Tipping the entire contents of the bottle down her throat, Cleo grimaced. Alcohol that could affect the constitutions of a Saint had to be specially made, and cost a gold shard for a single bottle like the one she had just finished. Luckily for her, Law had been working on making batches of it before they had left on their journey.
Cleo sat on her bed, flinching at the sunlight and at the feeling welling up from her stomach. She gagged and struck the middle of her chest before forcing a belch and a small ball of fire out of her digestive system. Grimacing, she belched and moved over to the washbasin that the maids replaced every morning while Cleo slept. She boiled the water with a thread of mana and when it began emitting steam she sank her hands into the bowl before she began to wash herself. The dim mirror that hung above the bowl quickly collected condensation, covering Cleo's tear-stained face and allowed her to feel less wretched about leaving Law behind. She knew that she could have done nothing to help him on her own, but she still felt responsible, and that feeling ate away at her more than anything else.
Running the hot water down her pale frame she felt the sweat of her hang-over drain away, and the pounding in her brain slowly subside. The alcohol was doing its work. She dragged her hand across the mirror and looked at herself, before sighing and drying herself off. Lying back down on her cot, she stared at the ceiling before finally getting the urge to stand up and dress herself. There was very little that could motivate her anymore, even simply getting up in the day was too hard for her sometimes, let alone cultivating. Her life had stopped, and for the two months since her loss she had done nothing but drink and cry.
In an attempt to make sure she did nothing to herself, Winoa had kept Cleo with them while they travelled through the floor. Cleo thought it was worthless to do, but she could not care. She knew she was listless and felt worthless. She was not suicidal.
After half an hour of struggling with clothing and moving quickly, she finally left the room in the inn the group was staying at before depositing her body at a table near the entrance of the building. Pulling out a soft brush she began to run it through her long, bedraggled red hair. It had been far too long since the last time she had brushed her hair and it was beginning to show. Large strands of hair were pulled out with each stroke, but as she got into a flow Cleo could not help but find the brushing relaxing. It stopped her thinking too much about anything and just let her focus on the feeling of the brush flowing through her waist length hair.
She busied herself for almost an hour with brushing, until a man rudely slammed his mug on the table and sat on the chair opposite her. Looking at the man, Cleo could not find any way of describing him other than brutish. A thick lower jaw, and small eyes made the extremely muscular nam look like a pug. He was repulsive, but she just continued to brush her hair. If she blew up now then the group would have to move on again, and she could not deal with fleeing for her life anymore.
“Well aren't you a pretty one!” The pug faced man declared, seemingly to the entire bar. “It's a shame about all that black clothing though. Why don't you hop on my lap and we could remove a few layers between us”.
Cleo did not even raise her head from her focussed brushing. “No,” she said, before going back to running the brush through her now very neat hair. She was so tired of running, of everything, that she had no feeling to waste on the poor excuse for a bag of flesh sitting across from her. She simply ignored him.
Seeing Cleo's reaction to her, he reached out in an attempt to grab her by the hair and pull her close, however instead of his hand meeting the soft, silky hair he was expecting, he met a thin but surprisingly solid arm in the way. She had raised her arm to stop him touching her hair, but probably not for the reason he was expecting.
“Girl,” he growled. “That was not a request. I'm a grand knight, you know, and I could turn you into pulp if I wanted”.
Cleo finally looked up, and with her arm bending like a snake she removed the man's tightening grip on her arm and instead his arm was now in her left hand. She slammed his hand on the table before pulling out a small red dagger from within her ring and pierced the man's palm, pinning him to the table itself. As the smell of burnt flesh began to waft from his hand the man’s eyes began to water and she leaned in close. “I will tell you this once,” she whispered. “I wear black because I am mourning for the only man I have ever loved. I do not want to sit on your lap, and you cannot force me because I have been what you troglodytes call a grand knight since I was seven years old. Now leave me be before you lose more than just your fingers”. She pulled the knife out of the palm and swung it, leaving four sausage shaped lumps of flesh and bone on the table top.
The pug-faced man stepped back, his face pale with fear, and quickly moved out of the inn at great speed. As he left, Cleo waved her hand over the decapitated fingers and turned them to ash with a thought. Saint, she thought sardonically, he barely had the capabilities to be called the peak of Earthen rank. Immediately she went back to brushing her hair and waiting for the others to show up.
The inn stilled at the sight of the morose young woman, slowly picking up in tempo as the people in the building realised she ignored everything around her as long as they ignored her. Soon a bubble formed around the table that she was seated on, which was only popped when Winoa arrived from outside and perched herself next to Cleo.
“How are you feeling?” she asked hesitantly, brushing the ash off the table in front of her. “And why is this table so dusty? You think the maids would be better in this place for what we're paying a night”.
“It's my fault, not theirs,” Cleo replied. “That was ash”.
“Did you burn something again?”
“Someone. They wouldn't take no for an answer”.
“Huh”. Winoa looked like she was going to retort when she noticed something by the chair opposite Cleo. “Well whatever happened, your friend seems to have left their bag with whatever else you burned off them”.
“Good,” Cleo replied. She had no pity as of recent, and even less for men like that. He would have disgusted her even if she had been in a better mood than she was currently.
“Aren't you interested what's in the bag?”
“No”.
“Well I am. Have you got some of that firewater stuff that Law was making? Why don't you get a couple of glasses worth out so we can share it and I will have a look in this bag”.
Cleo sighed, but she did not disagree. “Nosy,” she whispered at her friend, before she pulled out a full bottle the same size as the one she had inhaled earlier on. She pulled out two Salamandrite cups that Law had specially made for using with his ridiculous drink and began decanting the liquid carefully.
“Cleo,” Winoa said, raising her head in horror from the bag beside them. “I think you need to look at this...”
“What?” She said as Winoa put the bag on the table. Immediately after letting go of the bag Winoa grabbed the glass and swallowed the whole thing in a single gulp, before looking at Cleo with slightly wild eyes.
“I think I‘ve found a clue to help you feel a little better,” she said, pulling a stack of fine sheets from within the grubby sack. Upon the sheets were posters very similar to the one that Laurence had placed in front of them months ago, depicting their entire group.
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