“Other one,” the northman, sat on one of the ledges, calmly pointed with his thumb whilst whipping himself with a bundle of evergreen branches. By contrast Victor, who stood just inside the pool with the water going up to his thighs, froze in place like a scared animal. It took Zelsys considerable effort not to not look at him, but the clarity of her peripheral vision more than sufficed to carve the flesh-maul between the redhead’s legs into her mind’s eye. She gave a light nod of thanks to Jorfr before retreating.

“Seriously, it looked like one of those cylindrical half-liter canisters! I’ve half a mind to wager that the old man put Fog Storage into those shorts of his somehow…” Zel exclaimed in bewilderment at her protegé’s preternatural endowment.

Unfazed by information she already knew, Zef nodded: “Yeah, he did. Victor once asked me if I thought it was the craftsman trying to prank him or do him a favor.”

“It had bone ridges. Bone ridges!” Zel exclaimed. That revelation was enough to make Zef stop working conditioner into her hair and look over to her lover.

“...Like the ones on his neck?”

“Exactly like the ones on his neck, down the underside.”

“Now that I think of it…” Zef squinted in thought. “Those bone plates grow in response to repeated skin abrasion. Of course he’d have them down there.”

There came knocks on the door, but their source didn’t wait for an answer before barging in. It was a huge woman of a stature comparable to Zelsys, but somewhat wider. She wore a furred loincloth, a semicircular covering of beads over her chest, and a horned headdress, innumerable bangles and other jewelry adorning the rest of her. The snow-white of her skin was contrasted by wide-reaching tattooed swaths across every part of her except her face. A large leather bag weighed in her left hand.

Her pale-blue eyes locked onto Zefaris for a moment and she uttered: “It would seem that my work today will be easy.”

That sentiment changed when she looked at Zelsys and furrowed her brow: “...Or not.”

Surprisingly, the shaman went on to examine the both of them in a surprisingly familiar manner, primarily asking questions and even extracting a blood sample from each of them via another of those tiny starmetal knives. She used the same salve as Fryg to close the cuts, dispelling the appearance of the process being painful; it stung at first, but the wound became numb nearly instantly.

The first go round, the shamaness prescribed Zelsys a day of rest alongside a number of elixirs for the recovery of spent bodily resources, with use of Vitae elixirs several times over the course of that one day. As the woman went on in her ministrations, treating Zel’s injuries and mixing poultices up on the spot, Zelsys felt her Primordial Self reach out in disagreement. Her body knew what it needed. Zel allowed the Primordial Self to take over, feeling her sense of self shift as her body spoke without thinking.

“Wrong. Liver. I need liver. From… A great big white bear, I think. And bone marrow… And uh… Lots of tiny, bright blue fish,” the Primordial Self demanded.

“A Tundrabear Liver? You will just poison yourself, why would-” the shamaness dismissed, only to stop herself. She glanced over to Zefaris, as if she thought Zelsys had gone feral. “Is that the Beast Self speaking? Does this happen often? Can she control it?”

Zefaris opened her mouth to speak, but Zel blinked a few times and cut the exchanged short: “I’m… Still here. It’s easier to just let my body tell you what I need rather than try to relay it myself. Weren’t you Boreans supposed to be the continent’s experts on this sort of thing?”

“You’re- Oh, thank the ancestors, you are in control. You are not wrong, but when it comes out like that it is usually… Not good. It is no wonder that brother Jorfr holds you in such high regard if you learned to control your inner beast so completely without the ancestral traditions available to us.”

“Trying to exert control with brute force didn’t work,” Zel started, but she stopped herself mid-sentence. She had gone through this spiel several times before with her disciples back in Willowdale, and it had nearly slipped out when it shouldn’t have. “...That’s all I’ll give you. Now, can you get me what I asked for?”

“...Yes, of course. The fish are cheap, and Tundrabear liver is kept frozen for the few rituals that demand it. I still suggest that you follow my other recommendations.”

Zel nodded in agreement, and proceeded to kick back the first elixir which the shamaness had prepared. It was best compared to Grekurian Vitamax in the aggression of its herbal flavor profile, while its texture was unpleasantly thick. Downright tolerable. By what the shamaness had said, it was intended to aid in expelling toxins. As she handed the cup over, she felt her right elbow lock up as the last remnants of imbuing her right arm with Bronze began to dissipate.

“....Shit.”

She looked up at the shamaness.

“Grab my wrist and start pulling on three.”

Zel took a deep breath, focusing on expelling the leftover Metallum through her skin.

“Alright, three.”

As she felt her elbow start loosening up, scales of bronze oxide formed on her forearm and sloughed off, forming a small pile under her arm by the time her arm had straightened out. Zel used her left hand to forcibly work her joints

“Have you altered your wrist in any way? It felt as though some of the bones had fused together.”

“Yeah, don’t worry about it.”

“Ah, good. I have not worked with someone so heavily altered before, it is… Hard to tell what is intentional and what is the result of an injury.”

“I will be sure to come to you when I inevitably need further treatment, then. What should I call you?” Zel offered.

“Merete. You are… Zelsys and Zefaris Newman, is that right?”

The two nodded.