Ratau awaits her in a cozy little clearing, with a neat row of berry bushes, a hut with a rounded roof, and a candlelit shrine that looks like a miniature temple. He gestures invitingly to the bushes.

She picks a few berries and has her crown pocket them, then lets it slurp up all the Devotion out of the shrine.

"I must thank you," says Ratau. "By relieving me of my duties you have granted me what I desire most: peace."

She does her best to stifle her sudden surge of envy. What she wouldn't give to be able to live in a cozy little cottage in a cozy little clearing and grow berries.

"But before I can retire to pass my days playing Knucklebones, I have one last lesson to offer."

He leads her to the next clearing over, where he's set up a ring of effigies that look vaguely like leaf monsters and vaguely like cultists and very much like targets.

"Your Crown has the power... of curses," he says with a dramatic eyepop. "Try focusing your wrath on these bundles of leaves."

As usual, she has no idea what she's doing, but as usual her crown is eager to help. She tries focusing, and the crown nudges her thoughts into a slightly different shape, and she focuses again and WHAM. The target she was looking at is obliterated by a bolt of red-black rage.

"Wow," she says, impressed.

"The power of your curses depends on your Fervour," Ratau explains. "The heat of battle, the glory of victory. If you expend many curses fruitlessly, it will run dry; as you fight and kill, it will replenish."

She nods slowly, already thinking of how this will expand her tactical repertoire.

"That is all, then." He sighs heavily, then smiles. "Visit me in my cottage if you would like to play a game of Knucklebones."

"Wait—" He has already sunk into the ground.

She sighs and trudges back over to the cottage, running a hand along the doorframe for a moment before she steps inside.

"Ah, you have discovered my humble cottage," he says contentedly. "Be careful you don't make the same mistakes I did, or you will end up in a place just like this." There's not much heart in the warning, though; he sounds almost proud. "Now, perhaps a game of Knucklebones?"

"Actually..."

She hesitates, scuffing her feet on the wooden floor for a moment.

"...did you build this place yourself? It's just—I couldn't help admiring the way you've got the thatching blending with the grass so it looks like a little hill—"

"Oh?" he says, surprised. "But with your crown's Divine Inspiration, you will be able to build so much better than a mere mortal like me ever could."

"I've spent my whole life building with my own two hands, I don't want to stop now!"

He smiles, touched. "Well then. Let me show you how I built these walls..."

A lot of the techniques are similar to ones she already knew or figured out for herself, but some of the details are different, and having a fresh perspective on things helps her understand better why this or that aspect of construction works the way it does, or how to do something more reliably than she's been able to before. And the thatching trick is genuinely pretty neat. The doorframe, too, once she works up the courage to ask about it.

She heads home in a better mood than she's had since all this began, and only looks up after a few hours of hammering together foundations for the dormitory to realize that she's thinking of it as home. Wow. Weird.

Her congregation is very excited to help her put together a place to sleep. By the time night falls on their little encampment, there's not much in the way of beds but they do have a partial roof to keep the weather off, and piles of leaves and grass to soften the hard ground.

At which point the Lamb discovers that sleeping is not a thing she does anymore.

She spends a little while lying outside the half-finished dormitory, hands tucked behind her head, staring up at the distant stars.

Then she sighs and gets up and heads out to have another go at the Darkwood.

Only a few clearings into the latest maze, when she's barely had time to cut some grass and certainly hasn't had time to fight anything, the world darkens and three Bishops emerge from black puddles on the ground.

"So it is true," rumbles the one on the left, whose crown glares with a yellow triangle. "The Red Crown sits on the brow of another."

"But how?" warbles the one on the right, whose pointed head bears a pointed crown with a round blue eye. "We did everything we could to—"

"It matters not. We need not bother Shamura with this. Deal with it, brother."

"As you command, my sister," says Leshy, standing between the others.

The three of them sink into the ground, and for a long moment she's frozen, even after her crown stops gibbering and releases her. Only the sight of a cultist advancing with knife raised snaps her out of it.

What do you know, that curse thing really does come in tactically handy.

She kills the cultists. She cuts the grass. She digs up potatoes and picks berries wherever she finds them.

Clauneck is as cryptic a big red triangle as ever.