“United by one wise man, an Independent State. This was much against the wishes of certain governments, whose leaders tried to break us down and make us all repent…”

Eventually, the steam that filled the bathroom and his own lack of focus on maintaining the technique allowed it to fade away much faster than it otherwise would, and he continued scrubbing away while quietly humming the melody of that song, just in case something loud enough to be heard by the naked ear happened. Something as mundane as this wouldn’t have phased him at all in any other circumstance, but the fact he had unwittingly eavesdropped somehow made him feel filthy, dishonorable even.

The sun was high up in the sky. The townsfolk milled about on the street. Makhus and Sigmund had been awake for a good three hours now, invigorated by the first time they had slept in proper beds in a long, long time. The two men were busy running errands, buying cleaning supplies and taking the first steps to preparing Riverside Remedies for re-opening.

Meanwhile, in room four…

Zelsys slowly, ever so slowly drifted into consciousness. Confusion briefly washed over her as she felt the touch of skin that clearly wasn’t her own, the weight of another’s head on her chest, the feeling of another’s legs tangled with hers. The spark of waking flickered into a flame. She remembered, and a smile crept onto her face as she reached up to run her fingers through that platinum hair.

She’d been wrong to call the one-eyed markswoman a coward. Zef stirred and let out a half-awake groan, slowly, ever so slowly reaching her hand out from under the covers and towards her face, briefly stroking her cheek. She wound her hand back and Zelsys braced herself expecting a slap, but it never came.

Zefaris just reached behind her head, pulling herself up by the bed’s headboard to plant a sudden, aggressive kiss on her lips. Once the brief moment of surprise passed, she melted into it, closing her eyes once again. 

“You win,” the cyclops uttered when she finally pulled away. “My legs are still numb.”

Zelsys couldn’t help but chuckle at that, still running her fingers through that off-white hair, jokingly asking, “You sure you won’t need me to carry you to the bathroom?”

“Fuck you,” Zef said jokingly.

“Fuck me yourself,” Zel responded.

“Later. Don’t you have a beast-slaying contract to fulfill?” 

“...I do,” Zel murmured, scanning the room for any sort of clock. There was one right on the wall above the window. Eleven thirty-seven. “Oh. It’s almost noon.”

She had intended to depart very early in the morning, early enough to kill the beast shortly after sunrise, but in hindsight… It probably wouldn’t be too much of an issue to do it in broad daylight.

She shifted into a more upright sitting position, stretching. Her trousers were in a crumpled mess by the bed, but it was no bother - the half-wrapped roll of bandages that she used to bind her chest waited on the nightstand, and she used it precisely for its purpose. 

First a new pair of makeshift underwear to hold her over until she could find a tailor, next the chest wrappings, then the long process of braiding her hair. By the time she was halfway through the first braid, she felt Zefaris shifting, soon followed by the feeling of her fingers in her hair. She said nothing, silently working on the second braid. Once the braids were finished and bound together, the markswoman just sank back under the covers with a quiet utterance of “You’re welcome.”

Next came her trousers, boots, the arm-harness, the cleaver in its holster… The Tablet. “Where’d I…” she wondered, and the memory instantly sparked into her mind. It fell off the other side of the bed, and indeed, there it was. It came alive at her touch, showing the exact screen it was on when she last let go of it.

TECHNIQUES

Fog-breathing

Beast Butchering Arts

An absent-minded tap on the former as she turned to walk to the bathroom. There was a single unnamed technique in that category, with the option to give it a name glowing beside it.

Unnamed Breathing Technique - Name Technique

The name flickered the moment she laid her eyes up on it, a brief wave of warm buzzing spilling through her hand when it changed. 

Lover’s Breath

A small chuckle escaped her at that, silenced by a realization when she crossed into the bathroom. The tub was half-full, most of the bath salt phials were empty, and the ground was still littered with the wilted poppy flowers that she had stuck into her braids on the way here. “Explains the lack of residue,” she thought, allowing a smirk to spread over her face while she browsed the Tablet’s Fog Storage in search of a toothbrush. It wasn’t very far down in the alphabetically sorted list.

x74 Ikesian Dental Hygiene Ration

She retrieved two, placing one at the edge of the sink for Zef to use later before she took to brushing the taste of morning breath and sex out of her mouth, the taste of bitter mint soon overwhelming both. A part of her wanted to explore the town, to visit whichever of its shops were still open and maybe buy something, but she quickly snuffed it out. She would have more than enough time to do all of these things and more - once the payout and the beast’s Azoth were safely in her possession.

What if another beast-slayer tried to snatch the quarry out from under her nose? After all, the posting could very well still be on the board in plain view. A roll of the shoulders, a splash of water on the face, and out the door she went, taking care to not make too much noise as she made her way to the ground floor. The inn was half-filled with a nearly equal distribution of the old and the young, and both groups shot her strange looks when she passed by to head to the bar.

Shopping and exploring the town could wait, but hunger could not.