It's terribly salient to him. "That... that was it! The Light of Heaven! It chose you!"

"What did you do with it? Where did it go?"

"Here," she says absently, and summons it again.

"I saw - felt - Lariel's last moments. She died fighting cultists and demons. In great pain. And she left this here for someone else to continue her work. Standing against Deskari... I guess I count."

She doesn't feel worthy, but being a Hellknight is hardly disqualifying for this war.

"Thousands of gongs and none of us could touch it, but the first surfacer to come by gets a vision and picks it right up. Figures."

He stares for a moment in unabashed awe.

"Don't be jealous, Wenduag. The sword picked her because she's not tainted. We're born with evil inside us and it's up to us to prove ourselves better than that."

He turns back to Estel, excited. "If you can keep doing that, it'll be easy to rally the tribes! Will you come to Neatholm with us?"

"If Deskari tunneled down here instead of challenging Kenabres's guardian dragon, whichever of you survived probably could have picked it up just fine." She doesn't know Lann well, but she recognizes an unhealthy preoccupation when she sees one.

"And yes, of course. That's the way to the Shield Maze anyway, isn't it?"

If she'll help them she can be as condescending as she wants. "Yep! We had to sneak past some beasts to get here but it looks like you made it through fine, any of em who see us we can take on together."

That didn't land well at all, did it? Eh, that's a problem for whoever his officers are after the beasts are beaten back.

"Sounds good. While we're walking... What do you know about Lariel? I only got a few moments of her life - I guess I'm not even sure 'her' is the right word."

"The legend goes that fifty thousand gongs ago, our forebears found a dead angel here along with the bodies of his companions. We buried them with their weapons, except the sword that no one could move. Now we know it's true! They even got the name right on the tombstone."

"How long is a gong, in hours? Do you track hours?"

"We ring the bell once in the morning when everyone wakes and once at night before everyone sleeps. So, seventy years ago, in uplander time."

"And that's legend, now? That usually takes..." Generations. She is maybe understanding why they might feel cursed by blood.

"It did," she hisses. "Our grandparents' grandparents."

"We know we live shorter lives than uplanders. It's part of our curse, passed down from the first crusaders."

"That... does sound like a curse. Gods, and other races think humans have it bad because we only get a century. You get, what, ten thousand gongs?"

"Usually closer to twenty thousand, especially if you're not one of the hunters."

To Estel's eyes, Lann and Wenduag are both clearly well practiced and able hunters, but amateurs in comparison to the Hellknight archers she knew.

"You must grow up fast... You're better archers than the Kellids I've been training, I'd bet, and they're years older."

Not including the more specialized hunters of the Steel Exiles, but they've been training more than being trained.