She stares at her for a long moment. People often find this disconcerting but it is definitely warranted in this case. 

There was nothing wrong with that. 

She relaxes considerably. Not entirely. There could still be a problem somehow. And also she is still very close and very beautiful and it is an exercise in virtue not to stare.

"I see. That was a good answer. A startlingly good answer. I have met heathens before, and none of them would have said such fair things as you have, since we met. 

My training was more than good enough for what I needed. I did not expect to need to know how to talk to heathen philosophers. They are not normally such pleasant company."

She flashes her a little flattered smile. 

"Heh. I'm not sure I'd call myself much of a philosopher, but I suppose worldliness can make up for a multitude of sins, there. Expect you'd have some of the same trouble if you ran into a sufficiently foreign wizard, but imagine that doesn't come up too too much, either, especially given how gung ho I've heard wizards tend to be for chances to compare notes with each other."

"And... I do think that you might end up getting a biased view, of what 'heathens' can tend to do? Probably a lot of places someone like you 'd get called off to would be marginal, monster infested lands, the kind of place someone with good opportunities to be elsewhere wouldn't find themselves in for long. The kind of people who stay tend to be the overly attached or the more modestly gifted, though they can still have plenty of their own wisdom, if given the right opportunity to express it." 

She wants to make her smile more.

...And she does not have to worry so much now, does she. 

"You used the word 'metaphysics'. You're a philosopher." she deadpans. 

"And - I do not think so. My parents are old enough to remember a time before the word of God was brought to their lands. Most folk were hardly free to breathe. Women were held as property, as slaves. I would have been put to death many times over before I was ever strong enough to use a sword. You are the only sane heathen I have ever met or heard of."

She leans into the attention for a while. 

"Hah! Ahh, I just - like being conversant where I can, and ther's enough magic in the land if you know where to look for things to come up, but I suppose that could easily enough make me 'just' a philosipher and not a proper theologian or scholar." 

She winces sharply at hearing of that. 

"Nasty business, that. People being weird about gender alone can... get out of hand, much less of the other things that people get up to when they can cage themselves away from the world. Some places flow a little more freely, but I can't say that your wrong to expect that of the scraggy little corners of the known world, and a good deal of other places, besides." 

Scarlet is an extremely strange and admirable person and Aeolyn tells her so matter-of-factly. 

She can explain a little of the Church and its struggles. There is resistance everywhere and so, so much darkness. But as it grows stable in Valynrest - people no longer starve when the harvest doesn't come, they do not go through life maimed, they cannot be starved to the brink of death to fatten a bandit with a castle and a false title, or married away into slavery, or any of the many fates that normally befall peasants.

She'll tell her of the Gods, briefly, as she knows them. Pelor, sun-god, from whom rightful rulership flows. Moradin, not the god of merchants but of fair exchange and truth. Mystra, moon goddess, who knows and cares. Sirenna, the Lady of Liberty. Aphrodite, Who speaks of love and beauty and joy and sex. 

She nods along gravely, listening to her tell of their plights. It's not... something that she's actually unfamiliar with, but it's something that she doesn't like dwelling on. There's only so much you can justly do, in those places, if you don't expect you can work things from within or infuse a bunch of manpower into patching the holes a revolution would give them. She's given some of them the fear of god, or gotten some refugees off to face their face on greener pastures, sometimes, but it's grisly work, and not what she's best suited to. She tries to find herself challenges... elsewhere, where she can, though how much that's something she can get up to terribly deliberately varies with the weight of her conscience and the vibe she picks up from the travellers she stumbles across. A decent number of the cults have different norms, at least, for they care for a different breed of tortures. 

She's not the most hungry, so she'll make herself (and Aeolyn, if she desires) some oatmeal with the swiftly boiling water. 

She follows along, and gamely asks a few questions. Is there a particular 'correct' way to worship them, such as an encouragement to pay them all respects or seek a particular role model amongst them? She asks too if she knows anything of why these gods, in particular, are the ones with the skill in healing, given the way their domains work out, and how she worships them, herself. She's also a little curious what's up with baptisms, or how to correctly pray to each of them, if there's a set form or general style she should stick to, if she ever wants to reach out. 

The domains are interesting. Not a particular comprehensive list, nor do they sound particularly like a themed 'set' in terms of domains, though there is the moon and sun duality in there. She wonders what makes caring of Mystra different from the weighing of trade of Moradin, or the valuing of art and grace of Aphrodite. Sounds like a mishmash, honestly, and even if they aren't local gods... usually groups of spirits have something - cleaner, than that. But it could make sense, if they're scattered reflections more than differentiated cuts of a single gem, if she's mixing metaphors. 

She will try some, thank you. 

"The fact that you care at all is wonderful to learn. Never mind that you even sometimes take action. I am extremely glad to have met you." She smiles suddenly, dazzlingly, it's a striking change. 

"You should think of them as like parts of a whole, outlines of that which is Good, from different perspectives, and of yourself as another, smaller one, and ask where you fit with Them. Ask what you can live up to better. You are righter than you know. The Gods are alike in many ways, They all come from the same high truth."

"These questions can be dangerous. But I would guess that groups of spirits are so united by some theme because they are not gods, because they were collected or brought together, or made a conspiracy, or most likely of all because they were outright made up."

"Healing is not a skill in that sense. It is a making whole, revealing the image of God that is a person. The gods grant it because that is Their nature as well. ...I should ask, in fact, do you have any unhealed wounds or maladies or any such thing? I can lay hands upon you." 

Her eyes are softer than you'd think, too, and her lips are supple and full, despite everything. 

She nods along lightly at the instructions. Those are loose, and... relatively impersonal, but they do seem like the impersonal sort of creature. She'll need a while to get her head sorted for that, above and beyond just poking at their structures. 

She shakes her head at her offer. 

"Perk of the trade - generally can heal that sort of thing myself just fine. Can take a few days, sure, but old wounds do not weary me." 

"Suppose objects are at least less an image of creation, in that sense? Feels like might still be able to do something, there..." 

She blinks lightly. 

"Oh and... Do you want to say anything, tactically, about dealing with that guy? Don't really object too much in principle to just jumping him when we get back, but does leave a bit of a poor taste in my mouth to set aside hospitality that crudely, and it could still be fine to follow along, despite everything about him. Wonder how important that gem is - not sure if you can tell if it's a decoy or no? It's plenty magical, sure, but..."

She tilts her head.

"Also, do you happen to know if liches still need the - skeletal structure of their throat for verbal components of their spells? I think usually undead operate of the - memory of the function of the body in life, but I doubt that's impossible to patch, if you get into the weeds of the functions enough. It works pretty well, though it can be a little tricky to make it not just a killing blow, and if you're going for those, you have a few more options..."

She shakes her head. 

"but yeah, having more targets that work is better, generally, and don't like relying on targetting hands - hands are finnicky and you never know if they'll be able to pull off something with one hand. Cleaner to take out the throat or the life, in most cases."  

They are no longer acutely in danger. Scarlet is not actually a heathen in the sense of being likely to worry that she could die for refusing a knight's attentions. She has already made indications. 

Aeolyn decides that it is in fact righteous to stare at her a little. There is such... life in her, and danger like a coiled wolf. If you are incapable of the kind of anxiety that might inspire, it is intoxicating to be around.

"Impressive. People are indeed different. It's a matter of actual image and not only incidental light."

"If we meet him again - its tongue and lips rotted long ago, what you hear is its voice, bound after death. Seizing it by the neck will not help." However,

"If you can stand its touch, pinning its hands would help."

"In truth, that thing is an abomination, but I share your feelings. ...This all assumes we find it again. My quarry here is the necromancer I was chasing."

"Though that may be pointless now. Students of dark magic do not take competition lightly."

"I was more thinking 'maiming the spine where the throat would be'. But probably is much the same answer, there. I can certainly try to bind or maim its hands, though that's... trickier, in my experience. It'd be worth a try, if a fight comes." 

She'll sip from her waterskin and eat her food in quiet. She has... much to htink about, and the initial brasher rush of words has ended, for now, though she's sure she'll have a hundred more questions once she works through the prayers and all the thoughts she'll need to get that in order. 

She's happy to just watch her quietly. It is extraordinarily good news that a heathen can be this way at all. 

After making sure Aeolyn's had a chance to drink and eat her fill, she'll toss away her stuff back in her bag and stretch out a little. 

"Mm. Onwards, then? There's some use to training drills, but never found it as helpful to linger on it as most other warriors I've run across... May as well just keep on wandering down tehse halls, and I expect that we'll find plenty to keep our blades sharp, here." 

They really, really do. 

Aeolyn fights the way she talks, absolutely correctly and with a mildly terrifying frankness. The undead cower from her, acid does not want to corrode her flesh, and corruption does not touch her. 

She is very clearly trying to put herself in between Scarlet and anything else, even when she clearly doesn't need it. 

It does not appear again. It has far more important things to attend to than a couple of awestruck bipeds, if its serpentine empire is to span all the world and all of time. It is receiving reports that Snake-Men currently seem to be extinct, which is an annoying setback. It could swear it saw them around here somewhere only the other day. 

They find the Necromancer crouched at the bottom of something like a well, slimy walls and a distant disc of evening sky far, far, far overhead. 

He is perhaps fifty, bearded, crouched over a small and horrible mass of white exposed bone and soaked red flesh, stark in the sickly light cast from a grinning glass skull. 

He looks up in horror. 

She takes out her spears, for them, tossing them down range to get them skewered and run through, a faint purple glint shining on their tips. Her skin flushes a fierce red, once, a deep guttural grunt spilling through her chest as she tears through one clump of them with a reaving swipe, before the power drops away, leaving her panting and sweating softly. It passes quickly enough, and she's left only with the faintest scrapes on her skin, slowly fading down to nothing as she walks through the paths. 

- yeah, no. She'll toss out a spear, making it whistle through the air, aiming right at him (or the illusion of him, anyways - some sort of programmed image seems all too possible, here, but what can you do?) 

It was not an illusion on this occasion! 

The spear rebounds from his skin, but it staggers him -

A terrible will tries to crush her mind, cut her down from behind -

- You know, that would be a decent trick, if... 

1) she didn't have a reasonably strong will,

2) if she didn't have the shroud of rage bursting through her skin, her hair like a cascade of crismon flames flaring out behind her, and 

3) She wasn't already charging at him, a cloud of dust coming from behind the buzzing wings at her feet, a surge of unearthly speed shoving her forward as fast as she can to cut that bastard down. 

Lay on Hands, on the bundle on the floor. 

...Nothing. As expected. But she couldn't not try, just in case.

Well. At least this and the Spell save her the trouble of arresting him. 

Smite Evil. Very, very hard. 

Dimension Do-

Smite Evil. She shatters every bone in his hand.

He twists and is struck with Scarlet's blow and there's a dull red shiver in the air as his Abjurations give and he stumbles, bleeding - 

And desperately tries to invoke the rite of lichdom right now no matter how suicidally impossible that is, a sudden horrific icy wind scouring the room -

There's no time for anything sophisticated, just enough time for her sword to flare with a surge of fiery power, a broad carpet of flames spilling out, her tattoos igniting with fury, pulsing like a second system of veins along her skin, as she arches her sword up just a little so she can cut him down -

His bones split his skin and burst out in bloody claws and as his soul is scoured, in one final act of spite he directs the howling dark Spells out into his eyes, into the world, into her, to shatter her feeble sanity even as her sword comes down-

She lays a hand on the bulging muscles of Scarlet's shoulder.

The magma in her veins burns her hand through the gauntlet, but that is not relevant. 

A feeling washes through her of - sanctity, purity, rightness. Cleanliness.