After the end of the penultimate bout, she took a few minutes to rest and speak with the bookie, learning that Von Wickten fought in full plate using a sword and shield, and allowed challengers to use their own equipment as well, justifying this obvious unfair advantage as “Special Rules”. In these few minutes, she went through her Fog Storage inventory and picked out one of the garish jade ornaments she’d retrieved from the Locust Queen’s hoard, stowing it for later. It wasn’t long after that before Von Wickten came out on-stage, making a big show of rounding up the three “Winners” and selecting which of the three he would honor with the right to fight him. The remaining two would, it seemed, be made to fight for the second-place prize - a sizable cash award, though smaller than even the consolation prize for whomever fought Von Wickten, should they lose as the knight-captain expected. She played nice and let him talk for a while, but when it came down to it, she decided to make absolutely certain he would want to beat the smug grin off her face enough to pick her as his opponent for sure. He had had the pit-hands drag three luxurious seat out onto the stage, in which he sat the would-be challengers.

As he went across the two other finalists and commanded them to convince him to let them be his opponent, Zel waited, and when it came down to her, when the microphone receiver with its thick connecting-cable was shoved up against her face… She decided to provoke him further.

“Many of these people rely on you for their livelihoods, and I’d wager many of them fear retaliation if they offend you. I don’t. You’re not a real pit fighter, Adalbert - you’re a performance artist at best.”

Adalbert’s face flushed red, veins bulging on his neck, his scales lifting up the same way an animal’s fur would in anger. The knight-captain seemed about ready to call for her to be dragged out of there, or more likely, to just assault her himself, but this only prompted Zelsys to let out another chuckle and put on a grin of razor teeth. She raised a hand, gesturing for him to wait as she continued: “I mean, seriously! You call yourself the strongest living thing in Arches, but how many people have you fought that could actually challenge you? How many have you had disqualified on technicalities when they posed a threat to your championship, huh? C’mon, it couldn’t be more obvious that the referees are too afraid to risk pissing you off.”

“Who are you to accuse me of such things?!” the knight captain interrupted with an angry, but clearly articulated demand, displaying a degree of self-control that actually impressed her. “You are but a barbaric foreigner who will be gone before the full moon next rises. Of course you would have the unearned bravado to spew such vile lies, to burn bridges you will never have to walk!”

“Nice guess, but wrong!” she laughed, leaping out of her seat and striding in the knight-captain’s direction, effortlessly leaping atop one of the nearest ring’s corner-poles. “I’m saying that you wish to live the life of a martial artist without the risk, the struggle! You want the showboating, the bravado, the status of being at the top…”

She slowly raised a pointing finger upwards, only to then shrug, finishing: “...Without actually defending your position against real threats to your reign as champion.”

“There is no challenger who has bested me!” declared the knight captain with absolute certainty.

“Then you’re confident you could beat me, as well, yes?”

He scoffed: “A waste of my time!”

“Gotcha,” a thought shot through Zel’s mind as she pulled out the jade ornament she’d prepared earlier.

“Then I’ll make it worth your time!” she said, “I’ll forgo any rights to an official prize, and instead put up this little number right here if you beat me… On Black Horse Family Hard Sparring rules, with an impartial referee. Someone not from around here, who won’t have to walk a burned bridge as you so fittingly described, and therefore won’t be biased.”

Adalbert stared into her eyes, then at the jade ornament, then into her eyes again. He knew what those rules meant, how clear they were… But he also knew the value of something carved from such a large chunk of jade. After a few moments of deliberation during which neither of the two other finalists made any effort to contest her disturbance of the usual process, Adalbert finally caved.

“Very well, but before I agree to this, tell me what it is that you would have me render up in the inconceivably unlikely event that you somehow defeat me.”

“Oh, just some information,” Zel smiled innocently. “I’ll tell you what that info is in private, and while we’re at it we can also work out the other terms of our little bet. If it turns out that you don’t know what I think you know, I’ll just be on my way.”

“...Make your way to the edge of Pit Four before the start of the runner-up match - one of the pit hands will bring you backstage,” he said with feigned dismissiveness, exaggeratedly spinning on his heel and beginning to march towards the great door.

Briefly turning her head to watch him leave, Zel stowed the ornament and returned to the others, one of the pit hands briefly stopping her to let her know that the next match would start in only fifteen minutes, which passed in a flash. Within this time, Zelsys set her Tablet to begin a mnemonic recording exactly when she was to meet with the pit hand and retrieved a scroll of black, gold-interwoven cloth, wound around two brass spindles.

“Is that-” Victor squinted in recognition.

“-a Black Contract, yes. Don’t fucking bring it up to anyone, swear to the Sage,” Zelsys nodded, flagrantly ignoring the fact she’d been explicitly told not to disclose the nature of the object to anyone other than Zefaris or Jorfr, not even other Bureau assets like Duma. Her instincts told her the boy was no threat, and so she treated him as such. Victor fervently nodded in affirmation at the implied threat.

It was, from what the Bureau agent had told her, a Three Kings Era artifact which could weave a simple agreement into a geas that would prevent either side from intentionally breaking the terms, with the spindles having to be attuned to either participant.

“I don’t know what is so important about getting accurate information out of Von Wickten that our friends would supply such a tool, or how they managed to get a significant enough personal possession of his to tune it to him, but I won’t complain about my job being made easier…” she thought as she cautiously unwound the blank fabric, making sure the complex artifice of both spindles was intact, before winding it back up and stowing it in the half-sheath on her back. Despite the sheath’s size, the leather was enchanted such that it reshaped itself to envelop anything placed in the sheath and clung to it, much like her own clothing. The White Marble Tablet, the Black Contract, the Jade Ornament, and her own weapon, however, just about scraped the upper limit of what it could hold.

A few more minutes passed, and Zel made her way to the bottom of Pit Four, paying no mind to the runner-ups’ concerned looks as they waited for their own standoff to begin. One of the pit hands led her around the stage, through one of the amphitheater’s old staff tunnels, and to a black, hammer-forged door, at whose other end was an altogether mundane backstage area, clearly not designed for the tacked-on stage. He further led her through a hallway that had a direct sightline to the stage door, to a room which held a downright opulent catering area. Tables were pushed up against the walls with reams of half-eaten, luxurious food as well as bottles of drink and chalices littering them, the remains of a shattered bottle still on the ground. Before she could ask where exactly Von Wickten’s dressing room was supposed to be, she got her answer - connected to the catering room was another room, which contained only three things: Cages clearly meant for humans, and a downright antique-looking Fog Gate connected to a Kargarian machine by thick, black cables. Its presence here made sense - such a relic from the Three Kings Era had likely been repurposed by the first feudal lords that re-settled this are after the Divine Emperor’s genocide.

The Gate was a glyph-etched blackstone frame embedded in a shallow alcove within the wall, a solid marble slate at its other side, carved with a gate glyph.

The pit hand adjusted a dial on the cabinet-sized machine and threw the switch, causing it to emit an unpleasant clicking noise as it spat Fog and forced the ancient transportation machine to come alive. The glyphs flickered and pulsed with light as if in protest, before an unstable-looking wall of Fog filled the doorway.

“Step through quickly, please. The passage isn’t as stable as ones you might be used to,” the pit hand said as he gestured to the gate. With a sigh, Zelsys did as asked, reminding herself that she’d only been warned of long-range Fog Gates, and that a short-range hop wouldn’t risk deteriorating the seals that kept her blade semi-stable.

A wave of static washed over her and she felt herself being shunted through the Sea of Fog, emerging into the middle of a warmly-lit, opulent office. As she stepped into the room and looked around, she saw that this side of the gate was an entirely modern work of artifice, brass and silver rendered by exacting Kargarian hands in the image of an ancient stone archway. Work tables were pushed up against cabinets and bookshelves, the old hardwood floor covered in scratches and stains of suspicious origin.

Noticing the distinct lack of noise or even the feeling of another’s presence in her immediate vicinity, Zelsys took to more proactively looking around and exploring what she presumed to be Von Wickten’s home.

The cloying stench of expensive perfume assaulted her nostrils, marshaling its considerable might towards the goal of drowning out the other smells of Von Wickten’s residence: alchemicals, blood, and semen. There was a raging fireplace right across from her, its flames licking the many-finned copper grill of an Igneic Accumulator, from which black cables snaked across the floor and out the door to her right. To her left was a wheeled cabinet, similar to the one at the other side of the gate. She wasn’t sure if he was rightfully confident in the gate’s security, or a fool to trust it so much as to have one directly between the amphitheater and his home. The room had no windows, and going off of the general feel of the air, Zelsys was certain that this place had to be underground. Making her way out into the hallway, she took note of three other doors, two on each side of the hallway, with an upward stairway to the leftward far end and an L-turn to her right.

Before she could decide which way to go, she heard suspicious noises from one of the doors nearest to the stairwell. It was Von Wickten’s voice, angry and cruel, undercut by pained, boyish moans and pleas. Somehow, what she realized was happening was even more revolting than what she’d previously assumed.

“Milk,” came a loud command, followed by yet more pained vocalizations, which themselves were overpowered by the knight captain’s frustrated growling and hissing.

“I said milk! MILK!” he commanded again, this time to the sound of a gauntleted hand smacking flesh. A pained cry issued from the source of the boyish voice, to which she heard Von Wickten utter: “Ah, finally.”

There was a brief moment of silence. Then, a belted command from the knight captain, echoing through the door and down the hallway: “Number Four!”