Left. Right. Left. Right

She wasn’t running as much as she was leaping back and forth, making her way towards the beast in too erratic a pattern for it to decide on where to aim its breath of decay. Its mouth periodically swung open as it seemed to struggle with the decision, and she had decided to use the opportunity to toss the small bottle right into its waiting mouth once she got close enough.

Only… Such a moment didn’t come. An arcing stream of deep red liquid splashed on its back, sending ribbons of Red Fog in every which direction as the beast shivered and froze at the undoubtedly excruciating pain. Zelsys could clearly see its heart beating a panicked staccato as it pumped more black ichor to try and counteract the essentia of animalistic survival that was seeping into its decaying flesh.

Left. Right.

Almost there, she was almost there, but not quite. Then, from the left, from behind one of the barriers, there came a flash of emerald light and a thundering boom. A moss-covered musket ball carrying a net of thorny vines slammed directly into the beast’s waiting eye-socket, a horrendous scream emanating from the beast as the bramble quickly enveloped its head, beginning to slither down the blood-stalks of its neck, a thick Green Fog wafting from the growth all along.

It was stuck, frozen solid by unbearable pain that could only be inflicted on a creature of death and decay by the distilled essences of life. Zelsys saw the opportunity and took it, stopping at the end of one of her leaps to take a breath before she took off again, sliding underneath the beast from the right. She hefted her cleaver, using the momentum of her entire being to drive the push-saw side through its ribcage.

Though it was unable to move and its mouth was held shut by the bramble, pressurized jets of liquid death sprayed out of the hole that was once the bear’s nose, painting a trail of desiccation and wood rot over the treeline.

The crunching of bone and singing of steel ringing in her ears as she knelt beneath the Necrobeast’s shattered rib cage. She smashed her remaining seal-bottle into the gap, using the moment of clear air to take a breath as she grasped her cleaver with both hands. Letting out a breath of Fog through an exhilarated grin, she swung it upward into the gap she had made. Unable to help herself, she quipped, “Sorry for the heartbreak.”

Both hardened glass and shriveled flesh yielded to bulldozing steel, yet where she had expected a deluge of pitch-black liquid, there fell out a small gemstone - a many-faceted polyhedron, only slightly larger than a human eye. The beast’s legs were already shaking under its own weight as the remaining Nigredo was burned from its body. Thinking quickly, Zelsys palmed the gem and threw herself into a slide out from beneath the beast, ripping her cleaver free of its decrepit flesh.

She quickly stood and broke into a sprint to get farther away from the beast, its colossal weight shaking the ground well before she reached the barricade and turned around to look at what she had just slain. Holstering her blade as she watched the body begin turning to dust whilst Rubedo still rained down onto its back, she could do nothing but let out an exhilarated laugh. Then, Sigmund stumbled out of the building, looking around and pointing his stolen pistols. He visibly deflated in disappointment when he realized the beast was already dealt with. He muttered something about returning the pistols before the officer woke up and walked back into the checkpoint.

Second, Makhus finally stopped projectile-vomiting a continuous stream of Rubedo and fell to all fours, retching on the ground as he gasped, “Liqh- Liquid Vigor, need…”

His tattoos were still partially red.

Third, Zefaris leapt out of cover and ran over to him, trying to get him to drink pure Viriditas. He almost took a sip, but when the Green Fog hit his nose he pushed the bottle away, muttering “No, don’t wgh- waste…” just before he broke into another retching fit.

The cyclopean markswoman sighed in admonishment, untying one of the remaining seal-bottles from Makhus’s backpack, uncorking it, and bringing it to his mouth instead. He tilted his head up and downed it in one continuous gulp, allowing it to pour down his throat with ravenous thirst. His tattoos had turned black by the time the bottle was half-empty, but he kept drinking until it was empty.

Finally, he tossed the bottle aside and spat out a disgusting clump of bright-green mucus, struggling to his feet with Zefaris’s aid. “Never again,” he grumbled. “Let’s get outta ‘ere ‘fore the officer wakes up, this stench’ll stick to us for weeks otherwise.”

The swordsman rolled his shoulders and took a few deep breaths before he turned to finally cross the border properly, but he froze at the sight before him.

Zelsys stood leaning against the brick wall, smiling and inspecting the gemstone as she waited for the three soldiers to be ready to leave. While at first glimpse it had seemed to be obsidian-black, it was in fact partially translucent and heavily fogged with Nigredo, a mercurial silver glimmering within its center if the light hit it just right.

Her smile grew to a grin when she noticed Makhus frozen, captivated by the tiny gem, whilst Zefaris didn’t seem to pay it any particular mind. The swordsman squinted, looking at it, then back at the near-skeletal Necrobeast, then back at the gem. He pointed back at it, questioning, “Did that… Come out of it?”

She only gave a nod, smugly shooting back, “Yeah, what of it? In the end, I killed it - twice, at that.”

“I-I wouldn’t dare suggest that ain’t yours, it’s bad luck to covet one o’ those,” he quickly conceded, as if just the mere thought of demanding the gem felt wrong to him. “Just…Surprised that that thing had an Azoth, is all. Make good use of it.”

The bearded soldier finally emerged from the building, shutting the door behind himself. “Harder to holster a gun into a sleeping man’s coat than it looks,” he remarked as he looked around, seemingly confused for a moment. Bushy eyebrows raised, he asked, “So… Are we leavin’ or what?”

And leave, they did, taking off down that winding gravel road. Whilst they walked quickly to put plenty of distance between themselves and the checkpoint, they gathered the remaining seal-bottles one by one and stored them away within the Tablet. Makhus grumbled that it wasn’t good to drink pure essentia when Zefaris explained why one of her bottles was partly empty.

Once the bottles were stored away, Zelsys dropped the gem into the Fog vortex, then tapped BROWSE STORAGE to check its name. And indeed, there it was, near the top of the alphabetical list.

1x Minor Azoth (Necrobeast)

When she tapped on it, the usual options to Retrieve/Cancel came up, but there was an extra one, slightly offset to the right and highlighted in golden-yellow.

Consume

Out of curiosity, she almost tapped it, but something in the back of her mind told her it wouldn’t be a good idea to do that here and now. And so, she just touched her cleaver’s handle to loosen the holster, placing the Tablet within and letting go as she continued to walk alongside the three soldiers. The three made no effort to march in formation as they had previously, the tension in their steps relieved by the forest beyond the border.

They didn’t pay any particular attention to her, or at least far less than they had when they had first met in that wasteland of dead wood. She did find that Zefaris threw glances her way more often than the others, but she knew this had nothing to do with caution.

Eventually, though, it became obvious why neither the three deserters nor Zelsys felt as on-edge here. The further from the border they got, the less aggressive the greenery became. The gravel road they walked became not the sole path through a maze of greenery and brambles, but rather just that - a road, past whose edges one could see for a reasonable distance. After perhaps an hour or two of walking, the rustling of leaves and branches under the summer wind was broken by the occasional chirping of birds.

Verdant as the forest was at the other side of the border, the conversion barrier had made it so dominated by plants that many animals simply avoided it altogether. Compared to this side of the border, it was a veritable jungle.

Some time after the sun had passed its zenith and begun inching towards the Western horizon, the group reached a clearing at the side of the road containing a small campsite - a table and benches clearly hewn from raw logs and a basic fire-pit. They hadn’t been walking for long enough to be exhausted, but they gladly took the opportunity to take a breather, with Zelsys walking ahead to take a seat - or rather, to lay on the bench with her feet up on the table, holding the Tablet in hand as she idly browsed her traits, wondering what they each meant.

Zefaris seated herself on the same bench, whilst Makhus and Sigmund sat across from them. They cracked open one of the large bottles of Liquid Vigor, slowly passing it around as they each sipped from it in turn, or at least until it would’ve been Zelsys’s turn.

“It’s fine, I’m not thirsty,” she said offhandedly, but even so, the markswoman hefted the heavy bottle and held it out in offering. Zelsys let out a resigned sigh, took her feet off the table, and sat up, taking the offered bottle and sipping from it. The warm herbal flavor of Viriditas and the heat of ethanol, then a surge of strength and energy. It was a lesser effect than before, but still substantial.

She passed the bottle to Sigmund and continued idly tinkering with the Tablet. A thought crossed her mind - another one of the many ways in which she would fill the gaping holes in her knowledge of the world. Summoning the smugness that came to her so naturally, Zelsys swiped twice to the left to reach Fog Storage and tapped on BROWSE STORAGE, then on the Retrieve option for her Azoth.

The Fog vortex never failed to capture the three’s attention, and Makhus was entirely captivated when he saw the foggy polyhedron of a gemstone rise into her waiting grasp. She showed it to him held between two fingers, grinning as she asked, “Tell me, how would you make use of this? Satisfy my curiosity.”

Makhus took the bottle, taking a small swig of its contents before passing it to Zefaris, a gravelly chuckle rumbling out of him.

“Always with the pointless questions,” remarked the swordsman. Nevertheless, he rather enthusiastically took to explaining what he would do, as if he had been thinking about this idea for a long time.

“I’ve devised a hackneyed method of cultivatin’ Azoth that I probably won’t get a chance to prove for a lil’ while, but here’s what I came up with. First I’d crack the solid shell open, dissolve the mercurial core in a low-concentration Alkahest solution,” he began, leaning forward slightly while Zelsys took the bottle, sipped some Liquid Vigor and passed the bottle to Sigmund. “I’d grind the solid shell into a fine powder, use it as the base for ink. Then, I’d distill the mercurial solution into an elixir, which I’d imbibe while tattooing an appropriate sigil onto myself,” he continued, the veneer of stoicism vanishing from his eyes to reveal a mad glint. A smile formed on his face, but he was snapped back into his usual attitude by the prod of the seal-bottle against his arm. He took a swig and passed it, leaning back and returning to his usual, laid-back attitude.

“If my understandin’ of the method is correct - which I doubt - this’d allow me to create a vector for tapping into some of the creature’s capabilities while maintainin’ separation between my soul and the creature’s essence. Given proper precision and planning, I could even layer these Azoth Tattoos atop one another, assumin’ my method works ‘course.”

The bottle had made its way to her again, and she took another swig. It was half-empty now, and Makhus took notice. He waited for it to reach him again, took his swig, and said, “Right, one more round n’ then we get back on the road.”

Zefaris nodded, while Sigmund just grumbled affirmatively into his beard. Zelsys simply placed the Azoth gem back into storage, going back to the Traits readout. Expecting nothing, she tried tapping on her Survivor’s Instinct trait, and to her surprise, the Tablet reacted.

Its projection became scrambled, with all but the trait’s name illegible. It flickered from white to yellow, then became scrambled as well. The Tablet died, its projection fading, and it just sat there as the four observed it in silence. Before anyone could speak, it flickered back to life, a different projection this time. It posed a question, and offered a choice highlighted in blue at the bottom.

Trait Details are a Restricted Function. Soulbind this device to enable Restricted Functions. Proceed? Accept Decline

It didn’t feel wrong, and trusting her gut had gotten her thus far. Thus, she tapped Accept. The buzzing warmth rushed up her arm, past her shoulder, and towards her heart as wisps of silver Fog shot out of the Tablet and seemingly dove into her markings, traveling up them as pulses of light. Her vision instantly faded to silver, and in her mind’s eye, there flashed several phrases in quick succession.

SOULBIND SUCCESSFUL OWNER DETERMINED: ZELSYS RESTRICTED FUNCTIONS ENABLED FUNCTIONALITY RESTORED: TRAIT DETAILS FUNCTIONALITY RESTORED: TECHNIQUES LIST FUNCTIONALITY RESTORED: ADVANCEMENT ASSIST

She wiped the nothingness away with a series of blinks and a shake of her head, the three soldiers staring at her with varying degrees of concern. Makhus in particular looked a combination of concerned and befuddled.

“Did… Did y’just… Huh?” he tilted his head, squinting at her as if he were trying to figure out if she was going to explode. “Fuck’d you do just now?”

“Looks like this piece of rock didn’t properly bond to me when I first picked it up,” she said, feigning nonchalant annoyance as she gestured with the Tablet for emphasis. “Took this long to give the option to do it manually.”

Before he could question further she stowed it away, holding out an open hand for a few seconds until Zefaris passed the bottle. She took a swig, passed it to Sigmund, and rose to her feet, walking a few steps and idly stretching as she waited for them to follow. Soon enough they were back on the road, making their way towards the edge of the forest with renewed vigor. Zelsys could feel the edge of the forest approach, as could the others - the trees weren’t getting any less dense, it was something about the way the wind blew.

As they walked, however, Makhus became visibly restless, as if something was gnawing at his mind. Bored by the mind-numbing monotony of trekking through a forest, Zelsys confronted his nervosity.

“C’mon, spit it out,” she poked at him.

Cautious and strangely polite, he asked, “Your breathin’ technique. Who taught you?”

Zelsys was willing to do many things to cover up her own ignorance, but lying about this somehow felt wrong. She didn’t recall what it was, or the exact connotations of it, but for some reason unknown even to her, she understood that this was a touchy subject. Perhaps it was the uncharacteristic caution with which the swordsman asked the question, as if it was something deeply personal.

“I’m afraid I must disappoint you, but Fog-breathing comes naturally to me,” she answered honestly, before adding on a white lie to lead the conversation further.

“Besides, I couldn’t point you to a teacher even if I had learned it from someone. You can figure out why.”

A disappointed, sad chuckle rumbled from the swordsman as he weakly shook his head, as if to dismiss the questions he would’ve asked were her answer different.

“Of course,” he said bitterly. “The war took ‘em, like it did damn-near every Fog-breather. Makes y’wonder what the fuckin’ purpose of this war was.”

“We all know it was a matter of face for the old powers,” Sigmund piped up, stating an observation with surprising clarity, though his words were still somewhat muddled by the mass of rusty wire on his face. “Think about it. A couple city-states suddenly get united by some jackoff that calls himself the Sage of Fog. Not only do they make giant leaps in manufacturing technology enabling them to mass-produce things that take your craftsmen tens of man hours to produce, but they categorically refuse to share this technology and force you into trade deals that, while good on paper, are extortionate when you take manufacturing costs into mind.”

The bearded soldier raised his wizened gaze to meet the others’ befuddled stares, smiling through his facial hair. “What? Not all of us joined the army voluntarily. I used to be a history teacher,” he said.

“So as I was saying,” he continued rambling as they walked, “the old powers needed to put us in our place for the sake of face. So they send a couple Fog-breather led battalions, maybe some golems or what have you, shave a couple kilometers off our borders and take a factory or two.”

“A trade paid in blood and Fog,” recited Zefaris, as if it were some sort of saying. Zelsys made sure to remember it.

The bearded historian nodded, “Exactly. Next thing they know, they’re getting pounded into the dirt with rolling thunder artillery and an army of peasants is fighting and winning against their trained martial artists using mundane blades and glorified muskets. No wonder they pulled out all the stops, to them it must’ve been like Ikesia climbed onto the table of international affairs and pissed on it to claim it as territory.”

Makhus chuckled spitefully at that. “And they’ll just keep tryin’ to stomp us down to make sure we don’t threaten their rule,” he said, losing control of his voice and dropping into something approaching a growl. “War reparations for the crime of what, losin’?”

“For the audacity of fighting back, more like,” Sigmund replied. “And I’d wager they’re more than willing to kick us while we’re down if we start rebuilding a little too quickly. Maybe incite some extremism to justify further occupation, who knows. Not much stopping them with the Sage dead.”

Somehow, none of them had any more to say. Zelsys was more than happy to learn about different points of view before forming her own opinion of the world at large, whilst both Zefaris and Makhus were simply not particularly eager to poke at the open wound that was the possible future of their homeland. And so, they just continued to walk, the silence looming over them like the shadow of the very war they had hidden from in the Exclusion Zone.

And indeed, soon enough they reached the edge of the forest, greeted with fields of green and rolling hills as far as the eye could see. They walked the gravel road between the fields, the three soldiers’ eyes lighting up as they looked about and saw distant groups of people, plowing their fields and sewing seeds.

Zelsys felt the warm winds of summer blow through her hair, the wide open countryside stretching out entirely unlike the confines of the forest. She couldn’t help but smile, finding a strange sense of reassurance in the toil of these distant people - a proof of life’s continuation, of struggle for recovery in the wake of a great catastrophe that she knew she lacked context for.

Fields of grass and weeds soon turned to fields of wheat, the roadside ditches filled with blood-red poppy flowers. Zelsys stepped toward a spot in the ditch with many of these crimson blossoms, and saw that they grew amidst the sun-bleached ribs of a long-dead soldier. With her feet squarely in the ditch, she could feel the death that dwelt just inches below - it was unlike the disgusting feeling of rot and decay, it was a peaceful resignation of life in the face of entropy.

Wishing the soldier a peaceful rest, she plucked a handful of the flowers and got back on the road before the others walked too far ahead. She stuck them into her braids by the stems as she walked. When she was nearly done and had but one left, just as she wondered which braid had more flowers, she caught Zefaris looking, hands raised as she counted.

“Which one’s got more?” she asked.

“Both have three,” came the answer.

Beaming with her usual ear-to-ear smile, she handed the last poppy flower to the markswoman, “This one’s yours, then.”

A smile briefly turned to an amused grin when she saw the snow-white face turning a shade of pink as Zefaris threaded the flower’s stem into her ponytail.

“Y’done over there?” chimed in the swordsman in his rugged manner of speech. “The town’s s’posed to be just over this hill.”

As they crested the hill they saw that he was right, at least partially.

Over the hill, there stretched yet more fields, mountains reaching high into the sky over the horizon, and a line of trees dividing the fields to suggest the presence of a river. But down that hill, there stood a town… Or at least, what was left of it. To Zelsys, it looked to have at some point been a well-to-do farming town, perhaps a few thousand people strong, but now, it looked like some sort of perverted rorschach. They stopped at the top of that hill, observing what awaited below.

What Makhus had described as a town was just a vaguely circular layout of half-collapsed buildings, with perhaps a little more than a third of the town’s houses still in outwardly good condition. There stood the remnants of a wall around the town, huge holes blasted into it at multiple points, those visible barely covered over by planks or piles of rubble. Even so, a brick gateway still awaited them at the end of the road, a pair of people stood outside leaned against the wall.

Makhus’s face twisted into a grimace, his veneer of stoicism utterly melting away in a deluge of grief and rage. She heard his joints pop, his fists clenched tightly as he broke into an aggressive stride down the hill. “Fuckin’ animals,” he growled. Howling to the heavens, his voice became hoarse as the swordsman vented his fury. “Willowdale was meant to be untouched!”

The sense of optimistic levity that Zelsys had managed to cultivate evaporated in a manner of seconds, and as they ran after him to catch up, she could do nothing but allow herself to be dragged into the murk of melancholy. He didn’t look like he was going to calm down, and so she did the first thing that came to mind.

She took a breath and tackled him, using the exhalation of Fog to instantly get on top of him before he could regain his bearings. The swordsman struggled, but surprisingly, he failed to get out from under her, doubly so after she pinned his wrists to the ground. She was relieved that none of the seal-bottles broke.

His murderous glare pierced through her, his teeth flashing in a snarl like a mad dog. “You’re in no place to call anyone an animal, you rabid dog of war,” she admonished with no undertone of humor or nonchalance.

For a moment it sounded like he was growling at her, but a second later, Makhus turned his head and coughed up a glob of bloody spit. When his eyes met hers again, he was calmer, but barely-restrained fury still burned behind his glare.

“What do you plan to do when you get to that gate, huh? Assault some grunt and play into their nation’s propaganda?!” she questioned, assuming that at least part of the apparent prejudice against Ikesians had to have come from wartime propaganda.

To her surprise, he blinked a couple times and seemingly snapped back to his senses. She could almost see him mentally putting the mask of stoicism back on. “A’ight,” he rumbled calmly. “You’re right. Now get off me ‘fore you shatter my pelvis, yer fuckin’ heavy.”

Zelsys let out a brief, surprised chuckle and did as he asked. By the time he got up and dusted himself off, the others had caught up, and the group resumed their approach of the town without any further incident. A melancholic mire still hung over them, but that little incident seemed to have relieved the worst of the tension - or at least, to Zelsys it seemed as such.

After no more than perhaps a minute of further walking, it became clear that both of the guards were Ikesian. Their snow-white foreheads glistened in the sun, covered by a thin layer of sweat. They had muskets with long bayonets, which neither of them bothered to hold at the ready, instead just leaning them against the wall much in the same way they themselves did.

In fact, they weren’t particularly attentive at all - it took until the group had approached within a stone’s throw of the gate before one of the guards snapped out of his daydream and stood at attention, reaching for his rifle and holding it at the ready as he waited for them to approach.

They both had strong builds, but while the Left Guard was a youthful, well-groomed man, the Right Guard was the visual personification of a tired soldier. Greying unkempt hair, a short untrimmed beard, and a swelled, pinkish nose that stood out from the stark white of his face. Both of them wore uniforms that were very obviously repurposed Ikesian military uniforms, combined with casual clothes. The young man kept an attentive eye on them, though particularly on Zelsys - she wagered it was only partly due to the fact she was a towering foreigner among a group mostly composed of Ikesians.

“Welcome to Willowdale, please state your business,” the young man said cautiously when they finally reached the gate, looking them up and down in turn. The three soldiers stated their intentions in turn, and the guardsman did nothing but smile and nod at his countrymen to let them know they would be let in, only to turn his eyes toward Zelsys once more. Despite his impressive height, he still had to look up to meet her gaze.

“Especially you, foreigner,” he prompted.

Zelsys smiled at him. He was clearly young, very young. Perhaps in his late teens, barely more than a child. This up close, she could make out scraggly blonde threads that poked out of his chin, barely visible against his face - far less visible than the fear in his eyes as he stared up at her. “Oh, I’m just looking for honest beast-slaying work,” she said.

“Truly?” doubted the boy. “Or are you here to stir conflict? To undermine us even more after what your kin have done?!”

Accusations spilled from his mouth, misdirected anger blazing out of him as he gripped his rifle. The noise woke the old guardsman from his stupor, and the old man admonished his counterpart, “Fool, what did I tell you about antagonizing foreigners?! Shut your mouth before you get us in trouble!”

“Look, I wasn’t even on the continent during the war,” she interrupted, drawing stares from both the guards. A raised eyebrow from the old man and plain confusion from the boy.

“A treasure hunter, then? Count yerself lucky, then. I’d take a hundred cannibals o’er this travesty of a war anyday,” the elder responded, drifting off into a nostalgic daydream for a brief moment before he snapped back to reality. “Still, that don’t explain yer purpose fer bein’ here. Why come to a war-struck town at the edge o’ the Exclusion Zone?”

Something about the way the old man looked and spoke to her told Zelsys that he saw a reflection of his younger self in her. Whether that impression was reality or merely a misplaced assumption, she decided to play along. After all, she had begun walking this path the moment she told her purpose for entry to that officer.

“Just a Fog-breather looking to do some honest beast-slaying,” she said, knowing full-well it would draw attention to her.

“Truly? A’ight, I won’t try to stop you,” the old guard said, much to the younger man’s visible frustration. Nevertheless, the youth refrained from challenging his elder, and so they were granted passage, this being no more than the old man retrieving a bulky keyring and unlocking a smaller door in the gate for them to walk through.