I didn't want to believe that Eione could have been affiliated with warlocks. She was a bit of a brat and a shameless flirt who sucked up to me and Saayuko because we were perceived as being in charge. But she was mostly sweet and seemed harmless. She was the last person I'd suspect of dabbling in dark magic.
...
Well, I had to talk to her before I could be sure. Bene had a bottle of something called Potion of Temporary Insanity that he swears came from her. Back then, I wouldn't have put it past him to lie to save his own skin, but when I talked to him, I saw something in his demeanor that I wasn't used to. I assumed, rightly, that what I saw was how he looked when he was being honest.
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I see a lot more of that look these days but, yes, it was new for me back then.
...
So, Saayuko fetched her from her room and brought her to my workshop for a little talk. She was noticeably nervous from the moment I showed her the potion that I had taken from Bene. It seemed to be a very thin thread connecting her to the cult. But there was something else that bothered me about her. She knew about the "job" Venaticus tried to offer me before the warlocks cleared out the shop they were operating in. There were only three others who knew about it. Takaa is no fan of ANY magic. Oogura's druidic magic was a natural opposite to dark magic and everyone I talked to assures me that if she had ever tried to work with dark magic, she'd never be able to use her nature spells or shapeshifting abilities again. And you know, of course, that Saayuko is the only person alive I trust.
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She denied having made the potion. Tried to tell me that she bought it from someone else. Without getting into why she'd want it, whether or not she knew what it was at the time, I asked her about the person she got it from. She spun a story about a druid from Sister that lived near Foldo. I wasn't sure whether to believe it, but those who join my family deserve the benefit of the doubt. I dismissed her, but worked out a plan to figure this out once and for all.
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I wanted to find this druid of hers. I didn't know at the time that high enough concentrations of dark magic would negate druidic magic, so I didn't even recognize this story for the yarn it was. So, I had Saayuko come to get her once again roughly an hour before dawn and sent them on a mission to capture this druid. If she was telling the truth, we would be one step closer to finding out how our group was tied to dark magic. If she wasn't, she was bound to slip up eventually.
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You're right. None of this would have explained who tipped off the warlocks that Venaticus was tracking, but he was the only one who made it a point to keep his plans secret. The most charitable theory for Eione is that she carelessly mentioned the operation to the druid, who acted on it without revealing his link to the coven. I wasn't foolish enough to actually believe this, but I wanted to be sure before I hung this girl by her toes. Her brother is a very important man, and if I acted too rashly, I could bring the wrath of an Avatar on my head. Nobody wants that.
...
When Saayuko and Eione left, I went around and woke up everyone else. If there was corruption in our family, I wanted everyone to see how I wanted it dealt with. So, we gathered in the lobby and Moruay used her magic to spy on Saayuko and Eione. The two of them found the druid playing around Flora Field, chasing a squirrel in the form of a lynx. I had a bad feeling as soon as I saw that goofball, so I had Oogura rush to the magic shop next door and call in a favor that the owner owed us. He created a portal that took us all to the hills outside of the valley.
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Then, we just waited in hiding while Eione approached the druid to talk to him. What she did next was hidden from Saayuko's view, but we were able to see it with Moruay's magic.
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She reached into her pack and whipped out another vial of potion and dosed the druid with it. He shipped back into his cat body and went berserk. Saayuko acted quickly to cut him with a knife that she had tipped with a knockout-poison. The girl thought she had been saved, but then we came out of hiding. Her guilt was confirmed.
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I wanted to kill her on the spot, and so did half of the guild. There was no denying that she had caused the druid to go after her, and I had promised Venaticus that any dark mages I found in our midst would be dead long before they reached his custody. But I still wasn't completely sure that she was tied with the warlocks in the chimera farm.
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Ordinarily, I wouldn't need much more proof than that to end her, but I had two things holding me back. The first was her Avatar kin. The second was Venaticus. He knew full well that I'd sooner kill her than turn her over to him, but if doing so didn't end his suspicion of me, he'd never leave us alone. So, I decided to give him a little present. Saayuko stuck Eione with the same poison that she used on the druid, Oogura went to fetch Venaticus and the rest of us carried our prisoners back to the compound.
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When Venaticus showed up, he shared my disbelief that Eione could be wrapped up in this. Apparently he knew her brother and had heard enough about her to be surprised. He had readily accepted what I told him about her nonetheless. As for the druid, he didn't seem to be interested at all. For all of the detective work he put in, [Scoff] he didn't know any better than I did whether he was a warlock or innocent bystander.
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The druid was the first to wake up and, I must say, he wasn't very helpful. He confirmed that he and Eione were previously acquainted, but was bewildered by what happened. Like the rest of us, he had no idea that she had ever been anything but a nice girl. The man appeared to be mentally ill even after the potion that he was dosed with wore off, but he was harmless. He seemed to be more comfortable waiting out the rest of his time there in his lynx body and it became clear rather quickly that we were going to have to wait for Eione to wake up to make any sense of this.
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At the very least, she seemed to feel guilty for fucking over the Midanian, who I learned was called Varuna. That's when she spilled some of her secrets. She claimed that she was no dark mage, but had recently become involved with a man who was. She spun her tale about the druid to protect this man without taking the fall herself. Varuna was simply a convenient scapegoat for her.
...
After all of the pressure we put on her, Venaticus and I managed to determine that the warlock met with Eione in Fides when he wasn't hiding out in that trinket shop in Resta City. Other than that, all we got was his first name: Iollan. At that point, I think she decided there wasn't much else she could tell us without deepening the hole she had dug herself into, so she refused to say any more. Venaticus agreed that we could turn her over to the Royal Inquisitor after letting her talk to her brother.
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