"I am certain it took you by surprise. This time you have the advantage of preparation. You will use that advantage to bring honour to our Goddess—or you will perish, and in that case She did not have use for you after all.

"Do you have any questions?"

    "No, True Soul," says Bryanna.

"No, True Soul," repeats Andrick, getting to his feet.

"Then go. I will see to it that your brother's remains are taken care of."

They definitely do not need to be told twice. That True Soul was terrifying.

Ivetrielle will be good and not backtalk immediately, though she does look a tad pained. And it doesn’t take long for the inevitable backtalking to occur.

“Was the torture really necessary?” she says in an undertone, after the cultists are good and gone.

"For the character that I was playing? Yes. But somewhat more importantly, now that they're gone." He takes in a deep breath...

"ARE YOU OUT OF YOUR FREAKING MIND?! You could have gotten seriously hurt or worse! YOU COULD HAVE DIED! Do you know how many times I ran exactly that scam? Pretended to have someone injured or dying to get someone's guard down? And you left your freaking party!!!! Without talking about it first!!!!! If you ever do that to any other party they would be correct to leave you. Behind. To be eaten. BY AN OWLBEAR. You do not do this to your party!!! You are endangering them, you are endangering yourself, you are BREAKING THE SOCIAL CONTRACT!!!!

"And then. And then. When that creepy symbol appeared on that woman's face and all of our tadpoles reacted. I tried to warn you and you completely ignored me because despite all evidence you think. That I. Just. Do things. Without a reason!!!! When I interrupted Kagha I had a reason. When I interrupted you to talk to Zevlor I had a reason. AND NOW. I HAD A REASON TOO. YOU COULD HAVE BEEN ABDUCTED BY MIND FLAYERS AND THEN WHERE WOULD WE BE? DOWN A PARTY MEMBER IS WHERE!!!!!"

Ivetrielle was absolutely not expecting this, and flinches at the sudden onslaught of yelling. Wow, that was a lot of nothing to suddenly yelling??? Her first instinct is to yell back, to justify herself and pick apart his arguments, but...

... he does sound like he sincerely worried. And she really is inexperienced when it comes to this whole 'adventuring in an adventuring party' business.

"I'm sorry for scaring you," she says, in a bit of a small voice, because it's probably best to get that out of the way first.

He breathes deeply again, then takes a few more breaths for good measure until he's something resembling calm again. "You are forgiven," he says, in a much softer voice. "You do not need to like us, you do not need to want to be with us, you may be planning to only stay with us temporarily, but please, in the future, at minimum give the rest of the party time to object or to reposition and prepare in case we do in fact need to intervene. Does that work for you?"

“Right. Okay. Yes. … Though I had moved so as not to give away your position, and, time was of the essence, and I don’t think we all agree on our priorities. If someone is dying and I could prevent it I will step in to save them regardless of how that could put me in danger. Though, for the record, putting my staff down didn’t really do much.”

"It may not have been that bad from a tactical perspective," he concedes. "And I hope that that 'regardless' in that sentence was for rhetorical effect because if you will try to save someone in fact without considering the trade-off—well, you are free to do so but this is something you party also has an interest in knowing."

“Rhetorical effect, yes. I don’t want to throw my life away either, I have things to do. Just.” She gives a vague wave. “He was dying and I had a chance to maybe save him. Without putting you all directly at risk, because I did. Think about that.” Pause. “Also for the record I could probably talk an owlbear out of eating me but I assume that phrasing was also for rhetorical effect.”

"It was. And it's fine if you want to be all Good and save people, I would just have liked about ten seconds more to position properly in case I needed to stab a bitch."

(Shadowheart approves.)

“Fair. I’ll, you know. Look at the rest of you and gauge how stupid you all think I’ll be to go running off to help strangers. I’m not used to this whole… adventuring party business. It’s usually just me in the woods, doing things.”

"Speaking of it being just you, in the woods..." He reaches into his Bag of Holding to grab the package Ivetrielle had grabbed for Kagha from the swamp, opens it, and shows her the stick inside it as well as a note she wrote. "What is this?"

Ivetrielle looks both amused and irritated. “Well, I know you’re not used to being out in the wilderness, but I should hope you don’t need me to tell you. It’s a stick, Astarion. A yew branch, to be specific.”

He grabs the note and unfolds it one-handed to show it to Ivetrielle, glaring. It reads:

Has anyone ever told you it's not nice to go through other people's things?

She smiles placidly, looking as innocent as one possibly can when one has ruthlessly drawn their party member into a trap.

(Lae'zel approves.)

(Shadowheart approves.)

He folds his arms and says, "Well?"

(And fuck both of you too.)

Innocent blinking. “Well, what? You’re the one who went through my pack without permission, when if you were curious about something you just could have asked. Like a reasonable person.”

"I," he sniffles, "gave you the information about your aunt for free. The least I expected is that you would share your findings!"

“Well, I wasn’t privy to that deal you decided I was a part of, now was I. And instead of asking, you went through my pack to see for yourself. This is what my circle would call a learning exercise.”