It took a little arguing with the contractor that served as the purse for the bounties put up by the city, but we got our bounty money in full, without them retaining any as ‘insurance against future failures’. I suspected that it was Justin’s youth that caused them to be more cautious than my own presence. When I began to cite city ordinance at her, she relented.

The spa was its own adventure of sorts. We arrived and I made sure to request enchanted lockboxes and an insurance policy in case they were stolen, then the clerk, an Orc, with a relatively chipper disposition I suspected was company policy rather than personal choice, asked what gender we wished to be associated with. 

Justin froze, confused. I wondered at this but asked politely, even though there was a board that clearly described the options. “What are our options?”

“You may select from communal options of Male, Female, or Non-specific. For an additional fee, we have individual rooms available, although only one is currently open, and we have a strict one person per individual room.” They looked between us, eyebrow slightly cocked in what I imagined was personal amusement, not employee policy, “For sanitary reasons.” 

My feathers parted in good humor as both of us stared at Justin for him to realize what was being implied. As he started to turn pink, I said, “I’d prefer the non-specific. If you want to join me, Justin, I wouldn’t be opposed. We can afford you a room alone as well.”

“Ahh, I’ll join you. I am not sure I-. As long as you are okay with that.” I suspected he was worried that he might not know the protocol. 

We both went to the lockbox room and put our things into the relevant slots, where they would be passively cleaned for many surface stains and scents. I spent more money than I would have ever spent on my own, but I also was aware of our social engagement and didn’t want to get out of the spa and immediately crawl back into unclean clothings. 

I wore a towel over my back, which more or less draped over me in all the right places for nominal upright sentient decency, and I let Justin take his time covering himself. He seemed flustered as it was, and I didn’t want to make him uncomfortable. His towel wrapped around his torso tightly, one hand always holding it in place.

His shyness did more to reveal how, while he might be very lithe and muscular, he looked thin in the way I’d seen people who were indentured to construction guilds. Justin wasn’t *quite*  starved growing up, but both this and the way I’d seen him devour dinner, he clearly only had just enough to keep himself from sliding into true malnutrition. With his incredibly pale skin, long hair, and pretty face - for a mammalian - I would be loath to let him wander the wrong streets alone here.

The mixed baths was a room on the second floor, where a raised floor revealed three pools. One was cold to the touch and still, one was blistering hot, both of them big enough to fit about four mammalians comfortably. The third pool was warm and had a sense of motion to it, as it was fueled and drained by a pair of magical vases. The room was empty, which I sensed was to Justin’s relief. It was lunchtime, and middle shift for most places, so as long as we didn’t dally, it would likely be empty for the duration we were here. 

“You are supposed to rinse first in the larger pool, where the contaminants are drained away, and then you can soak in the cold or hot bath. We have access to all the cleaning supplies on the wall, though if you want something more specific, they likely have it for a fee.” I gestured to the far wall, where a dumbwaiter sat with a menu and cards for additional requests. 

“I… see.” He wandered over to the rack of cleaning supplies, trying to get a grasp on the sense of organization. 

“I am going to set my towel over here. Are you going to be comfortable with that?”

There was a set of cubbies for towels, and even another stack of clean ones. 

“Um. Sure.” He focused harder on the cleaning supplies, grasping that they were roughly organized by species focused products. I removed my towel, put it up and followed him to the cleaning supplies, grabbing a bar of Elven-style hair conditioner. I had to tilt upright to reach the - relative to me - tall counter. There were no Kobold supplies here. Specialty shops would occasionally have goods specific for us, but they were rare. I found that Elven conditioner worked best on my scales, followed by a cold soak of my feathers with body oil to keep them from wilting. 

“I am sorry if all this immodesty bothers you, Justin. I don’t mean to push you into something you are uncomfortable with. Kobolds have little sense of physical exposure when nude ourselves. Our genitalia is primarily internal, male or female.”

“I, ah, its more that I’m just shy. I’ll get there in a moment, I just, uh, need to work up to it.” 

I gestured understanding and entered the main pool to rinse, conditioner on the ledge nearby. Strictly speaking, Kobold feathers weren’t really made to be washed. I heard in the Drakenguard, Kobolds primarily used sand pits to scrape themselves clean. It was considered some indication of their barbarity in Sumar, so I never bothered to find out if there was a similar pit here. 

Once I was wet, I stepped out to the shallower steps to rub my scales with the conditioner. At some point, Justin followed, immediately getting into the deep side of the water, covering himself up to his shoulders. The water moving between the source and sink created enough ripples to maintain his decency. 

We washed in relative silence, with me eventually dunking my head into the cold water bath to clean and oil my feathers carefully. One of them fell out with a slight tug and I frowned at the white and red feather, fully nine inches long. Just one falling out wouldn’t be noticeable, but that I was molting meant I was either getting very old - and I wasn't quite that old, in spite of Kobold mortuary tables compared to mammalian sentients - or my sex was changing again. I put that thought aside and threw the feather in a waste bin in the corner of the room. 

Justin and I left the spa and headed back to my place as we started to hear traffic pick up in the other parts of the building. Justin didn’t want to be around others, and I wouldn’t force him. 

While we went to several fine clothing dealers in CenSum, I briefed Justin on the basics of manners in a high class setting and workshopped our story. 

“In my letter, I explained that I was your colleague, which is suitably vague. My status as a former city guard is not likely to be a secret, so let us say that we met before your capture under odd circumstances. You needed someone who had access to the Library of Dreams, and I happened to fit the bill.”

“Wait, you have access to the Library?”

“I spent thirty years as a scribe there. I’ve only been a city guard for three years.”

“Oh, no wonder you could get at the necklace… So I will just say you are an associate, whom I contacted when I got to the city. How do we explain my arrest?”

“I don’t expect that to come up in open company, very impolitic. Did you try to explain the truth when you were being detained by the royal guards or any other city guards like me?”

“Um, I tried to explain it to the city guards that brought me food.”

“Hmm.”

“What?”

“That means we can’t just lie. We will need to be honest, that you had information for the future Crown Princess’s ears only. The question is how do you know what you know.”

“Yeah. I don’t suppose that the truth would work there.”

“I do not believe that the governor of Sumar City will believe that you are an extrauniversal outsider that has foreknowledge of the universe, no. Do the Red Dawn Cruxist have any connection to the plot to usurp the throne?”

“I, um… Well if you follow through with investigating the Red Dawn Cruxist, its like a quest that spans the whole game. It’s kind of boring, but you find out that the pirates of the Auran Coast are actually the cult’s origins. They basically are fucking over both empires as their demigod is trying to help the Horrautomatons to kill everyone so they can be the humans to repopulate. You can kill them all, but the damage is done by the end of the game.”

“I… see. So could you have conceivably come across some documentation in the Red Dawn Cruxist’s ownership that implied that there was something going to happen at the coronation, that the Cruxists were aware of too?”

“There’s nothing like that in the game, no.”

“I’m suggesting you lie, Justin. And say that the evidence you might have had was destroyed when you detonated the bomb.” I knew Justin had spent the last eight years fixated on improving his skills to prepare for one or two events. I suspected he hadn’t really considered how his actions would change the world ‘dynamically’ as he described.

“I, ah, have a feat that gives me a disadvantage to lying for a couple points in Agility and [Gymnastics].”

I sighed, and said, “Then I will come up with something, just play along?”

“Ah, sure.”

Hadassah

Min-Maxing to save the world has its disadvantages.

I don't have a whole lot to say here, just that I do like a world where luxuries exist. Fantasy Chic has baths as far and few between as they do dungeons, which is silly. I also feel like there are things that magic is often depicted as being to be able to do easier than physics, like cleaning. There are fast-booths that clean people and their clothing in about thirty seconds, but that's now considered a lower class invention. Rich people have time to bathe.

As a result, disease, while relatively less common, tend to be more virulent and status-conveying than they might be in our world, as they can survive the easy access to cleanliness that exists here.