The day passed. After a brief exchange with a few other members of the Hulson clan, Zel and Zef were assigned a room together. Victor was assigned the room next to theirs, both being on the second floor of the longhouse. The sheer size of the structure was closer to a sect building than a home, with a long central hall where several throne-like chairs were arrayed at the head of a great table. Something about the architecture of this place tickled a deeply-buried part of Zel’s memory, feeling in some ways more familiar than even the architecture of her own sect. Wooden animal-head carvings held lightgems in their jaws, and the firepit at the foot of the table was occupied by an array of Ignis burners rather than an open wood fire. Weapons, pelts, and mounted heads decorated the walls, yet the stench of such things did not fill the room.
A huge mural was carved into the back wall right behind the head of the table, depicting a great army led by a towering, bearded figure with a sword and shield, marching against giant humanoids flanked by floating ships - the carvings of these ships were inlaid with gold. Somehow, Zel instantly knew that the largest figure was the Revenant King. There was, however, a gaping wound in the mural, by the Revenant King’s right hand-side. A wide-open spot where it didn’t so much look like it had been defaced, but like something that was meant to be there had never been carved, the wood flat and untouched.
It was mostly empty at the moment. For their first full meal in this place, which turned out to be supper, only eight others turned up. Five of them were Hulsons and three turned out to be hired help from families bloodbound to the Hulsons. She sat next to Zefaris, while Victor sat to their right and Jorfr across the table next to some of his relatives, presumably brothers or cousins by the way they interacted. Fryg took one of the seats at the head of the table. Curiously enough though, Merete and another, significantly less towering woman sat themselves right next to Victor. Merete was now clad in markedly more normal clothing, though her jewelry remained. It was hard not to notice the amount of attention they directed towards the redhead, though he seemed to take it better than expected. Perhaps a tad too well, by Zel’s reckoning. She hoped that this - whatever this was - wouldn’t end up becoming a problem. But then, Zelsys didn’t feel that she was whatsoever qualified to level scrutiny at her protegé for acting his age, not in the least due to her own head-first dive into Zef’s pants at the first opportunity.
“I have to admit that I didn’t expect a falsely-dishonored quaternary clan to have such a vast home. No wonder Jorfr had no trouble navigating our sect building...” Zelsys remarked, looking around as she did. Her meal ended up being a fish stew made using the little blue fish her Primordial Self had requested, with the bright-yellow Tundrabear liver on the side. The stew was objectively good, being thick and creamy with many pieces of meat from the small fish as well as chunks of potato and various other, alien vegetables, heavily spiced. It actually reminded her of the very first meal she’d eaten in Willowdale - fish and spuds with herbal cream sauce at Quincy’s. Several large pitchers were placed to be in everyone’s reach, one for each individual; half were full of strongly sweet-smelling mead, the other half, paradoxically, a herbal tea with a brick of glacierglass floating in it.
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Fryg responded: “Despite our disfavorable position, our real standing outside the higher circles of Oasis City is equivalent to a lower-middle secondary clan. No matter how much the Ramdalls, Buhaugs, Eisens, and their lapdogs would wish it to be otherwise, those who know us were not fooled by that stunt they pulled before the previous changing of the clans.”
Her voice was so full of justified bitterness that Zel was surprised she hadn’t inadvertently cast a curse on one of the aforementioned clans.
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After the first day of their stay, while Victor had still not entirely recovered from the battle, Zel had completely recovered thanks to Merete’s expert care. Over the course of this one day, a number of Zel’s teeth also fell out and in the same timespan their replacements pushed their way into place, leaving her teeth resembling a bear trap more than anything else. She certainly liked the result, but then, she had never doubted her Primordial Self when it came to results. Her hair also grew back to its original length. Jorfr’s chest-wound was apparently going to be healed in the next couple days, as the raw power of Von Wickten’s Blaze Schneider had caused it to overpenetrate and leave a clean hole. She stepped foot in Oasis City for the first time on her own, seeking the nearest gymnasium in the early hours of the morning. As Jorfr’s relatives told it, there was one immediately across the street from the longhouse’s front doors - and so it was. Bizarrely, despite the environment of Borea, the streets of Oasis City were downright temperate. Steel-banded copper pipes could be seen all over the place, from those as thin as a finger to those wide enough to carry a grown man within, and the vast amounts of heat they gave off by far overpowered the naturally frigid environment of Borea.
A white bear the size of an Ikesian supply tractor made its way down the road, dragging three sleds of similar size joined end-to-end, loaded with tarp-covered, tied-down goods. There was no-one controlling it, the animal seemingly knew where to go. The sleds glided over the stone road without resistance, and at a closer look Zel saw that they were continuously creating a thin layer of ice under themselves that instantly sublimated as they passed.
The gymnasium in question was an open-air affair with varieties of typical training equipment one would expect, though it leaned heavily on weightlifting. This early, despite the sun shining down already, a small number of people could be found there, and among them Zel recognized one of Jorfr’s relatives - his other sister, as she recalled.