The rot-bear’s heart had shriveled to less than the size of a fist, and still it beat inside the flask, pumping black Fog into the apparatus even with the burners off.

As Zelsys approached them, she felt Makhus’s eye upon the Tablet, and she almost palpably felt the realization dawning on him before he asked what she thought he would. “Hey, this might be a lil’ much to ask,” he began, but Zelsys cut him off before he could finish by simply walking up and sitting down on one of the logs, placing the Tablet on the ground and activating the PUT INTO STORAGE function.

She sat there, legs crossed and hands on her knees, staring at him as the Fog vortex formed. “It won’t stay open for long, and the moment it closes that’s it,” she smugged at him. “Hurry up soldier boy.”

A hearty laugh issued forth from her when she saw his eyes go wide as he reached for one of the larger seal-bottles with lightning speed, cautiously placing it onto the vortex, which was too small for the bottle to fit. It expanded to swallow the bottle, and an expression of visible relief settled into Makhus’s face as he reached for the next one, dropping it into the vortex with far less caution.

She knew that the vortex would stay open for as long as they kept adding things, but they didn’t, and the resulting momentary panic manifested itself as a mindblowing feat of sheer coordination. In less than five minutes, the three soldiers managed to store most of the seal-bottles and the vast majority of the heaviest goods they would be carrying, even including their chest-plates and weapons, with the exception of Makhus’s sword and Zefaris’s rifle.

“Last one,” the blonde said as she rushed toward the vortex. In her hands, there was a small flask bearing seals in blue ink, half-filled with ash and coals, a fist-sized gemstone the colour of dying embers sitting atop them. The vortex swallowed it the same way it did everything else, and the three soldiers breathed a collective sigh of relief. Zelsys gave them all a look, grinning ear to ear. She could tell by the rising annoyance in her face that Zefaris had already realized what she was about to say.

“Y’know, I would’ve let you store your shit even if you let the vortex close,” she admitted, “but watching you go was entertaining.”

They departed perhaps half an hour later, leaving behind most of the camp - Zelsys couldn’t clearly tell how much the sun had moved through the tree canopy, and more importantly, she couldn’t read its movements that accurately. Makhus didn’t bother even attempting to dismantle the alchemic still, instead just smashing it up with a rock before they left.

A harmless prank aside, the three soldiers were thankful for not having to carry the bulkiest of their possessions. Their backpacks were still heavy enough to slow them down, which was only compounded by the density of the forest.