A brief silence, wherein he sipped of his ale and furrowed his brow in remembrance before continuing, “That was some… Three millennia ago I think? Two? Don’t remember. Anyway, things were pretty good fer a while, until folks realized they couldn’t have kids no more, n’ the pot boiled over into full-blown fracturing n’ civil war. That’s why we call a country breaking inta itty bitty warring states Ankhezination…”

He just kept going. And going. And going. For minutes upon minutes. He emptied his second tankard and crossed the point of true drunkenness. His face grew ever more flushed, his speech ever more fluid - he didn’t slur anymore, instead spewing forth a many-branched river of tangents and tangents off of other tangents.

Zel felt herself checking out around the point where he got into the specifics of something he called the “Black Towers”. They were… Something to do with the sun? Apparently some sort of mass-scale system meant to tap into the seven rods that ran through the sun, able to power a civilization when brought together. There was also something about them probably not being the original towers - he went on a full tangent about the Sage’s obsession with the towers, how the man had continuously asserted that the architectural style was different and how the math just didn’t check out.

“If the Ankhezians could power their empire by skimming off the top, think of what the original receiver towers could do! I wager they used their fakey-fake towers to kill the shit outta eachother for a couple centuries n’ then realized oh shit, we’re goin’ extinct. Most Ankhezians alive today were alive then, n’ only like one in ten can ever have kids now, so they’ve been slowly dyin’ out while what’s left of their empire slowly shrinks. It’s pretty bad for halfies too, but the infertility n’ extreme longevity both fade pretty quickly fer further crossbreeds. Lucky fer Imperials, their big conquerors had fucked their way across the known world so their genetic legacy lives on in folks with long-ass ears and double the normal lifespan. Even the zipperheads don’t step to ‘em, probably ‘cause their heartlands are all warded to shit n’ full of dormant golems.”

At this point, her mind just freely wandered and Strolvath’s historical rant became background noise. She just couldn’t stop wondering how the subject of his initial joke would even work, perhaps because she hadn’t ruminated Azoth-induced physical mutations in any serious context up until now. The reason why she didn’t just dismiss it as a drunkard’s joke was simple - from the very first day of her waking memory, she saw the capabilities of mutation on a regular basis. The Necrobeast, the Wendigo, the Locust-men, Mantis mutants, Beetle-boars, the Locust Queen herself.

Even she herself was living proof. She hadn’t noticed the change, but in retrospect even purified by the dungeon, the Wendigo’s Azoth had side effects - her teeth had grown pointier as Strolvath pointed out, and her tongue was… Certainly far longer and more dexterous than she recalled it being.

“Okay, but how would a mutant dick even…” Zel wondered out loud, brow furrowed and eyes squinted in befuddlement.

“Fuck if I know!” Strolvath laughed, taking a long chug of ale. A moment later, Zel saw a thought spark behind his eyes. He grinned and took his knife off the belt, sheath and all.

Holding it up he posed a rhetorical question, “See this?”

Still holding onto that juvenile grin, he unsheathed the knife and then grabbed both so that the blade was concealed behind the sheath and so that the tip of the blade aligned with the mouth of the sheath. Then, as if he were doing the most hilarious gesture ever, he pushed the knife through his gripped hand so that its blade appeared to be emerging from the sheath.

“Maybe like that? Like the way it works fer some animals?” snickered the middle-aged man like an absolute child.

Zel wasn’t necessarily mad, as much as she was caught off-guard altogether… Especially because she couldn’t help considering such a concept within the framework of her own traits.

A chuckle escaped her, and with a grin she half-jokingly said, “I mean, I did gain ‘Dualism’ from the maneater’s azoth.”

“...Hol’ on, y’know I meant it as a joke right? I wasn’t exactly lyin’, but surely you can’t be considering such a thing in earnest.”

“I sure don’t intend to mutilate myself out of curiosity, but I could think of far worse Azoth side effects than some extra meat. If such a thing did come from a mutation though, I feel like it’d probably work the way you described it rather than just… A sewed on homuncucock.”

She couldn’t help grinning at that word. It was so vulgar, so immature, so unfunny, that it somehow looped back around to tickling that juvenile sense of humor that made one laugh at a fart joke. For a little while longer, they continued drinking, both of them ordering another tankard of cider. Strolvath ran off nearly half a dozen times in the span of half an hour, excusing himself with, “Looks like my liver finally kicked in, no point to tryin’ to get drunk anymore. Gonna be pissin’ fire fer the rest of the day.”

At the raising of her eyebrow, he said he’d tell her later - and he did. After his fifth and final jaunt to the John - that is to say, probably pissing on a wall in some back alley - he returned seemingly perfectly sober, though his face remained flushed.

“When I worked under the Sage, I got to use his elixirs. He warned me not to overuse ‘em, but they were too helpful. Destroyed my liver and kidneys, he replaced ‘em with homunculi. What you saw me do down under would’ve killed me were it not for that,” he explained.

“You sure it’s a good idea to talk about it openly? Even down here?” Zel asked.

“Oh, they know. Bet you a sovereign that at least one other person here has a homunculus organ,” Strol responded with utter confidence, of the sort that comes from a rigged bet.