Beneath the dress’s subtle white straps, opulent, lacy black ones told plainly that Zef was still wearing that same lingerie, much to Zel’s amusement. She wondered if it would show through in the sunlight.

“What’s in these?” Zef asked, leaning on the table as she looked over the remaining turnovers.

“Cats’re spiced ground chicken, the rat’s cheese,” said Zel between bites. The blonde gave a slight smile and took a cat, sitting down and also kicking up her feet. Her dress would’ve hung down and covered her underwear, had she not intentionally crossed her legs. Zel felt no need to look- not more than once, anyway.

And so they ate, the summer sun illuminating the kitchen by proxy as its rays bounced off the roof of the greenhouse to shine onto the kitchen ceiling. They both reached for the rat at the same time, deciding to just split it. Its filling - cheese though it was - didn’t ooze out or drag, and it had a strong, very recognizable smell. Bryndza, a creamy type of cottage cheese made of sheep’s milk. If anything, it was testament to the integrity of the dough that the smell hadn’t come through sooner.

A short while passed, the two women helping Sigmund stock the shelves and then deciding to wile away the hours until the time came to witness the arrival of the vaunted caravan.

Over the course of these hours they killed the time in a couple different ways, talking being among them. Eventually, Zel decided to recount her experience visiting the speakeasy with Strolvath, for one particular reason - she brought up the minor confrontation with a particular braggart, what she had said about him making it a dick-measuring contest, and the subsequent joke that Strolvath had spun that line into… As well as the further myths regarding the matter which he had spoken on at length.

“Ain’t that a hell of a thing, huh?” Zef laughed, sipping from a tall glass of iced citronade.

Zel took a long sip, mulling over that dream. It was still there, right within reach, quietly waiting for a decision.

“What if I-” she began, and Zef immediately cut her off, still with a joking demeanor, though it was clear she meant what she said: “-grow one? Don’t see how it’d be any different than your tongue. Regular or some weird mutant shape, kinda signed up for shit like that when I decided I wanted to fuck the two-meter monster that just killed a rot-bear.”

“That quickly? I figured it took at least until partway through the trek out of the E.Z.”

“I’ve got a weakness for tall, muscular, and smug. Can’t help it.”

Over the coming hours, the dream faded from Zel’s mind, all but gone by the time the four comrades departed Riverside Remedies to observe the arrival of the caravan.

________

The Serpent’s Head neared its destination. One after another, its contingent had thinned out - independent Fog-Sailors dropping off one by one, choosing to sail the rest of the way under their own power, that they might reach the city ahead of the pack. It was always like this.

It was of no concern to the Old Hands, for they remained in an alchemically-deepened hypnotic trance for the vast majority of the journey. Even now, mere moments before the Surfacing would begin, they remained suspended in their elixir baths, in the true heart of the Serpent’s Head. True, the great vessel would be crippled without its reactors and all the conveniences of this essentech chamber would be lost to the sailors as well, but the Old Hands not only knew how, but fully expected to need to drag the great vessel the entire way under the power of the Fog-Sea’s winds and their own wills.

Such a catastrophe had not come to pass, not in centuries, and each of the eight prayed that it would not come to pass again. They prayed to the Leviathan, to the Caged Sun, the Barren Moon, to the everchanging deity-swarm that made up the Pantheon of Storms. Indeed, they prayed to Karga and her builders too, evergazing towards that empyrean beacon amidst the waves of cosmic uncertainty.

Seven unique suspension units lined the inner circumference of a heptagonal steel room, its structure reinforced by seven heptagonal pillars, and between these pillars, along the walls. Bundles of cables and tubing connected to these steel coffins from the walls, serving to lift the burdens of self-sustenance from their inhabitants that they might better focus on guiding the Serpent’s Head and her fleet. In the middle of the chamber was an eighth unit, connected to the ceiling and containing the first of the Old Hands, the de-facto captain of the Serpent’s Head during her trek through the cosmic elsewhere.

It was all silent - not just devoid of noise, but so silent as to chip away at a person’s sanity if they were to suddenly find themselves here.

But then, the klaxon blared within their steel womb and their trances began coming undone, one by one.

One of the suspension tubs hissed, its coffin-like lid sliding open to the side. He lurched from floating in his amber-coloured bath to sitting upright, eyes wide and bloodshot, tongue still mumbling prayers and incantations without his input. He reached a six-fingered hand covered in crystalline, purple scars underneath his other arm, grasping the base of a thick cable. With the press of a latch, he forced it to disengage from the still-bleeding plug that had been implanted into the gap between his ribs. He felt the hollow, cold-iron stake slide free of his beating heart.

He shook his head, licking the inside of his many-fanged mouth with a split tongue and spitting out a gelatinous glob of congealed elixir. The red alert light illuminated his bath, his reflection shimmering on its surface. Off-green, scaly skin, covered densely with lilac-glowing arcane symbols, their dying shine giving way to charred-black scar tissue. On his hands was an extra thumb each, opposite the first, and his head was utterly devoid of ears - in fact, it was not a human head at all, but that of a great predatory lizard. Such was the lot of a cultivator-beast, forever bound to the remnants of their animal selves.

Karzon, First of the Distorted, was awake, and soon the others would be as well.