As far as the post-war government was concerned he was a dead man, and that gave him a sense of security in using his birth name.

The projection flickered and changed to an attribute readout, one which furrowed the brow and befuddled the mind. Partly for the supposedly superhuman Hardness which the device assigned him, and partly for the second attribute ratings in parentheses.

NAME SIGMUND SEX MALE SPECIES HUMAN (IKESIAN) FORCE D+ PRECISION C- (C+) HARDNESS B AETHER E+ (C-) TRAITS>

Taking care not to hit his head again he stood up, walking out onto the clearing as he shook off the last cobwebs of unconsciousness. A conversation echoed faintly from outside, and he could tell it was between Zelsys and Zefaris by their voices. He passed by Makhus on the way out, taking no particular note of what he was doing until he heard the swordsman enthusiastically muttering something. “Purgation Arts: Hundredfold Viriditas Containment Seal Creation!” he recited, soon followed by a weak breeze from the rapid movement of his arms and the sound of calligraphy brushes on parchment. He turned to look, and saw something he hadn’t seen in a long time - since they first started brewing Viriditas, really.

The butchering table had been cleaned to a cleaner state than usual. To Makhus’s left, there were four empty sheets of parchment, the seal-covered bottle that seemed to store an endless quantity of Rubedo, an inkwell, three calligraphy brushes, and a bowl with a liquid so dark-red it was nearly black. To his right, he had stacked four sheets of parchment covered in a repeating pattern of that dark ink - containment seals, painted with Rubedo-infused ink.

Sigmund knew his friend wouldn’t so much as acknowledge any external stimuli until he finished this sheet of seals, and thus he just waited, leaning in to get a look at the process. First came an outline along the parchment’s edge with one brush, then a grid to outline the seals with a different, special brush, a narrow blade flashing amidst the bristles. “He could’ve made a living off that back in the day,” he thought, and then a realization hit him. He waited - Tablet in hand - for the swordsman to finish the seal-painting sequence, for that small exhalation at the end when he put the brush down.

“What’d you need all those seals for?” he asked as Makhus put the finished sheet on the stack. “We don’t even have that many bottles.”

“I know. It’s to cover all our bottles completely. Partly to make sure none o’ the stuff goes poof, partly to-”

“You think they’ll let us past the border with all of that?” he jokingly interrupted.

“Let me finish. I figure they’ll confiscate some of it no matter what, so we just gotta make sure what they confiscate is Liquid Vigor instead of pure essentia. Thus, I gotta cover up all the bottles, so it’s not suspicious.”

“Won’t making all those seals tire you out?”

Makhus laughed at that. “It normally fuckin’ would, the ink’s one third Rubedo by volume. Lucky fer me…” he shook the Rubedo bottle.