She stretched out on the hard mattress, her feet hanging out of the bunk, head resting on her hands. All it took was a couple deep breaths, and she slipped into the realm of sleep.

A mixture of smells and sounds assaulted the senses. Zelsys instinctively grabbed to the right, grabbing the cleaver before she even opened her eyes. The pale morning sun shone through the doorway. The smell that filled her nostrils was a pungent mixture of Viriditas and Nigredo, the former countering the latter and creating a smell that could only be described as aggressively fungal, a smell that one would follow if they wanted to find mushrooms after rain. The other smells were sweat, and menthol, and vanilla, noticeably wafting in from nearby.

“Morning already?” she thought, looking around. The bunk across was empty, but there she was - Zefaris stood over the sink, brushing her teeth. She placed a cup underneath the faucet and turned the valve, the crystal on the wall glowing a faint blue as crystal-clear water poured into the waiting cup. She rinsed her mouth, poured the water down the drain, then opened the faucet again and washed her hands, then her face.

Shaking her head, Zelsys sluggishly rolled out of the bunk into a sitting position, stretching and rolling her shoulders, blinking and yawning as she shook off the cobwebs of sleep. “Talk about a deep sleeper. Hey Snow White, catch,” said the blonde, throwing something thin and wooden into Zelsys’s waiting hand. It was a flat piece of wood with bristles on one end - a mass-produced toothbrush, the type that one would find in a ration pack’s accessory tin. It was pristine, and smelled strongly of menthol.

“We got mis-assigned a shitload of accessory tins instead of regular rations. Had to start hunting early on, but at least we got all the toothbrushes and Aqua crystals we could need,” Zefaris answered both of the questions she was going to ask, walking out onto the clearing soon after.

Zelsys stood up, walked to the sink, wetted the toothbrush, and just… Brushed her teeth, unable to shake the strange feeling. A toothbrush and running water. Such mundane, basic amenities felt out of place in a place like this. Her mouth filled with foam and bitter menthol, washed away by the water to who knew where. An arcane reservoir like Makhus’s Rubedo bottle? An alchemic recycler that would condense the pure Aqua into a new crystal? A regular old tank somewhere in the transport’s guts? Who knew.

She rinsed her mouth, splashed some water on her face, put on her boots and strapped the cleaver in its holster to her back. Next came the arm harness, and in her hand, the Tablet. The rays of the morning sun fell upon her face as she stepped out of the transport, and there they were, the three so-called war criminals.

Zefaris and Sigmund were around the now-dead fire-pit, busy packing things into three huge backpacks and a variety of smaller pouches, while Makhus was crouched at the still, sticking seals to one bottle with his right hand and holding another to the outlet with his left.