Xaviers!

"Not sure what the Lady plans to do, especially with how soundly the lot of you managed to defeat the Grey Lords. With her power restored, there's no telling what she can do. She gave up quite a bit to have her daughter. I suppose, in the meantime, if you see more of the Lost, you could send them here."

"Chest plate's about ready. What do you think, Terra?"

She looks critically at something out of his sight, then back at him, then back at whatever it was. "Go a bit more harness on the straps. I have a feeling he'll need the support."

"Well, it seems I'll be here for...longer than I originally intended. So I will keep my eye out.

I'd also be wary of claiming we defeated the Grey Lords so easily; I somehow doubt that they'll just be...gone for good."

Will raised an eyebrow at Terra. "Do I...want to know what I'll be supporting?"

Terra looks like she's about to explain and then thinks better of it. "Maybe you don't. Give them a minute and they should have most of the front piece done. Tallius is a wonder with metal and Fergus has never met a piece of leather he can't tame."

"I put myself into your capable hands, then..." Will sighed, trying to shift around to make the stuffing inside feel a little more comfortable.

Terra starts tapping her foot impatiently, but shortly they bring over a bronze plate with leather straps riveted onto it. They get it settled in place and then strap it down, using the straps to help anchor the back plate as well. "We'll make sure this works, then I'll get Lila over here to work on that sword wound."

"This is supposed to keep me...rigid? Is that the idea?" Will asked, testing the strength of the straps by shifting his weight (such as it was) from side to side.

"Holds the stuffing in, keeps the hole closed. That's what you wanted, right?" The straps seemed to be a pretty high quality leather, designed for a lot of wear.

"Yes, exactly," he said, rapping his hands against the plate. "I'm...impressed you were able to make something this complex this quickly. I underestimated you."

"Magic," she says with a satisfied smile, "and a bit of time moving at our own pace." She looks over her shoulder, "Lila, you ready for the Fragarach wound?"

"I think so. Hope this will work," says another female voice, younger than Terra's. A younger elven woman moves into view, smudges of some grey material on her face.

"Hi there. Watch out, this wound is apparently pretty nasty?" Will said, trying to identify the grey stuff.

"It still tingles, and not in a super-pleasant way."

"Don't know if I can do anything about that," Lila says, "but I can at least try to cover it up." The grey stuff looks like dried clay of some kind, which is born out in a moment when she takes a handful of the stuff and begins to try to gently apply it to fill in the furrow left by Fragarach.

"Ah! Some sort of...potter, then, are you?" Will asked, trying to remain still enough to not disturb Lila's work.

"Potter, yes," she says, applying the clay in careful layers and with way more care than Terra used in stuffing him. "You're... not made of clay... it's something else."

"It's not normal clay, at the very least," Will clarified. "Or at least, not the sort of clay you find around here.

I...knew someone once who was good with minerals and things. She had all kinds of fancy words for it, and technical terms and things of that nature.

To me, though, if it looks like clay, and it molds like clay, then it's clay."

"There are different kinds of clay, good for different kinds of things," she says, laying a slightly different type of clay in before working at filling at the gap with more clay. She smooths it out gently, lifting her hands which start to glow. "This might hurt a little. I need to fire the clay so it will stay put. Otherwise it might just drip out."

"I've been though this before, I can take it," Will said, biting his lower lip.

She begins to run her hands across the clay, the heat permeating through the substance and beginning to bake it.

The clay would mix well with Will's pre-existing clay, creating an interesting gradient effect as the two blended into one another.

Of course, the clay Lila was used to working with would behave like she was expecting. The Will-clay also was baking somewhat normally, however, firming up as she applied heat.

"This is working exceptionally well," Lila says, pulling her hands back to inspect her work. "Let's let it sit for a bit and then see if we can get you upright."

"I try to be easy to work with...

...At least, most of the time," He added, after a short pause.

"This is far more than I was expecting -- I thought you would just loop a couple of straps across it and call it a day. This is really high-quality work."

"We do our best," Terra says from somewhere out of sight, "You defended the Lady, the least we can do is take care of you and the others."

"It was nothing, really.

It would have been an honor to lay down my life for something bigger. My safety and my needs are secondary to keeping people safe."

"A lifetime of service, something most here can certainly understand," says Terra, popping into view and inspecting Lila's work, nodding to the younger woman. Lila moves her hands elsewhere, heating them up to work out the dings and dents that Will seems to have accumulated.

Whereever Lila moved, she found she could fairly easily work with the clay, smoothing out dents and cooking the material, resulting in a sort of unfinished terracotta-type look.

"It helps to have something to serve. Take care that you're true to your Lady; losing that purpose is something that can be...hard to recover from."

Terra peers at him, "Everyone here knows what it's like to lose purpose. Only the Lady helped us regain it."

"...Of course. I apologize; I meant no disrespect."

"We're not the Grey Lords to take offense at the slightest whim," Terra says, "So what's your purpose?"

"At the moment? I have none.

I'm not even from here, originally. I come from a different...a different place. Similar in many respects, but that sometimes make the differences stand out all the more.

There, I was someone. I led the X-Men, I served the Morrigan, I was a father and mother. All very important purposes.

I am none of those things here, and I have made returning...difficult, to say the least.

So...I exist. I suppose that is my purpose at the moment."

"Existence is not purpose," Terra says. "I was seamstress to the Lady of Sunsets." She spits, "She exiled me because someone else was critical of one of the dresses I made for her. I wandered for years of your human time, constantly withering away and losing my mind. I existed, but I had no purpose. Has none of your companions offered you purpose? Has the Morrigan not taken you back in?" The questions seem mostly curious.

"The Morrigan..." Will said, then paused.

"This Morrigan is not my Morrigan, a mistake I have made several times. And I betrayed her -- had I had my way, she would have not been here today, and you would have all likely been lost to the Grey Lords."

He sighed.

"As for the others...not particularly. Not in the same way I had before, at any rate. There's a distance there..." he trailed off again.

"Has she cast you out for your mistake? Are you forever banished from her presence for your transgression? I think you think too much about what might have happened but did not, and not enough about what is," Terra scolds.

"Do you give this little pep talk to all your dresses, too?" Will said, trying to turn it into a joke.

"If they behave the way you do, yes," she says, somewhat seriously. Lila nods to Terra and Terra says, "Okay, time to get you up."

"Right, let's see how this has turned out. I don't suppose you have a mirror?"

"Do we have mirrors," Terra says, "Mirror, front and center!" A pair of fey bring a full length mirror forward as Lila and Terra help him sit. There's clay across the gash from the Red Lord, which looks sort of off, but not too bad. Over the largest hole, there's a bronze plate with leather straps that go up, over, and around him. If he turns, there's a similar plate in a similar position on his back, held in place by the straps.

"Not bad," Will said, twisting around a bit to get a better view. "Not bad at all. This will do quite nicely -- at least for now."

He tentatively pinched at one of his arms, feeling how the cotton stuffing was working. "You do remarkable work. I'll be sure to recommend you."

"We appreciate the compliment," Terra says and they all give him a bow. "Thank you for all you've done."

"Really, there's...no need to thank me. At all. This is far too much already," Will said, bowing back.

Terra smiles, "Lila can show you back to the upper levels where your friends are." She gestures for the younger woman who comes up near Will.

"Thank you much," Will said, carefully taking a few tentative steps forward.

"Magical weapons. Fine," he sighed, trying to get used to the unusual feelings.