After the end of the penultimate bout, she took a few minutes to rest and speak with the bookie, learning that Von Wickten fought in full plate using a sword and shield, and allowed challengers to use their own equipment as well, justifying this obvious unfair advantage as “Special Rules”. In these few minutes, she went through her Fog Storage inventory and picked out one of the garish jade ornaments she’d retrieved from the Locust Queen’s hoard, stowing it for later. It wasn’t long after that before Von Wickten came out on-stage, making a big show of rounding up the three “Winners” and selecting which of the three he would honor with the right to fight him. The remaining two would, it seemed, be made to fight for the second-place prize - a sizable cash award, though smaller than even the consolation prize for whomever fought Von Wickten, should they lose as the knight-captain expected. She played nice and let him talk for a while, but when it came down to it, she decided to make absolutely certain he would want to beat the smug grin off her face enough to pick her as his opponent for sure. He had had the pit-hands drag three luxurious seat out onto the stage, in which he sat the would-be challengers.

As he went across the two other finalists and commanded them to convince him to let them be his opponent, Zel waited, and when it came down to her, when the microphone receiver with its thick connecting-cable was shoved up against her face… She decided to provoke him further.

“Many of these people rely on you for their livelihoods, and I’d wager many of them fear retaliation if they offend you. I don’t. You’re not a real pit fighter, Adalbert - you’re a performance artist at best.”

Adalbert’s face flushed red, veins bulging on his neck, his scales lifting up the same way an animal’s fur would in anger. The knight-captain seemed about ready to call for her to be dragged out of there, or more likely, to just assault her himself, but this only prompted Zelsys to let out another chuckle and put on a grin of razor teeth. She raised a hand, gesturing for him to wait as she continued: “I mean, seriously! You call yourself the strongest living thing in Arches, but how many people have you fought that could actually challenge you? How many have you had disqualified on technicalities when they posed a threat to your championship, huh? C’mon, it couldn’t be more obvious that the referees are too afraid to risk pissing you off.”

“Who are you to accuse me of such things?!” the knight captain interrupted with an angry, but clearly articulated demand, displaying a degree of self-control that actually impressed her. “You are but a barbaric foreigner who will be gone before the full moon next rises. Of course you would have the unearned bravado to spew such vile lies, to burn bridges you will never have to walk!”

“Nice guess, but wrong!” she laughed, leaping out of her seat and striding in the knight-captain’s direction, effortlessly leaping atop one of the nearest ring’s corner-poles. “I’m saying that you wish to live the life of a martial artist without the risk, the struggle! You want the showboating, the bravado, the status of being at the top…”

She slowly raised a pointing finger upwards, only to then shrug, finishing: “...Without actually defending your position against real threats to your reign as champion.”

“There is no challenger who has bested me!” declared the knight captain with absolute certainty.

“Then you’re confident you could beat me, as well, yes?”

He scoffed: “A waste of my time!”

“Gotcha,” a thought shot through Zel’s mind as she pulled out the jade ornament she’d prepared earlier.

“Then I’ll make it worth your time!” she said, “I’ll forgo any rights to an official prize, and instead put up this little number right here if you beat me… On Black Horse Family Hard Sparring rules, with an impartial referee. Someone not from around here, who won’t have to walk a burned bridge as you so fittingly described, and therefore won’t be biased.”

Adalbert stared into her eyes, then at the jade ornament, then into her eyes again. He knew what those rules meant, how clear they were… But he also knew the value of something carved from such a large chunk of jade. After a few moments of deliberation during which neither of the two other finalists made any effort to contest her disturbance of the usual process, Adalbert finally caved.

“Very well, but before I agree to this, tell me what it is that you would have me render up in the inconceivably unlikely event that you somehow defeat me.”

“Oh, just some information,” Zel smiled innocently. “I’ll tell you what that info is in private, and while we’re at it we can also work out the other terms of our little bet. If it turns out that you don’t know what I think you know, I’ll just be on my way.”

“...Make your way to the edge of Pit Four before the start of the runner-up match - one of the pit hands will bring you backstage,” he said with feigned dismissiveness, exaggeratedly spinning on his heel and beginning to march towards the great door.

Briefly turning her head to watch him leave, Zel stowed the ornament and returned to the others, one of the pit hands briefly stopping her to let her know that the next match would start in only fifteen minutes, which passed in a flash. Within this time, Zelsys set her Tablet to begin a mnemonic recording exactly when she was to meet with the pit hand and retrieved a scroll of black, gold-interwoven cloth, wound around two brass spindles.

“Is that-” Victor squinted in recognition.

“-a Black Contract, yes. Don’t fucking bring it up to anyone, swear to the Sage,” Zelsys nodded, flagrantly ignoring the fact she’d been explicitly told not to disclose the nature of the object to anyone other than Zefaris or Jorfr, not even other Bureau assets like Duma. Her instincts told her the boy was no threat, and so she treated him as such. Victor fervently nodded in affirmation at the implied threat.

It was, from what the Bureau agent had told her, a Three Kings Era artifact which could weave a simple agreement into a geas that would prevent either side from intentionally breaking the terms, with the spindles having to be attuned to either participant.

“I don’t know what is so important about getting accurate information out of Von Wickten that our friends would supply such a tool, or how they managed to get a significant enough personal possession of his to tune it to him, but I won’t complain about my job being made easier…” she thought as she cautiously unwound the blank fabric, making sure the complex artifice of both spindles was intact, before winding it back up and stowing it in the half-sheath on her back. Despite the sheath’s size, the leather was enchanted such that it reshaped itself to envelop anything placed in the sheath and clung to it, much like her own clothing. The White Marble Tablet, the Black Contract, the Jade Ornament, and her own weapon, however, just about scraped the upper limit of what it could hold.

A few more minutes passed, and Zel made her way to the bottom of Pit Four, paying no mind to the runner-ups’ concerned looks as they waited for their own standoff to begin. One of the pit hands led her around the stage, through one of the amphitheater’s old staff tunnels, and to a black, hammer-forged door, at whose other end was an altogether mundane backstage area, clearly not designed for the tacked-on stage. He further led her through a hallway that had a direct sightline to the stage door, to a room which held a downright opulent catering area. Tables were pushed up against the walls with reams of half-eaten, luxurious food as well as bottles of drink and chalices littering them, the remains of a shattered bottle still on the ground. Before she could ask where exactly Von Wickten’s dressing room was supposed to be, she got her answer - connected to the catering room was another room, which contained only three things: Cages clearly meant for humans, and a downright antique-looking Fog Gate connected to a Kargarian machine by thick, black cables. Its presence here made sense - such a relic from the Three Kings Era had likely been repurposed by the first feudal lords that re-settled this are after the Divine Emperor’s genocide.

The Gate was a glyph-etched blackstone frame embedded in a shallow alcove within the wall, a solid marble slate at its other side, carved with a gate glyph.

The pit hand adjusted a dial on the cabinet-sized machine and threw the switch, causing it to emit an unpleasant clicking noise as it spat Fog and forced the ancient transportation machine to come alive. The glyphs flickered and pulsed with light as if in protest, before an unstable-looking wall of Fog filled the doorway.

“Step through quickly, please. The passage isn’t as stable as ones you might be used to,” the pit hand said as he gestured to the gate. With a sigh, Zelsys did as asked, reminding herself that she’d only been warned of long-range Fog Gates, and that a short-range hop wouldn’t risk deteriorating the seals that kept her blade semi-stable.

A wave of static washed over her and she felt herself being shunted through the Sea of Fog, emerging into the middle of a warmly-lit, opulent office. As she stepped into the room and looked around, she saw that this side of the gate was an entirely modern work of artifice, brass and silver rendered by exacting Kargarian hands in the image of an ancient stone archway. Work tables were pushed up against cabinets and bookshelves, the old hardwood floor covered in scratches and stains of suspicious origin.

Noticing the distinct lack of noise or even the feeling of another’s presence in her immediate vicinity, Zelsys took to more proactively looking around and exploring what she presumed to be Von Wickten’s home.

The cloying stench of expensive perfume assaulted her nostrils, marshaling its considerable might towards the goal of drowning out the other smells of Von Wickten’s residence: alchemicals, blood, and semen. There was a raging fireplace right across from her, its flames licking the many-finned copper grill of an Igneic Accumulator, from which black cables snaked across the floor and out the door to her right. To her left was a wheeled cabinet, similar to the one at the other side of the gate. She wasn’t sure if he was rightfully confident in the gate’s security, or a fool to trust it so much as to have one directly between the amphitheater and his home. The room had no windows, and going off of the general feel of the air, Zelsys was certain that this place had to be underground. Making her way out into the hallway, she took note of three other doors, two on each side of the hallway, with an upward stairway to the leftward far end and an L-turn to her right.

Before she could decide which way to go, she heard suspicious noises from one of the doors nearest to the stairwell. It was Von Wickten’s voice, angry and cruel, undercut by pained, boyish moans and pleas. Somehow, what she realized was happening was even more revolting than what she’d previously assumed.

“Milk,” came a loud command, followed by yet more pained vocalizations, which themselves were overpowered by the knight captain’s frustrated growling and hissing.

“I said milk! MILK!” he commanded again, this time to the sound of a gauntleted hand smacking flesh. A pained cry issued from the source of the boyish voice, to which she heard Von Wickten utter: “Ah, finally.”

There was a brief moment of silence. Then, a belted command from the knight captain, echoing through the door and down the hallway: “Number Four!”

A door creaked as it opened, but it wasn’t the one she’d expected - it was a door behind her, from which emerged… A boy. Couldn’t have been older than fourteen, done up in downright whorish makeup and clad in glorified harem silks, some sort of metal chastity device gleaming beneath the sheer fabric. Zelsys couldn’t help noticing the makeup caked on his skin in places other than his face, or the bruises it was obviously covering. She willed her Tablet to begin a full mnemonic recording, focusing on everything she experienced moment-to-moment to ensure the recording’s quality. The Pateirian numeral for “4” was branded onto the boy’s left shoulder. A pervasive sense of disgust flooded every fiber of her being as she watched the slave look up at her with a dead-eyed stare, only for the door she’d been listening through to open and for the knight captain to step out, slamming it shut with his foot the moment he noticed her.

“Ah, Newman, was it? I- I must have lost my sense of time. Did the attendant not instruct you to wait for me in the gate room?” Von Wickten said, feigning aloofness. The tension in his entire being was palpable, however. In his right hand he gripped a teacup filled with a steaming, black liquid, atop which floated globs of white something streaked through with blood-red. He noticed her brief glance down at the cup and vigorously stirred the disparate components into an even viler-looking substance.

“I was told nothing of the sort,” she answered curtly, prompting him to sigh and look to the slave.

“Number Four, Three needs a rest. Bring him to the Red Room and take his place,” he commanded the boy. A look of abject terror washed over his features before, as quickly as it had come, it vanished, and he walked past. Zel’s inner question was answered by seeing the boy from behind - a small, purple insect was attached at the base of his neck. “A subtler form of control parasite?” she guessed, suppressing her own growing disgust and violent impulses.

Once the slave vanished into the room which Von Wickten had emerged from, he turned his attention to Zelsys, putting on a masterful, empty smile of perfect teeth as he gestured up the hallway.

“Come, let us discuss the terms of our agreement.”

Remaining on-edge, Zel followed him up the stairs and through the halls of his hilltop mansion which overlooked the town from a spot near the duke’s own home, soon finding herself in yet another opulently decorated room, lit by the warm light of tinted lightgems arrayed in a chandelier. An office, going by the placement and furniture.

“I must apologize if I seemed a bit on-edge earlier; as potent as the Dragonheart Cultivation Method is, it comes with certain draconic… Proclivities,” the knight captain faux-apologized as they walked. “You must’ve noticed that where Ser Baldwin’s horns are naturally symmetrical, mine have to be filed into shape - the increasingly wild growth of draconic tissue is an unfortunate side effect of my advancement in the Method.”

“Not just a degenerate, but one that tries to make excuses and brag in the same breath…” she thought, smiling at the walking impurity tumor before her. If they considered these draconic mutations a cultivation method, that meant it couldn’t have been purely based on those False Drakes… Perhaps they only harvested them for cultivation materials, then. But what was the root of the method? She felt the need to find out, if only so she might tear said roots out to rid the world of this filth. Even the most degraded of Dragon Descendants were strongly arcane creatures, it was such a waste to use them for a filthy cultivation method like this.

They sat down across from one another, Von Wickten behind his lacquered wood desk and Zelsys in front of it, the chair creaking under her weight and somewhat humorously undersized for her height.

“So…” he said, sipping the rest of his “tea” and setting the cup down. The played-up magnanimity was draining from him by the second. “What is it that you think I possess which you would be willing to bet that thing for, again?”

“I have it on good faith that you’ve been performing an undercover investigation of the Red Locust Bandits and their connection to the emerging slave trade in the region - is that correct?” she asked, defaulting to the same official mode of speech she used with braindead noblemen and bureaucrats, in part due to the constant focus on the present moment that was required to ensure good fidelity in the mnemonic recording. Von Wickten gave a slow, cautious nod.

“Then I would have the passphrase to access one of their private auctions.”

Von Wickten stared her down with a dubious look in his eyes, the iris of his half-squinted left eye briefly expanding and contracting in an unsettling manner. The next moment, the tension vanished from his form and, with a relaxed smile, he took a sip from that horrid accursed mixture in his cup.

“You should’ve simply told me that you wished to contend with me for direct access to the Meat Market! We could’ve avoided all that silly posturing,” he said, seemingly oblivious to his own hypocrisy. “Had you come a week earlier I would’ve bet you a useless, out-of-date passphrase. Unfortunately for me, and fortunately for you, one of my most delectable morsels somehow overpowered its control parasite and vanished into thin air with my favorite horn file, and being that the fine fol- er, detestable bandits running the operation knew better than to risk losing me as a customer, they gave me this month’s passphrase for free.”

He… Wasn’t lying. Zelsys was certain that he wasn’t lying because her gut had a track record of detecting all but the best liars, and even then, she would’ve at least been able to tell something wasn’t quite right, but why wasn’t he lying? Then, it clicked. He thought she was an equal of his, that she was just like him, one who thought herself above the rest of mankind and sought slaves for the most obvious reasons. Of course a cultivator would want to buy slaves, in Von Wickten’s mind it was a foregone conclusion. Menials, peasants, serfs, outer disciples, the name didn’t matter - Von Wickten knew that the powerful always sought to make servants of those less able or fortunate than themselves, and cultivators doubly so.

“So, just to confirm. I win, I get the ornament,” he continued speaking. “You win, you get the passphrase… And the fight is to be under what rules, again? I am not familiar with…”

“Black Horse Family Hard Sparring rules; they’re simple. Weapons and armor are permissible, as are techniques and magic, but they must not be of the type intended to cause lingering damage or harm the opponent’s cultivation,” Zel explained. She normally preferred an in-between rule set that had, in her time running the Newman Sect, come to be known as Newman Family Semi-Hard Sparring, but it was a rule set she’d conceived because Hard Sparring could still very easily result in long-term injuries… Injuries of the exact sort she intended to inflict on Von Wickten, knowing that the Black Contract wouldn’t let him renege on their agreement regardless of what happened in the pit, short of a life-or-death situation.

“Whoever concedes or becomes unable to fight first loses. The referee can call for an interruption, but this is mostly there to mitigate risk of death… So just pick out any of the traveling peddlers that’ll be halfway across the continent by next month, and odds are they’ll do a good job.”

“Sounds fair to me,” the knight captain held out a gauntleted hand, all too eager to walk face-first into what he doubtlessly thought would be a fight he couldn’t lose. His mind couldn’t conceive the possibility of losing against someone who didn’t display an even more ostentatious presence of wealth than him, who didn’t flaunt their social standing even more than him.

Looking down at his hand for a moment, Zel smiled… And pulled out the Black Contract.

“While I tend towards incaution at times, I know better than to leave this sort of thing up to a verbal agreement,” she said, unrolling the contract towards Von Wickten such that the spindle which had been attuned to him would be on his side of the table. “This contract will ensure that neither of us will try to breach the agreement - just grasp the spindle, and the agreement will write itself out on the parchment.”

He stared at her with a dubious, yet familiar expression, his pupils contracting to barely-visible slits and his scales raising slightly. “I know what this damn thing is, I hate it with my entire being, and I now consider you an enemy for having one pre-attuned to me,” his eyes said to her… And yet he spoke not.

For a good fifteen seconds, the two sat locked in a staring contest, before the knight captain finally gave and did as was asked of him. The moment both of them had a hand on their respective spindle, intense thrumming pain shot up both their arms, enough to make even the knight-captain grit his teeth. Meanwhile, Zel’s pain tolerance automatically rose to render the pain tolerable before it could even register to her conscious self, this being one of the self-alterations she’d carried out her command over her own body. It was a degree of fine internal control gained from creating a direct line of communication between the Thinking Self; the Ego, that which most people considered to be themselves, and the Primordial Self; the Id, which governed all that which was normally out of a person’s control about their own body.

The knight captain looked at her with perturbation in his eyes, a flicker of uncertainty at the total lack of a reaction. He then rationalized that, because she was likely inferior to him and thus didn’t pose nearly as much mental or spiritual resistance to the artifact, it must not be causing her nearly as much pain, and his uncertainty disappeared. From there on, it took them a good ten minutes of discussing the specifics of the bet to get the Black Contract’s golden-glowing magical writing to cease writhing about on the scroll, but when all was said and done, Zelsys had gotten exactly the agreement she had wanted, and Von Wickten lied to himself that it was much the same for him.

Once the Black Contract was back in Fog Storage where it belonged, Von Wickten took the initiative and simply said: “Let us take a few minutes, then - I need to get into my battle armor, and I am sure you would like to prepare as well. I shall come out on stage once I am ready, that should be a clear enough indication for you to come to the pit.”

“Of course,” Zel smiled venomously, rising to her feet. Von Wickten followed suit, walking alongside her all the way to the Fog Gate, keeping one slit-pupiled eye on her the entire time until she passed through. It was obvious her use of the Black Contract had instilled distrust in him, rightfully so.

With his head buzzing from the tankard of ale which Jorfr had bought for him while Zel was gone, Victor wasn’t entirely sure at first if he was seeing things correctly when Zelsys returned with a look of barely-concealed disgust plastered across her face. She sat down at the table, saying something to the others with palpable hate and disgust in her voice, prompting Jorfr’s features to harden, while an ice-cold malice took hold in Zef’s otherwise calm face. Zefaris said something back, and Zelsys pulled out her White Marble Tablet, setting it down on the table. Was that… Was that a mnemonic record playback projection? It looked like one, but Victor wasn’t sure, tipsy as he was. Both of the two others touched the Tablet for a short while, Zefaris spitting off to the side in disgust and Jorfr standing up, walking around the table for a bit and exhaling visible clouds of ice-cold air while somehow radiating waves of heat.

The Borean sat back down, uttering something about a “blood eagle” before he kicked back his tankard and downed its contents in one massive gulp.