“We could go there, even tomorrow if you wanted,” Zel suggested.

Zef didn’t respond for a little while, and then with a sigh denied, “I think I’d rather not. Don’t have much reason to go back there, even if it’s somehow all untouched. Ma and pa did their best, don’t have anything to hold against them, just… Don’t have a whole lot to pull me back either.”

The blonde looked up at her lover, briefly opening her other eye for no purpose other than proper eye contact.

“Not enough to make me abandon what I have here,” she smiled, before resting her head on Zel’s chest.

They remained as such for nigh on another hour, wordlessly gazing out over the landscape.

Nothing more was to be said, nothing both of them didn’t already know.

Wounded though it was, Ikesia wasn’t even close to giving up.

Even if the cowards in the Capital already had.

The day passed. Despite Zel’s insistence that she was fine, Zefaris wouldn’t permit her to return to the sect to train. So it was that, after picking up the requisite fuel cells and maintenance equipment from Oedo’s, they returned to Riverside Remedies, leaving the monstrous motorbike just standing outside short of the ignition key.

Despite everything, all the hustle and bustle brought by the caravan, there was still a sense of routine to be had. Indeed, despite everything, after they returned from their outing, after giving Makhus that metal box and Sigmund those beamwands, the rest of their day went… Uneventfully. Zef went off to somewhere at some point when Zel had fallen asleep reading a pulp, returning with pierogi and a well-wish from Kanbu himself.

Nevertheless, a roiling curiosity churned within Zelsys, so much so that she awoke just as the sun rose into the heavens with the image of that sealed-up door fresh before her mind’s eye. Fragmentary memories of a dream she knew she had experienced during the previous night, vague feelings of muscle memory and gestures that made the fingers hurt and strained the joints, gestures so complex they demanded involvement of the full body and were not easy even with her quite literally inhuman body control.

It was all so appropriately dreamlike, ephemeral like candlesmoke. Yet somehow, she knew she would be able to grasp it when she needed to, just like she had grasped Fog and even lightning itself.

She also clearly remembered waking up in the middle of the night to the growling of a truly massive engine and someone hollering about how “the containment mantle nearly slipped out of the harness”.

No matter how quietly she slipped out of bed, however, Zef’s waking followed closely behind… Alongside, somehow, another new article of clothing to even further emphasize the markswoman’s already shapely figure. It was a surprisingly tasteful corset, being mostly black with small sections possessing a more subdued version of red-black patterns that adorned Zef’s apparent newly-favorite underwear.

When Zel saw her walk into the kitchen wearing that thing over a black sundress from Bherad’s, she couldn’t stop a question from slipping out: “Are your measurements just that close to the Locust Queen’s desired ones, or is the fitting enchantment on all the clothing from her hoard that potent?”

The other question, of course, was whether she had bought that dress yesterday, but Zel didn’t care enough to try and get a concrete answer. A sundress was a sundress, though she had to admit that a mere colour change and the addition of an accessory was enough to change its wholesome evocation of summer into dark allure.

“A little of column A, a little of column B, I’d wager,” smiled the blonde. Zel wondered how long it would take to get a proper article of clothing made, considering the fact that almost nothing mass-produced properly fit her and even thin mundane fabric impeded her ability to channel Fog through her skin.

There was no breakfast in the kitchen to separate the beginning of the day from its remainder, only the sight of a wide-grinning Sigmund hauling a sack of coins and wearing his new wands on his belt much like one would firearms… And a few scorch marks on the floor boards behind the counter. Upon questioning, he revealed that he himself had only this morning discovered that Riverside Remedies was among the establishments whose loss of profits during the caravan’s presence would be subsidized.

Makhus was conspicuously absent. Sig mentioned that he left exceedingly early after saying something about finding a tattooist. After a few minutes spent helping the beardo restock the shelves and for Zef to grab her fotoapparat, they were off for the sect.

Unsurprisingly, everything was still there when they returned - from the stage, to all the stands, short of only the golem’s remains, which had by now turned to little more than dust. That strange old man occupied the stage, plucking away at the strings of his instrument as numerous peddlers opened up their stalls.

Nevertheless, only a fraction of yesterday’s crowds was present, doubtlessly because of how early in the day it was.

After buying a breakfast of meaty noodles and drenched in some sort of purple sauce, they made their way to the sect proper.

Despite not having had the time to truly admire the architecture in her initial opening of the sect’s doors, Zelsys couldn’t keep herself from hurriedly striding through the hall and into that hub room whilst Zef hung back and took her time. Why was it all sealed up?

Without a moment’s delay the beast-slayer made her way to that enigmatic door, retrieving the deed from Fog Storage as she went. Her first thought was to just cut the seals with her cleaver, but she had chosen to leave that for a last resort. No, first she would try to open them based on her newly-gained authority over the sect.

She knelt right in front of the door, neatly placing the deed right in front of herself and reaching forward, so that her hand rested against the paper of the largest, central seal. It was around this point that she felt Zef enter the room, though the blonde did everything within her considerable capability to remain quiet.