“What if they’re not caught? Do you truly think a crowd of civilians won’t fall for a well-done distraction?” Zef pushed again. It sounded like she well and truly wanted to ensure the deaths of those two with every fibre of her being.

“Oh, they will be. A crowd of angry people without guidance is easy to sway, that is true - which is why I’ve had certain back alleys barricaded off and why I picked out several reliable civilians to inform and guide the flock, so to speak,” explained the governor reassuringly.

Zefaris stared at him, squinting her eye. Then, she sighed.

“Very well,” she conceded. “I better get to see the corpses.”

“I’m certain a great big circus will be made of the whole affair, as it tends to,” he agreed.

Once more Estoras ushered them out of the office, but this time Zelsys stayed behind, and Zefaris with her, citing that, “I have a question I wanted to ask you in private.”

He drew back his hand from the sound ward generator’s switch, leaning back in his seat expectantly.

“Why are you working with the remnants of the Counter-propaganda Bureau?” questioned Zel with a knowing grin, even though she was firing in the dark.

Estoras stared at her for a few seconds with a blank expression, and even Zefaris gave her a questioning look. Then, the governor smiled.

“Call it a mutual vested interest,” he said, clicking the sound ward generator off.

Not a word more was exchanged, and the two women left. As they approached the door, he added, “Expect a letter with the address of your new property tomorrow.”

And so they left, making their way to Collier’s on the way back. Despite having gone out of her way to avoid promising timely delivery, the old gunsmith handed over six reloaded arm-cannon shells, two being Type-1, two Type-2, and two Type-1a. The third type stood out in the conical shape of its projectile and its two-tone makeup, with darker metal making up the body and a silver-coloured circle in the center.

When questioned, the gunsmith simply listed the traits in rapid succession: “Hotter load, aerodynamic projectile with a low-grade cold-iron penetrator, performance more in line with the full-size shell. High penetration, superior elemental conductivity. They’re for cracking tough cookies. No extra charge, courtesy of the governor.”

Indeed, she asked the price for four Type-1 and two Type-2 shells, promptly paid. Ammunition replenished, they quit that place for the streets of Willowdale, casually strolling and meandering on their way back to Riverside Remedies, looking out for the inevitable signs of unrest.

The relative emptiness of the streets which they walked and the distant roar of a great crowd was more than sufficient. Their arrival back at the store coincided with that of Makhus, a large package of what was clearly meat clutched in his arms. It turned out to be the blue meat that the butcher had offered to them, the swordsman-alchemist citing that he’d had it before and that, “It’s good if you cook it right, I swear. You just need to sear it with a little bit of the right elixir, slow cook it, guarantee it’ll be better than any beef brisket.”

Makhus took to work on the cut of blue meat with skill, speed, and confidence, carving away extraneous bits and… Injecting it with some sort of elixir? He even made a rub for it, and into it too he added at least three distinct liquids from alchemy flasks.

When questioned on what he was doing, he explained that this was the way to get the best possible result every time. Pressing him further on why he didn’t just do the same with normal meat, he retorted that the mixtures he was using would only work on the meat of creatures with copper in their blood instead of iron, and that he didn’t know why.

Zef - unwilling to take no for an answer - used this time to look over Zel’s wounds, even though she was done within a few minutes with a half-relieved, half-confused remark of, “Huh. Guess all those were just flesh wounds. Just don’t- Just be careful. You of anyone should know the severity of an injury.”

Once the meat was finished cooking, he turned out entirely correct. It was, indeed, possibly the best Zelsys had ever eaten, but that really wasn’t saying much.

The four of them had their lunch, and while Sigmund returned to his work keeping the store open, Zel dragged Makhus to the back yard to fulfill her promise. Zef went out, taking with her some money, saying simply that she wanted to take a look at something and that she would be back soon.

Second verse, same as the first. Makhus had picked out a particularly sturdy stick and made token attempts at offense, but he remained mostly defensive throughout the second bout until Zel pushed him to lashing out.

This time, he jabbed at her hard enough that she instinctively channeled Graze Pulse, causing him to lurch forward and lose his balance. They decided to take a break, sitting in the grass for a few minutes.

It was a frustrating affair, for both of them. Zelsys could feel the frustration building inside the swordsman, but herself didn’t quite understand how to break such a mental block since she had never experienced one herself.

“I am a soldier, yes, I have killed more people than I remember, yes, but all of that was in the context of war and either using a gun or in a defensive position. It felt justified,” rambled on the swordsman. There wasn’t a whole lot of direction to his words - he’d been going on like this for minutes, thinking out loud, clearly trying to untangle something in his mind.

A question came to mind.

“Who cut up your shoulder?” she poked. “That’s a damn deep wound, I bet it severed a bone.”

The look he gave her all the info she needed. He had fought and killed someone, there was no doubt about it.

“That fight was the moment when you first used Fog-breathing, wasn’t it.”