“He recognized you,” Zelsys looked to Strolvath.

“So he did,” he nodded grimly as he folded up the weird three-flap dish and tinkered with the device, moving the needle arm, flipping a switch here, winding a spring there. “I still got him on record, though.”

Click.

It replayed what Zel had said word for word starting right after the point when she had made clear her hatred for the Emperor rather than his servants.

The Emperor's speech on the other hand was just… Gibberish. Not even Pateirian. The most recognizable pattern amongst the noise sounded like “oijay jija”. As the needle neared the end of the cylinder, Strolvath’s face moved from disbelief, to frustration, to simple disappointment.

“Damn,” he sighed. “At least we got confirmation on that myth about how he speaks. Guess he really can make his speech unintelligible to unwanted listeners.”

The Inquisitor had already stepped back into the hoard-chamber by this point and began moving things around, seemingly piling objects of the same general type together.

Zefaris observed Strolvath handling the phonograph and its cylinder, finding it curious that the wax didn’t melt in his hands despite the great heat he gave off. He wrapped it in wax paper and packed it away inside his prosthetic leg, staring off into empty space for a moment.

“What’s done is done, let’s see if the scumsuckers had anything workwhile,” he rumbled, rising to his feet.

Finally, it was time to go through the Locust Queen’s hoard, divvy up the spoils, and take what they could carry. Only… Not really. It quickly became obvious that a great deal of what made up the hoard was either mundane or well beyond fitting in a backpack.

Furniture, structural panels, paintings, huge chunks of black-stone - raw stock waiting to be fashioned into something, but nearly useless without access to the dungeon’s arcane tools. Another major portion of the hoard was the Queen’s supply of “Blood of God” elixir, of which they agreed to take samples for study and leave the rest here.

Even with all the impractical loot out of the equation, the sheer volume of objects in here was massive.

Thus, Zelsys offered up her Tablet.

“We can just take everything that fits in the vortex and divide it up once we get back to town, have the Tablet make a record of all the loot for posterity,” she said.

Strolvath had no qualms with it, and obviously neither did Zefaris, while the Inquisitor seemed wary. Always with the ice-cold stares. Wait, no, it wasn’t caution. It was a tense, heavy coldness which all but screamed that the woman had something on her mind that she wanted to say, but couldn’t bring herself to say it.

This sentiment remained even as she made a sign of agreement and walked off to the back of the chamber while Zelsys set up the Tablet near the entryway. She grabbed a string of strange copper coins from the drawer of a nearby commode, lowering it into the vortex as she kept her mind on the intention to record that it was part of the hoard.

Scrolling through the list had her finding it all the way at the bottom, separated in its own little convenient category.

HOARD LOOT String of 20 Pateirian Coppers

Just as she checked that the Tablet had properly separated the item, Strolvath came over with three belts of six wheellock pistols on each arm. He tilted his head, squinted, and remarked, “That don’t sound right. Zipperheads call their money ‘huén’ and break up the denominations by animals: Copper rabbits, silver eagles, golden tigers, n’ jade dragons.”

Huén. The word sunk in, and the listing changed to match.

String of 20 Huén Copper Rabbits x1

The pistol belts went into the vortex just as easily. Feeling no particular need to stake her claim on anything, Zel started leisurely digging through the commode’s drawers and emptying them, watching what the others dropped in the vortex as she did.

There were swords, daggers, pieces of rusted armor. Some two-dozen paintings, all possessing a strangely surreal quality as if one was looking at a vivid memory given visual form. Looking at one of the smaller pieces up-close, Zelsys couldn’t discern individual brush strokes despite its oil paint appearance.

She set it aside and waited for Zef to come over, handing it to her with a question. “See anything weird about this?”

Dilating her Homunculus Eye and even opening the Philosopher’s Eye to get as good a look as possible, the blonde grew increasingly more visibly befuddled as she observed the piece.

“It’s… Printed? No, that’s not right. It’s like the paint was arranged on the canvas without the involvement of any tools…” she pondered, stepping aside to let the Inquisitor access the Tablet, carrying a comically opulent gold-embroidered robe on one arm and several strings-of-cash draped across the other. Zel received a tense, brief glance before the Inquisitor dropped the robe into the vortex, followed by the money in quick succession.

As the last two strings-of-cash dropped into the vortex, Zefaris let out a disbelieving laugh of realization.

“Paintings?” she exclaimed. “This bitch could force the core to make anything and she had it make paintings?!”

The painting was dismissively tossed in, and Zefaris began digging through the hoard with renewed curiosity, setting her sights on the commodes and closets that littered the left side of the chamber. More frivolities were found wherever she looked - jewelry, fabric stock, coins of all denominations arrayed on strings-of-cash of varying quality.

She walked up carrying strings-of-cash on both arms and even on her shoulders, dropping them in one by one. Zel noticed that the type of string was specific to the coin - coppers had thick linen strings, silvers were on some sort glossy of braids of fabric, while golden coins were on sturdy-looked red braids. Strolvath completed the puzzle when he brought several deck-like stacks of jade cards with dragon iconography.

“At this rate, we’ll make off with more cash than Estoras is paying…” he murmured.

“Won’t it be a pain to exchange?” Zel asked

“Not if we find the right people,” he answered, dropping in the last of the cards. “Plenty of merchants want or even need to trade with the cat-eaters, n’ they won’t try to screw you so hard if you use their own money.”

So it was that they continued the ordeal of emptying the hoard-chamber of anything worthwhile.

Further loot of note that caught Zel’s eye included unnaturally large chunks of white, green, and purple jade, statuettes made from the aforementioned gemstones, solid bricks of gold, and… Clothes, of all things. Dresses of varying styles from prudent to scandalous, hats of all sizes, eyeglasses with tinted lenses, earrings, even lingerie.

The more of the Locust Queen’s hoard they plundered, the more sad a picture its contents painted.

“It’s like she had expected the Emperor to return her to a human form and take her as a concubine...” Zel pondered as the last of the loot was being stored and they were preparing to finally leave this dismal place.

“Wouldn’t be surprised if that’s what he told her,” grunted Strolvath, hefting a solid rock of jade into the vortex. His Hellfire Mantle had progressively grown dimmer and smaller, and by this point his hair looked almost normal. The golden-coloured amalgam paste was scooped into empty jars that they found in the hoard and stored in this manner.

From there it was onto scavenging the iridescent gemstones, which took them only a few minutes. Zel even took the sister’s sword, more as a memento than to use it for herself. Strolvath grew increasingly more visibly exhausted throughout this process, eventually reaching a point where he moved like a sluggish old man.

Zef stuck close to Zel, both helping her gather the gemstones and keeping an eye on her in case she tripped or suddenly displayed signs of the major blood loss that she had gone through. It wasn’t her injury that concerned Zelsys, even though she could never get into a groove because once she did, she would be torn out of it when she instinctively tried to use both hands.

What concerned her were the constant glances from the Inquisitor. She’d thought the masked soldier had warmed up to her since they’d first met, but it seemed that raw animosity and disgust had only been replaced. Zelsys decided to bring it up when they first made camp.

In the end, they left a good third of the hoard’s contents behind because they were either useless, too big to fit into the vortex, or abominable beyond consideration.