The next day was… Staggeringly uneventful, all things considered. Zelsys had nothing to do but wait - wait for her wounds to heal, wait for the Tailor to finish with her order, wait for Collier to figure out how to produce more shells for her, and most importantly, wait for the Governor’s agent to contact her.

She was perfectly content doing nothing and just lounging around with Zef, and for much of the first half of the day, this was precisely what they did. Even after their respective morning routines of hygiene and a breakfast of porridge along the remnants of the fruits they had bought yesterday, they still returned to their room and spent the coming hours in idle comfort.

At one point, an idea sparked in Zel’s mind. Why not just reload the shells she already had? And so, with Zef’s aid and expertise, they took doing precisely that. In Fog Storage, she had not only the three shells that she had fired, but also the shells that had yet to be loaded when she took them from the bunker, plus a number of appropriately-sized lead balls.

“Well, we’ve got the shells and the lead, now we just need the powder…” Zef pondered, clearly trying to remember whether she had any loose gunpowder beyond that already contained in paper cartridges. However, Zel remembered as clear as day, that among the shell loading supplies she found in the bunker was a powder horn - one which she had placed into Fog Storage when she left.

Out of the Fog vortex it came, and soon enough, they had managed to reload the first of eight total shells, which was rendered far easier by the presence of a marking on the inside of the shell that signified how much powder should be poured. Zel had to use her Fog-breathing to produce sufficient pressure to push the ball far enough and in doing so compact the powder, but when all was said and done, the shell looked as good as new.

“Seven more to go,” she sighed, placing the satisfyingly weighty shell on the desk.

The next hour and a half was spent reloading the remaining seven shells, with Zef taking the opportunity to practice her Fog-breathing while pressing in the lead balls, clearly taking great satisfaction in the fact she could manifest such superhuman strength. Halfway through loading the third shell, they noticed that the powder horn didn’t ever seem to run out, and sure enough, tapping it on the table produced a hollow ringing of much greater magnitude than it should’ve.

It was just like Makhus’ Rubedo bottle. “Huh. Guess we’re not running out of powder any time soon,” Zel remarked, then got back to pouring gunpowder into the shell. By the time they were done both their hands were covered in pitch-black residue, and they spent a good few minutes each washing it off whilst they discussed what their plans for the rest of the day would be.

“It’s almost noon,” Zef said just as Zel was washing the last smudges of blackness off her palms. “Y’wanna go out on the promenade? Maybe get some lunch?”

Zelsys wasn’t quite sure, having intended to spend most of the afternoon resting and trying to improve her breathing method. Once she stepped out of the bathroom, however, seeing Zef in that sundress was more than enough to make her say, “I don’t see why not.”

After leaving the store they just kept walking straight, eventually crossing the crossroads at the bridge. They eventually found a small establishment situated in the basement of an apartment building, its entrance a steep three-step stairway into the bowels of the earth only made noticeable by a large, colorful sign above the doorway, depicting a cartoonishly masculine man with short blonde hair and a mustache holding a metal skewer with many pieces of meat and vegetable.

The veracity of the sign was confirmed when they entered the establishment, and the first sight to greet them was the counter, behind which stood a musclebound Ikesian with dirty-blonde hair that was slicked back, as well as a mustache even larger and more luxuriant than it was depicted on the sign. The place smelled of meats, vegetables, and spices, and was far from full, with only seven or so customers in sight. The chef’s icy-blue eyes pierced them whilst he chopped away at a cut of meat whilst several metal skewers sizzled away above a bed of hot coals right next to him.

The chef’s entire workstation was laid out bare for the customers to observe, and he clearly took great pride in making a show of his work, flicking pieces of meat high into the air with a cleaver only for them to land on an upward-facing skewer. Despite his piercing gaze and ice-cool attitude, Zelsys felt no apprehension as far as approaching him, offhandedly asking, “What’s the daily special?”

His brow furrowed, he gave her a stern look, then with an equally powerful and friendly voice spoke, “Beast-slayer special. Marinated bear meat and spiced bell pepper and sweet potato skewers, boss.”

The skewers were each separate - one skewer had neat cubes of bear meat, whilst the other bore a cornucopia of colorful vegetables. Between the food and the rather decent ale offered by the establishment, it was a very pleasant meal, priced at a surprisingly cheap one gelt per skewer, for a total of four gelt plus two gelt for their drinks.

It was also, all in all, forgettable beyond the impression left by the chef. Sure, it was good food in a nice place, but the vast, vast majority of both Zel’s and Zef’s attention remained directed towards one another. Soon enough, they had left the establishment and spent the next couple minutes idly walking the promenade, content to wile away the nice weather in each other’s presence.

Candy for the eyes and for the soul was complimented by candy for the mouth when they discovered a young Ikesian peddling candied fruits from the windowsil of his own home - a single gelt for a wax-paper bag of the stuff. So it was that the two women spent their afternoon, and despite that afternoon’s utterly uneventful nature, they were glad to have spent it as they did.

Upon returning to Riverside Remedies, Zelsys was immediately beset by Makhus’s sleep-deprived visage in the hallway just outside her and Zef’s bedroom. His eyes were bloodshot and his face was somehow ghastly-pale to the point it was noticeable through his already incredibly pale complexion. “You’re finally back,” he said. “Good. Zel, mind giving me the Necrobeast’s Azoth and some of your blood? I’ve an idea. Nothing to do with tattoos, promise.”

“...Sure?” Zel agreed hesitantly, retrieving the stone from Fog Storage. She had no personal attachment to it, seeing as she didn’t have a way to derive any use from it. “Why more of my blood, though? I already gave you a sample.”

“Oh, just… The reason is a little farfetched, to be honest,” the alchemist admitted. “I think I could use your blood specifically to isolate a single aspect of an Azoth stone to entirely sidestep the negative aspects of traditional absorption methods at the cost of no secondary benefits.”

“So uh… What did you learn from the tests you wanted to run, in the first place? Clearly you learned something, if you believe my blood to be somehow different from a normal person’s.”

“Oh, you uh… You’ve got teeny-tiny Azoth stones in your bloodstream,” he plainly stated. Makhus was so sleep-deprived his usual barriers had broken down as his mind made efforts to keep running despite only being sustained by Liquid Vigor. “I’m not sure why, but I have a theory. A theory I won’t share until I’m sure of it, ‘cause frankly, it’d be a lil’ much to say it without certainty.”

His bloodshot eyes wandered about for some time whilst he recollected his thoughts, thin wisps of green Fog rising from his mouth despite the fact he wasn’t holding a seal-bottle. He must’ve had consumed so much of the substance that some of its active ingredient managed to evaporate before his body could process it. It would explain his somewhat inebriated state, considering the not insignificant alcohol content of Liquid Vigor - only well and truly copious amounts of it would render its invigorating effect lesser than the intoxication that came from its alcohol content.

Zelsys sighed. He clearly wasn’t in any state to have a serious discussion with, and so she just asked, “How much blood?”

“Uh…” he narrowed his eyes, staring off into the middle distance as he slowly raised his hands as if to count on his fingers. “‘Bout half a syringe to do what I wanna do, goin’ by the Azoth Particle density of the first sample. Made that term up, think it’s got a nice ring to it.”

“Alright, look,” Zel put her hand on his shoulder, having made the decision to play the voice of reason for once. “Get some sleep first, talk to me about this tomorrow morning. Then I’ll give you the rock and the extra sample, deal?”

A slight smile, and a slow nod. “Deal,” he agreed, slowly turning on his bootheel and walking towards his and Sigmund’s room as he continued talking to himself. “How long’ve I been awake for anyway? Twenny hours? Thirty? Forty maybe?”

Into his room he went, as did Zelsys into hers, immediately met by Zef lounging on the bed with a bemused look on her face.

“Let me guess, he’s been awake since yesterday,” she guessed, clearly familiar with this situation. “Acts like a mad scientist when he does that, tried to give my eye a third pupil last time it happened.”

“This is a normal occurrence for him?” Zel chuckled whilst she shed her boots, sitting down on the bed beside Zef. The response she received was a simple, “Pretty much every time he finds a new obsession.”

It would still be a little while before the sun set, and so, Zelsys decided it would do well to learn more about her own abilities. She had an instinctive understanding of Fog-breathing and the Fog in general, that much was true, but that very instinct also told her there was much trial and error she could entirely avoid by just asking questions or reading books. After all, even if the knowledge of others wasn’t one hundred percent useful to her, that didn’t mean it was useless.

“What’d you know about Fog-breathing, by the way?” she asked Zef after a few minutes of silent deliberation. “Between what you learned yourself and what they taught you in training?”

“Probably less than you,” the markswoman laughed in response, but still began an extensive explanation of what she knew. “Aside from what’s common knowledge, they really didn’t tell us much, in part ‘cause Fog-breather families were more protective of their secrets than most governments. In many cases, they would intentionally mysticize the foundations of their knowledge to obfuscate the truth even from their own members. From what Makhus told me of his short time in one of these families, you wouldn’t get a forward explanation of how to learn a technique, you’d be given vague illogical instructions and trials until you were either deemed a failure, or just manifested the fully-fledged technique in an epiphany.”

“Makhus was part of a Fog-breather family before the war, huh?” Zel wondered. “Did he tell you that or did you overhear it?”

“I asked what he did before all this shit, so he told me. More upfront about his past than his alchemical theory,” Zef chuckled. “He never did get to learn more than the fundamentals before the draft snatched him up, though I suspect he might’ve just gotten kicked out altogether.”

“Fundamentals…” Zelsys continued to wonder, racking her brain as she followed the thin thread of instinctive understanding through the maze of her pre-existing techniques and her experience in using Fog-breathing. It seemed that techniques, no matter how basic, were somehow involved with the Fog. “I figure the fundamentals of any combat style would be defense and offense. Fog-breathing, then, should be used both to enhance one’s attacks and to protect them in the absence of physical armor.”

“It’d sure be nice if you could figure out how to turn Fog into armor, if you plan on walking around like this,” Zef prodded, both with words and with a finger into Zel’s side.

“Fog into armor, huh?” Zel asked herself, and like that, the seed of an idea began to sprout in her mind. She could already use Fog-breathing to selectively enhance her own physical capabilities, so why not use it to enhance her body’s physical resilience as well?

She stood from the bed, and beckoning for Zef to do the same, said simply, “C’mon, I want to try something real quick. Punch me in the stomach when I say so, full force.”

Zefaris clearly wasn’t at all worried about hurting her lover with a simple punch, and so gladly took up a boxer’s stance in front of Zelsys, intently staring at her bared abdomen as she did so. Zelsys, in turn, filled her lungs to their limit with a single long breath, and with but a small wisp of Fog escaping, said, “Hit.”

Zef’s fist lashed out in a straight jab, and just as it did, Zelsys exhaled a third of her lung capacity, focusing on hardening her abs to take the punch. Though her muscles became rock-hard to the point of causing Zef to reel from her punch for a moment, it wasn’t what Zelsys was looking for. She still felt it, the strike didn’t have any less impact than it would have usually.

Opening and closing her fist a few times, Zefaris looked up into Zel’s eyes, then back down at her abs, then back up again. “No Fog armor, but by the dead gods, you could grind meat on those,” she marveled, assuming a boxer’s stance again. “Let’s try again.”

So, they tried again. Same result.

Again.

And again.

And again.

By this point, Zefaris switched hands and Zelsys was starting to feel some ache in her stomach from the repeated blows, but most irritating to her was the repeated failure to produce any tangible effects. Clearly, the same method as supercharging physical performance wouldn’t work.

Once more she took a deep breath, but instead of exhaling, in an attempt to change her approach she stopped the exhalation short whilst still compressing her lungs. Only a small wisp of Fog came out her nose alongside a low-pitched wheeze, and she felt a strange heat radiating throughout the very muscles she flexed.

No exhalation came out yet the Fog in her lungs was still burned for fuel, the silver lines over her stomach taking on a brief glow as wisps of Fog rose from them. Zef’s fist passed through the Fog and touched skin, yet she strangely rebounded backward as if the motion of her punch had been reversed. A breath of change passed and Zelsys felt a strange yet familiar sensation, as if this very moment had been made a snapshot in her very soul - a technique had just been born.

Zefaris tumbled backward and nearly fell, but Zelsys caught her just in time, letting her focus slip as she exhaled and returned to normal breathing.

“Th-That works, I guess,” the blonde laughed. “Can we try that again?”

Herself unsure of what exactly she had just done Zelsys nodded, hoisting Zel onto her feet, the markswoman’s sundress fluttering with the motion.

They repeated the experiment a few more times just to make sure it wasn’t a fluke, and sure enough, Zelsys managed to replicate the effect more or less consistently every time. With each repeat, she learned more about the properties of this new tool, and with each repeat, she formulated an optimal strategy for making use of it.

She could invoke the technique’s effects nearly instantly, and they quickly diminished over a short period. At its strongest it would entirely reverse the impact of a strike, while at its weakest it would barely deflect even a half-hearted punch from Zefaris.

“Oofh, gettin’ sweaty here,” Zef gasped once she regained her balance after a punch slid off Zel’s skin. She quickly caught her breath, and making a decision on the spot, simply said, “I’m gonna take a bath.”

And indeed, as she said she would do, she did, eagerly walking to the bathroom and shedding her dress in preparation to wash off the grime of the day, idle as it was. After having been bereft of proper hygiene for so long, she was clearly happy to have the tools necessary to maintain a high self-standard.

Zel herself let out a breath, relaxing her muscles as she felt the muscle fatigue in her stomach slowly begin to fade. Slowly, ever so slowly, yet far more quickly than it would for any normal person without the aid of alchemy, that much she knew. Even her wounds were practically gone, only the deepest stabs holes in her back still felt when she stretched. In perhaps a day more, even the faint scars would fade, and her skin would be spotless as the day she climbed out of that bunker.

“Should probably take a bath myself,” she pondered as she returned to lounging on the bed, once more reaching for the Tablet and once more tapping its wellspring of knowledge. Each time she picked it up after having undergone a substantial change her hand thrummed whilst the device actualized itself, and this time was no different.

A new trait? No.

A new technique.

REBOUND PULSE Type: Reactive Defense (Special) Trigger: At-Will - Mnemonic Sequence Effects: Kinetic Redirection A+ to C- (Timing-dependent) Advancement: “Return to Sender” a Lethal Blow

Mnemonic sequence? Strange. It lit up yellow, as if it were a button. At a prolonged touch, her mind flashed with the exact sequence of actions she had done to trigger the technique. “Too complex to show with a projection, huh?” Zel chuckled to herself, idly swiping through the device’s projections in the absence of anything better to do. Something gnawed at the back of her mind, so perhaps using the memory-refreshing RECORDS function could be of use.

RECORDS Beast-slayer Contract No. 1 - Briefing Record Beast-slayer Contract No. 2 - Briefing Record

Though she remembered that number one was Quincy and number two was the Governor, Zel thought that if this default naming scheme remained it would quickly become confusing. Near instantly the Tablet made a small adjustment, keywords flickering into being next to the record titles.

RECORDS Beast-slayer Contract No. 1 - Briefing Record - “Barkeep” Beast-slayer Contract No. 2 - Briefing Record - “Governor”

A tap on the second record refreshed her memory of the briefing. “So that’s what I forgot,” she thought as she reached into a pocket, retrieving the small piece of paper that the Governor gave her. It read:

Unforeseen Consequences

Into Fog Storage for safekeeping it went, and for the next couple minutes, Zelsys idly lounged about. She tested Fogskin by channeling it into her palm and punching it, feeling out the timing more and more. She didn’t actually intend to just wait for Zef to get out of the bath, but she couldn’t follow after the markswoman right away either. No, she waited - waited for just long enough that, by the time she stood at the bathroom door, the bath had filled at least a third of the way and the room had begun to fill with steam.

She would’ve knocked, but something told her she didn’t need to. Indeed, the door was unlocked, and Zefaris sat with her lower half barely submerged in the off-green tinted water, leaning back in the tub. One of the cabinets was ajar, and there were glass phials with green and pink bath salts on the tiles next to the bath, the former empty while the latter was three-quarters full. Zef turned her head to look at Zel with a smug, blushing smile, wordlessly affirming her correct prediction of what would happen.

Zelsys shed her clothes, and without saying a word either, stepped into the bath, facing Zefaris. For a little while, they earnestly did no more than help one another wash off the grime of the day, but… The steam that rose from the bath did not help either of their restraint. To both of them, the steam smelled of herbs and of one another, but it also smelled lightly of the iron in blood and of raw primal instinct, of lust.

Gently scrubbing away at Zef’s chest, Zelsys found herself captivated by the glistening of her counterpart’s marble-like skin, instinctively leaning in for a kiss as she let go of the sponge and allowed her hand to wander downward whilst with her other she took hold of Zef’s free hand, fingers intertwining. In the moment before their lips met, she took a breath and felt the lustful Fog-intoxication of Lover’s Breath flooding her being, even without her conscious input.

Zelsys felt the sponge fall from her back and splash into the water when Zef let go and, in turn, traced her own hand down Zel’s chest, stroking and prodding to an almost fetishistic degree all the way to its inevitable destination between her legs. Utterly consumed by the lustful trance of their own creation, they quickly devolved to a breathy, moaning tangle of limbs, and by the time they once more came to their senses, the water had gone completely cold.

That night, just as the night before, they slept in each other’s embrace.

Zel and Zef were woken up all too early in the morning to a banging on the door.

“Nrrrgh... “ Zelsys grumbled in annoyance as she dragged herself out of the unconscious abyss of sleep, slowly sitting up. Zef clung to her, still mostly asleep. “What is it?”

“The brat you beat the snot outta wants to talk to you!” Makhus responded from beyond the door, audibly annoyed at having had to interact with Halxian at all.

“And don’t forget the samples!” he added.

With a sigh Zelsys sat up, got dressed to a functional minimum of trousers, boots, and chest-wrappings, then walked out of the bedroom.

Bleary-eyed, hair hanging down in a rust-colored cloak, and just about ready to tell the youngster to piss off, Zelsys walked down the stairs and into the main room of the store, where she saw the governor’s son standing in the door, alone. He… Didn’t look all that arrogant. He didn’t act the part, either.

There was very much a tangible sense of egoism radiating from him, but when he cast his gaze her way, he did so with a grudging sense of respect, in part likely fueled by the presence of very visible wounds that peered through her at the moment loose and haphazard chest wrappings.

“You better have a good reason to wake me up this early,” Zelsys grumbled at him, making no effort to hide her animosity. The young noble let out an apologetic chuckle.

“I’m afraid it wasn’t my choice, at the moment I am no more than my father’s messenger,” he explained with audible spite towards the man he spoke of. “He says your contract has been moved up due to unforeseen consequences. Don’t go getting yourself killed, I’ll get my rematch when next we meet.”

“If it’s another beating you want, I’ll be happy to oblige you someday soon,” Zel chuckled menacingly, then immediately dropped her grin for a moment of seriousness. “Now scram. If it comes to it, let your father know I’ll be there soon.”

Without so much as batting an eye, the youngster gave a single sharp nod, turned on a boot-heel, and walked away, leaving only the ringing of the doorbell in his stead. Zelsys took a deep breath and let out another deep sigh in an attempt to dispose of the murk of sleepiness, making her way up the stairs. At the top, Makhus met her just as he emerged from the kitchen, his eyes instinctively wandering downward before he caught himself and blurted out, “Samples, right. Y’mind comin’ with me to the lab real quick? And uh, tighten your wrappings.”

He stepped past her not waiting for a response, and indeed, she followed, reaching behind her back to tighten the strips of fabric. Alas, she’d wrapped it carelessly, and even with an ironclad knot they held on for dear life throughout the ordeal of going to the basement and having her blood taken again. She ducked into her bedroom to grab the Tablet, then retrieved the Necrobeast’s Azoth from Fog Storage on the way down in lieu of waiting for the Fog vortex then and there, simply handing it over when she caught up to the alchemist.

“What of the tests you wanted the samples for?” she questioned whilst Makhus cautiously pulled on the plunger to let her blood fill the syringe.

He was obviously reluctant to say so, but her offhandedly asking “What, am I a fucking homunculus or something?” was enough to make him spill it.

“That’s what I’m trying to figure out ‘ere, now stay still so I don’t scrape the inside of the vein,” he responded, frankly. He said it seriously, matter of factly. Zelsys could feel in her gut that he was telling it as it was, and to her own surprise… She didn’t really care. It only made sense - she woke up in a tank at the bottom of a huge bunker lab complex, crawling with the failed contents of tanks just like the one she came out of.

What was the alternative, really? Some sort of alchemically-induced stasis that also involved amnesia?

“Alright, done,” Makhus said, reaching into one of his pockets for a cotton swab and pressing it against the point of entry as he pulled the needle. He squinted at it up-close, as if trying to peer into the tiny glass window of the mostly metal-encased syringe. Zelsys was just about ready to turn and walk out before he tried to further involve in his research, but was stopped by a drawn-out, “Say… If you were to pick somethin’ about the Necrobeast to use for yourself, what would it be?”

Zelsys chuckled, recalling her bouts with the beast. It sure wasn’t graceful, and she doubted the strength of a Nigredo-fueled bear was all that impressive. “It’d sure be nice if I could just pull myself back together like it did,” she said, making her way towards the lab’s door.

Though bleary-eyed and yawning all the way back upstairs, she felt no urge to sleep. So it was that Zel quietly went about her morning rituals, redoing her chest bindings properly before she moved onto the mindless process of braiding her hair. The repetitive manual labour was almost therapeutic in its thoughtlessness. Once finished with her hair, she brushed her teeth using one of the dental hygiene ration kits and left one of them on the sink for when Zef woke up, just as she had done the days prior.

Lastly came the remainder of her equipment, and once she strapped on the arm-cannon and its harness, she took the moment to retrieve two spare shells and tried placing them into what free space remained in the cleaver’s holster, at the very top left corner so they would be in reach. Much to her relief the enchanted leather clasped them tightly, not letting up even when she pulled the cleaver or retrieved the Tablet from the holster.

Planting a kiss on Zef’s forehead without waking her up, she made for the town hall, striding through Willowdale’s near-empty streets as the sun rose into the cloudless sky.

All was tranquil.

Zel bought a few large pears on her way to the bridge to serve as her breakfast, eating two almost in their entirety save for the very tops and bottoms, which she tossed into the river as she crossed the bridge. The remaining two went into Fog Storage, still wrapped in wax paper.

The Town Hall’s front door now in sight, Zelsys found herself somewhat dissuaded by the surprising number of people milling into the building, all well-dressed, and mostly rather aged - bureaucrats. She felt bile rise in her throat as she overheard their inane banter about the economy, and instead turned her gaze to Collier’s Equalizers.

There she was, behind the window, wiping dust from the display guns and gazing out over the street. By some small stroke of luck, Collier’s and Zel’s gazes met, and the gunsmith gave a knowing nod, wordlessly beckoning for her to enter.

And enter, Zelsys did, after crossing the street and doing her best to ignore the insufferable feeling of being looked at by the dusty, soulless eyes of a dozen self-important office workers. Never before had she felt such irrational dislike for anyone, and she wagered she wouldn’t feel it like this again for a little while.

“You’ve come… Ufh… At just the right time!” Collier beamed at her as she stepped into the store, carrying a narrow crate full of shells out from the back room and hefting it onto the counter. The edges of the shells were very slightly uneven as if they’d been cut short with a hacksaw, but otherwise they looked like a mix of Type-1 and Type-2 shells at a two to one ratio, arrayed in three rows of seven each. Atop the crate sat an unloaded shell that was nearly twice as long as the others and narrowed sharply around a third of the way from the top, likely for comparison’s sake.

Zelsys was utterly confused by the massive supply of ammunition, produced in such a short span of time no less! “How…” she wondered, her bewildered gaze flickering back and forth between Collier’s ecstatic face to the crate of ammo.

“Well, the shell you gave me looked a lil’ familiar, an sure enough…” the gunsmith began, picking one of the shells out of the crate and running her wrinkled finger along the casing’s edge. “Turns out, it’s a shortened version of an older design for solid-shell ammo. I ain’t sure how or why, but whoever came up wit’ yer gun had access to the development docs of an experimental armor piercing weapon meant to give infantry the means to kill enemy Fog-breathers.”

Zel furrowed her brow. “Two questions,” she said. “How do you know this, and what does this mean for me?”

A ringing laugh came from the older woman.

“Let’s just say that when he last visited our lil’ town, the Sage hired me on as… Remote research contractor, so to speak. It’s wondrous how quick you can send messages ‘cross the whole country with a couple of those neat lil’ Tablets linked together,” she trailed off into a rant, only to catch herself and return to the topic at hand when Zelsys raised an eyebrow and looked to the crate of shells again.

“Oh yes, the shells, sorry dear,” she excused herself. “We worked on an infantry weapon that could reliably kill enemy Fog-breathers, but the project ran into issues with recoil and got shelved near the end of the war. The pencil-pushers in the capital asked us to dispose of all our research, but you’re walkin’ proof that I wasn’t the only to ignore the order!”

For a few seconds, Collier quietly laughed to herself about her defiance of orders as if it were a small act of mischief, then once more steered herself onto relevant information with, “So as it turns out I still had some o’ the test casings in Fog Storage, and I cut some of ‘em down to size and loaded ‘em like the one you gave me. Bein’ that they’re useless for anyone other than you, I’ll cut you a deal - just take the whole lot for twenty gelt, and any further ammo is the same price if you buy in bulk. Otherwise, it's one gelt for a standard load and three gelt for that nasty shotgun-style load.”

For a little while, there was silence as Zelsys processed the flood of information. She was not at all used to the manner in which the older woman trailed off on tangents so easily. After blinking a few times, she managed only a question whilst she pulled a quartet of silvers from her belt pouch to pay for the ammo, “Why’s it that it seems like everyone of note in Willowdale was somehow involved in the war?”

“Because that was very much the case dear,” Collier answered with a smile. “Sure we’re technically a neutral nation-state, but we’re very much aware that our independence survives only for as long as Ikesia stands. Grekuria wants to integrate us thinkin’ we need the help - bless their souls for tryin’ - whilst those rude foreigners from the west just want to erase us for refusing to help ‘em. Oh, but that’s enough politics from an old hag like me, don’t let me hold you up.”

The gunsmith took her payment and sat down behind the counter, observing with a comfortable sense of warmth that awakened within Zelsys a nostalgia for a place she wasn’t sure even existed. Like a faded memory of a time she wasn’t alive in. She put her Tablet on the counter, and one after another began putting the shells into Fog Storage.

“How’s reloadin’ on yer gun, by the way?” Collier queried.

“Fast and easy considering the size of the shells, but ah… I haven’t managed to get more than one shot off during a fight yet,” Zel admitted.

“I’d wager I can guess why. You ain’t got no practical way to carry spare shells an’ yer right hand is probably too busy with that big ‘ol cleaver o’ yours, ain’t that right?” the gunsmith guessed with a wrinkled, knowing grin.

Zel chuckled, “Usually too busy butchering to work the bolt and load a shell, yeah.”

“Develop a reloadin’ technique is all I can tell ya,” Collier advised, breaking into yet another of her mild-mannered rambles, as if to fill the silence while Zel put the ammo in Fog Storage. “Ain’t so popular nowadays what with cartridges bein’ standard, but back in the day y’could tell how good a musketeer was by how many spare balls n’ ramrods they carried, so quickly they could reload that they wore ‘em down in a minute. I could make you a shell belt if y’want, if yer willin’ to shell out the gelt.”