The Boon, a gift of pure chaos from Lord Kasian, was a fickle thing. One moment, Veridia was a ghost moving through the Silver Coalition's forward camp. The next, the magic sputtered. The shimmering veil of un-being around her flickered, dissolved into static, and winked out of existence. She was solid. She was visible. And she was standing directly in the path of a lone Paladin, his form stark and righteous under the cold moonlight.
A theatrical gasp echoed in her mind, Seraphine materializing at the edge of her vision. "Oh, dear sister. It seems your Gambler's luck has just run out. This should be a short, if pious, final episode."
The guard was Castian the Vowed. His single, good eye widened, not with the simple surprise of a sentry, but with the horrified recognition of a crusader finding his holy war standing before him. He didn't shout an alarm. He didn't call for aid. This was not a matter of camp security. This was a personal sacrament.
His hand went to his greatsword's hilt, the movement slow and deliberate. The blade slid from its sheath with a whisper of steel, its edge gleaming with a cold, righteous fury. Veridia's heart hammered a frantic rhythm against her ribs. She was weak, the dregs of her last meal already dissipating. She couldn't fight him; she couldn't flee. The hunter had found his prey. Her only weapon was the one he had sworn his life to destroy.
***
Castian advanced, his greatsword held in a low, ready guard. He was a walking bulwark of faith, each step a judgment. Veridia did not cower. She held her ground, her expression shifting from shock to a carefully crafted mask of tragic vulnerability. Her first strike would not be with claw, but with a word.
"That blade must be so heavy," she said, her voice a low, intimate whisper that absorbed the surrounding sounds, creating a pocket of unnerving silence. He faltered, his advance slowing by a fraction. She pressed the attack. "Your faith… does it keep you warm at night, Castian? Or is it just another wall in your prison?"
His jaw tightened, the muscle flexing under his scarred skin.
"Blasphemy," he hissed, but the word lacked the fire it should have held. It was a line read from a script he was no longer sure of.
"How quaint," Seraphine's voice dripped with amusement in her mind. "She's trying to talk her way out of it. Let's see how that works against a man who has sworn to kill you on sight."
As he hesitated, caught between the certainty of his vow and the venom of her question, Veridia closed the distance. She moved with a liquid grace he was unprepared for. Her hand, warm and alive, came to rest on the cold, consecrated steel of his gauntlet. A profane act.
Castian froze, his breath catching in his throat. A violent tremor ran up his arm. He did not pull away. He stared down at her hand on his, at the impossible contrast of her soft, living flesh against his unyielding armor.
*There.* The thought was a spark of triumph in Veridia's mind. *The first crack in the cathedral.* She could feel it through their point of contact—a flicker of doubt, a sweet, intoxicating note of corruption she could now play like a harp. This was no longer about survival. This was a performance, a masterpiece of defilement she was composing.
She slid her hand from his gauntlet up the plates of his vambrace, her fingers tracing the holy etchings as if they were lines of a poem. "You've given up everything for this, haven't you?" she murmured, her face tilted up to his, her eyes wide with a feigned, tragic understanding. "Tell me, saint. Was it worth it?"
He finally moved, shoving her back, but the motion was clumsy, lacking the conviction of his initial advance. "Silence, creature."
Veridia simply smiled, a slow, knowing curve of her lips. She began to unlace the leather ties of her ragged tunic, letting it fall from her shoulders to pool at her feet. She stood before him, naked and unashamed, a living sacrament of everything his faith denied.
"You see a monster," she whispered, taking a step closer. "But I see a man. A man who bleeds. A man who aches." Her hands came to rest on his breastplate, flat against the cold, unyielding silver. "A man who *wants*."
His breath was ragged, his single eye wide with a war of emotions. Fury, disgust, and a dark hunger he had chained in his soul for years. Her hands slid from his chest, down to the thick leather belt at his hips. His own hands, still clad in steel, came up as if to stop her, but they hesitated, hovering uselessly at his sides.
She worked the buckle, her movements slow, deliberate. "Let me show you a different kind of prayer," she breathed, her lips ghosting near his ear. She knelt in the dirt before him. He was trembling, a great shudder wracking his body. His sword was forgotten, its tip resting in the dust.
Her mouth closed over the hard ridge of his arousal through his roughspun trousers. He let out a choked, guttural sound—a noise caught somewhere between a prayer and a curse. She worked him through the fabric until his control finally, violently, shattered. His hands fisted in her hair, not to pull her away, but to press her closer, his hips moving in a single, spastic lurch of pure, unwilling need.
With a low growl of triumph, she freed him from his clothes. He was thick and hard, a pillar of rigid, desperate flesh. She took him into her mouth, her tongue tracing the engorged head, tasting the salt of his skin, the flavor of his reluctant desire. A roar was torn from his throat, and he collapsed against her, his armored weight driving her to the ground.
He was on top of her in an instant, a desperate, fumbling animal of pure, frantic need. He tore at her, his movements clumsy, his breath coming in ragged pants. He positioned himself at her entrance, a hot, demanding pressure against her slick folds.
He plunged into her with a single, brutal thrust, burying himself to the hilt. Veridia cried out, a sharp sound of pain and exquisite victory. She wrapped her legs around his waist, her nails digging into the leather pauldrons on his back, pulling him deeper. He began to move, a frantic, punishing rhythm, each thrust a violation of his sacred vows. He was not making love to her; he was trying to destroy the sin within himself, to extinguish the fire she had lit by burying it in her flesh.
In her mind, Seraphine's mockery had long since faded into a stunned, fascinated silence. The only feedback Veridia registered now was the glorious, soaring metrics of Patron approval, a silent, golden applause for her masterpiece of corruption.
"Say it," she hissed in his ear as he hammered into her, his body shuddering on the edge of release. "Pray to your new god."
His release was a violent, full-body convulsion. He screamed her name into the night, a raw, broken sound of absolute surrender as he emptied himself deep inside her.
***
The aftermath was a ruin. Castian lay weeping against the cold earth, his immaculate armor in disarray, his body trembling with the aftershocks of his transgression. Veridia rose, standing over him not with pity, but with the cold, satisfying triumph of an artist admiring her finished work.
She felt the surge of Essence course through her, a vintage so potent it made her dizzy. It was laced with the flavor of a shattered soul, of broken faith and exquisite despair—a rush more powerful and nourishing than any she had ever known. The Sieve in her soul was, for a moment, overflowing.
As she turned to leave the broken man to his new gods, a dark light caught her eye. The silver holy symbol, torn from his neck during their struggle, lay half-buried in the mud. It was no longer silver. It pulsed with a faint, violet-black luminescence, humming with a dissonant energy that vibrated in her bones.
Veridia smiled, a true and predatory smile. She reached down and plucked her new trophy from the dirt. She hadn't just survived. She had created a weapon.