“Yeah, I, um, a thing happened, but I don’t think it’s a bad thing, necessarily, I…um. I. Think. I might be a cleric now???”

Well, this might as well happen.

“Oh. That’s strange.”

“Well, to be fair, it’s objectively less strange than undemoning someone.”

Giggle. “That’s true! I think I like the undemoning better, though.”

“Well, obviously. Still, given the timing, I appreciate the gesture of support for the project.”

“Which god is it?” He’s definitely not personally interested or anything but it might end up mattering at some point.

“That is a good question. Let me—” she waves her wand around, creating various crude holy symbols out of the same white material that the body of the wand is made of. She picks each one up, tries praying with it, and then tucks it away in hammerspace, until she gets to a sort of T-posing angel.

“Sarenrae,” she concludes. “Neat.”

It’s less reassuring than Iomedae or Torag, but it could have been soooooo much worse. He tries hard not to think about the possibility of it having been Nethys. Encouraging redemption is so much less concerning than encouraging mad science.

“Well, I don’t have time to pray for spells right now, if I even can not at dawn, so I suppose this’ll be more useful tomorrow. Though the thing that replenishes mana is the emotional significance of healing, not the specific spell I was using, so having a manaless source of healing is convenient.”

Areelu is more confused than she had expected to be, but it’s hard to argue that things aren’t going well.

She’s definitely not sending Suture to interface with Seshka for the foreseeable future, though.

“—So, as you can see, purifying a Dretch worked!”

Irabeth stares at the Creature. “I do see that.” For…whatever value of “worked” Lucy is working with. She, uh, she’s not sure why this outcome is desirable, but if it increases “mana,” and “mana” is necessary to fix the Wardstone, then so be it.

“Anyway, I don’t think I have enough mana to fix the Wardstone yet, but I have more than twice as much as I did when I left, so it might make sense to go see if I can see how much I’ll need? By looking at the Wardstone again.”

“I don’t have any insight into how to manage your mana, but would that be a good idea, with the Garrison in enemy hands?”

“It should probably be fine, as long as I’m careful.”

Irabeth doesn’t ask “and are you going to be careful,” out loud, with her voice, but she’s thinking it at the top of her lungs.

Thaaaaat’s pretty fair.

”One passenger doesn’t increase the mana cost that much; would it make you feel better if I brought Staunton?”

“Immensely.”

“Alright then.” And she goes and collects Staunton and vanishes.

The Wardstone is beautiful.

It’s not that she hadn’t noticed that the first time, but this time she knows what a Wardstone is, if not why it’s full of people.

Lucy steps closer, closing her eyes and resting her hand and forehead against the glowing surface.

And Staunton settles into a guard stance, watching warily for demons to show up.

Which one does! In fairly short order!

Minagho was informed, of course, when some crusader teleported in and then out again. It probably wouldn’t matter, but it was the kind of thing she had to keep an eye on, so to speak.

When someone comes in and starts meddling with the Wardstone, she didn’t need to be informed. Meddling with the Wardstone is her job, and she can feel it as soon as someone else touches the blasted thing.

She wasn’t particularly expecting the interloper to be the same teleported from earlier, but her escort!

“Staunton! Darling!”

Oh no.

“Minagho, you bitch.”