Wandering off now that her announcement has concluded.

"Yes, my lady?"

"Have you thought any more about learning to cook?"

"...n-no, my lady. Sorry. It's just—it would be such a big step! But if my lady requires it—"

Well now she feels like an ass. "No, I'm not trying to require it. I'm just... hoping somebody'll take me up on it one of these days, I guess. Never mind."

Valefar nods respectfully and heads for the Shrine to worship there.

So much for that.

In a fouler mood than ever, she casts around for something to do that's not 'kill things to make herself feel better' and not 'do things that make her feel worse'. For a minute she can't think of anything at all, just keeps bouncing off the same bad ideas over and over again. Then she has a new thought, and, well, it's not a good idea, but it's at least not one she's tried already. Fuck it, she's going fishing.

Fishing turns out to be a surprisingly relaxing activity. The sun sets and then rises again as she casts her line into the water, waits, pulls it back, and pockets the result, fish after fish after fish. Nobody speaks to her. Nobody attacks her. Nobody bothers her in any fashion. The Fisherman is here, but he's quiet, focused on his own fishing. She could stay like this forever, she really could.

Except she forgot that her cursed incompetent Followers don't EAT if she doesn't COOK for them, so around midmorning her crown prods her worriedly with a report that they're all getting really hungry, and she has to dash back home in a rush, unpocket a small mountain of fish, and grill them all as fast as possible while her followers moan and rub their stomachs.

Okay, well, she's incredibly grumpy now, but she does at least feel less like she's about to explode from the sheer force of her unmanaged stress. She'll take it.

Her crown, worried for her and also eager as ever to be worshipped, recommends a Sermon. She doesn't have anything better to do, so she gives one. She thinks she can feel a little more clearly this time how the energy they collect fuels her crown and makes it stronger. Or maybe she is just imagining things.

She considers tracking down Valefar and demanding that they learn to cook, but... the more she thinks about that, the more tired and despairing she feels. She could just make these people learn to cook and start cooking for themselves. There's a sense in which it might even be a kinder, more generous thing to do than personally making all of their meals. But it would be forcing them to bend to her will for her own convenience, and that's a sickening thought.

In order to get that out of her head, she does a round of blessings, whereupon she notices that Amdusias is lying half-conscious in bed in the middle of the day.

...crown, did Amdusias miss the sermon?

Yes! Should they punish him?

What? No!! I'm just worried!

"Hey," she says, hovering uncomfortably at his bedside. "Are you feeling okay?" That's a stupid question. No rescuing it now, though.

Amdusias's eyelids flutter weakly: "My Lady...? I missed the Sermon... I'm sorry... I felt the call, but I just couldn't..."

"It's fine," she says quickly. "Just... rest and recover, okay? I'll bring you something to eat."

She bolts across the grass to go grill a fish. Probably grilled fish is bad for sick people. What's good for sick people? She can't remember being sick as a child. The few times she's been sick as an adult, she mostly staggered miserably around her cabin, slept a lot, and threw up occasionally. Whatever. She's bringing Amdusias a grilled fish.

"My Lady is so generous," he gasps, struggling to sit up. With effort and assistance, he manages a single bite of fish before collapsing back into bed.

The Lamb stares worriedly down at him.

He gathers all his strength and clutches daringly for her hand, but misses.

Hesitantly, she takes his hand, and even more hesitantly reads his mind.

It's a mess in there, cluttered with pain and dreams. But the thing he's trying to communicate is floating right up at the top in plain view.

Lady, please don't let me die forsaken.

...and by forsaken he means—fuck.

It's her own stupid fault that she's in this situation. It seemed like such a good idea at the time, to instruct her followers to prefer dying by her hand to dying of natural causes. But of course it's not simple and clean and straightforward, when it's happening right in front of you. She doesn't know if Amdusias is going to die. He might recover! He might be fine! But he feels like he's dying, and he wants her to make sure, because he's more scared of being forsaken than of being dead—

A tear falls on the stupid useless necklace of health she gave him.

She squeezes his hand and says quietly, "Of course not."

Of course, allegedly she can bring him back if she kills him. But that's not really the problem, is it? The problem is that she has to kill him. The problem is that she has to kill him and she doesn't know and can't know whether that's what he wants or just—what she told him to want—the problem is that she's somehow found herself in a position where, in order to accommodate her follower's heartfelt dying wish, she has to do something that feels a whole lot like murdering him for her own ends without allowing him the opportunity to object. And she doesn't know, and can't know, which of those perspectives is right.

Well. Either way, she's made her choice. He asked, and she can't find it in her to refuse him. So she picks him up—his body feels light as a feather in her arms—and carries him to the temple.

Crown?

Her crown, striving to stay somber in keeping with her mood, reaches out to call her followers in for the ritual. Quite a lot of bones are required, but they have plenty. It aligns itself with the @#$*()), and the Lamb lays Amdusias down in the center of the little circle of followers, and the crown summons ritual robes for them, and the Lamb stands at the altar and—calls—

Amdusias, barely-conscious but smiling peacefully, rises into the air on a twisting column of delicate red vapours. Up and up and up, into the ceiling of the Temple and somehow past it, until it seems that he disappears not because he vanished but because he rose too far to see.

His skeleton falls back down through the column of smoke as it dissipates, and shatters on impact with the floor. The health necklace is tangled among the bones.

The Lamb will just be over here, focusing all her willpower on not crying.

Her Followers celebrate, wiping tears from their eyes but smiling and hugging each other. It's a bittersweet occasion, to see one of their number Ascended.

(Gusion looks sadder than the rest, though.)

Okay. So. She's bringing him back. She's definitely going to bring him back.

She just... needs to get her head together first.

She starts a pot of fish stew, and tries to dig in the garden, and finds that digging in the garden just makes her want to cry even more, and lets the crown Inspire her to build that Leshy trophy now that the transmuted wood has come through, and wishes she could feel triumphant about killing that awful worm, and in extremity walks out of the glade and between the trees into the thick of the woods. Stomping around in the shadowed dark at least doesn't involve interacting with people. She is so, so deeply sick of interacting with people.

Apart from a few distant disconcerting noises, the woods leave her entirely alone.

Thank you, woods, that is just how she likes it.

When she has recovered enough to put something resembling a smile back on her face, she heads back into the camp.

The mood is somber, which suits her just fine. Gusion is trying to worship at the Shrine, but keeps surreptitiously wiping away tears. Did the two of them get together, then? She should... congratulate them, or something. When she has Amdusias back.

She sips Devotion from the Shrine, and heads for the Temple. Her crown calls her followers in, and they form a circle on the Temple floor, hand in hand in hand.

The sensation of reaching out to find her dead Follower is... indescribable. The place she has to go to get him back is so alien in its geometry that its warped sense of direction seems to follow her home, painting the walls of the Temple in a colour that makes them curl like dying leaves. Circles on circles on circles ripple beneath her Followers' feet as they close their eyes and lend their will to her work. Amdusias rises from the sparkling pit created by the confluence of all this nonsense—he has for some reason turned bright yellow and lost his horns, but she can tell it's still Amdusias, she can feel it's still Amdusias—and collapses onto the floor as it resumes being a floor, and vomits black sludge that flies upward into the void in the ceiling.

All the strangeness fades away. Her Followers open their eyes, and begin to celebrate ecstatically as they disperse, though one or two of them look queasy as they catch sight of Amdusias on the floor burping one last bubble of noxious darkness. Gusion rushes to Amdusias's side immediately.

Somewhat slower, the Lamb climbs down from her podium and approaches.

"I saved your necklace," she says, holding it out. His bones are in her crown's pocket, but she sees no point in mentioning this. She feels like that would just be weird.