Zel headed off for the night, picking Jorfr up wholesale and carrying the mountain of a man to his room, leaving Gunnar and Yvonne alone. She briefly returned to leave a pitcher of that nice herbal tea by his bedside, also taking a bottle of DDLV out of his Tablet’s storage to go with the tea, knowing that he wasn’t nearly as resistant to hangovers as she was. She also took care to check on Victor, satisfied in seeing that Zef had the same idea as her, though the blonde took it a little further with two bottles of DDLV.

Upon returning to her and Zef’s room, she found the blonde had stripped off the topmost layer of her dress and fallen asleep, splayed out half-naked on their bed. She let the blonde sleep, sitting at the writing table and retrieving the bestiary and drawing upon her Core of Earthly Iron to turn her forearm to bronze as Ingvald had suggested. Her bronze-gleaming fingers flipped through the bestiary's ancient pages… Only to find that it had little to no information on Sapdragons beyond impressively specific artistic renditions and abridged repeats of what the Saga of Wide-wuth detailed, with one notable exception - Eisengeist’s size. The creature was large enough that, according to the tome, one of its tail-blades would suffice to make up the metal for the Butcher’s reforging with a solid kilo of material still left over after the fact. Even if she was uncharitable to the book’s size estimates, two tails would be nearly guaranteed to suffice. There was also the Serpentkiller spear as an option, but such a legendary weapon would doubtlessly have an identity of its own and the Borean people probably wouldn’t be too eager to give it over - not to mention that it wasn’t at all guaranteed to be the sort of metal that Ingvald required.

All these considerations were, however, theoretical - just in case a method of extracting a Fallen Star’s core couldn’t be found quickly. That was one thing, but killing a true Dragon Descendant for materials was another - every instinct of hers screamed that going head to head with one of those was suicide even for her. She could only imagine slaying the beast to be possible with a force comparable to that which had helped her slay Ubul… Making finding a Fallen Star the preferable option by far.

Her forearm had crusted over with green patina by this point, and the familiar sounds of creaking metal issued from it. It was orders of magnitude easier to maintain this lighter, non-combative form of metallization, though she could tell that it would be an ordeal to keep it up constantly without pills.

She heard Zefaris stir on the bed. A drunken demand followed: “Zeeel… Let’s go baathe…”

Knowing full well what the blonde actually meant, Zel gave her lover a smile and picked her up straight off the bed, tossing the blonde over her shoulder, eliciting a brief, feigned protest that quickly devolved into near-lecherous giggling. She grabbed Zef’s dress in her other hand before heading down to the baths, encountering no-one on the way. As she went, Zel used one of her braids to pull out her Tablet and retrieve a bottle of DDLV, knowing that it cleared one’s mind and alleviated hangovers if consumed while drunk without actually dispelling inebriation.

Zef, too, knew this, and she took the bottle from Zel’s hand and downed half of it.

What followed when the bath’s door closed behind them had nothing to do with the cleansing of the day’s filth; it was downright filthy. Zel didn’t even bother to strip down all the way, merely pushing her undergarments out of the way and willing their enchanted fabric to keep them out of the way. Ever since Zel had developed the ability to animate her braids as extra limbs, not a week passed without Zefaris demanding that she use them to tie up the blonde or herself, or even both of them at once on occasion - though such escapades strained the limits of just how long her braids were. That either of them could get free whenever she wanted did nothing to impede their fun.

Zef, in her drunken, sex-addled stupor, however, complained aloud. She complained that there had to be a way for Zel to just make her Thundergods manifest longer forms, that she wanted to get all wrapped up as if Zel were a tentacled monster rather than just having her legs and arms bound. At least, that was what she got out in brief utterances when her mouth wasn’t filled with something or when she wasn’t overstimulated to well beyond the boundary of coherent speech.

Zel had barely managed to gather what exactly her lover had been trying to say that whole time, and it only came together in her mind after they’d stopped to take an actual bath. She would’ve just asked Zefaris to repeat what she had said, but she was busy floating on her back and absent-mindedly projecting vulgar flashes of her own imagination from the Philosopher’s Eye, and by the time her mind cleared up enough Zel no longer needed to ask. Meanwhile, Zel had extricated herself from the water’s embrace, sitting at the stone ledge, having slipped her underwear back into its proper place.

There was something about what Zef had said, she was certain, the itch in her brain wouldn’t let her let it go. She knew there was, she just had to find it.

“What are you thinking about?” came a question.

She had no reason to hide her frustration, admitting: “It’s the Thundergod thing again, I can’t stop thinking about it. There has to be some way to do it, has to. Agh, fuck me…”

What she couldn’t let go, Zefaris made her let go, taking a frustrated exclamation to be an invitation. The blonde had floated over to her, exploiting Zel’s position on the ledge and her own in the water, as she was so fond of doing. Restless thought and drive to self-innovate melted away for another hour or so, washed away by Zef’s uncannily precise teasing.