By now the sermon had finished, and Cas was feigning interest in a card game the auxiliaries were gambling on. Surprisingly, she was able to follow the game, and had even started discerning its rules, even while most of her mind was occupied in conversation with Sara.
Cas looked inquisitively at the status of the card game. Dacula drew a card. The wrong card, to tell by the pained expressions of the spectators that had placed bets on him.
Another part of her mind marveled at her new multi-tasking ability. Aura-boost was a hell of a drug, and it was almost a comfort to tire her hyperactive mind out with multiple tasks.
Cas threw the words out with a neutral tone, hoping that would bolster her credibility.
<...yes?> Sara’s reply came back confused.
she hurriedly fixed.
Cas tried desperately to sound credible, but the effort apparently failed her as Sara replied back:
Cas had spent the past twenty minutes feeling like a conspiracy theorist. The hyper-caffeinated jitters of her aura boost contributed to this perception.
It was only now that she started sounding like a loon, however, even to herself.
Cas’s foot tapped restlessly, growing bored with the lack of activity.
Dracula's opponent – a regular soldier from the other camp – placed a Siren card onto the table.
Cas didn't know exactly what that meant, but she’d worked out enough of the game to empathize with the dejected look of frustration that came over her fellow auxiliary.
It was an expression she could well imagine Sara carrying as she replied:
And Cas believed her.
In fact, she’d anticipated this crux, and still had no answers to it.
Whatever ‘Aura Proficiency’ was, it had brought Cas into intimate contact with the nature of Aura, and Cas knew, just knew Aura couldn’t be changed. That was just a plain fact.
In fact, the truth of it was so plain that Cas began doubting her own story. Still…
Cas replied at last.
Dacula skipped his turn.
The regular soldier placed a second card. An intricate woodcut of a demon laughed from the face of the card, the number three written onto opposite corners.
Again, Dacula skipped his turn.
The regular soldier placed a third card: another monster.
At this point, the regular had two monsters and a demon, with numbers adding to eighteen. It seemed an impossible set to beat.
Cas could almost feel Sara’s mental sigh of dejection.
Dacula skipped his third turn in a row, and the regular placed down his final card with a triumphant expression. It was a Slime card, with a number zero at the corners.
With that, Sara hung up.
Cas’s attention returned to the card game in full, now.
Last she’d checked, the regular soldier had a four card and eighteen point lead, and a Slime card to boot.
So, it was surprising when Dacula pulled off a miraculous victory anyway.
With the trained flourish of a performance artist, Dacula lifted his final remaining card in the air before lightly dropping it.
The heavy card fluttered a little as it landed softly on the hardwood, revealing itself to be the all powerful ‘priestess’ card, and laying low everything his opponent had brought.
Despite the good fortune it had brought to her friend – who laughed as he raked in his petty winnings – Cas couldn’t help the ominous feeling the sight of the card aroused.
The ‘priestess’ card was the centerpiece of any deck; it was a rare feat for anyone to keep it in hand until the end of a game.
It was a face card, displaying an intricate painting of a woman with light eyes and priestly garb. She held a sharp sword in one hand. In her opposite hand, a bloody rosary dangled – strung through with the bodies of demonic figures and monster skulls.
Again, the rules of the game were intricate, but the message was clear:
Priestesses killed monsters, and demons, and all unnatural things.
----------------------------------------
The aftermath of the card game was an atmosphere of highs and lows.
Dacula laughed with practiced boisterousness, letting the clinking copper rain through his fingers. “You know the nicest thing in the world is to win money at cards.”
He daggered his eyes over to Anne.
Upset and embarrassed, Anne huffed. “So, I didn’t expect you to win, Ya? You looked bad at the game.”
Dacula let out another loud laugh. “Still, it’s a bit rude to bet against your friend, don’t you think?”
Anne pouted.
“I wouldn’t let it get to you,” Reginald said from the sidelines. “Dacula has been seeming bad at cards all deployment. I think he’s more than made his money back on that impression.”
Anne looked sternly at Dacula who only grinned in confirmation.
“You… you liar!” she accused. “You fooled me!”
Dacula only laughed harder.
“Well, technically, he fooled everyone,” Reginald commented from the side line, dejectedly cleaning out the lint from his coin purse.
“I want my money back!” Anne demanded, no nonsense.
Dacula wrapped his arms around the copper pile protectively. “Hey. Fair’s fair. If I start giving refunds, everyone's going to expect their money back. Besides, it’s your fault for not trusting in your friend. I told you I was going to win, didn’t I? I mean, Reginald trusted me.”
“I did not trust you,” Reginald quickly corrected. “In fact, I only bet against you because I suspected you’d continue hustling until the last day of deployment. People gamble larger sums on the last day, after all..”
“Oh?” Dacula grew intrigued. “You think I could have made more money if I’d waited?” Dacula grew thoughtful for a second before a happy smirk erased all that. “Oh, well! Guess I’ll try again on my next deployment!”
“You, you!” Anne was fritzing with anger, her accent redoubling itself. “Why did you not let me know this!” she stamped her foot, turning to Reginald this time.
Reginald shrugged. “It’s bad business to spread news like that.”
“I want my money back!” Anne whirled quickly back onto Dacula.
“Never!” Dacula laughed with an innate superiority.
“Cas!” Anne turned to her, looking for backup. “Who did you bet on?”
Seeing the impending gravity of the argument drawing her in, Cas quickly distanced herself. “Oh, I don’t gamble.”
For a moment, everyone forgot their emotions as the answer struck home.
“What?”
“Why not?” Reginald asked curiously.
“Like, never?” Anne pressed.
“Never,” Cas shook her head
Another long silence, broken by a laugh..
“Oh, ho! A holy woman!” Dacula cheered, raising a flask up in congratulations before shotgunning the thing. “Now that’s a reason to drink. Are you planning to go to the clergy? Was that betrothed of yours so bad as to make you give up on marriage?”
Anne turned. “Leave her alone, Dacula!”
“What?” Dacula shrugged his shoulders. “It was an honest question.”
Eager to avert another argument, Cas interrupted Anne’s forecasted explosion. “Well, I don’t gamble for personal reasons, but to answer your question, Dacula, I’m not planning to go into any clergy. I’m not religious.”
The air froze suddenly, and all the casual chatter stopped.
Cas, sensing the change and realizing it was too late to backtrack, simply waited. She felt an itch to start tapping her foot.
Her mind wanted to over react, to start listing through all the worst possible implications.
It didn’t get a chance to before Anne, voice croaking like a crying puppy, looked at her with heartbroken eyes and asked: “You… you’re a demon worshiper?”
Cas, mid-foot tap, nearly tripped.
“What!” she yelled, looking astounded enough to cow Anne’s unexpected boldness. “Of course I’m not! What does that have to do with anything?”
Anne, cheeks flushed with embarrassment, attempted a composed cough. “Well, It’s just that you said… well, the demon queen hates God, so I thought-”
“I think Cas just meant that she’s not a follower of the Faith.” Reginald, who’d regained his composure quicker than most, worked to smooth out the conversation. “You have to remember she’s from a different continent, and even on this land we have nature worshippers and knowledge bearers and the like. I’m sure Cas’s homeland has a different way of relating to God.”
“Oh…” Anne looked abashed. “Sorry Cas.”
“It’s fine. To be honest, I didn’t even know demons were a thing until I got to this continent.”
“You don’t have any demons where you’re from!” Anne looked at her amazed.
“I don’t see why she would,” Reginald shrugged. “The demon queen’s territory is in the center of our continent, and it’s bordered on either side by free kingdoms. Demons wouldn’t be able to get to the oceans, much less cross the leviathan’s waters.”
Anne ran straight up to Cas’s nose, looking at her with clasped hands and sparkling eyes. “So, you’ve never heard of a demon, ya?”
“Only in stories.” Cas, always uncomfortable with lies, smiled shyly.
“Wooowwww!” Anne danced in a magical circle, drunk on her own imaginations. “Every girl chooses her sweetheart, and no demons. Your land must be a paradise, Cas.”
“Oh, we have our own issues,” Cas answered calmly, trying to temper the girl’s excitement.
“Oh? ‘Where does trouble come from without demons?” Dacula asked, looking up from his coin pile mid-count.
It was an interesting question.
Cas could only shrug sadly. “I suppose we only have human folly to blame.”
“The foolishness of people?” Anne asked, translating the statement twice before repeating it.
“Well… it’s that… sometimes people do evil things,” Cas explained, “and nobody stops them.”
----------------------------------------
“Well, we’re here,” Sara whispered, careful not to disturb the somber atmosphere.
It was nearly dusk, and twenty long shadows stretched behind the group of soldiers as they approached the refugee camp.
In ‘the Faith’, as Reginald had called it, religious services were generally held during the evening.
Many soldiers planned to attend and Cas, despite her impatience, agreed with Sara that visiting with a crowd would be less suspicious.
And so they arrived in the midst of a small group, fashionably late to the party, and it was a party.
A dozen drums, each playing a different, discordant beat, dotted the border of the camp, struggling to be heard over the laughter and general jubilation of the dancing people around. A forest of cooking pits large enough to be mistaken for bonfires stood outside every major tent. Each fire had – strung over it – several dozen pots filled with boiling water and military rations. Steam billowed off from these, mugging the air with a savory smell.
The party circled the entire border of the camp.
Dancing ladies and men created a vivid tapestry of cheerful expressions, as a hundred separate celebrations melted together at the borders to create a continuous circle of cheer.
“Heyyyyyyyyy!”
The noise intensified for a second, as the villagers saw their approach and raised their hands in a welcoming posture.
Sara looked surprised at the proceedings. “My, they certainly are… surprisingly happy.”
“It’s because of the food,” Cas answered mechanically, remembering her time in the village, and the simple happiness bare necessities could evoke when people had been deprived of them for long enough.
Cas almost surprised herself with how easily the answer came.
Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.
She didn’t even have to think about it. The whole world seemed full of answers. They popped out the moment her eyes glazed over even the most innocuous sights.
And what a sight the refugees were.
Their clothes were all in good condition. They weren’t starving, either, but they were hungry, to tell by the universal impatience they showed as their meals cooked, as well as how close they kept to their cooking fires, not allowing even the presence of soldiers to draw them away from their appointed places.
Walking further into the interior. Cas and Sara separated themselves from the rest of the soldiers and detoured to the right.
Cas looked back at the soldiers. They headed towards the center of the camp, where the Priestess’s white palanquin stood like a miniature temple, surrounded on all sides by the white tents of the mobile monastery.
“Don’t worry about them,” Sara said. “Service doesn’t start until after supper, and I doubt they’ll be ready to ring the dinner bell for another hour.” She pointed to the boiling pots.
Cas barely heard. Her anxious, perpetually bored mind soaked in the surroundings.
For instance, there was the fact the refugees were from different places.
Three distinct groups made up the camp.
Wait… how did she know that?
Pausing a moment, Cas tried to remember the racing thoughts which had led to that conclusion.
The main way to tell them apart was that people kept to their own group, creating artificial boundaries amidst the continuous party.
Another tell was the hair styles. Young girls had loose hair, but girls over the age of twelve invariably had braids, and each group had a unique style of braid. Probably, it was a coming-of-age thing.
Although, one of the groups waited until they turned 16 to start braiding hair.
That implied a later coming of age ceremony, which implied a totally different culture, rather than some local variance. She decided to look closer at this group. There was so much about them that was different. For instance, their beads.
In every group, some people wore beads, rosaries, the like. But, in the other two ‘tribes’, men and women carried different shapes on their rosaries. A ten pointed star for men, and a crescent moon for the women.
Here in this third tribe – the sixteens as Cas had named them – men and women both wore the star.
Different religions, perhaps?
That bit of info inspired Cas to start looking around for a different priestess.
When that failed, approached a member of the sixteens and asked.
“Our priest stays in a tent on the outskirts,” the woman answered impatiently, turning back to focus on the cooking fire she tended.
Following the woman’s point, Cas noticed a small tent in the distance. There was a singular aura signature near it.
…
After a minute of walking, they left the camp entirely, and Cas’s overclocked mind ran out of things to notice.
So she paid a bit more attention to Sara, who seemed annoyed by the sudden chore which had been thrown onto her after a day full of meetings.
“You don’t believe me, do you?” Cas sighed, trying to guilt the woman into a cheerier mood.
Sara sighed. “I don't,” she admitted. “But I promised to help introduce you to society. I’d feel at least a little responsible if you went and got executed for murdering a priestess.”
“I’m not going to murder her,” Cas rolled her eyes. “I’m just… suspicious as to why she’d bring something so dangerous to the prince’s brother.”
“Ugh, are you even sure this is the same thing?”
“Positive,” Cas nodded. “I was flying through the desert when I saw the plant. It would’ve bit me in half if Fox hadn’t warned me.”
“Excuse me, Fox?”
“QUIET!” a powerful voice barked.
The source of the voice was an aged man wearing a dark, wool coat that seemed to engulf his skeletal frame.
There was a hardness to his sunken cheeks and bony fingers which implied the starvation he underwent was intentional. A long, scraggly beard – black despite his apparently advanced age – ran down to his lap.
He cut a strange and wild figure. For all that, his closed eyes were peaceful as he roughly manipulated the beads of a rosary along his left hand.
Out of respect, Cas and Sara did remain quiet, and they continued this show for ten minutes until Cas had enough.
“Sir?” she said at last, standing up.
No response.
“My friend Sara and I have come seeking your advice.”
Again, nothing, and Cas was just about to turn around.
Cas, having spent the past ten minutes trying to contain a hyperactive mind, replied in equal measure.
Sara retorted.
Cas looked back at the man, who was still roughly handling his rosary beads in a wild motion.
Cas raised an eyebrow.
Sara, with a knowing grin, said:
…
“Monk,” Cas said, a new confidence in her voice. “We’ve come seeking your advice about an important matter. We believe the priestess is planning something unbecoming of someone in her position.”
Immediately, the monk's eyes lashed open, revealing fiery black eyes. “What of it?” he asked bluntly.
Cas hesitated. “We wanted to gather more information about her-”
“Hah!” he laughed, somehow sounding angry by the act. “That’s just the problem with worldly persons these days!” He stood up straighter, speaking with an assertive, over-enunciated shout.
“‘More information’ she says,” he quoted mockingly. “You people of the world are drunk on information. You’ve hobbled your minds with it. Here, even, when you catch a glimpse of the truth you run around seeking more, more, more!
“Can’t you see?” He looked at them, desperate to be understood. “The whole of it. The whole monastery of hers is crawling with devils. It’s turned into a palace for Satan!”
Cas, holding back her surprise, ignored the mirthful ‘I told you so’ looks coming from Sara on the sidelines.
Carefully, she tried to bring some sense into the conversation. “She’s working with demons, you mean?” Cas asked, more out of politeness than genuine curiosity.
“No!” the man insisted. “I said Satan himself! Demons are angels compared to the light of Satan’s malice.”
“Satan?” Cas nodded considering. And then she stopped considering. “Well, anyway, we actually wanted to ask about a plant-”
“Hahhh!” The man yelled suddenly, leaping up with surprising energy and swinging his rosary like a weapon.
“Back!” he yelled. “Back! I do not welcome you here! You are welcome nowhere!”
Cas stood still. It was easy to tell the man wasn’t addressing the words to her.
Rosary beads beads whooshed through the air around her. The man drew the beads into hand, stepping back, apparently satisfied with his work.
He spat with disgust, looking at Cas with a wartorn expression. ”You should be more careful. Satan hangs like a cloud about you. He strikes when you’re most vulnerable.”
“You… can see Satan?” Cas asked.
“Of course not!” the man spat, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. “Satan can’t be seen. He reveals himself to taunt me. I said go away!” he screamed, turning his head to the side, swinging his rosary with a reflexive action.
Sara looked annoyed.
As interested as Cas was about Satan, she decided to skip the theology for now.
“We came here to ask about a plant the Priestess bought. Do you know anything about that?”
The man looked confused by the question.
“Why would I know about her plants?” he asked. “She spends mountains of gold on gifts for herself. If I were to keep in mind every flower and trinket she bought, I’d have to give up my robe and start keeping ledgers. Her extravagance, the sheer avarice of her heart. Can’t you see that?”
“Well, thank you for your time, then!” Sara projected loudly from the edge of the camp.She looked impatiently over at Cas.
Cas ignored her for the moment. “Has she ever stolen food?”
“Huh?” the man asked.
Cas clarified. “I mean. Has she ever hidden food, or stolen it. Do you think she’s been sneaking rations during this journey of yours?”
Hesitant, the man admitted: “Moderation… is one virtue she holds. A self aggrandizing and conceited virtue, but a virtue nonetheless. She has not stolen food,” he guaranteed easily.
Just then, the dinner bell rang back in the camp, accompanied by the grateful shouts of a thousand hungry souls.
Cas turned to Sara. “We have to hurry”.
----------------------------------------
Cas didn’t sprint, but her pace forced the slightly shorter Sara to race-walk.
“What now?” Sara asked, voice shuddering with her footsteps.
The interior of the camp was nearly abandoned, now that the dinner lines had started forming. The white monastery tents were just up ahead.
“The priestess doesn’t steal food,” Cas said.
It was a terrible explanation, but it was honestly the best Cas was capable of giving; her mind was skimmed with an Aura-boost. Under the conditions, it seemed like the most obvious answer.
“Ok. She doesn’t steal food.” Sara agreed. “So what?”
“Did you notice how close the refugees were to their fires? They probably haven’t had a real meal until the Lieutenant gave them our rations.”
Cas’s eyes flickered about, tracing a path that avoided any interruptions, paying attention to everything and nothing at the same time.
Sara decided to play nice and guide her along. “Ok… they’re hungry. And…”
“If they’re hungry, and the priestess doesn’t steal food, that means the clergy must be just as hungry. They’re not going to be at the monastery. And the priestess isn’t going to be in her tent.”
…
The Priestess’s palanquin was a massive thing. Large, iron bars ran underneath it like skiffs, and the whole rest of the structure hovered several feet above them, seeming almost to float in the center of the camp like a miniature temple.
Despite the wooden frame of the structure, the walls were made of cloth. The cloth blocked aura signatures like the tents, and it introduced a moment of anxiety as Cas entered – letting out a sigh of relief as she stepped into the interior and saw it was empty.
The interior was a large, single, room.
Cas felt a hardwood floor beneath the dark carpet.
“Uh, hum?” A short cough drew her attention back to the entrance, where Sara was removing her shoes.
Abashed, Cas did the same, a strange lack as the articles slipped past her flaring aura.
Item: Boots Unequipped.
-6 Armor +2 Balance
The inside was lit up by a powerful ball of light that floated in the empty air near the ceiling.
The lumber frame was completely visible from the inside. Every inch of it was carved with intricate swirls and geometric patterns. A few tapestries hung at the corners, but otherwise the entire room was unfurnished and undecorated.
Unfurnished, that was, except for the seven foot tall vase which stood innocuously near the back wall.
Peering over the rim of it, the heavy, sap laden cups of the Sand Angler greeted them.
“See!” Cas pointed triumphantly at the thing, moving close enough to touch it. “Tell me this isn’t suspicious,” she challenged.
“It’s not suspicious,” Sara deadpanned, walking closer with crossed arms and a bored expression.
“What? Look at it! The vase is seven feet tall!” She raised her hand to measure the rim of it, and it’s so wide I can’t even put my arms around it. What do you think she’s hiding in there, huh? This plant is hardly a shrub. It shouldn't require a container this large.
“It’s a decorative vase,” Sara replied simply. “It’s the standard when you’re giving flowers to an important person.”
“Ok,” Cas said, unperturbed. “Mind telling me why she decided to make this vase out of an aura-concealing material, then?” Cas put her hand behind the vase, pointing at how the outline of her aura disappeared whenever she did so. “Obviously to hide the body of the sand angler.”
“All vases do that,” Sara explained boredly. “Nobody wants to see the roots of a decorative plant.”
“Hmm…” Cas twitched her hand back and turned away in thought. “It appears she’s thought of everything.”
Sara elected to save the face-palm.
“Ok!" Cas turned back. “The tent.”
“What?”
“Do you remember yesterday, in your tent, when I needed some privacy?”
Cas got the words out in the midst of a dozen other thoughts, and thankfully Sara seemed to be getting her new, more indirect means of communication.
Raising her hand, Sara spread her fingers, casting the spell.
The silence of the room disappeared, replaced by an utterly empty lack-of-noise as the bubble of silence formed around them.
It was a silence as Cas had never experienced before. It made everything seem… still, somehow. She paused a moment to appreciate the utter serenity. She could even hear her own heart beating.
It was beating quite fast, actually. Thundering along like she was sprinting.
Her mind was quick to race over that detail, as she turned back to Sara and inquired.
“This bubble of silence. It works both ways?”
“Yes,” Sara answered, “why-”
The vase broke with a porcelain cry as Cas stabbed her half-molten dagger through it. Sand flooded up to their ankles in a deluge, sliding out to the borders of the silent bubble, where an invisible wall stopped the flood in its tracks..
That detail went ignored, however, as Cas struggled with the ten foot long sand angler that wiggled viciously in her grip.
Flexing panicked muscles, the angler slammed a tail into the sand, shooting upward and slamming Cas painfully against the immovable bubble of silence. The ceiling of the bubble was harder than anything natural could have been, and it drew an unnatural cough from Cas as the beast whipped aside and slammed her hard against the side of the bubble.
“Good, Cas! Keep your Aura percolated!” Sara encouraged with a frantic yell. “You’ll destroy the bubble if you touch it with a regular Aura!”
“Thanks for the advice!” Cas screamed, locking both arms around the head of the creature and bearing her weight upon it. She wrapped a leg around its tail and forced herself back onto the ground, twisting it around to keep the angler’s flaring aura from contacting the bubble.
The sand angler had a long, Eel like body with powerful muscles and jaws large enough to smash a microwave. It had a fully flared, panic stricken aura, and Cas could see it had a higher strength score than her. She felt that same stat as it wrapped its tail around her leg and squeezed hard enough to snap her knee in the wrong direction.
“Ghaa!” Cas restrained her scream, angling her fall so that she slammed back-first against the interior wall of the immovable bubble, keeping the angler – and it’s unpercolated aura – far away from the borders of the spell.
The creature took this advantage to squeeze its tail tighter, wrapping several more times around the mashing noises which were once her leg.
Sara lifted her hands, spreading them apart in a familiar gesture. “Cas! Get that creature’s head away from you!”
In truth – despite expecting it – the creature had surprised even Cas with its sudden appearance.
The advantage of surprise was one thing. But, Cas had started the fight with a dagger in the creature’s throat, and she used that dagger like a bike handle as she dropped her shoulder and twisted the creature’s head away from her, throwing it away.
Just then, an accelerated light and ethereal sound filled the space, and a blast of hot flame appeared, warming Cas’s face for a hot instant, exploding the Creature’s head in the next.
Cas closed her eyes just in time to be coated with blood. Bits of bone dinked against her skin like pellets.
She opened her eyes very slowly. Releasing a hard breath through her nostrils, she splattered more giblets of material onto her tightly pressed lips.
Her dagger, which had previously been stabbed deeply into flesh, now merely smoked in the open air above the creature’s headless throat.
The body twitched and wriggled a few times against her before slackening, unwinding from around her knee as the leg healed and the joint popped back into place with an almost morphenic sensation.
Basking in the afterglow of her victory, as well as the pleasure of no-pain, Cas almost didn’t mind the blood.
In a small triumph to her annoyance: Sara, too, was coated in gore, though not in enough of it to hide the displeased expression she wore under the mask of blood.
Cas stood up straighter, hugging the headless body to her chest as she panted.
“Accusations like that are not to be made lightly,” Cas mimed, twisting her voice into an annoying parody of Sara’s.
“Very funny,” Sara said, accepting the rebuke with calm measure. “I suppose you won’t be letting this go anytime soon.”
“Let me have one day of gloating,” Cas offered. Feeling the creature’s body beginning to slip, she hopped it up into a higher grip. “Do I still need to keep this thing from touching the bubble?”
She looked down at the cylinder of sand which marked the border of the silence.
“No,” Sara sighed. “It only would’ve popped if that thing touched it with a hostile aura. Good job on percolating yours when you smashed into it, by the way. The spell would have broken if you didn't.”
Checking again that the creature no longer had an aura, Cas dropped it. It slammed into the wall, slowly streaking down before thudding into the sand. It was quite a large catch, and it took up most of the walking space as it unfurled.
Despite Sara’s earlier skepticism, Cas found it hard to blame her. After all, changing one’s aura was logically impossible, so… how did this thing manage?
Looking across, the answer became clear.
The plant’s Aura glowed through the pile of sand that covered it. Reaching into the mound, Cas pulled the still living flower out, shaking the sand off the thing as she looked closer.
It was a medium sized plant, which flared out at both ends, one side spreading out into cup flowers, and the other into jagged roots.
Moreover, the plant was still alive and had an active aura, even though the creature was dead.
Not to mention the plant was completely disconnected, nothing like an angler’s lure.
Looking closer at the roots. Cas noticed several large, root-bulbs, a mirror of the ones on the flowers, though uglier and more heavily armored. Bringing it up to her mouth, she tasted the dew dribbling out of them.
“It’s sweet,” Cas noted.
Sara, busy ruining her last remaining kerchief as she wiped the blood off her face, barely gave the proclamation any thought. “That’s nice, darling.”
“No,” Cas said. “I think these are specifically evolved to pump nectar underground. It’s not a shapeshifting angler. It’s a mutualistic relationship! The plant feeds the creature, don’t you see?”
Cas held the roots at Sara so she could appreciate their beauty.
Sara looked at them like they were just a bunch of roots.
“Ugh! But, no, that doesn’t make sense. What would the plant get out of it?” Cas thought back. “Wait….” Cas paused, halting everything. “Wait, I remember learning about this in my botany class. Pollinator syndrome! Of course!
“Don’t you see? If a plant lets any insect pollinate, then that insect might go to a different species of plant right after, wasting the plant’s pollen. On the other hand, if it only lets one species pollinate it, that species specializes!
“... uhm. Basically, it becomes like an exclusive mail carrying service for the plant.” Cas used more accessible language in an attempt to include Sara who, for the life of her, still did not care.
Lost in her own world, Cas mused. “Most plants use restrictive flower shapes or scents, but using an animal to kill unwanted pollinators would also work! Not to mention animal waste is a natural fertilizer. Haha! It was two different creatures all along! The animal hides its aura, and the plant transmits above it. Can you believe it? I wonder how they reproduce?” Cas peered into the surface bulbs, looking for eggs.
“Cas!” Sara blurted, bringing the woman back to reality. “Maybe we can talk about all this after solving the murderous conspiracy, hmm?”
“Oh…” Cas could have sworn the plant wilted in her hand. “I suppose you’re right.” She dropped the flower with a sandy thud.
In all honesty, she wasn’t too worried. Unlike the soldiers – who usually kept their auras restrained – everyone in the refugee camp transmitted freely, and no one had stats worth worrying over, even the priestess. “Honestly,” Cas continued, “I doubt this conspiracy will take anything more than a simple conversation to unravel. I mean, I’m pretty dangerous myself, you-”
It was surprising how quickly Cas forgot the outside world existed.
The effect of the silence was so strong that she was genuinely frightened when she looked aside and saw the priestess in the periphery of her vision.
The woman had the same inscrutable face, baggy eyes and tired composure as she looked over at them.
Sara dropped the bubble. A strong flash filled the space, and sand hissed out in every direction.
The priestess’s eyes turned, flashing to Cas and Sara, and then finally to the headless angler, as if only now noticing them.
Another silence followed, a very heavy one.
Cas felt helpless.
She’d wanted this, hadn’t she? She’d worked hard to get to this very situation, but now that she was here… she just didn’t know what to say.
Sara gracefully took on that burden . “Priestess,” she said respectfully, though notably excluding a bow from the greeting, keeping her eyes attentively locked onto the woman. “I hope we’re not bothering you too much but…” she gestured at the bloody scene. “We’ve discovered something disturbing in your quarters. If you’ll come with us to the Lieutenant's camp, I’m certain we’ll be able to-”
Cas, even as she heard Sara’s words, felt her eyes drawn to the white satchell the priestess carried at her side.
It was an ordinary thing, understated almost. A simple flap ran over it, adorned with an image of a ten pointed star alongside a crescent moon, and it was moving.
No, not moving, but bulging. It warped and distorted, like a molting grub or a belly about to retch.
Suddenly, the flap opened and it started laughing.
It was an uncanny laugh, like a very convincing performance of a human sound.
“You’re dead meat priestess,” the voice growled out in relish, drawing on chords no human could have hoped to prepare. And it was no human that came out of the bursting satchell.
Crescent horns poked through the opening, followed by excited, malevolent eyes and a smile in the same shape at the horns.
It had brilliant white teeth, not at all like the obsidian fangs monsters sported.
“I told you,” it laughed up at the horrified woman. “I told you that you should’ve let me stab that little brat in the throat but no… you had to do things your way and here we are!”
The creature hopped out of the satchel. It flared its aura and the shrinking spell reversed itself.
At its full height, it towered over every other figure in the room. It had a lithe figure one could have called human if the joints and articulations weren’t just so subtly off.
Suddenly, the demon stood up. It seemed to enjoy the attention. Rising up on tiptoes, it reached both hands up, arching back into a tall stretch. “No matter! I, your savior, have arrived!” it let out a genuinely child-like smile, like an excited kid about to play its favorite game. “It’s honestly been so long since I’ve been out of that stuffy bag. No matter. I doubt this will last long.”
The demon snapped a finger, and the world outside fell silent.
“Oh, don’t bother trying to hide it now,” it turned hard eyes onto the priestess, who senslessly kept trying to shut the flap of her bag. “It’s obvious they're onto us. So what’s the point in keeping secrets? We’re going to have to kill them.”
The demon was still audible. It had its tail in a question-mark gesture and gestured invitingly over at them. “Now… which one of you shall I kill first? Oh, no matter, both will do.”
Another snap, and a torrent of flame sprang into existence, engulfing everything as it converged onto their present location.