Zoe found Stella waiting for her in an alley a block from the town hall. It might be more accurate to say that Stella ambushed her. Either way, the demons regrouped and headed back to the alchemy shop.

  A small part of Zoe wanted to stick around and watch the chaos. Nah, who am I kidding—it was a large part of her that wanted to do that. By the time she met up with Stella, a decent crowd was gathering. Despite starting on the third floor, the fire must have spread quickly.

  Sadly, it wasn’t usually a good idea to hang around at a crime seen, especially when you were the perpetrator. It would be even worse to stand around at the crime scene while perusing through self-incriminating evidence in the form of stolen documents. Therefore, Zoe browsed the secret folder on the way to the shop.

  “Okay, I think I figured out what’s going on,” Zoe said when she finished looking at everything. “And there’s some good news. The blight creation looking like me was a creepy coincidence, as far as I can tell.”

  Stella reached over and slapped Zoe on the back of her neck with a thorny plant stem. “Ow! What was that for?” Zoe eyed the offending vine with suspicion. “And where did that thing come from?”

  “Trade secret,” the shopkeeper replied, “and that was to get you to shut up until we’re somewhere more private. The fact that you couldn’t wait to look through those papers is bad enough.” A frown passed over her features. “Wait, that means you can read Veyrse.”

  That was indeed true. Zoe had grown increasingly literate since her initial lessons at the Blodmane estate. Familiarity with one alphabet and an automatic understanding of the spoken language made learning easier than it ought to be. “Yeah, I can—why?”

  Stella leveled her with a bitter glare. “Which, therefore, means you are perfectly capable of reading signs that say things like ‘do not touch’ and ‘please ask for assistance.’”

  Oh. She’s just mad about when I almost dropped her fancy inscription rod earlier. That’s kind of funny. “Would you believe me if I told you I only learned to read right before that Inquisitor showed up?”

  “No.”

  Zoe sighed. It had been a good attempt. “That’s fair. Bummer, though.” A couple of seconds passed. “So, want to hear what I found out about that weird experiment?”

  “No! Just shut up and walk.” Picking up the already rapid pace, Stella grabbed Zoe’s wrist and pulled her along. They had less than a block to go, but the shopkeeper wasn’t taking chances.

  “Oh,” Zoe lamented, “bummer.”

  _____

  Marceus hardly knew what to think about the way things had developed. He had grossly misinterpreted a critical part of the situation, and it damn near got him killed. From there, things only continued to escalate.

  The first thing he did after escaping from his disastrous encounter with the first demon was to collapse in a nearby ditch and quaff down a healing potion. The second thing was to lay some groundwork for a new form of subterfuge.

  Despite his grievously injured state, the Inquisitor had the foresight to maintain a costly illusory double in the ruined house. Then, once he recovered from the worst of his wounds, he returned his focus to his false copy.

  He hoped to extract some useful information from the demon before his skill ran out of mana and collapsed. Sadly, he didn’t witness anything other than the sheer arrogance typical of a creature of Disdain.

  Also, looking back, Marceus admitted that he had gotten a bit self-indulgent with the particular way he weaponized his lingering illusion. Regardless, it should have accomplished its purpose—to mislead the enemy.

  He didn’t expect the explosion itself to kill or even incapacitate the demon, so it was no surprise to find the creature roaming around soon after with the one other confirmed demon in Blossomfell.

  During that time, the Inquisitor busied himself by laying more groundwork elsewhere. While it was tempting to interrogate the demon’s allies, Marceus decided the wiser course of action would be too observe the pair first.

  While associating with a demon was typical behavior for a mana-warped beast, it was disappointing to see such a young, proper woman also in collusion with two animals. It was unfortunate that it was too late to turn her in the right direction.

  Along with keeping an eye on the demon’s two known conspirators, Marceus kept watch over the entrance to the shuttered mine, and, in addition, stationed a final illusion to monitor the two properties in the heart of the shopping district. In so doing, the Inquisitor was able to track the pair of demons to the town hall.

  It was at this point that the second unexpected development occurred. What Marceus thought would be a damning meeting with the mayor instead went up in flames. Setting fire to the building was not something the Inquisitor would ever have expected, and he still struggled to understand the motivation.

  Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

  It proved that the situation was more complex than either he or his superiors anticipated. It was for this reason that Marceus used his two long distance communication enchantments. Obscenely expensive and limited to a single use, the miniature beacons allowed him to send messages back to Verdanport.

  He did this prior to the fire at the town hall, using the few, precious seconds afforded by the enchantment to report the presence of at least two higher demons and to request the discreet dispatch of at least one additional Inquisitor.

  Now down to a single beacon, Marceus knew he needed to keep it in reserve for as long as possible.

  _____

  “Alright, so can I tell you what I figured out, now?” They were back in Stella’s shop, or rather, in the back office. Neither of them had dropped their disguises, even though Zoe didn’t understand what made the shitty drug lab one floor down more secure.

  “I think you should just hand me those papers,” Stella said.

  Pouting, Zoe took them out of her inventory and shuffled through them. “That’s no fun.” Reluctantly, she handed them over. While it would have been more exciting to lay out the pieces of the plot like a murder mystery detective, Zoe was aware that the situation had grown increasingly serious. There would be more time for fun and games later.

  The shopkeeper flipped through the pages for a minute or two. During that time, Zoe managed to hold her tongue and to restrain herself from poking around at the stuff in Stella’s office.

  “Well, this is honestly a little disappointing,” Stella said at last. “You’re half right about it being a coincidence. They’ve probably been trying to get flesh samples from anyone with more than a baseline level of power, and you’re included on that list.”

  Zoe nodded. “That makes sense. I assume you know more than me about what might be going on.”

  “Probably.” Sitting on the edge of the desk, the shopkeeper took a few seconds to put the papers back into a specific order. “They’re a mid-sized, second rate Revulsion cult trying to get their hands on bigger toys. Nothing they’re playing with is remotely new or innovative, so the only reason they’re experimenting like this is because they didn’t already have the proper knowledge or resources.”

  Thinking over what Stella said, Zoe thought she understood. She needed to clarify, though. “So—do I have this right? They’re an inexperienced group trying to become a proper cult, which means they started with no more information than the general public about illegal magic.”

  Stella shrugged. “Probably? I don’t know how they first started, but it’s clear that they’re in the process of attempting to replicate things they know exist but don’t know how to do yet.”

  Kind of like if you decided you wanted to cook meth, Zoe thought. You know that shitty drug labs exist, and you can look up chemical formulas, but there’s a lot of unknown details in between. But what exactly is the meth in this comparison? Zoe decided that would be a sensible thing to ask.

  “You’ve seen it,” Stella replied. “Blight creations. They’re not much more than artificial ghouls, which is convenient for imitating necromancy without having to learn soul magic.”

  She’s right, Zoe decided, this does sound weirdly disappointing. “So, what—make a bunch of disposable minions that shamble around terrorizing the populace and growing in numbers.”

  Stella nodded. “Yes, that’s the idea.”

  “That feels like something we should stop,” Zoe said, “even if it does sound like it would cause some convenient chaos.”

  The shopkeeper’s gaze sharpened, staring through Zoe with a sudden intensity. “That is a disturbingly logical realization.”

  “That an undead horde sweeping through the kingdom would be convenient for us?”

  “What? No.” Stella laughed. “I meant that you understood it would be a good idea to stop it, even if it might seem superficially useful. You have these moments of surprising maturity, for a younger demon.”

  Gee, thanks, that’s real complimentary of you, Zoe thought. Honestly, I think the fact that she thinks it’s a good thing because she doesn’t know I’m not just some ordinary demon child makes it even worse.

  Lilith chuckled from the back of her mind. “I’m pretty sure you thought it was pretty funny, not too long ago. What changed, hmm?”

  Zoe’s jaw tightened. Shut up. Wrenching her attention back to more important matters, Zoe thought about their options. If they were indeed going to do something to take down these wannabe cultists, then the presence of the Inquisition was the perfect chance to do it. That being said, if there were already Inquisitors here, didn’t that mean they probably already knew? Did they even need to do anything?

  “It’s possible,” Stella admitted upon hearing Zoe’s thoughts, “but consider this—a horde of blight infested monsters directed by a group of intelligent masters sounds like a meaningful threat, right?”

  Zoe nodded. “Yeah. Given what you’ve said about this cult, I don’t think they’d be able to do get away with taking over anything bigger than a few towns, but that’s still a problem.”

  “That’s what I think, too,” Stella said, “and it’s also what the Inquisition would think. So if that’s the case, do you think they would send just a handful of rank E or D Inquisitors to deal with it?”

  Realization struck Zoe. She had been strong enough to take down the one Inquisitor just after breaking through to Rank E. Even though he was injured, and possibly not the strongest of them, that level of power was incomparable to what she’d witnessed on her first day in this world.

  The Infernal cult ritual Zoe stumbled into couldn’t have been much bigger than this. In fact, it was in a far more remote location where there was less immediate risk to surrounding settlements. But did they send a smattering of low ranked Inquisitors?

  No. They sent a Rank B paladin, and that guy massacred multiple people who were definitely stronger than I am now. He also tried to kill me, and the only thing that stopped him was an even stronger Rank B. I guess I can thank you for one thing, Basil.

  “I don’t think they would,” Zoe said slowly, “I think they would have brought a higher rank paladin to rip the whole operation apart.” Groaning, she placed her face in her hands. “Which means they have no idea about the true threat they’re up against.”