Sunlight against her eyelids had Priscilla rousing herself from the haze of sleep. After she fell asleep for the second time, she didn’t dream of anything at all which was both a relief and made her uneasy because normally her mind threw the wackiest things together.

The blanket slid off her onto the floor as she sat up, rolling her neck to lessen the soreness. Priscilla blinked at the blanket before picking it up. She remembered it being on her when the nightmare woke her up, but Priscilla didn’t remember falling asleep with one on.

Her gaze drifted to the only person who could have given her blanket.

Sulaiman lay under only a thin sheet that clung to his body. The sheet was the same color as the blanket and they probably were a matching set.

Priscilla ran her fingers over the fabric with a half-smile.

Today would still probably be awkward but it might go better than she expected it would when she went to sleep yesterday.

Priscilla stood up after neatly folding the blanket and regarded her filthy clothes next to the couch. The only thing salvageable from it was the ribbon for her hair. The dagger was still filthy and she inwardly declared the trousers a lost cause and used it to fully get the gunk off the gleaming metal. She didn’t particularly want the now extra filthy outfit touching the rest of her clothes, so she gingerly folded trousers over the shirt before shoving it into the dimensional storage pocket. It probably wouldn’t make the books smell bad. She hoped.

By the time she had selected her outfit for the day and had Asha match a less sturdy and more decorative pair of gloves as the leather pair were also quite dirty, Sulaiman was sitting up, rubbing his eyes.

They made eye contact for a brief moment before Sulaiman looked away.

Priscilla thought about talking to him, but Sulaiman kept his gaze on the ground, so Priscilla let the silence remain. If he didn’t want to talk yet, she shouldn’t force him lest she activate that strange stubbornness of his again. It was easier now to look at the situation more objectively since the blasted headache was gone, and to view Sulaiman’s previous actions as merely annoying rather than rage inducing.

The two of them got dressed quickly and efficiently, with Sulaiman facing the opposite wall when she indicated she was going to change. Priscilla couldn’t help a silent huff of laughter at that show of honorableness that was one of Sulaiman’s best traits. The pests from last night couldn’t have been more wrong about him. They ought to have been worrying about Sulaiman’s chastity more than hers, not that Priscilla planned on defiling him.

She snapped the armor in place and that was the last thing they needed to do before getting ready.

As they reached the bottom floor, Priscilla hesitated when she saw the dining room, eyes flickering between it and Sulaiman.

Sulaiman caught her look and an expression too quick to catch graced his face before he looked away and said, “I ordered sandwiches for breakfast and lunch last night. You seemed to want to get on the road to get to your destination as quickly as possible.”

Priscilla was touched, a small, genuine smile tugging at her lips that she hid by looking away.

“We’ll grab our grub and get on the road,” Priscilla said and confidently walked into the dining room, Sulaiman trailing after her. It was much less busy in the morning but she did recognize Pest A from last night eating in the corner. Pest A saw her and then paled, staring down at his bowl of porridge.

Priscilla rolled her eyes. She hadn’t even done anything that bad, but perhaps that went to show how intimidating her new appearance was. She gave him an extra glare for good measure while Sulaiman approached the counter and Priscilla turned her glare to the worker behind it. It was a different man than last night, which was a shame because Priscilla would have asked several questions about what exactly was in that strange concoction she drank. She didn’t actually know if it had anything to do with her nightmare, but it seemed her curiosity would remain unsated.

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There were no further problems, so Priscilla and Sulaiman mounted their horses. Priscilla checked her compass to double check their route and started them on their path.

The silence remained as they rode. Priscilla wasn’t quite sure what to say with the awkward tension between them, so she stuck with the safest option of saying nothing at all. Sulaiman would speak when he was ready and she would react accordingly.

Though, Priscilla did half wonder if this silence would linger until they reached Kavil’s village.

Priscilla really did look forward to meeting Kavil because she absolutely loved his character and there was no previous relationship between him and the original that would complicate things. Priscilla would admit that Kavil was within her top three characters from The Destined Ending, and she loved his single-minded devotion to leaving the world a better place than he found it. It was a fitting motivation for the healer of the party and did get him into a fair bit of trouble, which was always entertaining.

Some of her excitement faded as Priscilla remembered that while she would be able to perhaps forge a friendship with Kavil, the only reason he began traveling with Illnyea in the first place was because his village had been razed to the ground and he was the only survivor. He had fled into the night, injured and lost as his world burned around him.

But she was traveling to his village to stop the destruction of it, and that might mean that Kavil may never want to leave. If he stayed behind, then…

Priscilla tightened her grip on the reins and tried to ignore her automatic feeling of despair at that thought. She told the god that she would go against fate, and Priscilla would just have to live with the consequences of doing so, even if it would make her life harder.

Between allowing fate to run its course and saving Kavil’s family, there was no way she would just sit by and allow him to suffer needlessly.

Thinking of Kavil’s future was making her feel more unsure than she wanted, so Priscilla began to think about how exactly she would protect the village. The only things she knew about the attack was what Kavil recounted in the novel.

The bandits had attacked at night when the entire village was asleep, and they set fire to the houses. After everyone woke up to the smoke and fled outside, the bandits slaughtered them one by one. Kavil hadn’t been sure how many of them there were, and could only say more than thirty.

Priscilla knew that she had a predilection towards violent thoughts and she often wanted to solve problems with violent means. It was why she kept up with her MMA lessons into adulthood so she could have a healthy outlet for those emotions and urges. The one time she actually had to use what she was taught outside of a sparring session, she still took care to not cross the line because she didn’t want Mr. — to look at her differently. The mugger may have wished she killed him when she kicked his kneecap hard enough to shatter (she had been wearing steel-toe boots as a fashion statement), but she didn’t hit or kick him again when he was down, opting to call the police.

But there would be no calling the police in this world, no enforcers to make sure the law was followed and give her the option to remove herself from the situation.

Priscilla was most likely going to have to kill some if not all of those bandits in order to protect the village.

It was easier to just read about death in a novel, when she was disconnected from the act because it was her heroes defeating the villains handily. Even when the enemy had been humanized, given a name and final moments, it hadn’t inspired the dark, heavy feeling that pooled in her stomach right now.

Priscilla was going to have to hold the knife when she killed a bandit, have to see the light dying from their eyes, have to feel the blood drain from their body and know that she caused that to happen. She was doing it for a good reason, but there were plenty of murderers out there who claimed they had a good reason for why they killed others and it didn’t change the savagery of the act at all.

Her fingers twitched as she recalled how light the dagger had felt in her hand yesterday, how easy it had been to draw and throw at the Gorelock Toad. It would probably leave the sheath just as easily and sink into a human’s throat like butter, sending arterial spray out in an arc that would cover the surroundings in a dark, sticky red.

Priscilla looked down at her hands and she could envision them covered in blood she spilled.

But it was not all she saw. Asha was gently squeezing Priscilla’s hand, sensing that she was unsettled but unable to figure out why.

Priscilla hadn’t had the time to explore the mighty legend killer’s abilities, but when she had the time and privacy, she was going to figure out just what Asha could do.

First, Priscilla just had to use Asha to kill.