“Yeah, we ran out of eggs so I made lokshe instead,” he confirmed, returning to the stove to continue. “The filling’s apples, cinnamon, and ground poppyseed.”

She had a mind to ask him what Vitae was, but before she could, a bleary-eyed, just-about-dressed Zefaris stumbled into the kitchen holding a hand to the left side of her head.

“That fucker should’ve told me a hangover would make this thing feel like a hot coal in my head…” she grumbled. She then went on to meet Sigmund’s good-morning with a vague groan, ambling over to the sink and downing a glass of water before Sig pointed out to her the pitcher of citronade on the table, at which point she filled that same glass from the pitcher and emptied it, too. A few seconds passed, and the aura of seething directionless discontent evaporated from her, replaced by resigned acceptance of consequences.

“Why’d you not stop me drinking that much when we were back there?” she questioned Zel, though from her voice it was easy to tell that she wasn’t being serious.

Zel responded honestly, “I didn’t know it was enough to do… Well, what it did, not to mention a hangover this bad. You only had two glasses and I had three, but I barely got a buzz.”

“If that’s not proof of you being a homunculus I don’t know what is,” Zef shot back after she cautiously sat down, squinting against the light that came through the windows. She sniffed the air, glanced at Sig, and smiled. “Lokshe? You’ll give Makhus flashbacks to the academy.”

“If he doesn’t like these I’ll know for sure all that elixir-tasting burned out his taste buds,” retorted the historian, giving Zef her own serving and once more returning to the stove.

A few minutes passed. They began eating, soon joined by Sig with two more lokshe stacks - one for himself, one obviously for Makhus. Zel quickly found out that lokshe were much like regular pancakes, but denser, heartier, and slightly savory in a way that contrasted nicely with the sweet, spicy filling.

Sig piped up halfway through eating his first one, looking up at Zel: “I take it the Necrobeast Serum just needed a reason to wake up, unless there’s another reason for the three new scars on your back. What happened?”

Of course he had noticed. She kept on eating at a leisurely pace, choosing to start at the beginning, describing the parlor and its atmosphere of reverence for combat, then pointing out the people she had noticed stand out among the patrons and noting that it would be important later.

Excessively elaborate descriptions of her fights against Jorfr followed, wherein Zelsys made no effort to conceal how much she enjoyed the fights, comparing them to her unfinished duel with the Sister.

And then…

“So I did the same thing I do to make ball lightning by using the Fog I had already extruded to form the Siphoning Pulse as a medium for Fulgur so that I would sublimate away the ice protecting his fist while also sending all the force of his punch right back, which only really worked because he had a predictable wind-up so I didn’t need to guess the timing…” she elaborated, biting off half a loksha before she continued.

“And I dislocated his arm. I was a little disappointed that he conceded then and there, but I get it. I had my victory lap, and just as it finished, the whole envenomed knife to the back thing happened, Heartstopper venom and everything. It was like the rat had just appeared out of thin air behind me within stabbing distance.”

“That’s because he did,” Zef added. “I saw him flickering in while already stabbing at you with one hand and doing a Fog-walking hand sign with the other. Zipperhead would’ve just poofed and went on his way if I hadn’t shot off his hand.”

“First that brainwashed kid with the talisman, now this… Something’s stirring,” Sig said, making Zelsys want to smugly reveal what she had managed to extract from the would-be-assassin before his suicide.

And indeed, she did: “Little rat did squeak, how I was marked for death and all that horseshit. I’m damn-near certain it’s the senators, same as your home invader.”

By the time they were halfway done with breakfast, steady footsteps were heard on the stairs, across the hall, then the kitchen door creaked open and Makhus poked his head in. There were bags below his eyes and an imprinted straight line across his cheek, but he looked much better than before.

He looked over the kitchen with half-closed bleary eyes, quietly sat down at the table, put some filling on a loksha, rolled it up, and uttered in a hoarse tone: “The contract’s finally done. Passed out at the writing desk right after I bottled the last batch but it’s done.”

For a little while longer, they continued to just quietly eat as Makhus woke up right in front of them. He eventually looked up at Zelsys and asked: “How’s the serum situation?”

Zel took the tablet in her hand and lifted it up for him to see, letting a grin shine through as she watched him lean in to read it. He said nothing, but after that moment there was a noticeable sense of hurry to the way he ate his breakfast. To the surprise of no-one he asked if Zelsys wanted to reattach the arm right now and if she was absolutely confident the trait worked, to which the beast-slayer responded by just taking a kitchen knife and putting a small cut across her forearm, stretching it apart with her fingers to see for herself. As she did this, she took in a small breath of Fog, keeping in mind the intention to use this before whatever Vitae was to fuel the trait.

Indeed, instead of pouring out, blood pooled in the cut and formed thin tendrils that reached to the edges. She felt her Fog gradually burning away, flowing towards the site of injury.