Chapter 24: 24 – Theorycrafting

Zelsys stood leaning against the brick wall, smiling and inspecting the gemstone as she waited for the three soldiers to be ready to leave. While at first glimpse it had seemed to be obsidian-black, it was in fact partially translucent and heavily fogged with Nigredo, a mercurial silver glimmering within its center if the light hit it just right.

Her smile grew to a grin when she noticed Makhus frozen, captivated by the tiny gem, whilst Zefaris didn’t seem to pay it any particular mind. The swordsman squinted, looking at it, then back at the near-skeletal Necrobeast, then back at the gem. He pointed back at it, questioning, “Did that… Come out of it?”

She only gave a nod, smugly shooting back, “Yeah, what of it? In the end, I killed it - twice, at that.”

“I-I wouldn’t dare suggest that ain’t yours, it’s bad luck to covet one o’ those,” he quickly conceded, as if just the mere thought of demanding the gem felt wrong to him. “Just…Surprised that that thing had an Azoth, is all. Make good use of it.”

The bearded soldier finally emerged from the building, shutting the door behind himself. “Harder to holster a gun into a sleeping man’s coat than it looks,” he remarked as he looked around, seemingly confused for a moment. Bushy eyebrows raised, he asked, “So… Are we leavin’ or what?” 

And leave, they did, taking off down that winding gravel road. Whilst they walked quickly to put plenty of distance between themselves and the checkpoint, they gathered the remaining seal-bottles one by one and stored them away within the Tablet. Makhus grumbled that it wasn’t good to drink pure essentia when Zefaris explained why one of her bottles was partly empty.

Once the bottles were stored away, Zelsys dropped the gem into the Fog vortex, then tapped BROWSE STORAGE to check its name. And indeed, there it was, near the top of the alphabetical list. 

1x Minor Azoth (Necrobeast) 

When she tapped on it, the usual options to Retrieve/Cancel came up, but there was an extra one, slightly offset to the right and highlighted in golden-yellow. 

Consume

Out of curiosity, she almost tapped it, but something in the back of her mind told her it wouldn’t be a good idea to do that here and now. And so, she just touched her cleaver’s handle to loosen the holster, placing the Tablet within and letting go as she continued to walk alongside the three soldiers. The three made no effort to march in formation as they had previously, the tension in their steps relieved by the forest beyond the border. 

They didn’t pay any particular attention to her, or at least far less than they had when they had first met in that wasteland of dead wood. She did find that Zefaris threw glances her way more often than the others, but she knew this had nothing to do with caution.

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Eventually, though, it became obvious why neither the three deserters nor Zelsys felt as on-edge here. The further from the border they got, the less aggressive the greenery became. The gravel road they walked became not the sole path through a maze of greenery and brambles, but rather just that - a road, past whose edges one could see for a reasonable distance. After perhaps an hour or two of walking, the rustling of leaves and branches under the summer wind was broken by the occasional chirping of birds.

Verdant as the forest was at the other side of the border, the conversion barrier had made it so dominated by plants that many animals simply avoided it altogether. Compared to this side of the border, it was a veritable jungle. 

Some time after the sun had passed its zenith and begun inching towards the Western horizon, the group reached a clearing at the side of the road containing a small campsite - a table and benches clearly hewn from raw logs and a basic fire-pit. They hadn’t been walking for long enough to be exhausted, but they gladly took the opportunity to take a breather, with Zelsys walking ahead to take a seat - or rather, to lay on the bench with her feet up on the table, holding the Tablet in hand as she idly browsed her traits, wondering what they each meant.

Zefaris seated herself on the same bench, whilst Makhus and Sigmund sat across from them. They cracked open one of the large bottles of Liquid Vigor, slowly passing it around as they each sipped from it in turn, or at least until it would’ve been Zelsys’s turn. 

“It’s fine, I’m not thirsty,” she said offhandedly, but even so, the markswoman hefted the heavy bottle and held it out in offering. Zelsys let out a resigned sigh, took her feet off the table, and sat up, taking the offered bottle and sipping from it. The warm herbal flavor of Viriditas and the heat of ethanol, then a surge of strength and energy. It was a lesser effect than before, but still substantial. 

She passed the bottle to Sigmund and continued idly tinkering with the Tablet. A thought crossed her mind - another one of the many ways in which she would fill the gaping holes in her knowledge of the world. Summoning the smugness that came to her so naturally, Zelsys swiped twice to the left to reach Fog Storage and tapped on BROWSE STORAGE, then on the Retrieve option for her Azoth.

The Fog vortex never failed to capture the three’s attention, and Makhus was entirely captivated when he saw the foggy polyhedron of a gemstone rise into her waiting grasp. She showed it to him held between two fingers, grinning as she asked, “Tell me, how would you make use of this? Satisfy my curiosity.”

Makhus took the bottle, taking a small swig of its contents before passing it to Zefaris, a gravelly chuckle rumbling out of him. 

“Always with the pointless questions,” remarked the swordsman. Nevertheless, he rather enthusiastically took to explaining what he would do, as if he had been thinking about this idea for a long time.

“I’ve devised a hackneyed method of cultivatin’ Azoth that I probably won’t get a chance to prove for a lil’ while, but here’s what I came up with. First I’d crack the solid shell open, dissolve the mercurial core in a low-concentration Alkahest solution,” he began, leaning forward slightly while Zelsys took the bottle, sipped some Liquid Vigor and passed the bottle to Sigmund.

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