Chapter 102: 100 – Foster the Flame

“Aye. Had this weird feeling one night, then heard someone screaming. Slicked my hair back, put on a gas mask, and ran out with a war-knife following the noise. Thought I’d end up cutting down some locust, not a Black Horse disciple. I’ll never forget the face when I took his head off, like even in death the head wanted to compliment my form,” he explained grimly, looking off into the middle distance. She pulled out her tablet, holding it out to him.

“The moment of a technique’s creation is recorded. Your breathing method should be no different. Use it to go back to that place, feel that motivation again.”

“I was defensive in that swordfight.”

“And yet you went out looking for a fight, and you killed a man of presumably equal or greater skill to yours. Just trust me.”

He wordlessly took the tablet, staring at it as he focused. Then, his eyes widened, pupils opening up like apertures all over again, silver light flashing from them while vague silvery swirls of Fog danced over the Tablet’s surface. Seconds later, he dropped the tablet and shot up to his feet, drawing in a breath and sprinting for the tower of scaffolding in the corner of the yard directly opposite that nook in the back, to the right of the door, just past the log dummies.

Reaching into that barrel, he scooped up a handful of rainwater and used it to slick his hair back, before leaping back down and picking his stick up again. 

“I get it now,” he said with a subtle grin, and Zelsys felt his presence change in that single moment. The feeling of a sword’s edge had been present before, just mixed in with his focus on alchemy and frustration, but that had been turned on its head. The sword dominated everything that Makhus was in this very moment. 

With a laugh she got up and picked up her wooden weapon too, remarking, “I’d hoped for a change, but not one this big and this instant. How come that one memory was enough to break that mental block?”

“I had grasped it back then, that spark,” said the swordsman. “Locking myself away in the lab had just snuffed it out. I won’t let that happen again.”

They collided, and it was Zelsys on the back foot this time. He set upon her with a violent storm of probing jabs, feints, and strikes to exploit even the slightest show of commitment to a move. For the first time since perhaps the Red Mantis, she actually had to actively counteract another’s reading of her movements.

Even without his Sensory Enhancement, the swordsman-alchemist had an inhuman reaction time within the context of active combat. To react from a purely defensive position was one thing, but he had maintained the same consistently lightning-fast blocks and parries even now.

That was not to mention that move.

The one that he unknowingly telegraphed by conserving his Fog and going out of his way to replenish what he expended. 

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The one that Zelsys felt before she saw it, when this stick too, shattered against her ribs.

“Soul-Sword-Single-Strike: Evil-cleaving Slash…” exhaled the swordsman, smiling to himself before Zelsys inevitably broke out laughing at the sheer theatrics of that name, even as she clutched her side. That would bruise, she was certain of it. 

---

A short while had passed, wherein Makhus had been made to retreat to his lab to deal with a shortage of the new Daytime Dust-infused fruit preserve, while Zel decided she might as well help Sig close up for the day in the absence of much better to do.

Zef returned soon after to the three others in the kitchen busy scooping preserves from a metal pot into jars, carrying an air of eagerness about her and a brand-new leather bag hanging at her hip by a long strap across her chest. Taking their questioning looks as a prompt, she put her bag down on the table and pulled out three square slips of paper. Whatever was still in the bag was at least the size of her head.

Standing from her squatted-down position, Zel instantly recognized what the papers were. Photographs. Photographs of… Some place, a place with an opulent main building and a huge square out in front, walled and gated. The walls brazenly displayed multiple rows of glyphs, the image of the location partially distorted due to the plainly visible barrier. Statues out in front and inside the pavilion, pillars of wood and stone both visible through the gate, trees of multiple colours, even the roof itself had two tiers and from it a spire with three golden spheres pointed to the heavens. It had shingles the same shade of blue as most of Willowdale, but even these were opulent, with multiple different designs that repeated every couple shingles, though what those designs were wasn’t clear from the picture.

“What is that place?” Zel asked, picking up the one photo. Zef didn’t even get to answer, as Makhus leaned in and without a moment’s hesitation said, “That’s the Willowdale Black Horse Family estate. Where’d you get photos of that place? Looks deserted, so they must be new...”

Beaming giddily, the markswoman opened up her new bag all the way, revealing a large box covered in black leather with lettering above and below an image, all embossed in gold on the lid. 

SuFeSh Gld. 

Fotoapparat

The image depicted a weird silhouette that didn’t really bring anything to mind. It was some machine, that much was certain. Within the velvet-lined box lay a strange device furnished in darkly lacquered wood, with a periscope-like visor on one end and large lens aperture with a thick brass dial on the front. It had all sorts of bits and gubbins, levers and buttons, a sort of concave mirror on a stalk with a dull lightgem set inside it. It had a leather strap affixed to its left and right side, presumably such that it could be hung from one’s neck.

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