It's not just about the healing channels, it's what comes with them too. People will trust her more and be more willing to take her to do something risky if they don't think it might send her to the Abyss afterwards.

"Same things as most anywhere else, I think? Helping people, giving to the poor, volunteering at an orphanage, healing people, keeping them safe, dealing with the Undead but someone else will probably get to them first, stuff like that. It won't be as fast as rescuing slaves or getting rid of Asmodean priests is, but you can probably hit neutral before you finish getting good at fighting if you work at it."

They — think she's Evil? But they believed her about wanting to help, and they put themselves in danger to save her, and they haven't hurt her at all — probably she's confused about something, but whatever it is feels very very dangerous to be confused about.

Saying things she thinks rather than being careful to figure out exactly what she's supposed to say has been working out really well so far but if it were going to stop working anywhere it'd be here, only she doesn't know how else to figure out what she's supposed to say when she's talking with people who aren't Asmodeans.

"My best guess is that I'm Chaotic Neutral already," she says, which is probably incredibly pathetic but hopefully not actually dangerous.

"I guess that's possible? We didn't check, and it seems like kind of a pain to have you try and trip me until I can tell if a Protection from Evil is helping me avoid it or not. Especially when we're stuck in the rope trick."

"It's much easier for clerics, you'd just have to try to fail a save against command and see if it went through. Lots of people in Cheliax are evil, though, if I was betting that's what I would guess."

They're talking about it so casually. Like they're saying that lots of people in Cheliax have brown hair, not like they're saying that she might be the same sort of person as Guifré or Chosen Dalmau or her lord, the sort of person who'd force themself on a girl or flog people for disobeying the will of Asmodeus, or even just the sort of person who'd bring up their daughter to serve and obey Asmodeus until she can go to Hell and be molded into a a perfect obedient devil.

Probably she's still confused. Her heart is racing and she feels a little like she can't breathe, which is stupid, it's not like that's going to help, and the safe thing to do here is to nod and agree even if she doesn't understand, only it seems like this is probably a really important thing to not be confused about.

Also she really doesn't want to just nod and agree. She was perfectly fine at nodding and agreeing and pretending like she was an Asmodean for two years and she hated every second of it and she does not want to keep it up, and probably this is a pathetic and reckless thing to not want but she can't change that she doesn't want it.

That... still does not actually help with figuring out what to ask if she wants to stop being confused.

"And you're not... upset, even though I might be Evil?"

...Wow, of all the questions she could possibly have asked there that's got to be one of the most pathetic ones she could possibly have picked.

"...Well, it's not nothing? Like I'm not going to try and say that, if we had checked and you were somehow Chaotic Good, I wouldn't have trusted you more for it? But even though Asmodeus tries to crush the goodness out of everyone in Cheliax, he's not very good at making it stick. Lots of people from Cheliax stop being evil once you tell them what good is and they realize it's not - pathetic to care about other people, or whatever other lies they got told."

...It's not?

She turns that around in her head for a moment. She was glad that the Eagle Knights had made it away safely, and that's... she has a lot of pathetic feelings, but maybe that's not one of them? And it'd be awfully presumptive to say the Eagle Knights care about her, but they put themselves in danger to help her leave and they gave her food and they're putting up with all her questions, and they're definitely not pathetic. And when she's an Eagle Knight someday, if she meets a secret Calistrian who just killed their equivalent of Guifré, she thinks she'd care about them, and want to help them too, and maybe that's not pathetic either.

She's still pretty confused about everything else, though. She wants to be less confused but she doesn't even know what to ask — maybe she can just say that, if she's saying things she thinks.

"I think — I understood part of that but not the whole thing, and probably some of the parts I'm missing are really obvious, but there are... lots of things that are obvious everywhere else that I don't know, because I'm from Cheliax. And I don't, uh, know the right questions to ask to understand, if that makes sense."

Probably she should try to be at least a little more specific than that, Joy wanted her to try to have questions and that's not even a little bit a question. And maybe it's a bad idea to try to explain it, but it would also be a bad idea to just keep not understanding.

"I think right now part of it is — you think I'm probably Evil, but you're not treating me like someone who might have done awful things? And I don't think I've done anything really awful, but if you think I'm wrong about that—"

"I guess you could say I'm taking a chance on it. Do I know for sure it's the right decision? No. Treason likes you, and I do usually trust her judgment, but I wouldn't stake my comrades' lives on her getting it right every time. But do I think she got it right? Yes. I'm a pretty decent judge of character, and the impression I get from you is someone who wants really badly to be good and just doesn't know how - and you definitely aren't faking the fact that you hate Asmodeus. So - I choose to help you, and trust that good will come of it. And it might blow up in my face some day, but I don’t think that day is today.”

"Besides, it's not that we didn't check at all. I spent some time talking with the slaves and servants and guards about who all their worst tormentors were while you were chatting with Treason and Liberty was preparing spells. If you'd made a habit of torturing slaves for fun or turning people in to the priests or such, I think I would have learned, and then we probably would have killed you before we left to keep them safe. Even if they were too afraid to talk about it, I think I'd have noticed the flinches get worse when you walked into the room." 

So they're... guessing that she hasn't done anything really awful, the sort of thing she'd deserve to die for, but they think she's probably done enough littler Evil things that she still counts as Evil? And they're not trying to give her what she deserves for those because... it'd be really hard to guess what the right amount was to hurt her, and they think that once she's Good she'll be able to figure out whether she deserves to be punished more? And — it feels sort of awful to think that she could be Evil, could deserve to go to the Abyss. Her chest is feeling all twisted up and tight just thinking about it, which is stupid and pathetic but knowing that isn't actually enough to make it stop. 

But she doesn't actually know. 

She did worship Asmodeus for thirteen years. Maybe that's Evil enough to balance out killing Guifré. It doesn't feel like it, it feels in her soul like killing him was more important than everything else she's done in her life put together, but — she doesn't know.

She nods. "I... think that makes sense."

She still feels kind of confused but everything she can think of to say is pathetic. ...But she keeps thinking that, and saying the pathetic thing, and it keeps being fine, so probably she can say it and it will be fine. "And — yes, I really do want that, and — you're probably right that I don't totally know how, I was trying in Cheliax but there's a lot I didn't figure out, but I want to learn, and I promise I'll keep doing my best—"

...It keeps being fine but also she keeps saying things that are really pathetic. No one cares if you're 'doing your best' if your best sucks.

In a different culture this might be where someone pulls in Asmodia for a hug, but that's not exactly in Liberty's wheelhouse. Instead she just smiles at her. "That's the spirit. And I'll do my best to help you where I can."

Eric's not quite as enthused at that response but the advantage of being good at talking to people is that you can avoid putting your foot in your mouth.

Smile!! She appreciates the Eagle Knights so so much and has no idea how to communicate this without entirely the wrong implications.

If there's nothing else urgent to talk about, Eric will offer to deal her in to the next game of cards; if she's not interested, though, she can probably talk them into sharing stories about Andoran or other missions they want on to pass the time.

About an hour after she arrives in the rope trick, the muffled sounds of Treason waking up become audible through the divider.

She is solidly mediocre at cards. 

When Treason wakes up, she glances towards the divider, but doesn't say anything.

Then it'll be a minute as Treason lazily gets herself dressed and does something about her bedhead before they come face to face again. "What time is it?"

"It's a mid afternoon. I'm going to go spell Joy in a bit, but everything's going smoothly so far."

"Great." Her bleary eyes register Asmodia, and then sharpen a bit. "Oh, you're up. Have you picked out a new name yet?"

She smiles tentatively at Treason and gives her a little wave.

"Uh, not yet. ...How did you pick yours?"

"My parents tried to name me Iris, if you can believe it. I knew I wasn't going to stick with it once I had the chance, but it took me a bit to settle; first I went by Courage, but that didn't really work, and then I tried Ragathiel but everyone kept assuming I was a guy before they met me, and then I was toying with a couple of names like Anarchy and Freedom and such before I finally tried Treason and never looked back. Lets people know who they're dealing with."

"How about the two of you?" she asks Liberty and Eric. "Or, uh, I guess maybe you've always been Eric."

"I decided to go by Liberty when Milani picked me as a cleric. It gets a bit confusing sometimes, since I wasn't the only one who had the same idea, but I like it enough I haven't changed it again. Plus it would kind of be a pain at this point."

"And yeah, my parents named me Eric. I think it's the same with Joy?"

"Pretty sure yeah, I ran into some of his buddies from wizard school a few months back and he was going by it then too."

The idea of people naming their children Joy is so weird. Do people in countries that aren't ruled by Hell — well, actually, now that she thinks about it, the answer to 'do people in countries that aren't ruled by Hell want their children to be happy' is obviously 'yes,' that shouldn't be surprising and definitely shouldn't be making her chest feel tight again.

...She's just not going to think about that right now.

She kind of likes the idea of naming herself after something good. The problem is that most of the options don't really sound very much like names, except 'bravery' and maybe 'victory,' only she doesn't really think of herself as brave and they haven't won yet. She could go with something based off 'Calistria,' like the opposite of Asmodia, but all the ideas she can think of sound kind of stupid. If she branches out into things that aren't names at all... 'revenge' is good but it sounds kind of stupid as a name, 'freedom' feels a little pathetic when she's only free because of other people, 'justice'... kind of has a nice ring to it? It still doesn't sound like a name, but if she ends up hating it she can change it later, Treason changed hers a bunch of times.

"I think... Justice seems like it might be nice? As a name, I mean, not just in general."

"Justice... yeah, I like it. Way better than Asmodia, that's for sure."

"What matters is that she likes it, not that you do."

"Sure, but she's the one that picked it! I'm just showing my approval, some positive reinforcement."

"So, what have you been up to while I was napping?"

"We talked about what sort of things I'd need to do to join the Eagle Knights someday, and about, uh, what sort of Good things there are to do in Augustana." And about the fact that they think she's Evil, but she doesn't really want to say that, even though presumably Treason also thinks she's Evil. "And then we played cards." Justice is losing the current hand.

It's not surprising that she's not winning against Eric; they never play for money with him because he's a total card direshark. As for the other question... she assesses Justice' build.

"Crossbow?"

"Spear."

"Yeah, I see it. If you ever decide you want to give a real bow a try though you should come talk to me about it, you'll have to put on a lot of muscle for it but I think you might be able to pull it off. Always good to have options, especially when you're starting out and squishy."

Nod nod. "That makes sense."

When the game finishes up, Liberty climbs out of the rope trick, and Joy climbs up it shortly after to crash for a few hours. When he wakes up, they all have to climb out for a bit while he makes another one, and then repeat the cycle again right before liberty goes to sleep so it doesn't wake her up before dawn.

It's about an hour after she finished preparing her spells the next morning that Eric calls up the rope trick that they're in sight of Augustana.

Justice wakes up exactly at dawn, and — catches herself, halfway through trying to pretend that she's still asleep. She doesn't have to pretend, not anymore.

Holy Calistria, uh, I'm not sure if there's some other title I'm supposed to put here, your, uh, priestess offers up this prayer to you this morning... I really need to figure out some way to say that that's not just copying off the prayers I know. Anyways. This is, uh, Justice now. Kind of a lot of things have happened.

She stumbles through a mental explanation of the events of the last subjective day.

I want to join them. I had no idea there was anyone like them, and now I know, and I want to be part of that so so badly. It feels like — I guess you can probably just, uh, see how I'm feeling, and I don't need to try to explain it. They're so good, I killed Guifré but it was only him, I didn't — they didn't even know any of us, and they still wanted to avenge what the old lord did. And I want to do that too, I know I'm not ready yet but someday I will be, and I'll go back, and I won't stop until I've made every lord and every priest of Asmodeus pay for what they've done. And I couldn't do that on my own, but it's not just me, there's a whole group all trying to do the same thing, and maybe if it's all of us together we really can give all of them what they deserve.

...I'm not sure if you can switch what kind of channels you give me but if you can it'd be nice if you could start giving me healing channels instead.

She's pretty sure she still has most of the hour left but she can keep going in this general vein for a while. Every so often she thinks about Guifré again and gets distracted with satisfaction about what's happening to him in Hell.