The first assault came as a phantom taste, a violation of the soul.
It bloomed on Veridia's tongue without source, a foulness so profound it churned the bile in her empty stomach. It was a sour, earthy flavor of rot and something else… something that squirmed. Through the shimmering, unwilling connection that now bound her to her sister, she saw the cause with sickening clarity.
Seraphine sat across a crude wooden table from Warlord Grummash, a perfect picture of serene elegance amidst the Orc camp's ambient reek of slag, sweat, and poorly cured hides. She held a wriggling, fat-bodied grub between two immaculate fingers, its pale flesh glistening in the firelight. With a theatrical slowness designed for an audience of one, she brought it to her lips and crunched down.
Veridia gagged, doubling over as the phantom sensation of the grub's gritty exoskeleton and pulpy innards burst inside her mouth.
"Enjoying breakfast, sister?" Seraphine's voice was a silken whisper in her mind, dripping with a venomous sweetness that was far more nauseating than the grub itself. "Grummash assures me it's a taste acquired only by conquerors. I find it… invigorating."
Veridia retched, spitting nothing but acidic bile onto the dirt floor of her tent. The Orcs guarding the entrance grunted at the sound but didn't dare look in. She was the Queen's new pet, a strange and volatile asset to be watched, not understood.
Seraphine took another grub. Another deliberate crunch. Another wave of phantom disgust washed over Veridia. Then, her sister turned her head, inhaling deeply with a delicate, appreciative sniff as if sampling a rare perfume. Instantly, the greasy stench of the Orc camp flooded Veridia's senses—the rancid smell of monster hides stacked near the fire, the metallic tang of blood, the eye-watering smoke from the forges—so thick it felt like a physical weight in her lungs.
*She's doing this on purpose.* The realization hit her with the force of a physical blow. This wasn't just a side effect of their bond. This was a weapon. Seraphine could now inflict misery on her from miles away, a constant, intimate, sensory torment. The game had changed. The cage had just grown infinitely smaller. Veridia's nausea curdled into a cold, hard knot of rage. Her sister had drawn first blood. It was a mistake she would not be allowed to make twice.
***
Driven by the gnawing fire of her curse and a burning need for revenge, Veridia stumbled through the blighted landscape. Survival was a chore, but vengeance was a purpose. She pushed through a copse of skeletal trees, their branches clawing at her rags, and found herself on the edge of a meadow blooming with impossible color.
Vibrant, alien-looking flowers swayed in the breeze, their petals a shade of violet so deep it was almost black. A flicker of memory, a dusty lesson from a pre-exile botany tutor about tactical irritants, sparked in her mind. *Grave-Bloom.* Beautiful, deadly to consume, and to most demons, a source of profound, uncontrollable allergic irritation.
A vicious, triumphant smile stretched Veridia's cracked lips.
She focused on the link, saw Seraphine still holding court in the Orc camp, her illusion preening as Grummash listened intently to her whispered strategies. Veridia waded into the field of flowers, the petals brushing against her ragged clothes like a silken caress. She found the largest, most obscenely lush cluster, a riot of dark violet, and took a deep, steadying breath. She plunged her face into it.
The air was thick with pollen, a fine, cloying dust that smelled of sweet decay and damp earth. She inhaled deeply, dragging the potent allergen into her lungs, holding it, bracing for the echo.
Miles away, Seraphine's smug monologue on troop movements was cut short by a sharp, undignified gasp. Her perfect nose twitched. Her illusion sputtered, the light flickering at the edges.
"*Achoo!*"
The sneeze was a thunderclap in Veridia's mind, a beautiful, satisfying explosion of sound.
"What—what is this foulness?" Seraphine's voice was a furious, nasal squawk. "You miserable—*ACHOO!*—hag! This is… this is common!"
Veridia let out a raw, triumphant laugh, the first genuine laugh she'd had since her exile. She waded deeper into the field, burying her face in the blossoms again and again, drinking in the pollen. Through the link, she watched with feral glee as the ghost of her sister dissolved into a frantic, helpless fit of sneezing, her regal composure shattered into a thousand pathetic, gasping pieces.
The victory was exquisite, but fleeting. The gnawing hunger of the Sieve returned with a vengeance, a sharp pain in her core that cut through her satisfaction like a cold blade. This petty war of sensations was a luxury. She needed Essence. Now.
***
The hunger drove her from the field and into the deeper woods. The trees here were ancient, their branches forming a canopy that dappled the forest floor in a green, watery light. Veridia's vision was blurring at the edges, the curse beginning to fray her senses. She leaned against a massive, moss-covered trunk, her body trembling with weakness.
A shape emerged from the very bark of the tree before her, peeling itself away from the wood as if it were a natural growth.
It was humanoid, but its skin was the rough texture of ancient oak, its hair a cascade of living green leaves. A Dryad. Its eyes were pools of liquid amber, ancient and devoid of emotion, and they fixed on her with an unnerving, alien curiosity. It sensed her unnatural, leaking soul not as a threat, but as a blight, a wound in the heart of its grove. It was not hostile. It was a physician, and she was the disease it intended to cleanse.
Before Veridia could react, living vines erupted from the ground, wrapping around her limbs with the unyielding strength of braided muscle, holding her fast. The Dryad stepped forward, its touch cool and solid as it pressed a hand of woven bark against her chest.
A torrent of pure, raw life Essence flooded into her. It was too much, too fast, an overwhelming force of pure nature that felt less like feeding and more like drowning. It was a terrifying, helpless sensation, a violation of a different, more elemental kind. But as the torrent surged through her, her cursed body, starved for any energy, reacted in a way she never expected. The raw, untamed life force ignited a pleasure so intense it was agonizing, an explosive wave that bypassed seduction and went straight to a primal, shattering release. Her nerves, accustomed to the slow siphoning of tainted fear, were overloaded by this clean, violent infusion of life.
At the peak of the sensation, a sharp, involuntary gasp cut through the glade.
It wasn't hers.
Veridia's head snapped toward her sister's shimmering form, which had been observing the cleansing with cold amusement. The smirk was gone. Seraphine's face was a mask of flushed, wide-eyed shock. Her lips were parted, her breath coming in a short, hitched rhythm she couldn't control.
In that single, shared, silent moment, a new, more terrifying rule of their damnation became horrifyingly clear. The curse didn't just share the pain of a papercut or the irritation of pollen. It shared everything. It shared the pleasure, too.