The bathroom was surprisingly similar to that in the inn, just… More. The room itself and the bathtub were both bigger, but the entire interior including the appliances were clearly the same designs and most likely the same manufacturer.

“Find the medical kit please,” Zel asked as she handed the tablet to her counterpart before she began undressing. First the arm-harness, then the cleaver in its holster, then everything else, save for her chest bindings. In the span of a few minutes, she was sitting up to her waist in hot water over whose surface a layer of silver Fog roiled. She slowly, ever so slowly pulled the wrappings from her flesh, long strands of half-congealed blood stretching between the fabric and her wounds as if some sort of organic glue. Even Zelsys found this strange, fully aware of the fact human blood did not act like this when congealed.

A deep breath in, a deep breath out, small sips of Liquid Vigor inbetween. Though she was able to bear a great deal of pain, she was more than happy to numb herself to it with Fog-breathing techniques and pain-killing substances. Still, the sting of alchemic disinfectant in the gashes on her sides was intense enough to make her hiss out in pain. Zef’s concerned looks only served to make her grin and bear it through the pain, reassuring that “It’s fine, just make sure it’s clean.”

She wasn’t quite sure what the substance was, but it burned like high hell even through the Fog-intoxicated stupor.

“Lift your arm a little higher, please,” Zef asked, and she did as she was told, stretching her wounds open with the motion.

“Homunculus Eye…” the cyclops uttered, leaning in further over the edge of the tub to get a good look at her wounds. She squinted, furrowed her brow, and surprisedly remarked, “Looks like the muscle fibers are already reconnecting, no scar tissue at all… Don’t think I’ll even need to stitch you up. How much Liquid Vigor did you drink?”

“Uh… Half a bottle, I think?” Zel wagered, then turned to the markswoman with a mischievous grin. “Does that mean you won’t kiss it all better?”

“Really? You’re doing this now?” the blonde admonished, soaking a fresh ball of cotton in disinfectant before somewhat forcefully swiping it against Zel’s wounds with a pair of medical tweezers.

“I’m about a-as close to be-eing at your mercy as I could get,” she responded, briefly hissing in pain at every swipe as the aggressive liquid burned away more than just the bacteria in her wounds. It felt, and to some degree smelled like it was partially cauterizing the wounds with a mere touch. “M-maybe making horny comments is a defense mechanism.”

“Sure it is, and I’ve secretly got a second working eye,” Zef chuckled, only half-jokingly. Zel started to gently pull away the rest of the bandages as the water reached her chest and melted them away, baring her claw-scored flesh plainly to see. Whilst Zef squinted at the deep stab wounds in the amazon’s back, she leaned forward in the bath and shut the water valve, stretching her wounds open to a point where her back began to bleed again.

Before she could return to a relaxed position, she heard the words, “Wait, hold on, stay like that.”

There was the squeaking of leather and clattering of metal, and she felt a metal tool slip deep into one of the stab wounds on her back, stretching it open. It was followed by long tweezers, which pulled out of the wound a stinging fragment that she hadn’t noticed through the rest of the pain before.

“Is this… A fingerbone?” Zef’s bewildered voice questioned, and Zel saw her turning it around and examining it when she finally leaned back.

She squinted at it, cocked her head to the side, and nodded, “Uh-huh, pretty sure. Fucker got his claws in me before I kicked him away, pretty sure a couple broke off inside.”

“What was the beast anyway?” the markswoman questioned, dropping the fingerbone onto the bathroom floor and picking up the cotton ball again, continuing to press it into her wounds to let the vile disinfectant seep in. All in all it was rather awkward, and it quickly became obvious that she couldn’t easily reach Zel’s back without painfully pressing her arm against the edge of the tub.

“Some poor soldier that had used an old ritual to turn himself into a man-eating monster just before the end of the war,” she said through a pained grin. Zel turned towards Zef when she put the cotton ball down to try and soak another one in disinfectant.

“C’mon, it’ll be easier if you just get in the bath with me.”

The cyclops gave a nod and a token sigh of resignation. “Alright,” she relented, pulling her shirt over her head before she began to unbuckle her trousers. Zel made no attempt to stay her gaze, leaning on the edge of the tub as she took in all that alabaster skin. She’d seen more than enough yesterday, but both her head and her sight were far clearer now. Under the milky-white light of the illumination crystal, Zef’s lightly-toned musculature reminded her of something she saw earlier today.

“It’s like I’m looking at a marble statue,” she chuckled, Fog spilling from her mouth with every syllable. She’d become so accustomed to Fog-breathing she needn’t consciously focus to do it, but doing it as such also had this rather visible side-effect.

“Sh-shut up,” Zef stuttered dismissively, bending down to pick up the Tablet. She swiped through its projection for a short while before she held it flat. Soon, a small seal-bottle emerged from the Fog vortex that came forth. She stepped into the bath and Zel immediately felt the warmth of that marble-like skin against hers, somehow easy to pick out even through the relentless heat of the bath.

She heard the popping of the cork and the glugging of liquid being drunk, then felt Zef’s lips around one of the stab wounds on her back, soon followed by the warmth of Viriditas flooding in. The markswoman did the same thing on the other stab wounds, quickly enough that she was done by the time Zel had gathered her thoughts. She turned around and blurted out, “Did you just-”

“It’s standard procedure for sealing deep wounds,” the cyclops interrupted as if it were completely normal, emerald-green Fog shrouding her face as the droplets around her mouth evaporated. Zelsys carelessly exhaled right into Zef’s face, seeing her face turn light pink as tendrils of the silvery gas were swept up by a breath in.

The cyclops turned her gaze towards the wounds once again, murmuring something about how they’re deeper than she thought before taking another swig of Viriditas and repeating the same procedure as before. Going by the fact Zel could feel the remnants of pain fading, she was willing to believe the severity of her injuries wasn’t being used purely as an excuse for more bodily contact.

Zefaris wasn’t exactly trying to hide the fact that this was exactly what she was doing, however. After all, it wasn’t as if sealing a wound by using one’s mouth to administer Viriditas directly into it required one to place their mouth anywhere other than the wound, or to wrap their arms around the patient’s chest as she did.

Soon enough, she saw the corked seal-bottle floating by, having slipped from the markswoman’s grasp. She felt the warmth of liquid green flow over the gashes on her back, followed by the feeling of completely unnecessary kisses on the wounds. Picking the bottle out of the water and uncorking it, the violently herbal smell of the primordial fluid assaulted her nostrils. Its vapors briefly obscured her vision before she pressed the bottle to her lips and took a swig, then sealed it shut.

Even now, the brunt of it tasted like nothing more than a vaguely herbal essence, but there was something new in the aroma. Something new, yet distinctly familiar.

“Viriditas. What’s it taste like?” Zel asked, absent-mindedly admiring the designs of the seals as she basked in the warmth of this impromptu embrace.

“Mint, lemon balm, sometimes thyme...” Zef trailed off, resting her head on the small area of her back that had neither gashes nor stab wounds. “Also you.”

“Me?” she chuckled, blindsided by that answer. “In which way?”

“Both of ‘em. Depends on my mood.”

Pages upon pages of philosophizing on the nature of Azoth, of alchemy, of the Fog itself - Aether by its alchemic name - filled the journal, interspersed with nuggets of real meaning, as if the journal was written all in one go as a stream of consciousness. Makhus was just about ready to believe that when he reached the fifth page of seemingly meaningless philosophy in a row, only to be hit in the head by an anvil by a simple, apparently meaningless paragraph.

If this experiment turns out successful, I believe my theoretical homunculus will be capable of Fog-breathing from the moment it comes out of the tank. I have secured a location in the southern swamplands, and should everything go to plan, I will be able to begin the growth process within the month. I only hope the tissue and blood samples I have obtained truly do belong to members of the great heroic families.

Despite its potentially revolutionary nature, my method of growing a fully-functional homunculus will not differ from the traditional method in base execution. I will, however, require a colossal quantity of pure Viriditas to fuel the process and a truly grand support mechanism to ensure at least one embryo is grown to the full extent, even if it means the premature termination of other embryos.

The next page had a date several months after the previous. He thought it must be missing pages, but it didn’t seem to be so.

It appears my research has attracted the attention of the Sage himself! He just showed up at my doorstep yesterday with one of those gaudy gift-baskets he’s known to be so fond of. I was more than happy to play the host, but he just handed over the basket and left!

There was a glyph-sealed letter buried amidst the confectionery, containing a set of coordinates I think are located within the southern territories and an instruction to burn the letter atop a marble slab that I am to find at the location.

I suspect I may have just been offered a research facility.

The more he read, the more he felt the need to cross-reference the journal’s contents with the alchemist’s other notes. The more he cross-referenced, the more discrepancies he noticed between the handwriting in this journal and the other material on the writing desk. Not only was it noticeably different, much of what was on the table seemed to have been written by someone entirely different who had also worked to translate the journal, in many places doubting the veracity of the claims.

Makhus sat for a moment, contemplating whether he should dive deeper or try asking the jar-homunculus. "It couldn’t hurt,” he supposed. He took a large piece of paper, and wrote his question on it in large letters that he thought the creature could read even through the mire of its jar.

DID THIS JOURNAL

BELONG TO THE

OWNER OF THIS LAB

He held it up to the glass alongside the old journal, hoping and praying that the homunculus would respond. Its vacant gaze remained affixed to his face, but after a few seconds the spark of sentience returned to its form for long enough to shake its head and write a response on the inside of the jar.

NO

A breathing motion to erase the word, and it continued writing.

NOT

SURE

WHO

Another breath. Another message.

USE IT

OR

BURN IT

This time, it faded out without even erasing its writing. The creature was a marvel of alchemy, a cross-section of the consciousness of whoever it was based on, preserved in synthetic meat that would outlast any natural-born human. A living time capsule, but with a clear flaw.

Even a homunculus as immaculately crafted as this could only maintain consciousness for short periods, after which it would lapse back into its state of mindless slumber. Makhus knew it would be a bad idea to ask it more questions than was absolutely necessary, as every period of activity was said to reduce such a creature’s lifespan significantly, for it could neither feed nor heal. It could only be sustained by the preservative solution it was sealed in.

He sat back down at the desk, and this time decided to look through the other notes, the other journals. These were written in everything from plain text, to the very same substitution cipher as the old journal, to unencoded old Ikesian, with seemingly no correlation between the importance of the writing and how heavily obfuscated its meaning was.

Some of the notes were simple scraps of paper with reminders on them, while others were entire self-contained theories that covered both sides of the paper they were written on. He even found a substantial wad of loose notes that had been bound together with twine into a makeshift, vaguely book-shaped collection.

This… Was a deeper rabbithole than he had the mental energy to delve into right now.

One note that stuck out to him was located right next to the resting spot of the worn journal, written in hasty cursive.

Likely lab location:

-------

Expedition risky

Must take risks

Where the location would have been, the note had clearly been ripped apart and stapled back together, but the edges didn’t align. Clearly the piece that the location had been written on was at some point removed.

Makhus sighed in frustration and turned away from the desk, but not before placing the old journal into one of the drawers. His gaze fell upon the alchemic still in the corner, and he decided he may as well clean it out, grumbling, “Swear to the Sage, she better not be a fuckin’ homunculus. Too goddamn convenient...”

“When all beauty is tarnished, when all thought is profaned, they'll cry out for men to invoke the iron rods again…” Sigmund sang along as he mopped the store, even though he couldn’t actually hear half of what the street performer was singing. He knew the song by heart, every word and every beat. It was one of the many, many old folk songs that had been revived in the wake of the war, a word changed here and there to fit the new political landscape and produce yet greater offense from those they were meant to target.

The historian side of him found it boundlessly intriguing, whilst the patriotic side screamed out to be heard and demanded him to let go of the ironclad shackles he had placed around his own emotions. “Now this our secret flame will illuminate the night, and its sparks fly on the wind and set the world alight,” he continued singing to himself, allowing himself just a twinge of heartfelt pride for the resilience of his nation. The smaller seizures weren’t that much of an annoyance anyway, just a few seconds of locked-up joints and the occasional jitter.

As expected, he felt the heat rising in his chest and his movements stiffening, and he fought it not with hard resistance, but by letting go. The historian flipped a switch in his head and smoothed out his breathing, his movements going from the step-by-step dance natural to humans to a snakelike flow that even a locked-up joint or two couldn’t stop.

He was fully aware of how silly it would look, were anyone watching, but he didn’t particularly care. Sig didn’t want to force his friend to bear the effects of purging Rubedo from his system unless it was a seizure too severe for him to power through on his own. Soon enough the seizure passed, and after a few minutes more, he had fully mopped the ground floor and was ready to move onto the upper one. Before he went as far as to walk up the stairs, however, he stood at their bottom and listened, as well as his ears would hear, to make sure he wouldn’t disturb anything - not because he was particularly polite, but because he frankly didn’t want to deal with the inevitable seizure that such an awkward situation would send him into.

No strange sounds. There was the occasional splashing of water and muffled speech, but nothing more. Surely, they wouldn’t mind if he went up there to sweep the floor.

But then, he was rather curious as to how the lab looked, and forcing Makhus to stop acting like a petulant manchild was something that bothered him far less than the prospect of disturbing what was doubtlessly a bonding moment for the two warrior-women.

A small albeit very real part of the reason for his apprehension towards disturbing them and his investment in seeing this curious relationship develop was simple academic curiosity. He’d read much about such relationships in the history books, but he’d never been close enough acquaintances with anyone who took part in one that stretched beyond a momentary fling.

So it was that he leaned his mop against the doorframe and made his way down the stairs to the basement, quietly opening the door to the lab. He felt his eyes glazing over as the grand hall of scientific pursuits stretched out before him, his gaze naturally floating across it from left to right as he tried to take it all in. No wonder Makhus used the first excuse to come down here.

Much to Sigmund’s surprise, Makhus was neither at the writing desk, nor at any of the many supply closets or display cabinets, or even tinkering with one of the myriad tangles of glass tubing that covered most of the tables. No, he sat hunched next to an industrial-sized still in the corner, murmuring a litany of expletives and slurs as he toiled away yanking hunk after hunk of desiccated plant matter out of the bottom of the machine.

“You uh… Need any help there?” he called out. To his amusement it startled his friend enough that it made him leap to his feet, grasping bundles of dry twine in both hands as he realized there was no reason to be startled.

“I’m good. Why’re you down here, are they being that noisy?” Makhus questioned, clearly nervous about something. Something other than his words insinuated. Sig shook his head, leisurely walking through the lab and in his general direction, looking about. Truly, this place was a veritable museum of wonders.

“Nothin’ inappropriate goin’ on upstairs far as I can tell,” he remarked, making his country bumpkin accent come through far more strongly than it would even if he didn’t try to hide it. “Not so sure ‘bout down here, though.”

“W-whaddya mean?” Makhus replied in kind, his own accent sounding through in full force.

Sig leaned against one of the tables and shot Makhus one of the stern looks that so reliably got the younger man to come clean. He found it to be tremendously effective, this fatherly stare that he’d learnt to project despite the fact he had no children and hadn’t gotten to teach a class for more than two years before the war.

Perhaps it was his one-time use of Victory Wash that galvanized his facial features, that night of slaughter alone must’ve been worth a decade of combat stress. To this day, he couldn’t remember so much as a split-second of it all. He needn’t so much as say a word to make Makhus break under the psychological pressure of his gaze.

“Fine,” the alchemist relented. “I’ve found somethin’. Remember what Zelsys told us at the inn?”

Sigmund gave a slow nod, nonverbally prompting him to continue. Makhus briefly rubbed his chin, murmuring verbal filler such as “Well…” or “Y’see…” under his breath before he finally just gestured for Sigmund to follow, walking towards the writing desk.

“Alright, just keep your arms up…” Zef instructed as she wrapped a fresh set of bandages around Zel’s chest, so tight it was almost uncomfortable. Almost, but not quite. She would’ve complained under any other circumstances, but she knew this was just to keep her wounds shut.

The old bandages she had used for chest-wrappings were soaking in the sink after Zef skillfully cut the most-damaged parts away with surgical scissors, the water already a light off-red.

It took a good couple minutes to finish, and by the time it was done, most of Zel’s chest was wrapped, with only the lower half of her stomach exposed. Even still, the bandages clung so tightly to her skin that every crease of muscle and even her ribs could be seen through. Much to her relief, Zefaris had the foresight to layer the wrappings many times around the upper portions of her chest to preserve what little modesty the amazon had.

Showoff that she was, she still wished to keep certain things away from the leering gazes of the townsfolk.

“I should get something properly tailored,” she remarked as she rolled her shoulders, testing the limits of her movement. Surprisingly enough, her wounds didn’t limit her range of motion much, especially sealed as they were. She turned to Zefaris, who was now in the process of readjusting her own clothes to hide the fact her shirt was clearly a man’s cut. “...And you too. Want to come to the tailor with me?”

“Huh?” the markswoman’s eye snapped to her at that question. “Why?”

“You obviously don’t have much spare to wear, if any at all. When’s that shirt last been washed?”

“Ah… Just before we went for that patrol when we met you, actually, so three days ago or so…” she furrowed her brow, knowing full well that her answer was correct yet still feeling like it was off. “Feels a lot longer than that, for some reason.”

“So it does…” Zel agreed. Had it really only been three days since she climbed out of that bizarre bunker-lab? “Either way, we obviously both need spare clothes, we can just have a nice time in town and get the shopping done later. I’ll foot the bill, since I just got paid.”

“Alright, alright. But I don’t do tailors, mass-produced stuff is just fine by me. You’ll probably need to have something custom-made, with those tree-trunks for legs. Could crush someone’s head with those things.”

Zelsys couldn’t help but laugh at that remark, jokingly reassuring, “Don’t worry, I’ll be careful to not crush yours.”

Her smile turned to a grin as she watched the realization of what she just said settle into Zef’s mind, her face flushing quicker than she could turn away.

Neither Makhus nor Sigmund were to be found anywhere on the ground floor when they made their way down those old, wooden stairs. Both of the women looked about for a few moments, soon realizing that the metallic rattling coming from the basement was caused by their compatriots. They vaguely heard Makhus yell something along the lines of, “There’s months of waste backing this fuckin’ thing up!”

“They’re probably cleaning an alkahestry still. Let’s not disturb them,” Zefaris suggested, clearly apprehensive to what she perceived as filthy, disgusting work. After all, she had no experience working with such devices outside of the horrific contraption that Makhus had set up in their camp. The concept of an industrial-scale still backed up with months of waste conjured in her mind images worthy of an ossuary.

Thus, they didn’t distract the two men from their labor, but Zelsys took a short time while they were still here to reload her gun. Not because she thought she might need to use it, but because something just felt off about leaving a fired shell in the mechanism, and if she were to extract the shell and place it into Fog Storage, she may as well just go all the way with retrieving another shell and loading it.

Even after seeing it multiple times, the loud click-clacking of the heavy mechanism and the violent motions required to make it move made the markswoman stare with enraptured fascination. Truly, this weapon was a wonder of technology compared to the simplistic, mass-produced muzzle loaders she was issued and had used for most of her adult life.

The empty shell was thrown skyward and clattered onto the counter when she yanked the bolt open, Zef’s eye tracing its trajectory before she reached out and picked it up, turning it over in her hand, even smelling it.

“Ignis-infused rifle powder, no wonder it needs that harness,” she remarked, handing the shell over. “Did it do anything to the beasty?”

“Punched a hole in its stomach, didn’t go through. I wager it would’ve if I hadn’t used it to stagger the thing,” Zel responded, waiting for the shell to vanish in the Fog vortex before she selected a shell for retrieval. There were no more Type-1 Loaded Shells to be had, and so it was that she retrieved one of the two Type-2s. She hadn’t paid them any particular attention when she first stored them in the Tablet, but having had some experience in using the weapon, the difference between a loaded Type-1 and Type-2 was quite obvious now.

One had a large lead ball poking out the opening, whilst the other just had some sort of cork plate at its open end, with a rune different from the one on the base burnt into it. Before she loaded it, she handed it to Zef with the pretense of simply letting her look at it up-close, but in reality she just hoped the markswoman would read the runes and tell her what they said.

The cyclops weighed it in her hand and turned it around a few times, remarking that, “The bottom just has the rune for high-yield, but the top looks like some weird sibling rune to the rune for the act of destroying something by breaking through it. Some sort of anti-material scattershot round, maybe?”

Zel took it back, sliding it into the chamber and closing it shut with a satisfying clack. “Guess I’ll find out when I use it,” she said, almost regretting that she didn’t load one of these sooner, if they truly were scatter shells. That would have been far more effective against both of the beasts she had fought up until this point, especially at point-blank.

“Alright, good to go?”

“Yeah.”

Down the riverside promenade they went, idly walking by the many storefronts that stared out into the street. A good two fifths of them were visibly abandoned, and of those that were clean only two thirds were open. A general goods store, a butcher’s, an open-ended fresh produce shop...

Zelsys instinctively turned on a heel and stepped towards the display. Half-empty as it was, it still held a bounty of fresh fruits and vegetables that obviously came from the surrounding farms, and frankly, she was hungry. It only took a few minutes to pick out a couple of the nicest-looking fruits and have the impressively ancient store owner pack them up in a wax-paper bag, just about small enough to fit into Zel’s right hand. The old lady annoyedly held out a hand when it was time to pay, resentment coming through her grandmotherly demeanor as she said, “Yer gonna hafta pay in that trashy Grek money, sorry. It’s two coppers fer the whole lot.”

“Got change for a silver?” Zel asked, pulling one of the shiny coins out of her belt pouch and handing it over to the old lady, waiting for a response before she dropped it into the gnarled waiting hand. As Zelsys did this, she felt Zef’s hand digging through the bag whilst the markswoman’s arm wrapped itself around hers.

A strangely forlorn stare from the veritable antediluvian preceded a slow nod, to which Zel quickly handed the coin over and waited for her change. Two coppers into the pouch and a huge pear out of the bag later, the two women walked down the riverside promenade in armlock, still looking for a tailor or any sort of clothing store.

The tangy-sweet flavor of the fruit itself was only complimented by the bitterness of its peel, and before Zelsys even knew it she was left with the core in hand. She briefly considered tossing it into the river, but chose to instead just put it in the bag and toss the whole lot later. Another pear. There was an apple, a peach, and a pair of plums left in the bag, out of which Zefaris arbitrarily picked the peach once she was done with her pear, perhaps because it was the largest out of the remaining fruits.

They passed by more closed stores, dust-covered displays staring at them from the empty storefronts. Pottery and porcelain, paintings, even moth-chewed dresses that hung off the skeletal frames of puppet-like mannequins. Then, for a good long while, nothing - just the front ends of perhaps a dozen houses. At the other side of this gap, nearing a huge mill that stood as part of the town wall, they found a small stretch of stores which were all open, likely kept afloat by the increase in traffic brought to this area by the presence of a bridge right by the mill.

Unsurprisingly, the largest and busiest of the stores was a bakery, a solid thirty people stood outside it in an orderly line, two armed guardsmen standing outside the store as the baker handed out identical loaves. Zelsys thought she might go take a look, maybe buy some baked goods for later, but the bickering of the townspeople waiting for their ration dissuaded her.

Next to the bakery, there was a smaller but equally busy general goods store, and separated from these busy places of momentary comfort by a narrow side alley, there was the very store they had been looking for.

It was clearly a very, very old building, perhaps as old as Willowdale itself, with no storefront or displays. Just a door and a meticulously maintained sign showcasing a roll of thread, with the string arranged into the store’s name - Bherad & Sons. Briefly stepping into the side alley and stowing the wax paper bag into Fog Storage, they walked up the stone steps and entered the store.

The front of the store was densely filled with basic clothing in all common sizes and both men’s as well as women’s cuts, from dress shirts and work pants to coats and even certain types of underwear like long johns. There was a substantial section dedicated to hats, all of which were obviously just the same base shaped and adorned in various ways - most were wide-brimmed hats of the sort worn by farmers to shield their eyes from the relentless summer sun, but there were a couple tricornes and cocked hats.

All of the clothing that was to be found here was clearly mass-produced far away and shipped here, but there was a sign behind the vacant counter that suggested an alternate option.

YES, WE STILL DO TAILORING WORK

STOP ASKING

It was written in thick lines of bright red ink, the writer’s annoyance palpable from the brush strokes. Zelsys looked about and found no employee or clerk present, and so simply rang the little bell that sat on the counter whilst she continued to idly look over the many varieties of generic, inoffensive attire that filled the store.

All of it was white or varieties of vague, inoffensive colours. The greens were olive-green, the browns were beige, even the blacks weren’t quite black - just dark grey. Her gut feeling was that the store’s owner was mocking those who chose to purchase mass-produced clothing by only stocking generic attire that wouldn’t stand out, even if it was of surprisingly good quality.

Her gut feeling was vindicated by the emergence of a willowy, middle-aged Ikesian man, his brilliant-blue gaze searching the room as he seamlessly moved across the floor with a strange grace that belied his stone-still hands, frozen in a resting position at perfect table height. His sleeves were held taut around his arms by myriad pins and needles, and a bright-red piece of fabric hung over his shoulder, as if he had placed it there and forgotten while working on something.

His attire was simple, but immaculately fitted to an unsettling degree, so well his dress shirt fit that it almost looked to be a second skin. The Tailor grumbled something in a tongue that didn’t quite seem to make sense altogether, though Zelsys managed to pick out a couple words that suggested a dislike for foreigners. He then turned his gaze towards her, eyes cold as ice staring up at her from amidst a webwork of crow’s feet, a question on those wrinkled lips.

“What’dyawant?”

“...I’m sorry?” she asked, cocking her head to the side. “I didn’t quite catch that.”

She perfectly understood what he said. She just wanted to make him say it clearly, not fond of the man’s attitude for no reason beyond personal pride.

“What. Do. You. Want?” he enunciated exaggeratedly, speaking loudly and slowly as if she were an idiotic child. Zefaris lifted her eye from a white dress shirt she was looking at to see what the fuss was about, but said nothing.

“Oh, nothing. I’ve got a couple Cold-iron Sovereigns burning a hole in my pocket, and I figured I’d see whether there was any merit to the rumors about how you’ve stopped trying since you started stocking factory clothes. Guess they were right, going by all this stock,” she rattled off, conjuring layers upon layers of lies as she went for the sole purpose of trying to yank on the Tailor’s pride. With every implication she saw his cold anger growing, and with every implication she had to work harder to restrain the smugness in her voice.

One of his eyes visibly twitched as he seethed, “I knew that ungrateful piece o’ shit ‘cross the river’s been spreadin’ rumors! You go ask him for anythin’ n’ I guarantee I’ll charge you…”

The Tailor’s anger towards what must be a competitor vanished the moment his gaze wandered downward, skipping past Zel’s slightly bloodied chest-wrappings and straight to the material of her trousers.

“Hol’ on. You’s all jacked up n’ huge, the fuck’re those pants made of to fit that well? Is that Fog-infused fabric?”

“So it is.”

“I’m sorry to say, I ain’t got the means to modify another Fog-tailor’s work at the moment, if tailorin’ work is what you want done on those. What else d’you need?”

“Can you make new Fog-infused fabric?”

“Sure, but anythin’ more than strips will take awhile. I’m talkin’ a couple months to a year fer an outfit dependin’ on complexity.”

“Just strips should be enough. I need at least two sets of chest-wrappings that won’t remain torn up if they are damaged. Can you do that?”

“Of course, that’ll only be a couple days. Anythin’ else?”

“Underwear.”

A small, self-satisfied chuckle from the old man, his trained eyes already making educated guesses as to her measurements, “Figured as much, the mass-produced shit chafes to no end. C’mon, I’ll measure you. We can discuss the style and cut once I getyer numbers.”

He led her to a spacious backroom that looked to be part workspace, part storage, and part showroom for examples of the Tailor’s best work. With a simple gesture he directed her to a seemingly random spot on the floor, instructing “Now just stand wide an’...”

There was a barely-audible whisper, and Zelsys felt feather-light touch around and along both her limbs and her body, just barely able to see the Tailor’s lightning-fast flourishing of his flexible measuring tool, its length snaking and whipping about as if it were sentient. A split-second later it was done, and he stood in nearly the same spot as before, clearly expecting her to have been unable to see him measure her.

“Done,” he said with some pride in his tone, visibly struggling to control his breathing as barely-visible wisps of Fog escaped his ears and nostrils. “Now, for the style - either you can give me all the specifications, or you can just pick one of the styles I can guarantee will work on your body type and we can make changes from there. Which’ll it be?”

She chose the latter.

Two-and-a-half dozen pairs of example underwear later, Zelsys had learned more about both modern and conservative types of undergarment than she’d ever bargained for, and she was just about ready to purge from her mind the mental image of high-waisted bloomers with any distraction. All those frills and lace must’ve been a nightmare to deal with.

Out in the front room of the store, Zefaris had already picked out and placed on the counter a few articles of clothing. There were several shirts and pairs of trousers, a wide-brimmed straw hat, as well as what looked to be a very simple white sundress. Between these clothes and the down first half of the payment for her custom order, she was down two Cold-iron Sovereigns and four silvers, for a total of one-hundred and twenty gelt.

The Tailor asked how they intended to carry all that clothing, but the sound vanished from his words when he saw the Tablet’s silhouette in Zel’s hand, and he just quietly scooted away while the two women went through the ordeal of placing neatly folded clothes in Fog Storage while doing their best not to scrunch them up, to which the Fog vortex was no help at all.

“What next?” Zef asked as they stepped out of the store.

“I need to speak with the governor, that’s pretty much it,” she answered. “Any clue where his office might be?”

The markswoman gave it some thought whilst they idly walked down the promenade to put some distance between themselves and the obnoxious bickering of the bread line. Her eye locked to a signpost on the street corner, its numerous arrows pointing every which way like the branches of a sheet-metal tree. She approached it and walked halfway around it, looking it up and down before she pointed at one of the arrows.

“Looks like the town hall should be… Across the river and then just down the road?”

“Can’t hurt to try.”