They reached Grazda an hour before sunset. The city of Grazda was known as the Hot-Spring City and it was a popular place to visit, despite not being near any other major trade hubs. Illnyea and her group had gone there when they were assisting Kavil in trying to track down the bandits that destroyed his village.

People had first flocked to the then small village of Grazda because it offered an experience that couldn’t be found anywhere else in the Kavendash kingdom. The popularity exploded when a king visited and gave his approval, and then the village of Grazda became a small city and kept growing from there. Priscilla knew this city was one of the few with a robust plumbing system and had constant running water. It was probably the closest she would get to the modern comforts she was used to.

The city wasn’t built onto a flat surface, building up into the nearby mountain range, so as they approached, Grazda blocked out the sun, casting Sulaiman and Priscilla into its long shadow.

The highest points of Grazda were the uber-wealthy and powerful lives, and Priscilla had no desire to get tangled up in any of the schemes if she could help it. So, she set her sights on finding an inn on the north-east outskirts of the city, closest to where they’ll have to leave in the morning, and finally settled on one that seemed to have decent security where they wouldn’t have to worry about anyone trying to steal their belongings.

“This will be the last real bed we have until we reach our destination,” Priscilla said seriously after she paid for two rooms, “so I suggest enjoying it as much as possible while you can.”

Sulaiman gave her a once over, before saying lightly, “Perhaps we should employ this inn’s bath services as well.”

Priscilla let out an offended gasp even though she totally understood, it was more of the principle of the thing. She gave him her best imperious glare at the mere insinuation that she smelled bad, and said, “How rude.”

“Go get clean before my nose falls off,” Sulaiman said, making a shooing gesture with his hand.

“So fucking rude,” Priscilla said, sticking her nose up in the air as she stalked off to do just that. But she paused in the middle of walking and looked over her shoulder.

“Sulaiman!” He paused, looking back at her with a raised eyebrow. “Do you want to eat dinner together?”

“As long as you smell better, I see no problem with that.”

“Fuck you too!” Priscilla called over her shoulder, though she had a smile on her face as she resumed her quest to find the baths.

It turned out that in a city like Grazda, even the less popular inns had hot-spring fed bathing pools. For just three gold, Priscilla got one all to herself. She left her armor and her pack in her rented room, bringing just a simple change of clothes with her.

“Do you want to join, Asha?” Priscilla asked as she began to strip.

“Maybe,” Asha said. “But I don’t think being a wet glove will be very fun.”

“You could be a rubber duck,” Priscilla offered, dropping her shirt onto the floor.

“Rubber duck?” Asha repeated, confusion in its voice.

Priscilla paused, momentarily thrown. When she thought about it, she supposed it made sense that rubber ducks didn’t exist because there was no great way to mold and then mass produce rubber in the shape of a duck.

“So it’s essentially a bath toy made of rubber,” Priscilla said, “It’s in the shape of a little yellow duck most of the time because ducks are cute and they swim.”

“Huh,” Asha said and Priscilla felt its contemplation. “Please put me down.”

Priscilla took Asha off and gently placed it on the tiled floor. The glove immediately took an amorphous form, pulsating for a few seconds before reshaping itself. The result was a far more realistic and detailed duck than Priscilla was used to seeing, but when Priscilla tentatively scooped it into her hands, the outside had the same, smooth feeling of rubber. A legend killer truly was wondrous, and Priscilla wondered what other materials Asha could turn into.

“Will you–”

“Way ahead of you,” Priscilla said, starting towards the steaming pool. The water was the perfect temperature, just a degree or two under scalding and it felt decadent against her saddle-sore muscles. She set Asha adrift and the little rubber duck was swept along the lazy, circular currents of the bath. Asha began to giggle hysterically, its joy sharp and bright in the bond.

Priscilla groaned in pleasure as she was fully submerged up to her collarbone.

“Gods, I wish every inn had one of these,” Priscilla said as she lazily stretched.

“Me too!” Asha giggled as it swept by her, crashing through a mountain of bubbles and leaving a duck sized tunnel in its wake.

Priscilla leisurely bathed herself, lathering the soap in her hair until it all could balance precariously atop her head. There was a rough but soft sponge that she used to scrape off all the layers of sweat and dead skin, and when Asha seemed curious because Priscilla was enjoying it so much, Priscilla obligingly washed Asha with the sponge as well.

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After she had nothing else to clean, Priscilla reluctantly left the bath’s warmth and dried off. After combing through the long locks, Priscilla decided to let her hair dry naturally and just wrapped a towel around her shoulders to keep her clothes dryish. Asha reformed into a thin, tan skin-tight glove that was nearly unnoticeable because the color was the same as Priscilla’s skin. If someone didn’t notice they couldn’t see Priscilla’s fingernails, they’d likely think she was wearing nothing at all.

Priscilla ambled to where the innkeeper had told her where the dining room was, and found Sulaiman seated at a table near the window. He was reading a book and looked quite peaceful with a healthy shine to his skin and hair, but Priscilla saw how the other customers gave him a wide berth, several of them sitting so they could keep him in their peripheral vision. Grazda was nearly two hundred miles north of where Muloi was and its citizens had never been conscripted to fight to subdue the Muloian rebellion, but it seemed the propaganda machine worked its prejudice into the Grazdan people just as well as it did the rest of the Kavandash kingdom.

She rolled her eyes as she muttered under her breath, “Dumbasses.”

Priscilla forcibly put on her brightest smile, not that it was that difficult when she was about to make a spectacle of herself, which was one of her favorite things to do.

“Sulaiman!” Priscilla called excitedly as she entered the room, drawing everyone’s attention with her loudness. Sulaiman looked up, startled, before giving her a deadpan look as she walked confidently to his table, dodging the other patrons just enough that when she shook her head, her wet hair sent several droplets flying into their space.

She slid in across from him as she said, “Thanks for waiting for me. I half-expected you to already be done eating by now.”

He shut the book with a single hand, rolling his eyes.

“You asked to eat dinner together,” Sulaiman said like she was an idiot.

Priscilla laughed a bit louder than she normally would.

“That I did,” Priscilla said, leaning the chair back onto two legs to glance at the menu. “Have you decided what you want to eat yet? My treat.”

“I can –”

“Nope!” Priscilla said. “You’re my guard, so it’s only right that I cover your basic necessities. So go ahead, order whatever you want.”

Sulaiman gave her a look like he suspected that she had ulterior motives but couldn’t figure out what, but eventually turned his gaze to the menu.

“I’ll take the cold noodle dish with yams.”

“I’ll go for the hot spring boiled egg and the stew, myself,” Priscilla said. “What do you say about splitting a sweet bean bun for dessert?”

Sulaiman gave her another long look and Priscilla returned it with an unabashed grin. She knew that he had a secret sweet tooth from the story and now that they were on better terms, she was less hesitant to use that knowledge.

“If you truly want dessert, then fine,” Sulaiman said, crossing his arms. He did put up a convincing act of being reluctant and that made Priscilla smile.

“Want to split a beer too?” Priscilla asked, mainly so she could elicit his glower of disapproval. “Fine, fine, but I hear that sipping cold alcohol after being in Grazdan hot springs is one of the finer experiences in life.”

She laughed as she stood, slapping her thighs lightly. When Priscilla turned around, she made sure to keep her megawatt smile in place as she glanced over the other customers. There were still quite a few looking towards them, but they glanced away when she aggressively smiled at them.

Priscilla ordered the food and ambled back with a pair of drinks to the table where Sulaiman was reading again, keeping an eye on the crowd as she walked. Their outright suspicion seemed to have faded with her entrance and loudly aligning herself with Sulaiman, but Priscilla wasn’t about to let her guard down, not after the stupid pests from yesterday.

She kept her smile easy and an ear on the murmurs around them as she asked, “Watcha reading, Sulaiman? Anything interesting?”

He raised the book without looking away. The cover read, A Record of the Six Continents’ Greatest Swordsmen.

“Who’s your favorite swordsman?” Priscilla asked.

“Adita Comollo,” Sulaiman said without missing a beat. “She single handedly prevented the sacking of Torihold by using a choke point to force the invaders to only have one place to invade the mountain fortress. Adita chose to destroy every other way out in the city to ensure that the invaders could only come in through one point. It was an extreme gamble that was only possible because of Adita’s skill with the sword and the fact that the sword she wielded was a powerful soul-bonded artifact named Amytas, which had renowned defensive capabilities. She made herself an immovable wall and every invader died by her sword.”

Priscilla let out a low whistle. “And when was she active?”

“Three hundred and thirty-six years ago,” Sulaiman said, finally looking up from the book with muted excitement in his expression. “Her sword technique has never been successfully replicated, even when mages attempted to use magical constructs to match the sword carvings in the walls of Torihold she left behind.”

“Sounds like Adita was one bad ass bitch,” Priscilla said. Sulaiman opened his mouth like he wanted to protest, then paused, considered her words, and eventually nodded in agreement. The whole process was incredibly adorable to watch and Priscilla had to turn her face away so he didn’t see her wide grin.

And by turning her head, she happened to hear another patron clearly say, “–group of bandits out east has been causing trouble.”

It took everything within Priscilla to not whip her head around to see who was speaking. But Sulaiman noticed her shift in attention almost immediately, his face losing its lightheartedness and turning into something serious.

“They’ve been burning each village they come across,” the man’s voice continued, dripping with contempt, “and the travelers they meet are left butchered.”

“But how do we know about them, then?” a second, feminine voice said. “If they kill everyone they come across.”

“A scout that was traveling with a group of farmers saw them,” the man said, “and even these bandit fuckers would be hard pressed to catch up with a scout running at full speed.”

“Ah, that does make sense,” the woman said.

Priscilla’s mind was racing. From what she knew, scouts were magic users that specialized in augmenting their own body to travel at superhuman speeds, sometimes traveling two hundred miles in a single day by foot if they pushed themselves.

And Kavil’s village was definitely less than two hundred miles away.

“Are those bandits the problems you mentioned?” Sulaiman asked in a low voice.

Priscilla nodded stiffly, forcefully choking back the blood that came from that simple confirmation, and Sulaiman swore under his breath.

The tension was interrupted by their food being delivered to their table. A black egg rested in a silver egg cup and the sweet bean bun had a perfect and enticing roundness but Priscilla couldn’t even summon her excitement at that, her stomach twisting itself into knots. She thought that they had enough time, but she didn’t have the exact date for when the attack happened, just a rough guess because that hadn’t been written in the book.

A spoon gently hit the back of her hand and she looked up. Sulaiman was staring at her, a spoon outstretched.

“Eat now,” Sulaiman said, “and we’ll deal with those problems later.”

Priscilla took a deep breath in and grabbed the spoon. The food was objectively tasty, but her heart wasn’t in it as she rotely shoveled the food into her mouth. Her knee bounced the entire time as her mind kept whispering the same thing over and over.

What if you’re already too late?