A more than cursory look showed that the Caster and Spearman were present, but they kept to themselves to the furthest degree possible. They’d already raised a number of floor pillars into an impromptu mini-chamber off in the corner, with only a single-pillar gap for a doorway.

Zel immediately walked over to the projection glyph altar, grasping its control handle and willing a few pillars to rise next to it so they’d have a measure of privacy, though near enough to the two bugmen to see their hidey-hole with a simple lean. She also made a few pillars rise into the same table and seats pattern as last time, for when Strol and the Inquisitor inevitably arrived.

After sitting down on the ground in their partly walled-off corner, Zel and Zef sat there leaning on each other for a few minutes, doing nothing and resting. The thought crossed Zel’s mind that she had technically fulfilled the trait advancement criteria for Stormsurge, but she didn’t feel like fiddling with the Tablet. Besides, it probably didn’t do much to change how the trait worked.

Minutes passed. They tapped into their rations, both eating only small pieces of dried fruit and cheese, washing it down with small glugs of elixir. They weren’t hungry or thirsty, seeing as by now they’d spent nearly as much time in this chamber as they had on the preceding floor.

“Why this?” Zefaris raised the speedloader, making no effort to hide her smile. “That was your part of the reward.”

“Couldn’t think of anything that would help me in a fight,” Zelsys smiled back. “Besides, I’d rather be the one playing catchup.”

Zefaris curiously tinkered with the device, inserting and removing Pentacle a few times to get a feel for it.

“I need your powder horn and something to catch loose powder. Oh, and some cartridges,” she finally piped up. Zel handed over the powder horn and pulled out the Tablet, certain she had something appropriate in Fog Storage.

After a few seconds of warm thrumming and a readout of SCANNING, the device showed another readout.

UPDATING RECORD UPDATE SUCCESSFUL TRAIT ADVANCEMENT

Though she was glad that her assumption had been right, she was also annoyed at having to wait for the machine to perform its actualization. Zefaris didn’t seem bothered at all, simply pouring powder into the speedloader’s powder slot while she watched for the Tablet’s updated readout. The counter glyph for the gunpowder storage portion of the device had ticked up to twelve by the time Zel’s Tablet finally showed which trait had advanced.

STORM ENGINE Type: Essentia Synthesis and Manipulation Trigger: At-Will (Consumes Fog or Metabolized Essentia (Fulgur)) Effects: Electrokinesis B- (B in Beast Style), Kinesthesia Enhancement B+ (A- in Slayer Style), Body Control Enhancement A+ (S- in Slayer Style), Manifestation Spec. (Beast Style), Self-Resuscitation Advancement: Unknown

Zel made a quick mental note about the differing benefits that the specialized styles conferred even to the raw power of her traits, but she made the readout disappear right after and swiped to Fog Storage. A (Rusted) pot lid would work fine to catch loose gunpowder, she figured, since it was not exactly safe to use for cooking as it was.

After that, she took thirty more rifle cartridges out of storage, simply piling them onto the ground. It quickly became obvious why Zefaris wanted something to catch loose powder when she started ripping the cartridges open, pouring out the powder, and putting the bullets in the speedloader.

Cartridge by cartridge it went, and a question began to gnaw at the back of Zel’s head.

“What’s the issue with your left eye?” she asked. “I know it doesn’t work, but… Why the apprehension about getting a new one?”

Zefaris finished ripping up a cartridge and moved the pot lid and speedloader aside. With a deep sigh, she looked up at Zelsys.

“I… Think I’ve got some sort of shellshock from when I lost it,” she explained. “I could’ve had a Brass Eye put into the socket alongside the Homunculus Eye procedure, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. It’s like the primitive part of my mind is too terrified of anything foreign ever coming near my left eye-socket ever again.

She pulled the Philosopher’s Eye out of her pocket, rubbing the stone against her shirt to polish it. “Maybe this is what I need to break past that. Can’t even imagine putting it in myself, though...”

For a few seconds she stared at the stone, then reluctantly held it out to Zelsys.

“I could probably grin and bear it if someone else did it,” she said, equally reluctantly. It was audible in her voice that she was fighting against her instincts even to consider having the artificial eye put in, but Zelsys quickly took her up on the offer.

In her opinion, the quicker an unpleasant procedure was done, the lesser its effects would be on a person. The idea of stapling a wound was, to her, preferable to having it meticulously stitched shut.

So, with a breath of Fog and a swift motion, she grabbed the eye with her right hand and pushed Zef’s hair out of the way with her left, holding her head. Putting her hands down the blonde held stone-still, her good eye shut tightly, even though her hands trembled.

Zel forced open the eyelids of Zef’s left eye-socket, greeted by a pinkish cavity with a featureless hole where the optic nerve would be. She pushed the Philosopher’s Eye into the eye-socket, and it sunk in without the slightest of resistance. Zef let out a single, quiet whimper when the eye went in, which Zelsys felt far worse for causing than every bit of suffering she’d ever inflicted upon others. A faint glimmer could be seen in the stone’s core in the moment before Zefaris closed her eye shut and pushed into a hug, one that Zel gladly reciprocated.

After a little while, Zefaris calmed down and pried herself away from Zel, cautiously opening her left eye.