Why would I bother? Infantile and shattered, it would not hold me back. Tell him we would be stronger.

“You’re lying!” She yells. “I did what you said and you’re lying! You want to eat my mind!” 

Stupid, useless child. Little enough to eat, nothing to sate me.

“Fascinating,” Adrien humms. “Well, I could sit here listening to you jabber on all day, but your sister would have my head. Have fun hunting cultists. Try not to ruin the experiment by dying.” 

He works his spell, all impossible gestures and alien words. Artificial arcane sleep comes over her.

She wakes in her cave. Adrien Adney’s spells are the only time she can sleep, and her cave has no bed. Someone left her in a jumbled heap in the cold and damp of the floor. She straightens her limbs. The joints ache. 

Finally. Useless and lazy, you have work to do. Stand.

“Would you eat my mind?” She asks. She lies on her back, the damp soaking through her shirt and tingling along her spine. 

What is there left to eat? Get up, we have cultists to handle. This is the good part, don't ruin it.

“What if I don’t want to?” She asks. “You want to eat my mind. Maybe I don’t want to do what you say.” There is a battered a chipped earthenware bowl on her table- soup? It smells like soup. Left by Elanor the housekeeper, she assumes- the caretaker some part of her mind supplies. Wholly her mind. The babysitter. The woman whose job is transparently to keep her from causing too many problems…

Your sister will be disappointed, girl.

“So? She’s been disappointed before.” 

Yes. And when she is disappointed, we have less value to her. If she can't trust us with her important missions, there is no reason for the arcanist to let us out. Do you understand, idiot child?

“I understand,” she nods. “I’ll finish the sword.” She stands, ignores the way her joints complain, takes a few bites of Elanor’s soup, and sets to work. 

Sister doesn’t like for her to move through the streets, but leaping from rooftop to rooftop is so much harder. The girl is grumpy, upset, distracted. She doesn’t want to bother. The cloak’s enchantments will shield her from attention anyway, so she doesn’t see that it matters. 

The cobblestone streets are arranged into neat little grids, but those grids change from quadrant to quadrant in order to follow the contours of the high cliff that splits Ardholm City into two parts. Two parts, but not halves. The higher quadrants are fewer and less populated than the lower- themselves smaller than the sprawling foetid slums that hang about the city’s walls like stinking rotting brats clinging to their mother’s skirts. 

The cultists meet in the high quadrants. That had surprised her. The basement of a North End apartment complex. The buildings here are tall- four, sometimes five stories, with slick tiled roofs. That of course is one reason she doesn’t want to try navigating a rooftop route to her destination; risk of falling is greater here, and a fall would hurt more. Wouldn’t kill her of course. Not anymore. But it would hurt. 

The walls of the buildings’ lower floors are made of hard grey stone, stacked and mortared. Too difficult for even her monstrous muscles to trivially breach. The upper floors though are all of overhanging timber and plaster. That, she could shoulder through easily enough, if only her quarry weren’t in a basement. 

People bustle past her, all finely dressed and supremely important. Embroidered velvet vests and soft linen shirts… stylish half-capes and high boots. Long silken dresses and tight whalebone corsets… dainty little colorful shoes and enormous feathered hats. 

Vanishingly few of the men and women here are visibly armed. Perhaps a slender blade concealed within the black lacquered shaft of a cane. Perhaps a short knife under a petticoat. Perhaps. Mostly, if they feel the need for protection, they bring with them hard-eyed mercenaries or house armsmen- and there are indeed a few of those about in their quilted jerkins or tough leathers. They all ignore her, with her tattered trousers and bloodied shirt. Her heavy battlefield sword slung at her hip, her scarred gauntlets, and scroll cases at her belt. It’s the cloak, she knows. It doesn’t render her invisible: that would be much too powerful of an enchantment to lie on a cloak given to a broken little girl. And anyway, there are ways of defeating invisibility. True seeing, detection based on alignment rather than sight, the various monsters of the worlds which hunt by smell or sound. No, her cloak is something simpler. It deflects attention. The pedestrians see her, hear her, brush up against her even when she doesn’t recoil quickly enough. But they don’t notice her. Don’t remember her unless she does something exceptionally stupid…

What do you want?

“What do I want?” She hesitates.

A few of the passers-by turn to look, but she doesn’t hold their interest and they move on, forgetting quickly. 

Yes. What are your goals? Or desires, or whims if you are too small for anything greater. It's never seemed like you have any. Makes you difficult to negotiate with.

“Hmm.” The girl starts moving again. “Candied chestnuts,” she answers after a moment. 

I didn't mean that small. Why, in the names of all of the seventeen hells and of all the demons imprisoned there?

“Idiot child,” she sighs, though the voice hadn’t said it this time. “How should I know? Because they don’t hurt us, I guess. Candied chestnuts.” 

Candied chestnuts. Hm.

No malice, this time.

Handle this by my preference, and I will get us as many candied chestnuts as you could desire. Enough to fill your mad, broken heart.

“Yes,” the girl allows. “But I control the legs. And the arms. And the rest of the body. You just read the magic scrolls and say mean things. I don’t need mean words to get chestnuts.” 

You doubt me? I could obtain you chestnuts using mean words. But no, I know many things that would not occur to you in your madness.

“I know about money, I just forget sometimes.” 

Forget?