And today, she does.

Okay, change of plans, she's selling her Ant Hauls and then she's going to tell her friends in the Eagle Knights the good news.

Not everyone is available; Treason got invited on a secret mission about a week back, and Eric's at some kind of family meetup in Carpendan. Both Joy and Liberty are in town, though!

Awww, she really wants to show Treason and Eric too. She can tell them when they get back but it's not the same.

In the meantime, she's going to arrange to meet Joy and Liberty at the temple of Milani, it feels like it would be kind of silly to demonstrate on two people who aren't even injured.

"Guess what?"

Joy will play along. ”You’ve decided to start learning some real magic? I think I could dig up an old spellbook from somewhere."

Liberty smacks him upside the head. "It's obviously good news, not her taking leave of her senses. Judging by that smile... you started channeling positive?"

Well, she wasn't smart enough for wizard school, but all things considered that's not actually a bad thing.

"Yes!!! Want to see?"

"Absolutely!"

Great! She heads on over to the channeling area.

When Justice channels negative it feels like reaching inside of herself to find the part of her that wants to hurt her enemies, curling that desire into a heavy ball in the middle of her chest, and willing it out into the world. There's something very satisfying about it, but it's not actually very useful, not anymore.

Channeling positive is the opposite. It's reaching inside of her for the part of her that cares about these strangers, that wants them to be alright, that wants their cuts and scrapes and bruises gone, and letting that desire soar out of her. A few months ago it felt almost unfathomable, but now it comes to her easily. She puts one hand on her holy symbol, looks around the channeling area, and wants the people in it to be healed, and a moment later they are.

(It turns out this is also pretty satisfying.)

Joy is smiling too now, unable to keep up his facade any longer. "Congratulations, by the way. Really. We all knew you could do it, but that doesn't mean it didn't take a lot of work to make it happen."

"As far as I'm concerned, this calls for a celebration."

Smile! "Thank you! Uh, what did you have in mind?"

"Well, we'd been planning to talk to this caydenite I know about throwing a proper party, but I'm not sure if you want to hold off on that until everyone was here instead, so we could just go get something fancy for dinner today."

"That's what I voted for in general," Joy opines, "But I was outnumbered. Your new spear should be ready for us to pick up, though."

"Oh, if we're having a party, I definitely want to wait for everyone to be back." She pauses for a moment. "....New spear?"

"Well, it's not as though we can recommend you for missions with the old one. You've gotta have silver, or it'll just bounce off a devil when you stab them."

Blink blink. "Does that mean, uh—"

"That we think you're ready to go on missions? Well, you'll still need to get whoever is leading it to agree, but as far as I'm concerned? Yeah."

She's excited enough that it takes her a couple moments to actually line up her words. "When can I start?"

"That depends on what you plan to do, and who with."

"I think there's a Steel Falcon affiliate setting out tomorrow or the day after, but I haven't been keeping track of who is headed for Isger."

Nod. "Isger probably makes more sense for my first time, if there's one heading out soon?"

"We can come help you check once you've got your new weapon."

This requires a little detour en route to the chapter house, because the spearmaker they commissioned didn't happen to have their shop set up exactly on that route. It's a relatively upscale place; not one of the really fancy workshops that do in-house construction for weapons enchanters, but only a step or two down from there. The shop's primary business seems to be in woodcarving, with a number of pieces both practical and decorative hanging on the walls; there's an apprentice manning the front when they arrive, but he seems to recognize Liberty well enough to fetch his master promptly.

"You're here to pick it up?"

"She's ready for it now."

"Hmm." He looks at Justice assessingly, but whatever he gleans from it is not voiced aloud; instead he just fetches a cloth wrapped object, and places it on the counter in between them with a light thunk before unwrapping.

The haft of the spear is solid hickory, a smidge longer than spears she used for practice, carved into a straight line of solid wood that ends in a rounded butt. Leather wraps the haft by where her hands would grip. By far the most attention getting part of the spear, though, is the tip; even indoors, the flattened blade shines with reflected light as it tapers into a point. It's the only part of the weapon not made in this store, forged from the sunsilver-mithral alloys favored by Eagle Knights to balance cost and durability with effectiveness - despite this, it's as expensive as the entire rest of the weapon.

Oh, it's beautiful. She picks it up reverently and tests the weight and balance. 

It's a good ten, fifteen percent heavier than her practice spear; the haft is thinner, but the length and density of the wood make up the difference and then a bit on top of that. The balance is significantly better though, by enough that she can feel it just holding it.

"I'm sure you hear this a lot, but this is incredible." 

He does hear that pretty often, but that doesn't mean it's not appreciated. 

"I'm quite pleased with how it came out myself. May you get good use of it."

"Thank you!"

Since it's obviously a hit with its recipient, Joy will pay the last bit of the commission price and let Justice walk out with it right then. From there, it's off - not to the local Eagle Knight headquarters, which for all its impressive fortification is under constant surveillance by Chelish agents, but to a relatively nondescript building run by a retired member that they don't think has been made yet and is still private enough nobody will be able to overhear anything unless they show up in person. There's a scripted call and response to confirm they're not just wandering in off the street, but then they can get to talking details.

"We're here to speak with Nelson about his little project."

"I thought you were busy out west."

"I am. But Justice is looking to get started, and the missions I take tend to go hotter than she's ready for yet."

"Right. Well, Nelson isn't in, but I'll see what I can do."

(Nelson's never in, of course; last Joy had heard the man wasn't even in the country. But things said in the front could be overheard, and it wouldn't do to confirm that).

"I understand completely."

Wave wave. "It's nice to meet you, I'm Justice." She... isn't actually sure how much she's supposed to say here, if it's less than 'everything.'

He's never heard of Justice before, but it's always good to have more newbies! 

"It's nice to meet you."

He clearly receives some kind of signal then, because he gets up from the stool he'd been sitting on, unlocks the door behind him, and waves them through. 

"Second door on the left."

Joy and Liberty can get their Detect Magics up to ensure no divinations are slipping through while the door is open, then follow Justice through.

And in the second door on the left is an unassuming woman in loose fitting clothing, who Justice wouldn't have blinked twice at if she passed in the street. When she holds out her hand for Justice to shake, though, it's pretty obvious there are muscles hiding under it.

"Celia. I hear you're the one who wants to join the next mission I'm running - what can you do?"

"Nice to meet you, I'm Justice."

She touches her holy symbol. "I'm a priestess of Calistria. Uh, I channel positive, and I've been practicing spear-fighting, and..."

She can describe her general physical and magical skill set. She's got the Luck and Chaos domains. (She's been trying to shift Chaos to Azata, she's heard people can do that sometimes, but so far no luck, and she's not going to mention that when explaining what she can do now. It'd be pretty stupid to try to switch in the middle of a mission without a really good reason.)

Definitely an encouraging resume! Clerics are hugely useful for anyone operating away from friendly civilization, and she knows some people who swear by the luck domain for ambushes.

"Do you have any interpersonal or religious disagreements you would expect to be mission-relevant?" 

She definitely has disagreements with people sometimes, no one in Andoran agrees with everyone else about everything, but probably they mostly aren't going to better for missions. On missions you're doing the mission, how sad you are about people going to Hell doesn't really seem like it'd come into it unless you're the sort of person who gets so upset about it that you're never willing to kill anyone.

"Not that I can think of? ...I guess if someone else was really opposed to working with a Calistrian priestess it'd probably be a bad idea to put us both on the same mission?"

She'd classify that rather thoroughly as the other person's issue, especially since Justice isn't herself evil.

"Okay. Depending on your schedule and risk tolerance, then, I have a few options for you. If you're up for spending being gone for a couple of months and spend a lot of time waiting, there's a group planning to go interfere with some of Cheliax's logging operations that's looking for a fourth; it's important work and reasonably safe, but the bases tend to be well enough defended that the worst case scenarios where you get caught at it are quite bad. I've also got a Bellflower affiliate who thinks they've found a vulnerable plantation to hit; you'd be one of two or three people at first, though if everything went well you'd have dozens with you on the way back, and you'd probably be gone for a few weeks. Very variable risk, sometimes they're a cakewalk and sometimes you get a province wide manhunt you can't get your charges away from. Or I can see about putting you down for one of the groups that'll be harassing Chelish army detachments in the east, but you wouldn't be setting out for a week and a half at the earliest."

She doesn't really want to wait a whole week and a half before she can start. Between the other two... it's not that working against the logging isn't important, Cheliax wants those logs for a reason, but... if Celia needs people for all of them, she thinks she'd rather start with the one where she's also helping people get out. She's fine with the risk either way, she wouldn't be trying to be an Eagle Knight if she weren't okay with danger.

Also, slavers suck. The loggers probably also suck but maybe less.

"The second one sounds good to me to start with."