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.

Eventually, though, it became obvious why neither the three deserters nor Zelsys felt as on-edge here.