Anastacia flinched awake when a pinecone hit her in the leg. It took a bit for her to get her bearings and remember what had happened. She found herself chained to a tree, with enough metal chains to prevent her from moving her hands or legs at all. Struggling proved pointless very quickly and she gave up on trying to escape.

Periwinkle was sitting on a rock some distance away from her with a few pinecones in his hand. “Ah, you woke up. I was starting to worry that I used too much poison, but it seems you’re fine, so no harm done!” Periwinkle said in a slightly raised voice to get Anastacia’s attention. “You’re surprisingly light, did you know that?”

“Where are we?! Release me right the fuck now or I’ll turn you inside out!” Anastacia screamed and looked around, but her vision was still too blurry for her to have any chance at recognizing her surroundings.

“You fell asleep over there, I basically just picked the nearest tree and chained you to it. The location doesn’t matter for our little exercise in the slightest.” He asked, got up and dusted off some moss from his robes. “Let’s get started, shall we?”

“But your range... You shouldn’t be able to reach the checkpoint or the hamlet from here.” Anastacia calmed down and started scanning the area.

“Oh, that… I have to admit that I haven’t exactly been honest about why I was spared when the rest of my sect was cut down. Due to some unfortunate events you are very aware of, Alizarin, the necromancer with the most exceptional range died. So there was suddenly a massive hole in Coquelicot’s recon team, to say the least. She had recognized that it was something that could happen at some point, and something she had prepared for by acquiring the necromancer with the second most exceptional range, as soon as the rebellion started.” Periwinkle explained, gestured towards himself and bowed. “I was sort of a half-prisoner since then and only got freed a while ago. Boss still seriously hates my guts, that part was true.”

“You?!” Anastacia exclaimed in disbelief. “But that means…”

“Thirty-eight villages, towns, cities and what not, including Valor are at stake here. Other than that, you did a good job figuring out my plan. It was ingenious to send the spriggan after me! Just make sure she hasn’t just eaten chicken the next time you want her to tail a necromancer. I kind of felt bad for her so I took a little trip to give her something to do and clear the area a bit.” The masked necromancer laughed heartily and spun his blowpipe around. “The bone dust has been spread ages ago, so here’s how we’re going to do it: You just hang there, and I’ll stay over here. Every few of minutes, the next closest settlement will start to wonder why there’s white dust falling from the sky and soon after that, everything in there, that happened to inhale it will find many tiny holes in their lungs. All you have to do is stop me. There isn’t anything here you can use, so I suppose you have to figure out how to do what you did while fighting Cerise and Carmine to take control of me from this far away.”

Anastacia just screamed as a response, she had trouble believing how easily she had been tricked and captured by a necromancer far less powerful than her. No amount of struggling even came close to loosening the chains and she was forced to play Periwinkle’s stupid game, or innocent people would have to pay for her stupidity.

Biggest problem with the situation was the distance between her and Periwinkle; the effectiveness of Anastacia’s powers fell harshly after just a couple of meters and even though she was able to overthrow him from much further away when they were testing her limits earlier, taking control of a necromancer’s own body was an entirely different affair. It would have been somewhat difficult to do it to a normal person from that distance, but Periwinkle being a necromancer, and a competent one at that, made it impossible for Anastacia to even get started properly. Unsurprisingly, there were no cracks to be found in the inquisitor’s armor.

“This is what’s best for you, trust me. You don’t want to go against Amaranth all willy-nilly, she’s has decades of training on you and if she finds even the slightest weakness in you, she will capitalize on it and well… you know what it’s like when necromancers fight each other. You’ll be covering the walls of her study in seconds.” Periwinkle tried justifying his actions.

“Fuck you! Do you have any idea how many people you are trying to kill for this shit?!” Anastacia yelled and screamed in frustration.

Periwinkle shrugged. “Nope. I can’t detect or use living matter. I know it might sound a bit cold, but I think it’s a blessing for someone in my line of work, makes is a bit less personal. Of course, I’ll know once the people start dropping dead, but what’s done is done. I’m sure the amount is miniscule compared to the lives you can save if you figure out how to use your powers properly anyway. This might end with me dead too, but it’s a price I’m willing to pay without hesitation. However, I think you know already that I’m more useful alive than dead.” He explained calmly while admiring a patch of may bells. “But enough with that, it’s about time for the good people of Greenweald to start worrying about all the white dust in the air. I’ll give you ten minutes to get started.”

After a bit more screaming and struggling, Anastacia started to calm down, mostly because her throat started to hurt. Otherwise she would have probably kept on screaming. “And what if… I can’t do it?”

“We know for a fact that you can and have done it, so if everyone dies today, it’s mostly on you. Suppose it means that I also failed as a teacher, but if the deaths of a whole bunch of people, including your friends, aren’t enough to motivate you, I have no idea what is.” Periwinkle laughed and sat back down on the rock. “As a side note, I think you calming down is a mistake. Strong emotions are magnificent triggers for inexperienced necromancers, so please don’t hold back.”

Over the next few minutes, countless failed attempts and the nearing deaths of the entire population of a hamlet ate away at Anastacia, until she finally broke into tears. Knowing that she had it in her to stop Periwinkle only made it worse. Even if all the world’s problems weren’t for her to fix, those deaths would be a direct result of her unwillingness to train, despite Coquelicot’s numerous attempts to get her to take it seriously. She found herself thinking that maybe it indeed was her role in the world to become The White One to not get pushed around and get innocent people killed, even if it was indirectly.

“Wait! I’ll do the whole cult thing with you! Just please don’t kill anyone!” She pleaded.

“You need this whether you’ll become The White One or not, and it’s a bit late for that anyway. Those people are already very dead, thirty-six of them to be exact.” Periwinkle shrugged.

“WHAT?! What the fuck is wrong with you?!” Anastacia screamed, suddenly full of energy again. “You said I have ten minutes!”

“Well it’s not like I have anything to keep track of time with, so I just figured I’d get it over and done with. Besides, you seemed like you needed… a push…” The inquisitor trailed off and stared at his hand. His fingers wouldn’t move, no matter how hard he tried. He grinned widely under his mask and continued to drive Anastacia towards the edge. “The next closest settlement would be… Valor! It’s a bit sad to be honest, they seemed like nice people, but they’re holding you back in many ways. Without them around, you don’t have to be afraid of hurting anyone, so really I’m doing a favor to both you and the world here.” He said and pointed towards Valor with his still moving hand.

“You’re bluffing! There’s no way Coquelicot would actually allow you attack Valor just like that.” Anastacia said. She knew that Coquelicot’s commands weren’t exactly absolute for the masked lunatic, but maybe they would at least make him reconsider the next target.

“My cause is a higher one, I will do what needs to be done.” He said calmly and felt the immobilization spread to his shoulder. “Can you feel the raw power you have? Remember what you are feeling at this moment and use it in the future!”

Anastacia fell silent. She hadn’t even realized that Periwinkle’s arm was now completely under her control and probably wouldn’t have noticed if he didn’t basically point it out himself, and as soon as she did she started to lose it back to him. Surprisingly, she found screaming helpful for whatever reason and managed to start gaining ground once more, only way too slowly. It would still take minutes and wouldn’t be enough to stop Periwinkle in time. By now she was frantically clawing and grasping for any solutions she could possibly have but found nothing.

While trashing around in what was roughly equal amounts of rage and despair, she cut her arm badly on a particularly roughly made link in the chains binding her to the tree. The warm blood flowing down on her skin distracted her and she started to black out even without having to see any of it. With her consciousness weakening by the second, her grip on Periwinkle’s body waned.

And then something snapped in her head.

The combination of thirty-six people dying because of her, her friends and everyone else in valor being in immediate danger and realizing she couldn’t do anything about it before blacking out was too much for Anastacia. Whatever bits of pride and ambition the bracelet that turned her evil had managed to dig out and amplify took over once more, and suddenly everything became crystal clear: this was not how things were supposed to be. She was better than this, stronger than anyone, and if some fuck ass zealot piece of shit thought he could do this to her, they were in more than just a bit of trouble.

The blood on her arm suddenly began flowing upwards and spread itself on the chains that gave out almost immediately as she pulled them apart. As she freed herself, she discovered that maybe she hadn’t quite numbed herself to the effects of seeing blood; she could barely stand without support and even taking a single step seemed like a gamble. She leaned back against the tree and glanced at the now frozen inquisitor. “I’ll get over there to kick your ass in a bit, so you just wait there. Like actually beat your face in with my fists. Necromancy just doesn’t cut it this time, I feel like it wouldn’t get the message of how fucking tired of this shit I am over properly.” She threatened and took off her boot and sock to use it as a bandage over the wound in her arm.

One wobbly step at a time, she slowly covered the twenty or so meters between them, stopping multiple times to almost throw up. When she finally got to Periwinkle, she had to sit down to catch her breath. While resting, she noticed that the inquisitor’s pulse was barely elevated, almost like he wasn’t even nervous about the situation.

“You probably feel like you’ve somehow won here, don’t you? And you probably know that against all my better judgement, I won’t kill you – now. But if you ever come even close to Valor, I will wipe the entire Mournvalley off the map, with you in it, and then quit necromancy completely.” Anastacia sighed and pressed her forehead against her knees to try and stop the spinning in her head.

Periwinkle may have been insane, evil and cruel among other things, but he actually believed in Anastacia in his own, twisted way. Not just as a means to an end like everyone else in Mournvalley, but as someone who could do some good in the world; and to even her own surprise, Anastacia couldn’t find it in herself to hate the weirdo enough to kill him.

She took a deep breath and slowly got up to punch Periwinkle in the face with all her wobbly might, but not being used to punching people, she hurt her hand way more than Periwinkle’s face. Having learned her lesson, she started kicking his feet instead and headbutted him in the chest as hard as she could before falling back down and passing out.

Soon after Anastacia blacked out, her grip on Periwinkle’s body loosened and he was free to curl into a ball and let out a muffled scream of pain. He would have laughed victoriously if it wasn’t for the chest pain, his plan couldn’t have gone any better. If Anastacia hadn’t been so unaware of the logistics behind his profession, there’s no way his ruse would have worked at all. In reality, not only would it have taken thousands of times more bone dust than he had on him to attack multiple towns and cities, it was nigh impossible to do it from this far away, no matter who you were. Even the slightest wind would blow the dust away and ruin everything, so at no point was anyone beside he himself in any danger. He had hoped to point that out to save his life, but things worked out much better than he had ever hoped.

“You now possess the keys needed for surviving against Amaranth – hopefully. What you do with them afterwards is not in my control anymore.” He said and turned Anastacia on her side, so she wouldn’t choke on vomit. “I just hope you’ll end up using them for everyone’s bene-“ His thought was cut short when his eyes met with a certain simulacrum’s.

King stared at the necromancers and slowly drew his sword.