Even though Dellia disavowed any words or actions that happened while she was drunk, she came back the next night for more. And the next, and the next. She still insisted that she hated them, but there was definitely room to work with there. 

Still, probably better not to rush future conversion attempts. For now, she would take it slow. Just focus on being a good initiate, not commit any violent crimes, and act friendly with those around her. 

Part of being a good initiate was practising her magic diligently. At least, her wind and water magic. For some strange reason the Vestal order didn’t have any training materials for dark magic (fortunately, Kin-Galud was more than capable of making up the slack).

They’d spent most of the first month on refining the basics- conjuring their elements and moving them around a bit. Now, they were called upon to demonstrate their abilities before a group of elders, who would then determine where they should focus their future efforts. 

Sionann was called up first, for some reason. She was a bit nervous- not because she was worried she wouldn’t be good enough, but because she was worried about being too good. Her power and control were considerably augmented by Kin-Galud’s boons, placing her head and shoulders above not only the other initiates, but also most junior Vestals, from what she had seen. 

She obviously didn’t want to advertise said unnatural competence, so she made a point during training to do exactly what was requested, and no more. Now, however, she was being asked to push her limits. 

Water shield? Gasps, whispers about how stable the edge was. She let the edges fray a bit, and dropped the shield after a few seconds, ‘exhausted’. Wind barrier- just big enough to cover herself, but even that was considered fairly impressive. Ice? Sorry, she hadn’t practised with ice (which was actually true- the ability to bind people with ice was much more finicky than binding them with darkness, she found). 

After ‘doing her best’ with a few other techniques, she was recommended to focus on her defensive magic- one of the elders specifically expressed their belief that she would be a great protector of Reme one day. 

Sionann carefully controlled her expression. 

As Sionann watched her fellow initiates showing off their magic, she realised she’d never given much thought to the fact that… between the ten of them, the initiates covered every element and element pair. Including the rare pairs of Earth+Air (Helvia, who was nice enough) and Fire+Water (Flavia, who was somewhat reserved). 

That seemed significant. Portentous, although what it portended, she didn’t know. The weird thing… she was an imposter, she had never had a spirit pact. If the Fates had brought the ten of them here for something, then the Fates had apparently taken into account the fact that one of them would be the servant of a demon. 

“Weird coincidence, how balanced we are, isn’t it?”, she remarked to Helvia, who was standing to her right. 

“Balanced?”, Helvia replied, confused. 

“I mean in elements.”

“What do you- oh, I see. Huh, I never noticed.”

…strange. Sionann turned to Genucia(Air) to her left. “Did you notice we were perfectly balanced in elements?”

Genucia thought for a moment. “I hadn’t. Kinda weird, I guess.”

…okay, that couldn’t be normal. Not only were they balanced, but apparently people hadn’t noticed that fact. She made a mental note to ask Kin-Galud if it knew what was up when she next visited. 

It did not. It hadn’t been aware of it either, since Sionann hadn’t consciously been, and what elements her peers had hadn’t been at the forefront of her mind at any point. It did have a theory, however. It would require some impressive machinations, but there were beings in the world that could pull such a thing off. Notably, there is a very rare type of spirit that could mess with people’s perception- not in the same way as a demon or angel, but well enough to steer people’s behaviour in subtle ways. Indeed, in some ways it was better, since it was harder to notice. 

[I’ve never heard of that], Fírinne thought. [What elements does it have?]

Well, that’s the thing. It doesn’t. It is a null spirit. They were almost impossible to detect, unless you were specifically looking for them. There had been one on the angel’s side when it fought Kin-Galud, though it suspected it wasn’t active currently. 

[Couldn’t the angel itself be behind the manipulation?], Sionann suggested. 

An angel would rather cease to exist than assist a demon in any way, no matter what purpose it served- so it wouldn’t allow Sionann’s actions to play a part in its schemes. Furthermore, an angel would’ve co-opted the Vestal order to its needs, and reinstated the proper blood sacrifices.

“Hang on, blood sacrifices?”, Dellia asked (still uncomfortable with telepathic communication). 

“Right, apparently angels feed on blood or something. That’s why the demon-detection chant doesn’t work, you have to spill your own blood to get any response.” 

“That’s a lie, it has to be.”

“I’m not sure if Kin-Galud can lie, actually.”

Oh, it absolutely can. It just doesn’t need to. 

[You’re not helping]

Honesty is the best policy. It would be a lie to say it couldn’t lie. 

“aaaaaaa, y r u makin dis so hard!?”

They moved on. Whatever was behind the weird situation, be it the Fates, a Null Spirit, or something else, they couldn’t do anything about it right now. They could only move forward, and try to figure out the manipulator’s plan along the way. 

Thus, Dellia proceeded to harvest several branches from the now thoroughly corrupted pine tree. From a distance they still looked normal, but up close one could see the bark twisting and rippling, hear the wordless whispering, and feel the malignant energy that suffused every needle.  

They took the branches, along with the remaining corruption seeds, through the Fey Wood to the vicinity of the Divine Grove. Obviously, since the barrier around the grove was being maintained by pine trees, holding a corrupted pine branch would shield them from its effects. Basic sympathetic counter-resonance, come on. I shouldn’t need to explain this. 

The branches did slowly shrivel as they got closer, but really only Dellia needed to get within spitting distance of the trees. While Sionann and Fírinne kept watch, she grafted one corruption seed per sacred pine, of which there were twelve. This required some effort, as the trees were obviously pretty resistant to eldritch corruption. Fortunately, despite what some philosophers had postulated, trees did not have minds (at least not of a sort that could consciously reject corruption)- so while it required effort to get the seeds to ‘stick’, once they were in, they were in. 

It would take some time before the seeds had any effect, of course. To slightly accelerate the process, they grafted the remaining four seeds to trees between the Divine Grove and the Fell Wood, making a sort of corruption pathway. 

Excellent work, Kin-Galud conveyed. For the next step, Dellia would need to practise her ability to excavate, while Sionann would have to harvest… let’s say one urna¹Roman unit of volume, roughly 13 litres (27 pints for colonials) of blood. From sapient beings. With or without consent, it didn’t matter in this case. 

[I’m sorry, what? How am I supposed to do that?] 

You cut people, you collect their blood in a jug. A funnel might help. You’ll need about three or four victims. 

[You know what I meant. How am I supposed to get away with that? That’s not the same as stab-and-run.]

Reme is a big city, there’s bound to be people who no one would miss. Just lure or drag them into the sewers or an abandoned building, then get to work. Fírinne could help, if she’s not too squeamish. 

“cudnt u hav dis conversation out loud, den i cud cover my eres n pretend i cant here u”

Fírinne patted Dellia on the back. “We don’t actually have to kill anyone, right? If we just take a little blood from a lot of people, that would still work.”

It’s a lot harder to get away with that sort of thing if you leave witnesses. You don’t want to deal with that hassle, do you?

“If we wear masks and different clothes, nobody will know.”

So long as it gets done.