Anastacia stared at the rice pudding she had been given for breakfast, something about the white slop seemed extremely suspicious. Not that there was anything wrong with it, it just seemed awfully Mournvalley-like to her. “Are you sure people out here eat this? It just seems so… boring.” She asked and watched lumps of rice drip down from her spoon and splat into the mush in her bowl.

“Mournvalley doesn’t have a monopoly on boredom. Besides, rice pudding is a good way to start your day and not boring at all. Your coffee and cookie-based diet wouldn’t give you the energy to shovel the snow every morning.” Gilbert defended the dish while scraping out the last few bits from his bowl. “Back where I’m from, we used to fill pastries with this. I’ve tried to get Rosie to make them too but apparently it takes too much time.”

“Makes sense that something this boring would come from the same place as you.” Anastacia grinned and finally took a spoonful but immediately spit it out. “Eww… It even tastes boring. It’s like eating mud but it doesn’t even have the gritty texture.”

“That makes it sound like you’ve eaten mud at some point, and you’re just being insulting now. If you want to spice it up a bit, some people put some cinnamon on it and kids always like a bit of sugar in theirs. Now I like mine plain, it took a few tries for Rosie to perfect the recipe, but now it’s pretty much just as good as back when I was young. Though there’s still the question of whether it should be made on a stove or in the oven. Personally, I like the crust it gets in the latter case, but there are people who absolutely despise it.” The old adventurer prattled on even though Anastacia had disappeared into the kitchen as soon as sugar was mentioned.

She returned with a cup full of the stuff and proceeded to pour the entire thing into her bowl.

“That’s disgusting.” Gilbert commented and disapprovingly watched as Anastacia started eating the sugary mess she had created.

They were interrupted by something slamming against the inn’s door on the outside. After a bit of scraping and banging, the door finally opened and Xamiliere floated in. She greeted everyone while slowly drifting past the tables until reaching the other end of the tavern and crashing into the shelves full of empty bottles and other paraphernalia that had worn out in use and were now used as decoration, breaking quite a few of them. Rosie watched the whole thing happen but didn’t feel like lifting a finger to either help the spriggan or save her possessions, simply because she thought it’d be funny, and the subsequent cleaning would give her something to do. The innkeeper picked up a broom from the corner and slapped Xamiliere towards Gilbert and Anastacia with it before starting to sweep the broken glass from the floor.

“Hey guys. I’ve completed my mission. That weirdo is waiting for Anna about a kilometer away from the gate. He was going to return here but I figured it’s better if he just stays outside. He said you have till noon.” The spriggan reported and tossed a folded map on the table. “On that map is the route he took during the evening and night, I marked the spots he stopped in.”

Gilbert stopped her and anchored the spriggan onto the table with the rope dangling from her waist and took a look at the map. The route was at least forty kilometers long and mostly followed the roads right outside the border of Valor. “This is a long trip to do in a single night, did he have a horse?” He asked.

“You wish. He killed a deer, resurrected it and rode it around. He also ate a part of it! It was both convenient and slightly disturbing. Anyway, I stayed back to avoid being seen but had a look around the spots he stopped in. He didn’t really seem to do anything odd, so I really have no idea what he’s got planned for you.” Xamiliere explained and scooped a bit of Anastacia’s rice pudding with her finger. The sweetness was clearly to her liking, which made sense since spriggans enjoyed honey as a treat, even if they didn’t have to eat to survive. She grabbed the bowl and floated up, so Anastacia couldn’t reach her.

Gilbert rubbed his beard and stared at the map. “What’s his range like? If you look at the first stop he made, it’s about ten kilometers from this little hamlet here. Then he changed the direction and started to circle the hamlet at that distance, until he got here… About ten kilometers from this checkpoint along the border. I think that might be his effective range, so at this point both the hamlet and the checkpoint would be within his grasp. Would he actually go that far just to piss you off?” He wondered and took out his pipe.

“Absolutely, he’d kill everyone there in a drop of a hat if that meant he got what he wanted. And ten kilometers sounds about average for his kind.” Anastacia sighed. “Not going doesn’t sound like an option either.”

“You could just stop him before he takes you to that spot. You have about fifteen kilometers just to get there, so just see if you can figure out what he’s about and decide what to do with him. Shouldn’t be a problem as long as you’re close to him, right?” Gilbert suggested and waved for Rosie to get them drinks. “I’d advice against killing him if at all possible though. He might be troublesome, but based on what you told us about your conversation with him, he might be the closest thing to an actual ally you have in Mournvalley. Coquelicot probably wouldn’t outright attack you the second your work there is done, but there’s no way she will ever actually forgive you for what happened with her husband. Then there was the business with Alice, I don’t think that left you in too good of a light with the blue-robed ones either. But Periwinkle, you becoming this ‘White One’ seems like a big deal to him, so your wellbeing probably has more pull on him than you’d think.”

Anastacia frowned and was visibly disgusted by the idea of having to be friends with Periwinkle, but understood what Gilbert meant. She had ruined her relations with both the new inquisition and Coquelicot, which left her in an extremely unfortunate place when Amaranth dies. She will be stuck in a castle, surrounded by Coquelicot’s army of necromancers, with everyone in charge having a reason to get rid of her. Having someone who has a reason to keep her alive there didn’t sound too bad. Even if the said someone was among the worst of the worst. “Guess I better go then, don’t want to keep him waiting.” She shrugged and got up.

King stood up as well and followed her to the door before getting stopped by Anastacia.

“You probably shouldn’t come. I don’t think I’ll be in any danger since he has nothing on me, but what he can do is threaten everyone else to get at me. I hate to say this, but I don’t want you there in case he somehow outplays me and makes me snap. It happened before with the pair of inquisitors and it was a miracle I didn’t just kill everyone then.” She explained and pressed her forehead against King’s chest. “I promise I’ll be okay. Just help Yulia and Rosie out while I’m gone, okay?”

The simulacrum seemed about as distressed as one of his kind can but obeyed in the end and returned to his seat.

On the way to Periwinkle, Anastacia played out multiple ways to deal with the situation in her mind and came to a conclusion that the best way to thwart his plans was to stop him somewhere between ten kilometers away from valor and the spot where he’d presumably be able to reach both the hamlet and the checkpoint. That way he would have no leverage in the confrontation – hopefully, and could be convinced to just drop his plans.

The masked necromancer excitedly waved at Anastacia when he saw her coming and jogged over to meet her. “Good morning! I hope you ate well, we’ve got a bit of a walk ahead of us.” He said happily and gestured in the direction of the point Gilbert had assumed Periwinkle would take her to.

Anastacia tried to smile, but even a blind person could tell how forced it was. “Should I have packed camping gear then?”

“Maybe, this might be an overnighter depending on how fast you walk. I’ve got water for both of us though and food won’t be a problem for our kind.” Periwinkle said and handed over a canteen to Anastacia.

They walked in a straight line towards the spot for a couple of hours, but since Anastacia still lacked skills in navigation, she had no idea how close they were. The first thing she noticed about the route was how there was no living creatures anywhere, or dead ones for that matter; Periwinkle had somehow cleared their surroundings of all material, which made Anastacia realize that he no longer had any bone dust on him either. It made sense for the weaker Periwinkle to deprive her of anything she could use against him, but the ace in Anastacia’s sleeve was her fire magic and there was no way to prevent her from using it. She made a smug grin, which then turned into a frown when she realized that they were walking on a small path in the middle of extremely dry and flammable forest.

If she hadn’t been so occupied with worrying, Anastacia’s opinion on Periwinkle would have probably improved slightly, as the inquisitor spend most of the time prattling on about things he had found out about the world outside Mournvalley. Many of his observations were same that Anastacia had made on her initial trip to Valor with Gilbert.

“The nature here is so green! It’s amazing. You definitely made the right choice when you escaped. During the night, there was this really nice breeze from the north, it didn’t smell anything like back home. I hope I get missions outside the borders in the future too! There’s so much to see.” He happily explained, every now and then stopping to look at a flower, rub a tree trunk or poke things with a small stick he had picked up.

Once Anastacia was somewhat confident that they probably were far enough away from Valor so that confronting Periwinkle was at least somewhat safe, she made one final scan of the area and stopped. “Just stop. I know about your plan to take me to a spot where you can threaten innocent people to see what I’d do. I’m not going to let that happen.” She blurted out suddenly.

“What? Oh, why did you have to ruin this already?” Periwinkle sighed and sat down on fallen tree. “I honestly just wanted to have a bit of a chat while walking through this beautiful forest.”

“Sure, whatever. I know your plan already so let’s just call it here. You can go your own way and I’ll go back. I’ll be ready to leave with you once my week is over, so you won’t get shit from Coquelicot, but you don’t get to involve others in your insane quest to make me a part of your cult.” Anastacia said and turned back while constantly monitoring the situation in case Periwinkle attacked out of desperation.

She heard Periwinkle sigh and suddenly a piercing pain in her neck. It felt like a beet had stung her, but there were no bees around, she was sure of it. Anastacia plucked a small metallic needle off her neck and turned to periwinkle as her vision started to darken.

The inquisitor had placed the stick he had ‘found’ along the way on one of the holes in his mask. “Blowpipe.” He pointed out and waved the stick. “I can't believe that worked... Conventional weaponry is one of those things we kind of dropped the ball with, but it’s quite clear that even this toy can be effective because we can’t really notice if someone is using one. It’s one of the things about Coquelicot I respect, she understands that we’re weak against stuff like this and is making plans to keep us with the times.”

Anastacia tried to toss a fireball in retaliation, but all strength had left her body and she simply fell over into the dirt.

“Don’t worry about it too much, the poison on the dart was not lethal, you’ll just sleep for a few hours.” Periwinkle laughed and walked up to Anastacia, who could barely make out his words anymore. “Oh and about you figuring out my plan, this was my plan. You’ll wake up not far from here and then we can proceed with your training – hopefully with a bit more enthusiasm this time.”