She buried her face between Zef’s legs, and her hand between her own, snapping electric arcs leaping between her fingers before the two poles were placed at either side of something that posed a path of far less resistance. The blonde responded in the only appropriate manner, locking her legs together behind Zel’s back and squeezing her head with her thighs.

The smell of ozone registered to her nostrils and a spark of concern flashed through her head. When she heard naught but a muffled moan from between her legs, she realized how resistant Zelsys must be to her own ability, how much more intense a current it must take to cause the same level of stimulation. Zel certainly sounded like she enjoyed it.

...The moments that followed made Zefaris realize just how long Zel’s tongue really was, and just how able she truly was in harnessing her Stormsurge when it didn’t come to weaponizing it. It was a truly, utterly strange sensation. The incessant swirling and probing, the unpredictable pulsing of it within her, the myriad sudden bursts of pleasure that followed in its wake… Truly, it was as if her insides were being explored by a thrumming tendril slathered in the most exquisite of aphrodisiacs.

Once again, her sense of reason melted away as she reached down and ran her fingers through Zel’s hair, only encouraged by the uncontrollable micro spasms that overtook her forearm. Even if she had wanted to let go, she couldn’t. No longer did Zefaris have control over her own musculature, for the current which coursed through the muscles of her thighs and calves forced them to contract and made their nerves sing with sensations that she was absolutely certain shouldn’t be possible. Hot and cold, the relief of fading pain without pain present in the first place, the relief of a nonexistent itch being scratched.

Were she in control of her senses, she would’ve tried and failed to place where one climax ended and the next one started. Her mind slipped away altogether from sensory overload, if only briefly.

Next thing she knew she felt herself falling, a powerful arm catching her, and seeing Zel looking down at her. Her legs were shaking and her chest heaved with each heavy breath.

“I… I think that… Means enough,” she chuckled, audibly struggling to catch her breath.

Zefaris couldn’t muster anything beyond a weak nod. She certainly tried to stand, but found that her legs were as though jelly.

Sigmund lazily looked up at the clock on the wall, then looked back down to his pulp book. He double-took, realizing that the time of day was coming ‘round when customers dried out to a trickle before the evening rush. This was the time when he went out back and exercised, and he did much the same on this day.

Flip the open sign to closed, lock the door, put the pulp away, grab a bottle of Liquid Vigor, go out back. The backyard really wasn’t by any means big, but somehow, it always had just enough space. Even with the greenhouse, the water collection tower, and the makeshift log dummies he’d set up.

He didn’t even get loosened up enough to smell his own nose hairs begin to smolder before he noticed the wisps of Fog coming out of the bathroom window and heard the entirely inappropriate sounds which came along with the Fog, even if they were truly barely audible. Sig swore under his breath and kicked one of the logs, sending splinters spraying onto the grass. He’d had the foresight to soundproof the upstairs doors, the upstairs bedroom windows, even the door between the staircase and the storefront, and yet he’d missed the bathroom window.

Sure, he was mature enough and had the self-control to just tune out the noise, but he doubted any possible eavesdroppers did - much less Makhus himself. He stepped back inside, making his way to the pantry and retrieving an old split cork. With the same knife they used to trim corks to fit them to bottles, he cut the old cork in half and trimmed the pieces to fit his ears. It took a few iterations to really get the shape close enough that he could scarcely hear himself knocking on wood, but soon enough these handmade earplugs drowned out sound so efficiently that it threw off his equilibrium for a moment.

With this, he wouldn’t need to worry about overhearing anything while he exercised.

And so he went on, beating and piledriving the log dummies until one of them was naught but splinters and firewood, and he felt like it was about time to get back to the store. At this point, he was very well fired up in the literal sense - his sweat pores just outright expelled wisps of steam, every exhalation carried with it red Fog, and his hair glowed like burning steel wool.

A couple deep breaths, a stretching exercise, and he was back to normal, plus incredible thirst and middling muscle ache. The considerable volume of sweat he’d expelled didn’t manifest even as a passing smell, for his tremendous body heat exterminated the very bacteria that fed on sweat.

Sigmund drank a third of the seal-bottle's contents and made his way back inside, taking care to instantly close doors behind himself and to only remove his earplugs once he was back in the storefront.

“What? How?”

Over and over, these two questions flashed through Makhus’s mind. The more he analyzed Zel’s new blood sample, the less it made sense. Zef’s sample was normal - well above average, but normal. Zel’s on the other hand came up simultaneously as changed and utterly stable, as if this was her natural state. It went completely against what he’d learned about the effects of Azothic mutation. Even users who had managed to absorb an Azoth without a single negative effect had footprints, trace amounts of essentia running through their blood, certain reactive properties that could be easily detected in the blood of an Azoth-altered person.