53 – Riverside Promenade

Neither Makhus nor Sigmund were to be found anywhere on the ground floor when they made their way down those old, wooden stairs. Both of the women looked about for a few moments, soon realizing that the metallic rattling coming from the basement was caused by their compatriots. They vaguely heard Makhus yell something along the lines of, “There’s months of waste backing this fuckin’ thing up!”

“They’re probably cleaning an alkahestry still. Let’s not disturb them,” Zefaris suggested, clearly apprehensive to what she perceived as filthy, disgusting work. After all, she had no experience working with such devices outside of the horrific contraption that Makhus had set up in their camp. The concept of an industrial-scale still backed up with months of waste conjured in her mind images worthy of an ossuary.

Thus, they didn’t distract the two men from their labor, but Zelsys took a short time while they were still here to reload her gun. Not because she thought she might need to use it,  but because something just felt off about leaving a fired shell in the mechanism, and if she were to extract the shell and place it into Fog Storage, she may as well just go all the way with retrieving another shell and loading it.

Even after seeing it multiple times, the loud click-clacking of the heavy mechanism and the violent motions required to make it move made the markswoman stare with enraptured fascination. Truly, this weapon was a wonder of technology compared to the simplistic, mass-produced muzzle loaders she was issued and had used for most of her adult life.

The empty shell was thrown skyward and clattered onto the counter when she yanked the bolt open, Zef’s eye tracing its trajectory before she reached out and picked it up, turning it over in her hand, even smelling it.

“Ignis-infused rifle powder, no wonder it needs that harness,” she remarked, handing the shell over. “Did it do anything to the beasty?”

“Punched a hole in its stomach, didn’t go through. I wager it would’ve if I hadn’t used it to stagger the thing,” Zel responded, waiting for the shell to vanish in the Fog vortex before she selected a shell for retrieval. There were no more Type-1 Loaded Shells to be had, and so it was that she retrieved one of the two Type-2s. She hadn’t paid them any particular attention when she first stored them in the Tablet, but having had some experience in using the weapon, the difference between a loaded Type-1 and Type-2 was quite obvious now.

One had a large lead ball poking out the opening, whilst the other just had some sort of cork plate at its open end, with a rune different from the one on the base burnt into it. Before she loaded it, she handed it to Zef with the pretense of simply letting her look at it up-close, but in reality she just hoped the markswoman would read the runes and tell her what they said.

The cyclops weighed it in her hand and turned it around a few times, remarking that, “The bottom just has the rune for high-yield, but the top looks like some weird sibling rune to the rune for the act of destroying something by breaking through it. Some sort of anti-material scattershot round, maybe?”

Zel took it back, sliding it into the chamber and closing it shut with a satisfying clack. “Guess I’ll find out when I use it,” she said, almost regretting that she didn’t load one of these sooner, if they truly were scatter shells. That would have been far more effective against both of the beasts she had fought up until this point, especially at point-blank.

“Alright, good to go?”

“Yeah.”

Down the riverside promenade they went, idly walking by the many storefronts that stared out into the street. A good two fifths of them were visibly abandoned, and of those that were clean only two thirds were open. A general goods store, a butcher’s, an open-ended fresh produce shop...

Zelsys instinctively turned on a heel and stepped towards the display. Half-empty as it was, it still held a bounty of fresh fruits and vegetables that obviously came from the surrounding farms, and frankly, she was hungry. It only took a few minutes to pick out a couple of the nicest-looking fruits and have the impressively ancient store owner pack them up in a wax-paper bag, just about small enough to fit into Zel’s right hand. The old lady annoyedly held out a hand when it was time to pay, resentment coming through her grandmotherly demeanor as she said, “Yer gonna hafta pay in that trashy Grek money, sorry. It’s two coppers fer the whole lot.”

“Got change for a silver?” Zel asked, pulling one of the shiny coins out of her belt pouch and handing it over to the old lady, waiting for a response before she dropped it into the gnarled waiting hand. As Zelsys did this, she felt Zef’s hand digging through the bag whilst the markswoman’s arm wrapped itself around hers.

A strangely forlorn stare from the veritable antediluvian preceded a slow nod, to which Zel quickly handed the coin over and waited for her change. Two coppers into the pouch and a huge pear out of the bag later, the two women walked down the riverside promenade in armlock, still looking for a tailor or any sort of clothing store.

The tangy-sweet flavor of the fruit itself was only complimented by the bitterness of its peel, and before Zelsys even knew it she was left with the core in hand. She briefly considered tossing it into the river, but chose to instead just put it in the bag and toss the whole lot later. Another pear. There was an apple, a peach, and a pair of plums left in the bag, out of which Zefaris arbitrarily picked the peach once she was done with her pear, perhaps because it was the largest out of the remaining fruits.