“If you make your place accommodate certain types of scum, then those types would gather there and turn it into a cesspool that would attract more like them in turn. Of course, given that you accommodated them in the first place, you’d probably find them to be good company.

On the other hand, others might just want to burn your place to the ground.” - Saying attributed to the Silver Maiden.

Despite the distance between where they disembarked the caravan and the trading house operated by a long-term asset in the Oajib Sultanate being only a few blocks, Aideen, Kino, and Eilonwy still ran into an unpleasant situation on the way there. Which was something, considering that they had only shown themselves in Oajib for a few minutes by that point of time.

It happened about a couple blocks from their destination, right in the middle of the busy streets. A rather old man dressed in fine clothing bedazzled with jewels blocked their way, with a pair of tall, burly guards behind him. The man said something to the three, but he used an old dialect of the northern language, which neither Kino nor Eilonwy speaks.

The north mostly used common – which was spoken nearly everywhere as it was the trader’s tongue – and a language that took influence from both the dwarven tongue and the local dialect in the present day. Despite that, some people still spoke the old language that was commonly used prior to the arrival of the dwarves. Mostly in places like Oajib which prided themselves on holding on to old traditions, though.

Neither Eilonwy nor Kino were familiar with the tongue, though Aideen had a passing familiarity with it.

“What is he saying?” asked Kino to Aideen while gesturing at the gesticulating old man with her eyes. While she did not understand what he was saying, the sneer on the faces of the guards behind the old man as well as the tone used with the words he said gave her a general idea that the old man wasn’t praising them or something like that.

“A lot of very rude and unpleasant implications about our mothers and how they failed in teaching us the proper ways and whatnot,” replied Aideen all too nonchalantly, though her words clearly garnered a strong reaction from Eilonwy. The girl always respected her mothers greatly so it was no surprise that she was the one who was most incensed by the words. Kino never knew her birth mother, while Aideen’s mother had passed many centuries ago by then. “Aaaaand I think he just lost his patience and told his guards to grab us so he could teach us how to behave like women should. Eilonwy, you can have them. Just don’t go for the kill.”

“Got it,” replied Eilonwy curtly while Kino moved to the side to let her pass. Neither Aideen nor Kino were worried about the girl having to take on two burly guards. Even if they were physically stronger than her, years of training under the Death’s Hands instructors gave Eilonwy an edge that those guards would be hard-pressed to match.

Sure enough, when one of the old rich man’s burly guards thrust an arm to grab Eilonwy, the girl nimbly slipped around his hand, grabbed his arm with both of her hands, rested his elbow against her shoulder, then threw the burly man over her back in a single, smooth, much-practiced motion. As the man slammed against the hard, packed soil of the road, Eilonwy also made use of the force to twist and break his arm in several places.

Then she added insult to the injury as she stomped hard with the heel of one foot against the back of the man’s knee, breaking the joint and conveniently disabling the man for the foreseeable future.

The other guard hollered in anger at the sight but otherwise reacted too late to come to his compariot’s aid. As he rushed towards Eilonwy and grabbed the hilt of the sword on his waist with one hand, the girl turned to him and reacted swiftly.

Eilonwy stomped the guard’s hand against the hilt and crossguard of his own sword before he could unsheathe the weapon more than a finger’s length out of its scabbard, then put her weight on that foot as she pressed forward, shoving the guard’s other arm with one hand. She bent her other arm and delivered an uppercut using her elbow directly to the guard's chin before he could recover from the surprise at her quick reaction.

The blow disoriented but didn’t topple the burly man, so Eilonwy stepped in even closer, where the guard would have trouble making the most use out of his physical strength. She viciously kneed the man right in the groin, and as he bent over, switched her footing around and slammed her other knee against his face, sending his head shooting back up only to be met with another pair of elbow strikes to the chin and temple. That proved to be too much for the man to take as the guard toppled over and collapsed like a sack of potatoes, unmoving on the ground.

Naturally, that still left the foul-mouthed old man who was apparently the employer of those guards, and some fear started to creep into the old man’s features as Eilonwy turned away from his collapsed guards and went for him instead.

Fortunately the girl still remembered that Aideen told her not to kill anyone and only dislocated the old man’s arms and legs – she didn’t want him to run away and bring more trouble to them at least in the immediate future – while slapping his face until it was so swollen he looked like a pig. She had also slapped him around hard enough to have loosened several of his teeth, to boot.

“I thought we were supposed to keep a low profile?” asked Kino uncertainly as the three left their ‘victims’ behind and continued their walk.

“There’s keeping a low profile, and there’s being a pushover,” replied Aideen. “Unless your mission specifically requires you to be the latter, for some reason, you should not allow others to push you around. Worst case you’d just have to cut your time in that particular place short anyway.”