Anticipating Zef’s cautious demeanor, Zel willed her Tablet to send a message:

“I’ve resolved the issue. Red is no longer hostile. Do not engage.”

A mighty grumble issued from Zel’s stomach the moment she stood up, prompting her to store the empty bottle away and retrieve two others; a larger and smaller one, the former containing a Viriditas-based elixir and the latter Rubedo. She mixed the latter into the former, creating a basic Vitae elixir just as she’d done back at the amphitheater, which she downed in one go, grimacing all the way. As the sound of the others’ return grew nearer, Red walked past Zel to return to her dragonfly, turning around once she passed to ask one last question: “Regardless of my identity, I remain a Pateirian agent. Why, then, do I not sense a fraction of the animosity that you so proudly display at every turn towards others like me?”

Before answering Zel finished her drink, briefly shivering at the mouthfeel as she dropped the two bottles into her Tablet’s already-open Fog vortex.

“By the end of the Blue Moon War, I didn’t hate Ubul, either. From what I know of you as Lady Karmesin, you’ve acted against the interests of the Occupationist faction, protecting Ikesians from your own countrymen and undermining Pateirian institutions wherever you’ve gone. Your existence just doesn’t coincide with the reasons I hate the Empire you so fervently claim to serve. Hell, you don’t even act the part the way you did back then; you seek to kill me because you promised to do so, not because I…”

Zel raised her hands, making a mocking quoting gesture.

“...”Courted death” or some other horseshit excuse based on maintaining “face”.”

That concept: Face. It was among the reasons Zelsys despised Pateiria so deeply, and why she found no hatred for Red in her current state. She had become able to discern whether one believed in “face” just by talking to them for a short while, even without the concept itself ever being brought up. It was a rancid sort of underlying dishonesty that suffused everything a person said, how they talked. That rancidness wasn’t there with Red, not anymore.

It certainly wasn’t present in her surprisingly timid followup question: “That may be true, but do you not seek the Empire’s downfall nonetheless?”

“The downfall of the Empire as it exists now, yes. Certainly, Xiān Dì has to die, as do the sycophants that enable his expansionist rule, but that doesn’t mean I seek to exterminate every last Pateirian, to pointlessly conquer as he has done, or to inflict undue suffering upon the little people of Pateiria. If they themselves choose to die in an effort to halt me, they’ll have forfeited their lives, but at the end of the day, my true goal is to see the Empire as it is dissolved so that a new regime may rise in its place… And Xiān Dì’s obnoxious face paraded around on a pike, of course,” Zel explained, glancing over at Red with a slight, yet insufferably smug grin on her face, knowing that such flagrant mention of the Emperor’s real name would elicit a violent outburst in someone with a burning loyalty for the man. She derived tremendous enjoyment from the mantis’ brief attempt at falsified rage, one which fell to the wayside when she noticed just how close the others were now, rushing to close her cloak, flip her hood up, and retrieve her mask from Fog Storage to put it back on. She continued as this went on, finishing her point: “...Thus, I don’t have a reason to hate you more than I do to hate Governor Estoras; you both being foreigners and both technically being occupiers isn’t enough to elicit my hatred.”

“I… Suppose that makes sense,” the Lady in Red conceded, her voice once more distorted and deepened by her mask. She returned to her vehicle just in time for the others to come within immediate eyeshot, returning the Subcore into its slot. Zefaris drove in Jorfr’s wake, holding Pentacle and an enchanted coin in one hand while steering with the other. One could clearly see the rusty-orange of Victor’s hair and the golden-hemmed red of his hood whipping behind her as he held on for dear life. The two Sturmgandrs came to a halt just short of twenty meters from Red’s dragonfly, Zefaris keeping her gun pointed squarely at the back of the mantis’ head as Zel reunited with her own motorbike, seating herself behind Zefaris while Victor switched over to ride alongside Jorfr.

Her voice full of distrust, Zefaris questioned: “Mind explaining that message of yours?”

“It seems we have the same intentions at the Meat Market. She sort of just…” Zel explained, running her thumb across her neck. The line where it had been cut was still there, outlined by a thin border of bloody-raw scar tissue. “Gave up trying to fight me after I made it obvious it was a waste of time.”

The blonde glanced at the newly-expanded scar, then up at Zel’s face.

“You held back, didn’t you.”

“I was curious. Besides, she’s-” Zel began, only to be cut off.

“I don’t care if she’s functionally a different person, or that Alcerys’s weird dead god thought the same as you, it’s just all too convenient,” Zef rebuked, turning her gaze towards Jorfr. Just three simple gestures were enough to convey that she wanted him to ride behind Red just in case she tried something funny. Meanwhile, Zel rode her bike out in front of the mantis, briefly slowing as she passed her to make it clear it was indeed a measure of caution.

Thus they rode off down that old forest road, their machine steeds howling as the sun set and only the glow of the Sturmgandrs’ lightgems and the Subcore remained to illuminate the path. The two further illusory dead-ends in their path put up no resistance to Zef’s unerring gaze, and within the span of less than twenty minutes, the cliff-face which was to be their destination already loomed above the horizon. Shattered aqueducts and other such broken edifices of the Three Kings Era towered above the treeline, obelisks and defaced statues competing with the greenery for the spotlight, whilst the cliff-face itself took up center stage; the temple had been carved into the solid stone itself, a three-floor superstructure with a tremendous alcove a hundred meters tall as the centerpiece. It was nearly empty, one of the arms of the statue which had once filled it now reaching up towards the heavens off to the west. Two holes were to be found in the stone within the alcove, right behind where the monument’s eyes would’ve been, doubtlessly so that they might be lit up with tremendous lightgems. No guards met them at the entryway, for it was concealed with yet another illusion right betwixt the statue’s legs; the only things left of that imperious figure in its original form.

They disembarked their vehicles some distance from that doorway, concealing them within the treeline and approaching on-foot. To reveal the entryway the code-phrase invitation had to be spoken. Near-nonsensical as it was, at its utterance the illusion faded and the doorway came into plain view, a looming blackstone bulwark as wide as the road and thrice as tall. It rose up ever so slowly, revealing an interior just as desolate as the exterior, the gate manned by two Grekurians, both of them surprisingly alert where Zel had expected either locust-men or parasitized servants. As they entered and the doors began to close behind them, she noticed the metal plates on both their left temples and the fact both their left eyes were closed.

“Just like one of Victor’s would-be kidnappers…” she thought. One of the guards remained, while the other beckoned the group to follow, leading them through these defaced halls of ruler-worship and into what must’ve at one point been the main cathedral, or an analogue thereof. Zel instinctively scanned the sprawling chamber the moment it came into view. A rectangular floor layout; four exits, including the one through which they’d entered just now, each in one corner of the chamber. Another exit, an upward stairway, was right across the room, with two others located in the two other corners, right behind an elevated podium, upon which an armored auctioneer’s booth had been set up, with a projector displaying a blown-up version of whatever was contained within a compartment below for all the would-be buyers to see clearly. Right now, the object being projected was a clock ticking downwards. Alongside the booth, four cages filled space atop the podium. Ancient stone pulpits filled most of the floor space, filled with worshipers anew, just of a different faith than intended; most had, wisely, dressed inconspicuously and masked themselves, but there were several recognizable faces, noblemen from Arches to a man, each and every one an ally or member of the Occupationist faction. Zel only recognized them in passing, Red’s bubbling, seething vitriol at seeing them here was palpable. A number of guards lined the outer perimeter of the room and surrounded the auctioneer’s booth as well as the archways at the back, two of them wearing mechanized plate armor emblazoned with Pateirian sigils: Second-model tank suits. Zel wasn’t surprised to see them here, not after the stolen Third-model test unit, but it amused her nevertheless, to see Pateirians making such ready use of the very technology that had turned the War of Fog into an embarrassment for the Empire.

The chamber had a vaulted, albeit not very high ceiling, much of the imagery that had been carved into the stone itself now stripped off or defaced, only resilient blackstone now remaining. It depicted an immense humanoid being built, a singular figure shaping its bones. There, with many eyes darting towards them before darting away, they were met with a revolting old hag of a woman, a hooked nose dominating her wrinkled, liver spot-riddled features while a pair of probing eyes as black as coals darted about from behind a deep, perpetually furrowed brow.

“Ah, Lady Zelsys, is it not? I see that you’ve made good use of our trusted accompaniment policy!” she said with a disingenuous, hollow warmth to her words. Her eyes drifted to Red, an evil glow alighting in them, “And Lady Karmesin, as well! I trust that you’ve come to ensure our establishment is run to imperial standards, yes?”

Red gave a curt nod, but did not speak. The woman’s revolting gaze shifted to Victor, then back to Zelsys. “Why is he-” she slipped up, stopping herself just in time for Zel to pick up where she left off.

“I bought him directly from the good Ser Burgghusen. Take it up with him when his convoy gets here,” Zel lied. The miasma of human fear and suffering combined with greed that filled this place was palpable; it stuck inside her nose and coated her sinuses, it made her stomach churn and bile rise to her throat. She turned to the squirrely-looking woman, for the first time in months having to fight to keep herself under control as she asked: “I wish to speak with the good Knight-captain. Is he here?”

She visibly hesitated, but her resolve crumpled like a stale crouton under Zel's barely-restrained stare.

“Y-yes madam, but ah… I am afraid he might not wish to receive visitors at this moment, as he is in a private business negotiation at the moment. Shall I go up to the third floor to inform him of your presence?”

“Do so immediately,” she hissed through a smile of gritted teeth.

The crone got the hint, and after feverishly nodding, she rushed off up the staircase. There was their way up. A suspiciously short time passed before there came a beastly grumbling from above and the crone returned, visibly out of breath, as if she’d ran for her life.

“Th-the knight captain shall see you after the auction,” she sighed. “I… Trust that this is agreeable?”

Zel nodded.

It wouldn’t be long either way.