Craning his neck to get a look at what it said, she could clearly see the surprise growing in his face, his eyebrows rising as if the mercury in a thermometer. He blinked a few times and pressed another button, causing the stream of Fog to stop and the sentence to dissipate.

“That’s… Good news, I suppose,” he admitted begrudgingly. “Step away from the machine, please.”

She did as asked and he returned to his desk, pulling open one of the drawers and retrieving a piece of paper. He looked up at her again, his eyes glinting with a mixture of purely physical attraction and deep, deep suspicion.

“Your reason for entry into the country?”

“Work.”

“What type of work?”

“Well, I’m an armed and eh…” she raised her right arm and flexed, briefly looking at her own bicep in an exaggerated gesture of narcissism. “Unreasonably attractive foreigner trying to enter the country, through the Exclusion Zone no less. What’s that tell you, officer?”

“That you’re probably wanted outside the Wall under a different name, a different face, and different soul signature, and that you’re probably going to leverage your previous trade for a more honest job while you lay low, likely as a beast-slayer...” the man rattled off, almost visibly charging her with imagined crimes as the resentment in his voice turned to resigned acceptance. Finally he sighed, retrieved a fountain pen from within his coat, and wrote something on the paper in cursive so stylized she couldn’t read it before stowing the pen away.

“Welcome to Ikesia,” he said with professional courtesy and a half-fake smile, one which vanished the moment he turned his gaze toward the three Ikesians behind her. He pointed at Sigmund. “Next! Baldo!” he called out, standing from his desk and walking to the machine to take up the very same position - one hand on the key, the other hovering over the buttons.

The bearded man grumbled into his beard, walking briskly towards the machine and grabbing hold of the handle. A malicious grin flashed over the officer’s face as he tapped the same two-button sequence to trigger the machine, fully expecting the condemnation of guilt to be written out in Fog. Rising threads of silver, twisting and intertwining to form three words.

CRIMINAL RECORD FOUND

The officer’s grin grew as he reached into his coat, but what he was reaching for would remain unknown. Zelsys readied herself to commit a crime, noticing Sigmund tensing up as he entered into the first stages of a Rubedo-induced seizure, visibly fighting the stiffness as he opened and closed his left hand.

Only, the officer noticed the leftmost nozzle sputtering, failing to produce a thread. Glee turned to disappointment, and he sighed, “Let go, it’s malfunctioning. I have to restart it.”

When Sigmund wouldn’t let go, the officer shot him a dirty look and repeated, not even trying to veil the threat in his words this time. “Let go, Ike.”

Straining to move, Sigmund raised his left hand and pried the fingers of his right open one by one. Threat turned to condescending pity when the officer realized what was happening, remarking “Some sort of paralytic sickness from mucking about in the zone, huh?” as he turned the key to the left, waiting for the machine to go silent before turning it to the right again.

“Alright, grab the handle again. You Ikesians never know where to stop, that’s how you get these bizarre conditions…” he continued thinking aloud, waiting for Sigmund to do as he asked before pressing the buttons again, waiting for the Fog to form words once again, without any enthusiasm this time.

NO CRIMINAL RECORD FOUND

“Figures…” muttered the officer, unsurprised by the outcome. He had assumed the malfunction caused a false readout, and he was correct. “Step away from the machine before you seize up again,” he added as he turned and took a seat at his desk again, once more retrieving a paper from one of the drawers and the pen from his coat.

“Reason for entry?”

“Search for employment and medical treatment,” Sigmund replied in a clearly rehearsed manner.

The officer wrote something on the paper and filed it away. He dismissively gestured for the bearded man to step away, which he did, walking to the door and leaning up against the wall.

“Next!” barked the mustachioed man, his tired eyes locking onto Zefaris. “Blonde with the homunculus eye!”

As much as he ogled her eye, the officer didn’t act as hostile towards Zefaris. He did the same things he had done for the previous two, operating the machine with a semblance of resignation as if he had realized that truly, these people weren’t war criminals. The machine returned the expected result.

NO CRIMINAL RECORD FOUND

The self-same sequence of events unfolded, beat by beat. The officer gestured for her to step away from the machine, sat at his desk, retrieved one of the papers alongside his pen, and looked up at Zefaris.

“Reason for entry?”

“Employment.”

“Markswoman, huh? I find homunculus eyes to be a crutch for lack of real skill, but no helping it if you lost the real thing. Couldn’t afford a second one?”

Zefaris let out a dark, melancholic chuckle as she answered, “One put me deep enough in the hole.”

“Count yourself lucky, then. Your debt is probably no more than the price of new shoes, what with the recent surge of inflation,” laughed the officer in a mocking tone, directing his mockery towards the country more than the person before him. The humor faded from his being in seconds, and he sharply gestured for Zefaris to step aside, staring through Makhus with a gaze as sharp as a razor.

“Next.”

“One moment, please,” Zefaris said, grabbing the officer’s attention once more. “What do you mean by inflation?”

He raised an eyebrow, turning a somewhat self-satisfied gaze towards the markswoman. “Oh, haven’t you heard?” he asked rhetorically, smugness dripping from every word. “The central bank tried to just print all the money necessary to pay war reparations. Someone high-up put a stop to it rather early on, but it still devalued the hell out of the Ikesian Mark. You must’ve been in the E.Z. for a while if you don’t know that. Now, if you would...”

A gesture for her to step away, turning to one of beckoning towards Makhus. Both of them obeyed the implicit order, the bottles of Liquid Vigor that hung from his backpack clattering as the swordsman walked. For the fourth time, a nearly-identical sequence of events unfolded - from the moment the officer stood from his desk, to the moment he sat back down, retrieved the form and his pen, and asked the fateful question.

“Reason for entry?” the officer asked, leaning around to get a look at the seal-bottles.

“Self-employment,” Makhus shot back, his tone harsh and hard, but controlled.

“As a…”

“An alchemist.”

A raised eyebrow again. “Conventionally trained?” he inquired.

Makhus squinted. He thought the officer was trying to leverage reverse psychology to make him say the opposite, to justify confiscating the seal-bottles. A part of him wanted just that to happen to justify his spite towards Grekuria as a country, and so he answered honestly.

“Self-taught.”

Somehow, the officer didn’t seem happy about that answer. In fact, he sighed, hesitating before he asked, “You know I’m supposed to confiscate your essentia containers if you’re not properly trained, right?”

The swordsman only gave a stern nod, staring holes through the man’s bag-riddled eyes.

“Just hand over one of the smaller bottles and I’ll let you pass. I objected to the order, so I got stationed here by some jackoff baron’s kid whose daddy bought him the way to a higher rank than mine...” he began, ranting about the petty unfairness of military hierarchy as he lightly knocked on his desk to signify where to place the bottle.

The officer stopped halfway through his rant, sniffing the air. Zelsys smelled it too. She felt it, the same feeling she had attributed to Zefaris’s gaze during the trek here, the same feeling she had when she first woke in that marble place. It seemed like the others had noticed the sudden shift in atmosphere as well, with Zefaris and Sigmund both cautiously looking around and Makhus frozen halfway through untying the knot around the neck of a half empty seal-bottle.

“Do you smell that?” the officer asked no one in particular.

Zelsys knew that smell intimately and immediately answered, “Nigredo.”

“Just… Just a moment,” said the man, nearly leaping from his seat as he rushed to the door and cracked it open, peering out. The room immediately filled with the stench of rot, of death, of choking smoke. Black Fog began to creep in through the crack in the door and the officer visibly recoiled, slamming the door shut.

All smugness and authority had vanished from his face at that moment, replaced by an expression any soldier was familiar with. Fear for one’s life barely concealed by the calculating determination that stemmed from extensive training. The four of them shared a look, and assuming he would listen more readily to a non-Ikesian, Zelsys piped up. “A rot-bear?” she queried. Much to her surprise, the officer frantically shook his head.

“T-the next step up. It’s a Necrobeast. How the fuck did it cross the conversion barrier?! Those things are two thirds pure Nigredo by volume!”

None of them knew what a Necrobeast was. Zelsys was not willing to admit that ignorance, but she was very willing to try teasing the information out of the officer even in this grave a situation. “A Necrobeast? Aren’t those…” she trailed off.

The officer nodded, in his element when given the opportunity to have the last word. “Extremely rare even in the E.Z., yes. A rot-bear with a true understanding of Nigredo. Either we’re in a shared group hallucination, or there is one a stone’s throw from the anti-vehicle barricade.”

The ground shook, and they heard the sound of something hard striking metal.

“Correction: Right next to the anti-vehicle barricade. What do we do? It’s not as if we can kill it.”

“Why not?” Zefaris questioned. “We’ve killed rot-bears before.”

“A rot-bear feeds on decay, but it’s still alive. This… This is death itself,” the officer rebutted. “Its only weakness is the creature’s heart. Even then, it can channel so much Nigredo it’ll just breathe on us and we’ll turn to dust.”

Makhus had been staring into empty space thinking. He perked up when an idea came to mind, asking, “What about the pure essences of life?”

The officer scoffed, “Liquid Vigor isn’t concentrated enough to weaken it to a substantial degree. Pure Viriditas or even Rubedo could work, but I doubt…”

A strand of Black Fog had crept through the small gap in the doorframe, and before any of them could warn him, the officer’s frantic breathing made him inhale it. His eyes rolled into the back of his head and he fell to the ground, unconscious.

“Lightweight,” both Makhus and Zelsys mocked at the exact same moment. The swordsman walked over to him, grabbing him by the arms and dragging him towards the other side of the room - or at least, trying to. Zelsys quickly loosened the wrappings on her left forearm and took hold of the Tablet, willing it to come alive and immediately activating the BROWSE STORAGE function.

“Sig, help me,” Makhus hissed through gritted teeth as he struggled. “He’s fuckin’ heavy.”

The bearded man gave a sharp nod and calmly grabbed both of the officer’s legs, helping carry him to the writing desk. In the meantime Zelsys retrieved bottle after bottle as quickly as the Fog vortex would spit them out, totaling four large ones and five small ones, plus the Rubedo bottle. Once she was done she unholstered her cleaver and placed the Tablet inside. As she had hoped, the holster molded itself to grip the Tablet as well.

Zefaris untied her rifle from her backpack, swiftly reaching into a pocket of her trousers to retrieve a cartridge and performing the multi-step process of loading the rifle and ramming the cartridge down in a single flowing motion, keeping the ramrod in one hand and the rifle readied.

Once the officer was hefted onto his writing desk his coat hung down wide open, and it became obvious what it was that made him so heavy. The inside of the garment was lined with pistols and pockets. “Fuckin’ hell, he’s got enough guns for a whole squad…” Makhus remarked.

There came another roar, this time closer. The four shared a look, and fully aware of their distinct lack of time to spare, they each grabbed a large and small bottle, with Makhus taking the Rubedo bottle as well and Zelsys taking an extra small bottle. Zelsys felt the instinct again, flooding her being.

“I’ll get its attention so you can get it from behind,” she ordered, reaching for the handle of her cleaver.

The three each gave her a look. Makhus seemed concerned, Sigmund simply paid attention to her plan, and Zefaris had a rather strange glint in her eye. “You sure?” the swordsman questioned.

“It’s only fair that I play the bait this time,” she laughed, walking towards the door. A deep breath of the stench-filled air, filling her lungs to capacity as she readied herself to come rocketing out of the door. She slammed the door open and dashed out of the building, silver Fog virtually spraying from her nostrils as she went.

He only caught a brief glimpse, but Makhus recognized that technique. The deep breath, the exhalation of Fog before a physical feat. The words of a man he had met long ago came to mind.

“To breathe is to live. To breathe the essence of Aer is to be most alive of all…”

Makhus wiped the thought from his mind, uncorking the Rubedo bottle with his teeth. He didn’t have time to dwell on the foreigner’s capabilities.

“What are you doing?” Sigmund questioned.

“I’ll absorb some and use my mouth as a hose. There’s too much in the bottle to break it.”

Carrying her three bottles as she went, Zelsys rushed out the door, exhaling as she ran towards the furthest gap in the barricade. She slid into cover behind one of the barriers before she even caught a glimpse of the beast. Now that she could take a look, it truly resembled a rot-bear, but it was also utterly unlike one. The beast was distended and contorted, its flesh skinless and decayed down to the bones. The bear’s rotting pelt hung from the creature like a cloak, and its intestines hung from its open stomach like an apron. It stood upright, leaning on the metal blockade as it breathed black fog over it. With each passing second, more of the blockade eroded, turning to pure rust under the beast’s onslaught.

It had begun looking around in confusion when she passed by it, its skeletal head rising from the stump of its neck while its foggy eyes searched without goal. As she observed from just behind the metal blockade, she noticed several things that immediately explained why the beast was here.

The flesh of its lower legs was riddled with shards of glass, its left foreleg held on by a knot of congealed blood. Most conclusively of all, its chest cavity - eviscerated and nearly empty - was occupied by an alchemic flask, a shriveled heart frantically beating within to pump pure Nigredo through the beast. The very glass tubes that once connected it to the still had been melded to what was left of the creature’s arteries by crusty, scab-covered clots.

Something had punched a hole into its ribcage, whether it was the shot she hit it with during their previous battle or something else, and from this angle, Zelsys had a clear shot. She had no choice but to take it. Taking another deep breath and bracing against the barricade, she brought the gun to bear and worked the trigger lever, fighting the urge to taunt the beast all along.

Click. Click. Boom.

First came the flash, then the shockwave, and lastly the smoke, but instead of lead ripping through flesh, there came a loud crack and an agitated roar. The recoil forced her into the cold metal, but she was up on her feet within moments, having picked up the bottles and taken off running in a wide circle around the beast, stopping behind it.

Once the beast came into view again she saw that it was completely unharmed, with the lead ball embedded halfway into the tough glass of the flask. Its head frantically swiveled on its blood-stalks as it searched for the assailant, and Zelsys called out to it to get its attention.

“What part of rest in pieces did you not understand?!” she yelled as she threw the small bottle and readied to throw the large one. The beast whipped around almost instantly at the first word, as if it had recognized her voice. The bottle shattered against its arm, the emerald liquid spilling over its rotted musculature and evaporating into numerous, thick ropes of Green Fog. It gurgle-roared at this, getting down on all fours and rearing back as if to vomit - and vomit it did. A flood of liquid Nigredo poured from its tongueless maw, covering too wide an area for Zelsys to get out of in time.

Thinking quickly, she smashed the larger bottle at her feet, trusting the pure essentia to protect her. It reacted with the influx of liquid decay, violently turning to a wall of Green Fog as the wave of Nigredo flowed around her. The trees that the wave crashed against began visibly dying, desiccating from the trunk up, and when it seeped into the soil, everything it flowed over had decayed. Even the soil itself had turned dry and desiccated.

It began to rear up again, and she took a deep breath of the Green Fog that swirled about her. Herculean strength and vitality filled her body and she unsheathed her cleaver, then broke into a zig-zagging sprint towards the beast, trailing silvery-green ribbons as she exhaled. At that moment, Zelsys felt that instinctive feeling more than ever, and she came to a realization.

It wasn’t fear, or even a survival instinct. It was a blazing will to live, screaming out against the world’s attempts to snuff her out, and every battle made her feel more alive than the last.

Two of the three soldiers scrambled toward the door after Zelsys ran out, rushing to close it behind her before the beast noticed them. With bated breath and ears against the door, they waited for the commotion to start. Meanwhile, Sigmund took a moment to take two of the officer’s pistols, having stored his rifle in the Tablet.

A moment later, there came a thunderous boom and an angered roar from the beast, soon followed by Zelsys shouting mockery. Even from behind the door, they could hear the smile in her words.

Makhus looked to his compatriots. “Don’t break ‘em if you don’t have to. Open the door once I stomp twice,” he advised, and they returned only quick, affirmative nods.

He only hesitated briefly before he brought the Rubedo bottle to his lips and took a deep swig, his tattoos gradually shifting from black to bright red. He put the cork back, gritting his teeth as he struggled to keep the violent essentia from overtaking him. For the moments before his tattoos absorbed the essentia, it burned his esophagus and filled his body with a dozen primal sensations all at once, his entire being flushed with blood so thoroughly his skin turned a shade of pink.

Unable to speak the technique’s name, he gestured with his right hand whilst he cradled the bottles in his left. It wasn’t any actual sign language that he was using, but rather a series of hand gestures that had a strong mental association with the technique, as he had been taught them specifically for occasions such as this. Though he had met a few individuals capable of triggering high-level techniques with one or two gestures, he himself was not remotely as skilled - it took him fifteen gestures to manipulate his body into doing what he wanted.

Though he needn’t do anything other than performing the gestures, Makhus was set in his ways, and strongly preferred the way he had been taught. “Purgation Arts: Rubedo Expulsion!” he chanted over and over in his head as he performed gesture after gesture, stomping twice just before the final one.

Just as Zefaris kicked the door open, Makhus stepped out and saw the beast’s pelt-cloaked rear end. He instinctively gauged the distance, raising his head at a shallow angle just before he clenched his fist whilst imagining it crushed his stomach.

He heard the footsteps of his compatriots running out of the building after him, but his vision was consumed by red. All red. Everything was red. The beast gurgle-roared in pain when the spray finally splashed on its back. Though he couldn’t see, Makhus vaguely felt how full his reservoir was by a tactile sensation of fullness - at this point, he had only expelled a third of the Rubedo contained within his tattoos.

Zefaris came running out of the building only a moment after the swordsman, running over to one of the barriers and taking cover behind it. She quickly opened one of the bottles and took a swig of its emerald-green contents, doing all she could to ignore its aggressively herbal flavor, the undertones of which so closely matched how the foreigner smelled. “Homunculus Eye…” she whispered under her breath, leaning out and taking aim at the beast’s head. From this angle she could only see its head from the side, its eyes foggy and unclear.

She also saw the foreigner, zigzagging at inhuman speeds towards the beast and trailing silver-green ribbons of Fog as she went. Expecting it to do no more than distract the monstrosity for a brief moment, she tried invoking Headpiercer Arts, to channel the Viriditas she had just ingested into a gunshot.

Her Aether was just about above average, and her grasp of Aethermancy was, as the Tablet suggested, rudimentary - but it was enough for what she wanted to do. Zefaris had no formal training in the usage of such techniques, beyond the absolute basics that every soldier was given. A technique needs a name, or a phrase by which to recall the moment of its creation. She didn’t have the time to think of a “good” name, so a simple one would have to do.

Green Fog spilling from her mouth, she whispered the words, “Headpiercer Arts: Bramble Shot!”

A pull of the trigger. The rifle’s internal hammer struck the Ignis crystal, igniting the explosive mixture in the cartridge and sending the lead ball rocketing down the barrel. For the tiniest, briefest of moments, her world came to a standstill as she felt the essence of greenery within her body being depleted - it was a split-second of eternity, a snapshot in time which she would recall every time she used this technique again.