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Atiseva didn't remember much about the first time the sickness came. She was young, only three at the time, toddling around on unsteady feet and sticking little fingers into everyone else's business. Looking back, that's probably where all the trouble started- her being so nosy all the time. She didn't remember much about the sickness, only that it was there, and that she couldn't breathe through it, that sometimes she would cough so hard her bedsheets would stain red, that-
Atiseva was seven when the sickness came back. Older, less nosy now. She had learned. She was special, they told her. Blessed by their god to carry its gifts. The green silk tied so gently around her hair was the sign. They hadn't seen the silk in years, their last blessed one long since dust in the ground. The stuff they gave her to drink smelled rotten, tasted even worse, and before long she was left feverish, delirious with visions of a pixie combing through her long hair and offering words of comfort until she was well again.
The sickness came and went as it pleased after that, but as she grew older she grew stronger. Immune to the plagues she carried, Atiseva was revered, almost as much as the god they worshipped. When the infestation came for them, she stood tall against the mutated creatures, her and her fellow plague-priests alongside a handful of truly devout followers. The rest ran, fled, were devoured by their own unfaithfulness to their god.
The survivors, though, they were truly blessed. The green pixie came to them, a cloud of fury for daring touch her people, defending the last of their little community. She pulled Atiseva from what was left, standing by her side as she mourned the loss of her home, her people, the life she used to know. She stayed with her as she elected to become something stronger, something that could rebuild what she once had and defend it properly.
When Saryn came out all wrong, the pixie was still there for her, coaxing her out of her own head until she could remember who she used to be, rebuilding herself instead of the community she lost. They looked strange, paired up the way they were, but with the pixie’s banner tied tight around her it was hard to deny this infestation-born frame was her charge.
The pixie taught Saryn everything she knew, showed her how to spread the blessings she was given, how to teach others of the plague-god. The pixie never showed herself when Saryn went in to talk to others; she never offered an explanation and Saryn never asked. She always told stories when she returned, and the pixie always listened intently to her every word, clasping her arbiter’s hands tight between her own.
They couldn’t keep it up forever. A frame without an operator was dangerous, and Saryn was beginning to gain a reputation. People knew who she was when she walked into a town. When the first group came after them, they got away just fine, but they knew that wouldn’t be the last.
When they were finally cornered, they were a terror to the void-worshipping bastards that came after them, a flurry of disease-ridden blades and desperation. The pixie seemed different after that, more paranoid, and Saryn didn’t know what the hell to do about it.
It was when she had someone pinned, months later, that Saryn suspected something was wrong. That her pixie wasn’t what she claimed to be. A man that had been hunting them, disarmed now, his fingers wrapped around a token of the Void he worshipped so devoutly he was willing to give up his life to hunt down these two plague-worshippers. The pixie’s head tilted, her blade looking too delicate in her hands for the slaughter that surrounded her, for the acid that dripped from it.
“Is your void-god here?” She finally spoke, the sound of her voice stealing the breath from her arbiter the way it always would. Malice simmered in her tone. “Is it watching? Are its eyes on you, on us?”
The blade tucked itself neatly under his chin, forcing him to look up at her, this toxic pixie and her puppet. Lime green material dripped and sizzled onto his clothing, a slow warning. “Mm. I think it is, yes.” She mused, sounding almost amused now. “I think it is watching, and it’s so very, very scared. The void has no power here, little snapdragon. It’s time you learned that.”
And when the man was carved to the pixie’s pleasure, she giggled and turned to her diseased little puppet. “Sweet orchid, go. They’ll only keep searching for us like this.”
Saryn ran.