Cloak and Dagger 4 (1/2)

The town of Witchaven was a settlement that had about three and a half thousand people living in it.

That truly was anything and everything the people who passed through this place could say about it. Nestled at the foot of the northern Sawblade Mountains, the only remarkable thing about this remote community was how unremarkable it was. It was self-sufficient, with a stable population that woke up at dawn and went to bed at sunset, had a below-average crime rate and the only thing that could be called a ‘local specialty’ was boredom. Well, that and a secret cult of indeterminate size and reach that used an unholy power to further their own malefic goals, but that was just as unlikely to attract tourists.

Yet it was precisely that trait that had earned Witchaven a visit from one very notable individual.

Having spent the last four days following the lead it obtained in Azurvale, Boxxy somehow arrived here, in this remote little mountain town. It had infiltrated and gutted two tiny sects of the ‘One Truth’ cult on the way here, but those only had three or four people in them at most. Or at least that was how many were left after most of their congregations had gone off and died in the elven capital. Nevertheless, following up on the clues obtained at both sites pointed to this place as being their origins.

Not that the fanatics’ presence was obvious, of course. Even Xera, for all her life experience and ability to read people, failed to see anything out of place. She was currently perched atop the roof of the Witchaven town hall, the tallest building around at only three stories high. Having hidden herself from view with one of her illusions, she had a perfect vantage point to observe the people below. Try as she might, however, her eyes, insight and intuition alike only saw dull people shuffling about in a dull manner as they went about their dull lives on this dull afternoon. The place was so quiet and overwhelmingly boring that the djinn felt like she was about to unlock the ultimate power a sloth demon could have - falling asleep on their feet.

She probably would have already done it if not for that nagging feeling coming from next to her.

“If you keep staring at me like that, I might start getting the wrong idea,” she said in an exhausted tone.

Xera didn’t need to see Drea to feel those numerous bug-eyes glaring at her hard enough to bore through the side of her skull. The stalker was supposed to help her keep watch and look for traces of that peculiar magic the cultists used, but her efforts were just as fruitless as Xera’s. Hence why she had the luxury of giving her co-contractor the octuple stink-eye while under the cover of her Clear Ice Skill. Something she had been doing ever since they left Azurvale.

“Come on, out with it,” Xera beckoned. “If you have something to say to me, now’s as good a time as any.”

“Tktktktktkt,” a quiet chitter rolled across the roof. “You should’ve let Boxxy enjoy its nectar.”

“That’s what this is about? You do realize that stuff would likely get Master - our Master - killed? Or worse, enslaved by some tree-bitch?”

“So? If you take the fun out of life, tktktktk, then what’s the point in living?”

The webstalker was speaking from the perspective of an immortal demon. Which was to say, one who feared boredom more than death. Seeking a way to distract themselves from the soul-crushing tedium brought on by centuries of existence within an immaterial realm was why fulfilling a desire was so important to a demon. Not to mention the main reason any of them agreed to summoning contracts in the first place. Denying a denizen of the Beyond what they sought was therefore one of the best ways to hurt them on a spiritual level. Barring literally soul-crushing cursed weapons, of course.

Which was to say that, as someone whose gluttony rivaled or perhaps even surpassed Boxxy’s, Drea felt that banning the creature from the delicious nectar it enjoyed so much was practically a sin.

“It’s unlike you to be so melodramatic, sweetie,” the djinn scoffed at her. “It isn’t like Master doesn’t have other things it can enjoy.”

“Yeah? Tktkt, and which one of those are you going to take away next?”

“Which ever one endangers my Master’s physical or mental wellbeing. And you and I both know it won’t stop such things on its own.”

For all of its rapid development, varied experiences, powerful instincts and numerous feats, Boxxy was still only three years old. Though sinister and on a scale most mortals would fail to comprehend, its goals and behaviors were quite childish at their core. It formed habits quite easily, and as demonstrated by that Honeydew debacle, could be incredibly stubborn in correcting them even if it recognized them as harmful.

“Tktktk, so what? You’ll just step in whenever you feel like it until the only thing it can enjoy is, tktkktk, a Snack?”

“Wait, I get it,” Xera smirked. “You’re jealous, aren’t you?”

“… Am not,” was Drea’s slightly delayed reply.

“Oh, this is priceless! The big, mean, spider-lady is worried she might get pushed aside because of me!”

“Master!” the arachnid demon reached out telepathically. “Xera is shirking her duties and not keeping an eye on the town again!”

“Snack,” Boxxy immediately responded, “I gave you and Claws loose orders so you have a bit more freedom when investigating, not so that you could slack off. Do you need to spend a week in Storage again?”

The djinn’s playful attitude and mischievous smile both sank like a ship being dragged to the ocean floor by a kraken. Being forced to dwell within her master’s personal pocket dimension was not the type of punishment she was a fan of. It was a dark, silent and cramped space that deprived one of most forms of sensory input. The perfect place to lock away an uppity familiar who was obsessed with revelling in the sensations her conjured flesh provided her with. She could theoretically break out of there by force, but the commands that normally accompanied each ‘visit’ made that impossible.

“I apologize, Master. This town is so monotonous that it is easy to get distracted.”

“Would you say it’s perhaps too monotonous?” Boxxy wondered.

“Perhaps. These backwater human towns are supposed to be dull and uninteresting, but this does feel like an extreme case.”

“Yeah, that’s the feeling I’m getting from roaming the streets. You’d think there’d be at least one person making a racket because their meat was overcooked or because they got drunk way too early and slapped a waitress’s behind or something.”

The thought that some kind of mystical compulsion was the source of this unnatural atmosphere of mild contentment did cross Boxxy’s mind, but there was one problem with that.

“Claws, still no signs of suspicious magical activity?”

“None, Master. No matter how much I look, I can’t spot anything out of place.”

Drea had been meticulously scanning the place from the rooftops since morning. She hadn’t stopped doing so even while arguing with Xera, which was why she felt ratting her colleague out for slacking could not backfire. However, the djinn had wonderfully deflected the accusation while also changing the topic to something more productive, which the webstalker wasn’t going to complain about.

“Wait, I think I see something!” the stalker suddenly declared. “Well, someone, I should say.”

“Describe them,” Boxxy commanded.

“It’s an adventurer-looking woman crossing the square in front of the town hall. Black hair, slightly tan complexion, wearing a worn out set of gray leather armor.”

Xera scanned the plaza beneath her, easily locating the person in question. She didn’t seem at all out of place to her, though. Definitely wouldn’t have taken notice of her if not for Drea’s words.

“… Is it the one that just stopped to fiddle with her belt?” the doppelganger asked.

“Yes! Do you see her, Master?”

“No, I AM her. I’m posing as a rookie Ranger on a Quest that’s just passing through.”

“Oh… Sorry,” Drea said dejectedly.

“Why did you think Master’s disguise was worth pointing out?” Xera chimed in.

“Excellent question. Claws?”

“I’m not really sure, there’s just something about your magical aura that made you stand out.”

“But I’m not giving off any ‘magical aura’ or anything. I make doubly sure of that every time I walk into a populated area.”

After all, giving off anomalous magical emissions was hardly going to be helpful towards keeping the shapeshifter’s true identity hidden. Even if enlightened beings were born incapable of perceiving such things by themselves, there were ways and means of expanding one’s awareness of the world around them. The Legendary Perception Perk was one such example, but there were plenty of other, more easily attainable options. Certain Skills, magic items, tamed monsters and contracted demons could easily help one detect fluctuations in the ambient mana.

Hence why Boxxy was rather peeved to hear that it was still giving off suspicious signals despite its best efforts to hide such things.

“… Master, can you have Xera fly me up so I can get an aerial view of the town?” Drea requested after a few silent moments.

“Why?” it asked curiously.

“I think it will help me find the place we’re looking for.”

Boxxy and its two familiars had split up earlier that morning in order to cover more ground while searching Witchaven for any signs of the One Truth cult’s presence. One would think a bunch of gibbering idiots skulking about in dark cloaks and robes would have left some sort of trail behind, but that wasn’t actually the case. There were no dubious rumors, unexplained occurrences, mysterious disappearances or other such telltale signs of a malicious underground organization. It was almost as if the cult wasn’t even here, but the mimic was absolutely convinced otherwise. All the clues it had gathered pointed towards this crappy little town as harboring their origin, the proverbial end of the road. Meaning that, if the location wasn’t the issue, then perhaps the trio’s lack of results was due to them approaching this investigation from literally the wrong angle.

Alternatively Boxxy could just systematically wipe out the entire population, but it lacked the manpower to do so without any of them getting away, so it relegated that idea to ‘Plan B.’

“Okay,” it agreed. “Snack, do whatever Claws needs from you. I’m going to loiter around the plaza while you do that.”

Having obtained the necessary permissions, Drea had Xera give her a vertical piggyback ride. Something the djinn struggled to accomplish. While she could float around lazily of her own volition, carrying something as heavy as a person-sized spider-demon required a good bit of effort. It was the first time in a long while that her grunting and panting wasn’t caused by her perversions. They still sounded the same though, which her arachnid passenger found mildly uncomfortable. It wasn’t until ten minutes later when she reached an altitude of about seven hundred meters that her passenger finally told her this was high enough.

“Master, I have good news,” Drea reported. “I’ve located the cultist hideout.”

“Excellent! Where is it?”

“I, uh, think you’re already standing in it.”

“… What?”

A webstalker’s magic-sensitive eyesight was an exceptional sense capable of perceiving nuances in an environment’s ambient mana from kilometers away. The closer one got to the thing they were studying, the more details they could make out, such as the ‘flavor’ of the enchantments bestowed upon a piece of gear. Drea’s eyes accomplished this by contrasting an object or a person’s unique mana signature against the background noise of the ambient mana. That was why the cultists that were lurking around Azurvale stood out so much. It was like swimming in a communal pool and coming across a patch of suspiciously warm water. However, what would happen if the pool in that analogy was filled with nothing but warm water?

“The entire town is blanketed in a thin layer of the cult’s miasma,” Drea explained. “I couldn’t tell the difference from the ground, because every single object or person in there was carrying it.”

“I see… So the only reason I stood out earlier was because I was ‘clean?’”

“Yes, Master.”

“What about Snack? Shouldn’t you have already noticed that she doesn’t fit in?”

“Well, yes, I did, but other demons always stand out like sore thumbs in my eyes, so I failed to see how her case would be abnormal.”

Part of Boxxy wanted to point out that there were plenty of ‘abnormalities’ with Snack, but now wasn’t the best time to argue semantics. This revelation meant that, rather than being a secretive sect run by a small part of the population, the One Truth cult encompassed the entire township of Witchaven. No wonder why none of the citizens it had been subtly questioning said anything - it was because they were all in on it. Whether those people were consciously aware of their allegiance or not was another question entirely, though not one Boxxy was overly concerned with.

It mattered not if the enemy numbered thirty or three thousand, any who dared to attack it would be slaughtered down to the last man, woman and child.

Probably also their pets.

And house plants.

Just in case.

“Claws, can you see any concentrations of magical energy from up there?”

“I’m afraid not, Master. It is… difficult to gauge.”

“Unfortunate, but no matter. Now that I know the entire town is affected, I know just where to start digging.”

“The town hall and the local temple of Teresa?” Xera hazarded a guess.

“Precisely.”

Both Boxxy and the ex-succubus knew from personal experience that the best way to gain dominion over a group of humans was to target the ones in charge. Whether it was a household, a town, a province, or even a nation, if one seized control of the head, the rest would soon follow. Granted, the same could be said of any society, but the ambition that drove and motivated humanity to achieve greatness made them significantly more susceptible to corruption than other enlightened. Boxxy wasn’t sure if that was a racial thing or just a cultural quirk, it just knew Imperials were more likely to be swayed by promises of money, power, or both.

It was, after all, that very trait that led to Teresa’s thought-poisoning.

It therefore seemed logical that this Mistress would have targeted the lord-mayor and the dean of the church. With the governmental and religious leaders in her grasp, it would not be difficult to subtly poison the minds of everyone else. It’s what Boxxy would’ve done if it were to ever try and become a ruler or conqueror. Not that it had such desires, of course, but it did entertain the idea of how it would do it with the least amount of effort involved.

The important thing was that it now had two targets of importance to track. Seeing as how the cult it was trying to uncover was of a religious nature, it decided to focus its attention on the church. It rapidly found, killed, absorbed, and then replaced a relatively high-ranking priest. The short-term memories that Broken Reflection was able to pilfer from the mind of Boxxy’s victim were not all that useful, unfortunately. They did help the shapeshifter blend in seamlessly with the rest of the congregation, but did little to reveal anything about this cult.

Then again, even if it was disappointing, this outcome was to be expected. According to what Claws had overheard during her one-spider raid several days ago, the Mistress was very careful about information leaks. Considering that she was quite literally inside her minions’ heads, it wouldn’t be far fetched to assume she could either remove or implant memories as needed. The fact that Boxxy still didn’t have a name for her was more than indicative of that.

Which was why it intentionally avoided going for the dean directly. The Mistress likely had failsafes and wards surrounding her major pawns, so there was a decent chance she would notice if he had been replaced. The shapeshifter’s current Facade, on the other hand, could both keep tabs on its primary target and investigate the church’s dealings, all without arousing suspicion. Which was precisely what it did for the remainder of the afternoon, though it failed to notice anything out of place before the day ran out and it had to pretend to go to bed.

Meanwhile Drea had been sent to track and spy on the lord-mayor, which proved to be just as fruitless. However, though likely not as important to the cult as the dean, the local head of government was doubtlessly involved with them in some capacity. Boxxy didn’t expect to learn much by monitoring his movements and meetings, but it was better to be thorough than not. Xera, on the other hand, was ordered to take over her master’s temporary disguise as Janet, the lonely black-haired adventurer girl from out of town. She was to keep asking questions while spending a few days at a local inn. The shapeshifter had a hunch the cultists would want to do something about the outsider that had been snooping around their town, so it had her act as a decoy.