There is, she thinks, a special kind of torment in doing something that you've been looking forward to for this long, that you've anticipated this eagerly, that you know would have brought you this much joy if you had any joy left in your soul, and having it mostly be an excruciating ordeal that you're only slogging through because all the alternatives are worse.

She's not perfect at concealing her mood, but she tries as hard as she can. The last thing she wants is to scare either of them off.

Together the three of them produce enough grilled-fish-with-berry-mash to feed the whole camp! It's no Ritual of Feasting, but Joobre and Valefar seem almost more excited about it than they were when the Ritual of Feasting was forged.

That's very fair of them. Personally the Lamb can't imagine being satisfied with knowing someone else could do something as basic as 'make food' for her if she wasn't also capable of doing it herself.

Okay. She needs to... not be here. She doesn't know where she needs to be but here is not it. Her Followers are fed and may even have the supplies and expertise to come up with a second meal after the first runs out. She could... fish? She's tired of fishing but she's less tired of fishing than she is of the rest of her life. Fishing it is.

And a grudgingly tolerant silence to you, too, Fishman.

As she fishes, she thinks. She tries not to, but it happens anyway.

She needs to go out again. She needs to make progress. If she doesn't make progress, the One Below will be unhappy with her. She doesn't want the One Below to be unhappy with her. Also, she does, in fact, still want the Bishops dead.

She doesn't want to go out again, because... she's afraid. She's afraid that all the burning determination she started out with has flamed out and left her with ashes, and she'll crumble as soon as she tries to fight anything. But what's her alternative here, exactly? Hang around the camp teaching her Followers to cook the objectively ridiculous quantities of fish she keeps catching for them, until the One Below gets impatient and grabs her on her next jaunt to the fishing spot to punish her with unbearable torments? That's not a plan, that's a delaying tactic, a shitty, stupid delaying tactic that will bring only pain.

So.

She heads home. She unpockets some of her catch and supervises Valefar and Joobre as they start grilling it, and praises them for how far they've come, and ignores the way the words seem to leave the taste of despair in her mouth.

And then it's back to the mushroom forest with her.

She was right.

She's slower, and worse, and she gets hit more often, and the pain makes her even worse and even slower. It's not fun, it's not relaxing, it's a grim and ugly chore. She doesn't feel satisfied when she moves on from a clearing with fresh bones in her crown's pocket; she feels tired, and sore, and she suspects she's gonna have a black eye where that one cultist smacked her in the face.

Still. She gets through it. One kill after another.

"It was not so long ago that we cast out the Red Crown."

gaaah

"A mere thousand or so years," Heket continues.

"The heresy it preached could not be tolerated. Such noxious ideals... it could not be allowed."

(she must've been a whole lot tireder than she thought, to get caught by surprise by a Bishop's presence)

"For this most damning of sins, the retribution must be slow and painful," Heket intones. "I cast a famine upon your Cult!"

wait shit what—

"And with greed and ambition unchecked, it drew Godly blood..." she says, as though quoting something.

A circle of Followers appears, dragged out of the ground by Heket's power. Hano, Pajul, Hutrear, poor Valefar again, and Meron. They cry out and clutch their stomachs, in pain and terror.

Heket sinks into the ground moments after returning them.

...The Lamb...

...feels...

...dead inside.

She knows in her head that she should be filled with righteous vengeful fury, but in her heart there's nothing. She knows in her head that she should be grieving her poor Followers who never asked for any of this, that she should want to protect them, that she should hurry back to them, but she just. Can't. The well of her caring is dry as bone.

She slogs onward. She does try to hurry, now that there's something to hurry for. She's not especially good at hurrying right now, but she does try.

Her crown picks up a couple of interesting trinkets along the way. A necklace that it says will soothe the need for sleep, and another one that's supposed to bring health and long life. The Lamb can't bring herself to believe in them.

Halfway through pocketing a whole bunch of camellias, she notices vaguely that there's a statue of her crown in the middle of this clearing, with the ring of camellias growing around it. She pokes listlessly at it, but whatever it's doing, she's too tired to care enough to figure it out. She moves on.

Today's final monster is sort of red and puffy, a giant lumpy three-eyed frog drooling ichor between its concerningly numerous fangs.

That's nice.

It hops around and vomits lumpy red flies the size of a person's head and generally makes a nuisance of itself.