Many, many years ago, Jean once told Raoulin about the hierarchy of virtues. Plenty of young squires start off with just the one artefact channeling just the one virtue. Sometimes it's not their own first or best virtue, because they get the artefact that is available and works for their skillset and their fighting unit's needs, but it's one they're at least comfortable with. Then almost everyone picks up their keystone artefact before they get knighted - the strongest thing they can do, channeling the virtue they chose to focus on most.

They sometimes have to correct the misconception that that's when you're done growing, when you find that focus virtue that gives you your trademark power; often that's closer to the halfway point. Knights traditionally choose seven virtues - not the same seven for everyone, but roughly seven and of course there's significant overlap between everyone's lists - and Raoulin has his own set of artefacts and powers working from the seven virtues he chose. It's the rounding out that helps a fighter find their role. A guy who can turn invisible is a guy who can turn invisible, while a guy who can turn invisible and summon horses and use truesight is a scout. Someone who isn't obsessed with just one virtue, who can see it in balance with all the others, is ready to teach it. 

Jean told him that once you're working with seven, it's not manageable to juggle a strong virtue you focus on and then six bonus things you try to also do on the side. You have to shift frameworks. Your focus virtue becomes a lens, a filter that shines light on every other virtue. A brave person can understand honesty as the courage to tell the truth. A loyal person can understand courage as a love great enough that it produces willingness to overcome fear. An truthful person could understand loyalty as commitment to oaths or being honest with oneself about how much you owe to your people.

When he's confused and has no idea what he's supposed to be doing next, Raoulin falls back on humility. It was a mental framework he struggled with and hated as a youth, and somewhere along the line he challenged himself with it enough that wrestling with it became his story for a few years, and then it became easy and comfortable. It's the foundation he can build other virtues on. It doesn't always steer him to the answer, but it rarely steers him wrong.

Okay, so assume she's smarter than him, knows more than him, and he doesn't have enough justification to conclude that she's definitely a demon misleading him nor to conclude that she's definitely a human teenager who desperately needs help. Assume Nicole's the better diplomat, Reynhard's the better fighter, the Baroness is the one authorised to make decisions as to who can or can't be told about magic, and so his main job here is to get things that they can use.

(They've been assuming they get to figure out what to do with her but even if she is just a human teenager she may well have her own ideas...) 

What do you do if someone very earnestly and honestly informs you there's nine afterlives?

That would be pretty important if it was true.

Does he know it isn't? He hasn't been to an afterlife. He hasn't actually really quizzed any fairies or dragons or angels about exactly how afterlives worked. To be honest he'd always thought he'd prefer it to be a surprise - whoever designed the afterlife clearly wasn't handing out too many clues, and maybe that was because he was supposed to focus on the life in front of him.

But if people could go to hell and fix it... well, yeah, sure, that's worth at least thinking about. 

"I'm... kind of confused," he admits. "I have never heard anyone say there were nine before. Some people here believe in zero, and some in two. How do you know about this? Have you been there? Can you take me?" 

"Raoulin," says Katherine, because she does not really think that going to hell was ANYWHERE in the ASSIGNED MISSION for this SATURDAY BAKE SALE CONVERSATION. 

"...uh, not now. If you have some way of knowing about the nine afterlives it should maybe be secret too, so - don't show it where people who aren't holy warriors could see, if that's okay?" 

Iomedae likes him. She likes anybody who notices that the afterlives are the most important thing, even if he does seem frustratingly fixated on not telling anyone about them - but it is possible to imagine that, somehow, it'd go worse here if everybody knew - she doesn't know enough about how judgment works to rule that out, and it's not like telling people things is reversible -

"I no can lie," she says, "but I have no strength to take people to Heaven or to Hell, and God will not give me that strength, if no should do that. I know there are nine because it says this in Scripture, because God did go to all of them, when he was a man, and wrote of what they are like. I know that Scripture is no a lie because God gives strength to the people who preach it..." Would that be persuasive, if it was really the first time she had heard it? No. It wouldn't be. 

"...I guess I do not know that God is not lying, but great men who see all the world and holy enough go to Heaven and to Hell do not say, oh Scripture is wrong, and other gods say, God like cities too much, God like war too much, God like laws too much, but not say, "God is lying", so they would all be lying also. And any person where I am from, they go to the priest when they are hurt, and the priest makes them not hurt, they go to the priest for water when it not rain, they go to the priest to have a baby and not die, and that does not mean God is not lying, or Scripture is right, but it - if you are trying to walk in the direction of Heaven that is the direction to walk in, right?"

Well that's certainly new. Raoulin scratches his head.

Better at least keep up appearances while he figures this out. He pushes a tray of badges and brooches and trinkets towards Iomedae. "Want to help set these out in nice rows while we talk?"

So many questions he wants to ask. Why can't she lie - is she fey somehow? What Scripture is this? Does God give her strength? Enough strength to beat him in a fight? What God does she worship that likes cities and war too much? 

Start from the assumption she genuinely knows more than him, and he genuinely actually wants to learn from her... 

"So, you've probably noticed in America - actually in all the places I've ever been or heard of - we don't have the same Scripture, and nobody has seen heaven or hell, and we don't know about nine afterlives and the priests here can't make rain or fix your hurts. Why do you think we don't have any of that? Did we make God angry, or is there something wrong with America?" 

Sure, she can lay out trinkets in nice lines. "They know God here?" she disagrees while she does so. "They not know all the same stories of God, but they know he was a man, and that he fight Hell, and that he can come back from dead. They know devils and Satan and they know you should be honorable and good. When they say of Scripture it is different because in different lands people see the same thing different ways, but I have no heard them say any thing that is wrong.

In America priests don't heal people. I ....do not know why." One guess is that it's because they're Evil. That guess is very salient right now. She does not really want to suggest it. "...I think there are things wrong with America, like how they make holy warriors foster childs. God probably angry America do that."

"...I can imagine that would make God angry, if he really wanted you to be a holy warrior but instead you were stuck being a foster child."

"So you think it's different people seeing the same thing in different lands, when some people think there's nine afterlives, and other people are certain there's only heaven, and other people think there's hell or purgatory, and some people think there's no afterlife at all? Those seem like some of them might be wrong, to me." He is not going to use the phrase 'cultural relativist', he vaguely remembers something like this from college but it's definitely better to stick to Iomedae's own words here. 

“People who think there is two is wrong, but - say you had lots of horses, and you showing them to Jenny and ask how many kinds of horses. Jenny not ride horses, Jenny maybe says oh there are two kinds, girl horse and boy horse. Sir Gabriel is a knight, he says this horse for farm, this horse for killing, this horse for car, this horse for make more horses. If someone says, when you die you go to Heaven or Hell or Limbo, they are not wrong, they are just not knowing all the kinds. …if someone says when you die you go no place, they are wrong, or lying. Or a” lich of some kind, but she has no idea how to say it in English - “or they killed many people to hide from God.”