Her Sin Was Pride

VI

"Faith is the currency of the divine and with it, they can buy the world."

Her resentment and conflict towards the strange tarot wielding duck lessened when her blade struck true in one of the worm's followers and he wailed in pain, succumbing to a poison she had never laced her blade with. She approached his rug when she spotted another, half-trodden path laced with his magic much more willfully accepting Fortune's Blessing when it was offered to her. It was a gift she was grateful for when in her further descent, she stumbled upon a new array - but this one, this one glimmered with a power akin to what she felt beating to the tempo of her heart.

"You have come far enough little lamb," hissed the familiar voice of the worm, making her eyes widen slightly as the shadows condensed. The hooded follower on the array dropped to his knees in reverence as the Worm of Chaos lifted his head from the darkness he traversed through, turning the eye of the crown on the awed follower. "My followers are willing to do anything for me, can you say the same of yours?"

"I give myself to the cause o mighty leader!" cried the worshipper.

Eve took a startled step back as the darkness climbed the followers body, flowing in beneath the cloak as he began groaning and shuddering. He curled in on himself as branches and leaves erupted from his skin, a new mouth of meat-eater's fangs clawing its way open top his head. The follower howled in agony as his form compressed, shrinking and splashing the black ichor of his god as well as the red of a mortal across the still violently flashing array.

"You have given yourself to the cause Amdusias, do not fail me," hissed the bishop of chaos as he seeped back into the shadows.

"I will snuff out this prideful heretic my leader!"

Oh what power belief grants you, Eve thought with a grimace as she rushed forward. The creature wasn't used to its new body yet and she used that to her advantage. The tent beneath the follower's old cloak had likely been a pair of antlers alluding to the possibility of them being a deer - used to long legs, fluid movement and impressive reach. The poison in the dagger assisted, or at least they assumed so from the agonized cries of pain from the transformed follower, far more intense than the groans from their transformation.

She had to leap back, slicing through the strange, acidic appear orbs it spat from the mouth on its forehead before whirling and flinging the dagger straight on.

The beast shrieked as it burst into flames - she hadn't expected that and watched it simultaneously burn and melt, smear across the ground leaving a trembling, frightened follower in place.

Disturbing.

Not a deer, she thought with mild surprise. Was he a deer before and his transformation was the result of he of Chaos' ritual? Or was he perhaps, always a worm? Another being in his lord's image and was thus, granted prominence for it? One should always take care to watch who they pledge their lives to she supposed. What lay in the margins of a contract with gods could have a far more serious consequence than merely being cheated out of your fair share of gold.

"Please, spare me," the worm, Amdusias begged. He still had the strange, spitting mouth atop his head but it seemed to have shut, sealed together rather than rumbling. She wondered if he would sprout berries if watered regularly. "I obeyed my master until the very end, I-I can be of use!"

...does this count as coercion if he offers himself without me even mentioning the cult?

Still, she couldn't be in the business of turning away followers given how few she had encountered willing to even take her hoof thus far. So she extended a palm to the sobbing follower, grasping upon the power offered willfully by the Red Crown.

Then join us.

Amdusias' eyes snapped to her in shock - had he heard her thoughts? Was it the power of the crown?

It didn't much matter, because the ground opened up and dragged him beneath.

With a sigh, her muscles relaxed and she allowed the pull of the crown to lead her down the side-route it seemed to sense. She held up a palm in preparation as she spotted the new array on the ground, power exploding from her palm and beginning to fill the transportation she hoped would become familiar to her.

Hm? An unfamiliar energy laced its way through the power of the crown.

She tried to draw it back but the gate opened and seized her body, turning her sight once more Red.