Fuck Snack Service's -

Pilar.  Snack Service is serious.

Snack Service tried to put up a good front of omniscience in front of Cheliax but the truth is that Snack Service doesn't know everything, even Nethys doesn't know everything about the future, and the gods are struggling to operate under the shadow of tropes just as much as anybody else in this whole situation.

Things are already looking somewhat derailed from what Snack Service thought was supposed to happen and Snack Service can't risk saying what that was, even in a conversation inside Pilar's own mind.

Pilar needs to become stronger so that Pilar can be ready for whatever happens, inside a situation that is now in flux.

Why should Pilar want to be ready to save Cayden Cailean's plans?  Especially if they derail in a way where Asmodeus wins everything and gloats?

The valid answer to that question can be told to Pilar if she puts on the artifact headband.  Which Pilar doesn't have to do now, if Pilar doesn't want to.

Snack Service is sorry.

...if Pilar would rather not think about this anymore, the next step is for her to head towards Ostenso.  There isn't a rush, and it's okay for Pilar to just walk all the way there, and enjoy the forest along the way.

Pilar has been doing lots of things recently one after another, and Pilar may risk losing her proud title of 'sanest person in Project Lawful' if Pilar doesn't take this chance to breathe.  Pilar does not need to think and figure everything out right now.  She's allowed to just walk through the forest for a while.

Snack Service knows that it is not Pilar's superior, but if Snack Service can't give Pilar that order, it means that Pilar needs to give Pilar that order.  And then, having received that order, Pilar needs to trust that Pilar knew what she was doing, and obey her.

Pilar heads off in the direction of the rising sun, and parallel to the distant coastline, as will bring her to Ostenso in time.

It's - strange, to think that she can just walk through the forest like this, safely.  She's been at Ostenso academy full-time since she learned to hang Ray of Frost, which was the first point when it would have been even slightly sane to wander a short distance into a forest without being able to use a sword.  Even as a second-circle wizard, you wouldn't want to go that far into a forest on your own; a second-circle just doesn't have the spell volume to deal with a medium-sized pack of predators.

Now Pilar is a fifth-circle oracle, who once slew out of hand a fourth-circle Security who was insolent to her; and it would be a very very improbable encounter in this forest that brought her into conflict with anything scarier than herself.  She is Cheliax's most valued spy-taker and would certainly be Raised if slain, or True Resurrected if wholly devoured.  It's not just that Pilar will almost certainly make it through the forest to Ostenso alive, it's that she can walk into the trackless depths of the forest without anxiety.

The cold of night is just dissipating, the Sun hardly even full above the horizon.  Condensed dew sparkles on everything around her, dampens her when she brushes past branches and leaves.  Pilar set up an Endure Elements, when she hung spells before dawn this morning, but she holds off on casting it on herself.  It's not that cold, and she can handle much worse than a little wet.

The reason it's not an unprecedented experience, for Pilar, is that she also traipsed through a sunlit forest like this in Elysium, four months ago.

...she would rather not think about that, and orders herself not to.  Aspexia Rugatonn said that, though she hated it, she had to admit that Snack Service had helped Cheliax after all.  Pilar is not going to act out angrily at Snack Service to the point of ignoring sensible suggestions like that Pilar command herself to stop thinking for a time.

She has, in fact, been doing one thing after another, or being in one kind of difficult situation or another, for quite a while now.  It's sensible, if the first step in whatever fate Snack Service has set up for her, is to quiet her thoughts for a time.

Stop thinking, then, Pilar.  Stop thinking.  Just walk through the sunrise-lit forest, getting damp, and don't think about anything for a while.

Some time has passed, now.  It might be an hour, or two hours; the Sun's higher, but Pilar has been deliberately not thinking about angles and seasons and what that means for how much time has probably passed.

Her feet grew sore, and her legs, after some of that time; but Pilar cast Lesser Restoration on herself when she noticed herself beginning to slow, and continued.

A hill stands before her, and Pilar deliberately goes up it, so she can check that her sun-bearing is correct and hasn't taken her away from the coastline she's trying to parallel towards Ostenso.

The coastline looks more distant, to her left.  But to Pilar's right there's what looks like an unpaved road, with wheel-ruts to show that carters travel along it; a road like that ought to be bearing toward Ostenso, Pilar thinks.

And if not, or if she's about to get lost or late for anything important, Snack Service can stop her about it - right?

(Silence.)

Pilar angles towards the road.  It's not just that Pilar is less delighted, now, by the sparkling leaf-dew dampening her - she cast Endure Elements on herself, when that started to be true - but that it's been four months since the last time she had a genuinely normal conversation with anybody.

The road is smoothed dirt, unstoned and unpebbled, and still much easier to walk over than untamed forest ground.  One obtains twice the speed, for half the effort, walking on almost any road at all.

Pilar's mind goes automatically to Asmodia's patient efforts to test the usability for road-surfacing of common materials that would be easily found nearby in forests or in plains; dampened, Prestidigitated in various ways, with heavy rollers run over them after the dampening and Prestidigation.  Looking for a surface that would last and shed water, once solidified.  Looking for a way to make lasting roads, cheaply, with one 1st-circle cleric to conjure water and a handful of wizard apprentices to Prestidigitate, lay roads almost as fast as a heavy roller could roll.  Roads firm enough that Keltham's 'tricycles' could be invented and set loose on them...

...would Asmodia have saved tens of thousands of Chelish lives over the next year, as Snack Service did claim, through some other use that Asmodia had in a war with Osirion, or by her influencing Keltham somehow?

Or is roadmaking just that important, that quickly?

...probably roadmaking is just that important.  Too many people walking them, too many goods moving across them.  Why did they mock Asmodia?  What were they thinking?  There can't be many more important matters than roads.

Only, what good does it even do, to Cheliax, to know how to make cheap roads?  If many people have to be taught the knowledge, to make many roads cheaply, it can't be kept from Osirion, from other countries' spies.

It wouldn't have helped Cheliax.  Cheliax wouldn't have gained any advantage.

It would only have helped the Chelish people.

Pilar closes her eyes, and walks blind, for a minute, along a straighter portion of the path.

She doesn't need to think about such things, right now.  Pilar commanded her so.

The road presents Pilar with her first carter, traveling the opposite way from Pilar; a woman with a narrow cloth-covered cart resting on wide wheels, drawn by a single ox.

By the time the cart has drawn close enough that the woman's expression is readable, her face is very guarded.  She has had time to see Pilar, by then, of course, and maybe wonder to herself what an Ostenso wizard-apprentice is doing on this road from Ostenso to who-knows-where.

(Pilar never did get herself into the habit of wearing clothes other than the uniform of Ostenso's wizard academy.  It was something of an unofficial uniform among the Old Guard of Project Lawful, and an honorable one, for that time.  Egorian has learned to fear it, not least because of Pilar herself, and that city will have odd reflexes if some innocent Ostenso student somehow ends up visiting there.)

"Am I on the road to Ostenso?" Pilar calls to her, once they're in easy hearing range.

"Who's asking?"

Pilar Pineda of Project Lawful, the Cake Girl, Cheliax's Secret Weapon and Terror of Lastwall...

...that's probably not going to help here, is it.

"Jacme, of Ostenso's wizard academy.  Don't ask me why I'm here, or why I don't know if I'm on the right road.  It's a long story, a private story, and you're welcome and encouraged to report on this event to any authority you deem appropriate."

The woman measures Pilar as she passes, not slowing down her cart at all; showing no fear, though even a wizard apprentice is a dangerous creature to a commoner if it comes to battle.

"You're on the right road," she says in a tired voice, and passes on without saying aught else.

Pilar, feeling sad and not really knowing why, trudges on.

After a couple of minutes, she sighs, and reaches up to her hair to Prestidigitate it a more ordinary color.

There just aren't that many people who want to draw that particular attention to themselves.  'Pink-haired young woman in Ostenso academy uniform' is too identifying, even if you don't call yourself 'Pilar'.

Some time later, several other carters have passed Pilar going the other direction from her, all with similar guarded expressions, and Pilar hasn't met a single cart going her own way.

Pilar spends several embarrassing minutes speculating about whether carters are starting out from Ostenso at dawn, but carters who started out at dawn from wherever this road's other end goes, are too far away to have caught up to her yet.

Then Pilar actually visualizes the road in her mind, as though it were a spell she was analyzing.  She realizes that obviously if Pilar is walking quickly in one direction, it's like the carters are moving very quickly in the opposite direction, relative to her; while carters moving in her own direction, are traveling more slowly, relative to her.

Pilar slows down, then, and walks at a more relaxed pace, to give the carters behind herself time to catch up.