They encountered nothing else for the rest of the day though they were both on high alert as they traveled, with Priscilla checking her compass often to assuage her nerves. The grass started to grow shorter, and the hills began to flatten for near endless tides of bright green marred by occasional brush or a tree. There were some hints of farmers previously living around here, but the homesteads were long abandoned, though not in the eerie way that Frean’s was, more in the way that nature naturally reclaims settlements for itself given enough time.

  Priscilla let Sulaiman take the lead on finding a place to set up camp for the night when dusk drew nearer, casting long shadows over the landscape. He chose to stop by one of the remnants of a home, the wood decayed and many walls collapsed, but one wall stood tall and blocked out the cool wind. Priscilla wasn’t going to lean on it, but she did appreciate how it made their position less obvious to anyone passing by.

  “We should probably have one of us be awake at all times so no one gets the drop on us,” Priscilla said, laying her pack on the ground and pulling out her bed roll before glancing at Sulaiman. “Unless you happen to know any alarm spells?”

  “Too finicky for me,” Sulaiman said, sounding regretful. “My magic isn’t suited for delicate arcane work like that.”

  “I’ll take the first watch then,” Priscilla said, patting her bed roll flat.

  Sulaiman nodded. “We should probably avoid lighting a fire to give away our location.”

  “Gotcha,” Priscilla said even though she wasn’t sure how much she was going to enjoy sitting in the dark. She would have to find a way to keep herself up, maybe she’d sit in a way that required her to move every short while so her legs didn’t go numb. At least with how bright the moons and stars shone, it wouldn’t be pitch black.

  For dinner, Priscilla hesitated before taking a bite into her jerky, chewing it quickly so she didn’t have time to linger on the meat flavor and the way it made her want to gag. She covered it up with a thick grain bar she had kept in reserve for when they weren’t near civilization. It was tasteless and dry, which was perfectly fine with her. Sulaiman didn’t seem to have the same problem with meat as she did, but maybe he simply hid it better.

  Sulaiman reluctantly took off his armor before climbing into the bed roll and Priscilla felt for him, she really did because of the whole threat of death and all, but the pout on his face as he realized he needed to make that decision was the first thing that had gotten Priscilla to smile for the first time since they left Grazda that morning.

  He settled into a position on his side, facing away from Priscilla, and Priscilla turned her slowly adapting eyes to their dark surroundings. She settled near the far edge of the wall so she could easily peek her head around it.

  “Priscilla.”

  Sulaiman’s quiet voice made her jump. Priscilla turned her head over her shoulder and saw that he was still turned away from her. She blinked at that and then slowly turned back around.

  “Yes, Sulaiman?” Priscilla said just as quietly so her voice didn’t carry over the flat land.

  “Do you know who killed the man we found?” he asked, something heavy in his voice as he spoke the words, like he hadn’t actually wanted to say them aloud but something compelled Sulaiman to ask anyway.

  Priscilla stilled.

  What a tricky question to answer and such an important one at that.

  While they were riding here, Priscilla had started to plan out ways to try and get around her restrictions to get as much flexibility in speaking as she could. She had thought pretty hard about Priscilla’s circumstances and what the original may have known at this point, combined the interactions she’s had with the cult thus far, and tried to deduce what she could reasonably say from there. She had a few ideas prepped and knew this was as good a place as any to try it out.

  “I have a guess,” Priscilla said slowly, looking at her hands, “but you might not like the answer.”

  There was a beat of silence then, “I'd like to hear it anyway.”

  Priscilla sighed.

  “Recently, I’ve come across an organization,” Priscilla began slowly, “that takes special interest in those who might feel like they’re… overlooked and unappreciated by others. They figure out what you want most in life and offer you enough power to achieve it. They like to use the right words to convince you that they were what you needed, and all you had to do was devote yourself to their ideals.”

  Everything Priscilla had just said were things that she heard the cult leader tell her personally, but she was skirting the lines of what she could say, based on the way blood coated her throat but didn’t rise further.

  “The organization doesn’t seem like one to hesitate to use violence if they thought it furthered their goals,” Priscilla forced out with just a light cough. She was glad she was facing away from Sulaiman as she wiped the blood from her lips, taking care to not wipe it onto Asha, though she felt the artifact’s displeasure clearly.

  Sulaiman processed her words for a few moments while Priscilla grabbed her waterskin to get rid of the taste of blood from her mouth.

  “Did this organization try to recruit you?” Sulaiman asked in the same heavy voice. “Is that how you learned of it?”

  Priscilla winced.

  “Yes, they certainly tried,” Priscilla said because there was no getting around it, “but I found that we had irreconcilable differences so I told the bastard to go fuck himself with a cactus made of orichacalum.”

  A startled snort of laughter came from Sulaiman and some of the tension in the air dissipated.

  There was the sound of him shifting in his bed roll. Priscilla risked a glance over her shoulder and found Sulaiman looking at her, a hand beneath his head. His expression was difficult to parse in the dark, but Priscilla could at least tell he didn’t seem angry.

  “If you asked me a week ago if I’d believe you’d do that,” Sulaiman said, “I would have told whoever was asking me they were missing a brain. But now… well, it’s not that hard to imagine.”

  “Thanks, I think?” Priscilla said with a wry smile.

  Sulaiman laughed, his whole body shaking from the force of it for longer than she expected, before he took in a deep breath to calm himself, a smile just barely visible in the low light.

  Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.

  His gaze met Priscilla’s once more.

  “Do you have a watch on you?” Sulaiman asked and that was a very good question because Priscilla was realizing she didn’t. As she shook her head, Sulaiman pushed himself up and rifled through his pack.

  “Catch,” he called and then Priscilla scrambled to try to do just that. A chain tangled in her fingers, and the watch dangled, spinning in rapid circles from the sudden movement.

  “More warning next time would be nice,” Priscilla grumbled as she pulled it free, “unless you want me to drop it and fuck up the mechanisms.”

  Sulaiman ignored that, saying, “Wake me in five hours.”

  “If I can read the clock face in the dark, then sure,” Priscilla snarked and she could practically feel Sulaiman’s eye roll from here.

  It was difficult to see what the watch looked like in the dark, but it seemed to be made of a silver metal, with the numbers carved into its side and the center open to reveal some of the inner clockwork mechanisms. The watch was sleek and graceful, and Priscilla let herself be momentarily distracted by a vision of Sulaiman dressed in a tailored double breasted suit to highlight his broad shoulders at a fancy party, pulling out the watch to check the time in one smooth motion. It was a delightful little fantasy and Priscilla’s fingers itched to draw out the design. But it was dark and she had nothing to sketch on – a fact that Priscilla told herself that she would rectify on the next journey she went on.

  Instead, she focused on the task at hand, which was keeping watch to make sure they weren’t murdered by bandits in the night.

  Though she had dreaded it, keeping watch wasn’t as worse as Priscilla feared it may be. It was dark and her thoughts drifted darker at first before Priscilla decided that she would much rather draw a map of the world in the dirt with a thin piece of wood she found. It was imperfect but it was serviceable as she trailed the edge of the stick on a tentative path for the future.

  After they save Kavil’s village and he may or may not join them, Priscilla and Sulaiman would return to Meadowyar to wait for Illnyea. Priscilla would do her best to keep herself in Sulaiman’s good graces and see if there were any artifacts for sale that might make her slightly less useless in combat. Once Illnyea came back, Priscilla would do her best to sweet talk her sister into making good on those plans to travel together.

  From there, Priscilla would have them travel towards the capital of Kavendash to the north-west, solving pesky problems on the way and not so subtly ruining the cult’s plans for the region. The cult was focused on increasing monster populations across countless countries, and with Illnyea and Sulaiman’s strength and Priscilla’s knowledge of magical beasts (and copious amounts of healing potions if Kavil chose to stay), dealing with the creatures shouldn’t be too hard.

  Once they got to the capital, there were many more plots to deal with and foil (and hopefully flying under the radar of politicians and magical researchers), and then they would be traveling to a small neighboring country of Amelliun and hopefully have the fateful encounter with the martial arts badass Frigge – another one of Priscilla’s favorite characters for both her fighting skills and her upfront nature.

  Priscilla lost herself in trying to imagine what she might say to Frigge when she got to meet her. Frigge and the original hadn’t had many interactions in the story besides Frigge calling her a bitch for using a poisoned needle, so their relationship would start on a clean slate. Priscilla would probably get her ass whooped if she asked for a spar and she’d probably love every second of it.

  By the time Priscilla had to wake Sulaiman and return his watch to him, she felt relatively confident about the path she had decided on, and was even excited about all the possibilities that lay before her. No plans survived contact with the real world, but it would serve as a foundation to build off of.

  As Priscilla settled down in her own bed roll, she reminded herself to curb her enthusiasm.

  Her plans all hinged on her surviving the encounter with the bandits, after all.

  The next morning, Sulaiman woke Priscilla up at dawn, jostling her with his foot roughly.

  “Mother fucker,” Priscilla groaned, glaring at him.

  “Good morning to you too.”

  Priscilla grunted in response, rubbing away the bleariness from her eyes. She didn’t recall much of her dreams again except for a vague feeling of terror that was quickly fading as Priscilla stretched. She paused for a moment, trying to see if she could recall anything else, but the dream remained nebulous and intangible, slipping away like water between her fingers, so Priscilla stopped trying.

  There were more important things to focus on – today was when they would arrive at Kavil’s village.

  If Priscilla’s calculations were correct, they should arrive at the edge of the forest near Kavil’s village by late afternoon and be able to follow the river, arriving at the village proper near dusk.

  They hadn’t seen any signs of bandits yet, but Priscilla had a suspicion that they may be approaching from the far eastern side, opposite from her angle of approach. While that meant Sulaiman and Priscilla didn’t have to worry about encountering the bandits prematurely, it also meant that the bandits may have already made it to the village.

  Priscilla slapped her cheeks lightly to banish that thought from her head because she couldn’t not afford to consider that possibility.

  Travel was once again silent, and largely uneventful discounting the horses getting spooked by a passing snake. It took longer than Priscilla wanted to to get her horse back under control as it stubbornly stomped the snake to death with its hooves. Sulaiman ended up having to dismount his own horse to calm hers down, which left Priscilla in a slightly dour mood. But she had no one to blame but herself, and Priscilla would get plenty of practice in handling horses with the amount of traveling she wished to do.

  If she could finagle it, Priscilla would love to purchase a Thacheleon steed. Horses from Thacheleon were faster on average and bonded deeply with their riders, refusing to let any they disapproved of onto their backs. Finding a Thacheleon steed was much easier said than done because they were from a different continent, but Priscilla mentally marked that down as a future goal, even if she did not get one for herself, then one for Illnyea, definitely. That girl attracted trouble like a moth to a flame and deserved a steady steed to get her out of that trouble.

  The land slanted downwards as they traveled, easing into a gentle valley with a lush forest hidden within it. They were arriving slightly later than she hoped they would, but the forest was just a little under an hour’s ride away at their current pace, so they should reach the village after dusk but not late enough it would be impossible to travel through the forest, though they might have to walk ahead of their horses.

  Sulaiman eyed the forest that was ahead of them with a thoughtful look.

  “Is this, perhaps, our destination?” Sulaiman asked, his voice dry. “We are on the day you said we’d reach it.”

  “Why, Sulaiman, what an astute guess,” Priscilla said brightly. “You prove again and again that you possess a lofty intelligence – the forest that you see is indeed our final destination.”

  Sulaiman’s flat look spoke volumes about what he thought about her theatrics.

  “Is there a specific place in said forest we’re visiting?”

  Priscilla squinted ahead of her, before brightening as she saw a glimmer of light reflected off water. Being able to see things with her own eyes neatly circumvented the restrictions on what she could say.

  “Yes, we will follow that river there,” Priscilla said, pointing it out to him, “and then we will arrive!”

  Sulaiman squinted, following her arm. The river really was hard to spot from this angle as it came from the southeast and was at a lower elevation so it was partially hidden by trees, but eventually Sulaiman nodded slowly after twenty seconds of searching.

  “I can only assume, with my lofty intelligence,” Sulaiman said, dead-pan, “that there may be people who live in this forest.”

  “Truly, your intelligence is beyond compare,” Priscilla said, dancing around actually answering him and giving him a toothy grin. Sulaiman rolled his eyes.

  But as his eyes settled back on the horizon and the wind blew over them, his face went still as his eyes went wide. Priscilla followed his gaze and felt her stomach drop as the faint scent of smoke hit her nose.

  It was hard to see at first, as the sun had cast it into shadows, but there was a camp stationed on the eastern edge of the forest. A camp that clearly had been just in use by a large party though it was now empty. There was only one place the occupants could have gone, and that was into the forest – and there really was only one option of what they were here for.

  The bandits were already here and they had a head start.