She puts the finishing touches on the runework, the lines of chalk messier than what she's used to due to the unusual component she added for the occasion.
"My Lady, my Mistress, you have my heart and soul, accept this offering and bring ruin to my enemies."
She closes the circle, and lets a single drop of blood fall on the key rune.
As the blood strikes the rune, a young woman appears mid-stride in the circle, stumbles, and catches herself, drawing in a sharp breath as she reaches for her dagger. She looks vaguely Chelish, in the way that could mean she is or could mean she’s from half the countries on the Inner Sea. She doesn’t look particularly wealthy; the style is more typical of rural Cheliax than urban, but regardless the coarse fabric of her clothing and the walnut and goldenrod dyes both look fairly cheap.
The most unusual thing about her appearance is the carved wooden symbol dangling from a leather cord around her neck. The center is a slightly-unbalanced circular disk, with three pointed spikes emerging from it and abstract designs painted in yellow, red and orange: the holy symbol of Calistria.
Wat.
That's a human girl, probably a bit younger than her (kinda cute) and...
Is that a Calistrian holy symbol? How did her circle end up grabbing a Calistrian?
Oh. Yeah, ok, maybe that's why.
Her first thought, when she found herself in a room she’s never seen before rather than the streets of Westcrown, was that she’d somehow been magically kidnapped by one of the Evil nobles at the convention. (Can Teleport do that? It still feels sort of incredible that there are other delegates who can Teleport, but she sure seems to be somewhere else.) She’s reaching reflexively for her dagger when the woman speaks, but—
—if this is some kind of Asmodean noble magic kidnapping, that question doesn’t make sense. Anyone at the convention would know she speaks Chelish Taldane, and they wouldn’t need to pretend not to, they could just kill her or ensorcell her or whatever else they were planning. She still doesn’t relax her grip, but she doesn’t try to go after the stranger either.
“I speak the Chelish kind, yeah,” she says. Her accent mostly sounds like she’s from somewhere rural in the Heartlands, but there’s something a little funny about it. “…I, uh, didn’t mean to break into your flat, or wherever this is, I just wound up here somehow.”
"Well, you didn't intend to but you're certainly here in my power right now." She takes a step toward the newcomer, with an intense, calculating look in her eyes.
"Nah, just messing with you." She briefly ulls out her Lady's unholy symbol. "Still no clue how you ended up here, but with regards to the how-" she points at the circle at their feet "- it's probably my creativity with the ritual."
—Even if that first part was a joke, she’s definitely not going to let her guard down after that! Especially since she’s admitting to magical kidnapping — maybe by accident, it sounds like it was some kind of accident, but still.
She looks at the necklace for a moment, since the woman clearly intends for it to be meaningful somehow. It looks like… some kind of crown, maybe, or an overgrown field? No one at the convention was wearing anything like it, as far as she saw, and it doesn’t really seem familiar.
“…Well, I’m supposed to be in Westcrown for the Constitutional Convention right now, so it’d be great if you could send me back there.”
"I have no clue what you're talking about, to be honest. I don't have any magic that could trasport you there, even if I wanted to. And to be honest I don't think I'd suggest going to Westcrown if I were you."
She grabs a chair, moves it about halfway between them, then takes a few steps back and sits on an ottoman next to the wall.
"You're a Calistrian. Do you not know what they do to clerics of Chaotic gods?"
"There's plenty of us at the Convention, I'm on a committee with a Caydenite. —I’m not stupid, I did know the whole thing might be a trap, I just thought it was worth the risk anyway. But so far it hasn’t even been a trap, I’ve sure got some issues with the new government but they’re not torturing people to death for being Calistrian priestesses.”
“…uh, that depends, nothing’s happened to the new queen that I know of but Abrogail Thrune got overthrown by some adventurers, like, more than a year ago.”
"Really? I find it hard to believe. As far as I know the Crown appointed Paraduke is still very much in charge of the town. Or well, he tries to be. We're not particularly keen on being governed by fucking diabolists."
“Yeah, the new Queen didn’t actually bother to get rid of all the Evil Asmodean nobles. Or even kill all the Asmodean priests.” She’s a Queen, it’s not like it matters to her how many innocent people they killed or tortured in the name of Asmodeus as long as they’re not causing her problems. “But so far as I know, she’s not an Asmodean, and she did get rid of a bunch of the Evil laws.”
Probability that this is a trap. Well, if it is she has already shown her hand by displaying Her symbol, even tho the girl didn't seem to recognize it. That was a mistake, in hindsight. Disguising yourself as a (cute) young girl wouldn't even be a particularly complicated ploy.
"I still find it hard to believe you but I don't see a reason you'd lie to me. Are you hungry?"
She nods. "I was on my way to eat supper when I wound up here."
"If you're not an Evil outsider the circle won't actually bind you, feel free to follow me."
She leads the way to the kitchen.
“I’m Chaotic Good. And not an outsider.” She steps out of the circle.
Ooooh, a human guest, they haven't had one in a while.
She discreetly puts the toys away, then continues cleaning the nettles.
Oh, she has servants, or at least one servant. In hindsight it was stupid to be thinking of her as basically just a regular person like Victòria when she’s clearly some kind of powerful wizard or sorcerer or something. And for some reason she’s having her servant cook nettles, which — well, her lord certainly wouldn’t have eaten them, but maybe in the city people don’t think of them as the kind of food people eat so they don’t starve. (Or she could be the sort of person who thinks it’s funny to have her servants do painful things, except if that’s what she’s going for there are definitely more painful options.)
“How long have you been working here?” she asks Sofia. It’s not the question she actually wants to know the answer to, but it’s not like she’s going to get an honest answer to ‘so, how do you feel about your boss?’
"A couple years now. Been doing it full time since the day it became apparent our parents weren't coming back."
That could mean they’re doing something fine and not Evil (there’s nothing wrong with two people who knew each other and got along moving in together), and at the very least the woman who brought her here isn’t doing anything so terrible that Sofia is already dead, like some of the terrible stories she’s heard from other delegates since she arrived. But just because it might be fine doesn’t necessarily mean it is. She’s probably not going to get a good sense of whether it is or isn’t fine just from asking more questions with the woman who brought her here standing right here, but she should definitely keep an eye on things just in case.
She nods solemnly at the reply and tries to stay out of Sofia’s way. It’s not safe to assume people will be upset about their parents dying, but it also isn’t safe to assume they won’t be.
"Do you like pasta? Sofia is pretty good with her hands, makes great paccheri." And if you're not used to eating pasta for dinner you'll probably be more malleable after the meal.
“Pasta is fine!”
(It’s not like eating pasta is more dangerous than eating anything else you were given by someone who magically teleported you into their house.)
Sofia is done cleaning the nettles and tosses them into the now-boiling water.
"Going to be ready soon."
“Sounds good to me!”
Victòria waits until she’s out of earshot, then turns back towards Sofia, lowering her voice slightly. “What’s it like working for her?”
(Even with her out of earshot, there’s still no guarantee Sofia would actually be willing to tell her if she’s a terrible boss, but at least this way she’ll have the chance.)
"Most of the time it's pretty boring, cleaning, washing, cooking, the usual stuff. It's kind of a lot doing everything on my own but... there are good reasons for that."
"How did you get acquainted with my lady?" And what do you know about her jobs.
“Boring” is probably a good sign, actually. It means she doesn’t have Sofia so scared she feels like she has to pretend she loves the work when she doesn’t, and it almost certainly means she isn’t doing things like using her servants for target practice (seriously, what the fuck??? Even her lord didn’t do that!)
“She brought me here with magic! I’d never been here before today.”
So she knows her Mistress has magic...
"Depending on who the circle calls, the nights can become significantly less boring."
She smiles and blushes a little.
Blink blink — oh. “I’m, uh, not that kind of Calistrian.”
(And also… she’s a woman? Maybe the magic can’t tell the difference, but everyone here has eyes.)
"Ah, such a pity."
She walks to the kitchen's counter and drops some leaves on it.
"So you're more about revenge? Seems reasonable to me, the world is full of assholes that could use some stinging."
(—Since when is she back from the garden?? She really hopes she didn’t almost get Sofia in trouble!)
“Yeah, exactly! There’s loads of people who deserve to be punished who’ll never face any consequences just from the law, especially since the archmages couldn’t even be bothered to deal with all the really obvious ones like the leftover Evil Asmodean nobles—”
"The archmages? Leftover Asmodean nobles? I thought all of them were Asmodean."
“—No, the old government got overthrown by some adventurers last year. They put in a new queen who’s not an Asmodean, but she’s still a queen, you know? And the queen replaced some of the nobles, there’s some from other countries and a few who are back from the dead, but lots of the Evil ones are still around. …I think they’re mostly trying to say they aren’t Asmodean anymore, no matter how many innocent people they had tortured to death in the name of Asmodeus, but that doesn’t make what they did okay.”
And for some reason Archmage Cotonnet won’t even let them make laws to punish them for all the awful things they’ve already done, only laws saying that if they keep doing those things they’ll be punished for it.
"Me neither, which is confusing. Chosen Merena seemed pretty spry last Oathday."
"...It took a little while for us to get the news back home, but nowhere near a whole year. How often does this place usually get news from other towns?"
"I mean, I'd expect we'd get some daily, but unless it's urgent enough to warrant a Teleport it probably comes with the regular post, so delayed by a couple weeks."
She turns towards Sofia. "The last time he brought a scroll, was it two weeks ago?"
"Irrelevant, I like it."
"And you're lying to yourself, it's quite evident you enjoy it to the fullest."
"I would say it happens... probably at least once every couple months? I can make a good guess on some nights the Chosen was particularly happy and felt like spending a lot of money on his... interests. Why are you asking?"
Wow, she’s not totally sure what they’re talking about but every possibility she can think of is concerning. If Sofia hates the spell, she shouldn’t have to have it cast on her just because her boss likes it, and telling her she’s just “lying to herself” doesn’t make it any better! Especially if it’s connected to an Asmodean priest somehow!
“I think it matters whether she likes the spell,” she says. (Which might be a terrible idea, depending on how powerful a magic-user she is, but the alternative is not saying anything, and she’s done pretending it’s fine for people to just treat their servants however they like.) “—But it’s weird that there’s still a teleporter coming. There’s no way they haven’t heard yet, and if they don’t want to risk the new government actually making them pay for what they’ve done, they could always just leave.”
"And yet they aren't, so what's happening?"
"Are you sure the "new government" is actually opposed to Asmodeus?"
(But could she actually say no, or is she just saying that so she doesn’t get in trouble?)
“I think so? Or — I’m not sure any of them care about all the ways Asmodeans hurt regular people, but they care when the Asmodeans hurt them or get in their way. They did get rid of some of the nobles, more than changed in the history textbooks from one year to the next, and they changed the laws on which gods people are allowed to worship — although I guess they are letting Delegate Lebanel get away with being a priest of Erecura, for some reason — and they invited a whole bunch of people to come write a new constitution, which is basically the laws for the new country, and I thought it might be a trap but they didn’t actually just kill everyone who showed up, even though there are a bunch of priests and priestesses of gods that aren’t Asmodeus.”
