"...It's the Queen's decision, not yours or mine."

"Even so--" Wait. Shit. He's a paladin. She can't suggest anything Chaotic. "--I mean, she can decide that you're in the Condemned, but--that's not the same thing as dictating your innocence or guilt, not really. I mean, I'm not suggesting that you, or anyone else who it matters that they continue to be Lawful, do anything illegal or anything? But, like--you are in fact still a paladin! Doesn't your god have more of a say than the Queen?" 

"...Torag's been awfully quiet, lately." 

"But you are still a paladin! Right?"

"What he means," Joran says, "is that it's hard to hold up a god's continued approval as a shield against the disdain of his fellow Crusaders." 

"Okay. Well--I won't pretend to know what that's like. But it is obvious that it must be really, really awful. I'm not--trying to downplay that. But--it also--isn't the only thing. Your god supports you. Your brother loves you. Yaniel still cares about you! I'm sure of it! Just because she's dead doesn't mean she's forgotten you! And--I respect you a lot. Not that I expect that to hold a candle, next to the rest. But it's true." 

Just because she's dead doesn't mean she's forgotten you!

"Thank you," he says quietly.

"And, hey, for whatever it's worth--next time someone's picking on you, come get me and I'll wave Radiance at them while I tell them to stop." 

"It might be worth something," Joran says. "Thank you." 

"Don't mention it. It's the right thing to do." 

Well, that was a whole thing. Okay. Finnean next. 

"Hello, grandpa elf!"

"Hello, Finnean..."

"I...I'm coming to again. How long have I been here? They kept me in a cage for three days...I know because three times the light under the door disappeared for a long time. Then they chained me to the table and the Bladesmith... everyone calls him the Bladesmith... he placed a device with a jar over me. It feels like I'm being fried..."

At first I tried to break free, but I got tired, then I screamed... but now I've lost my voice, though the pain is burning right through me..."

I think I lost consciousness again. But when I woke up, the pain was gone. And I wasn't tied to the table anymore, I was standing near it... and someone else was lying on the table, a burned corpse covered in a black crust. The master took out a handsaw and began sawing off his head, in a very focused way..."

I should have run, back then... but I didn't for some reason. This burned corpse had a symbol on his belt, just like I do: an eye and a star. My favorite belt, a good one... where would a stranger get one? It must have been someone from my clan, a distant family member..."

"Those crusaders, I...I was glad when I saw them, I thought they'd come to help, but...how? How was it that I killed them all? Someone told me to, and I obeyed... I don't understand... I understand nothing now... I...I need to catch my breath, I need all this to stop, even for just a minute. I just have to...to understand what's happening to me...just need to rest..."

"Please take care of this young lad. He is finally in the right hands. Do not worsen his suffering by involving him in dishonorable deeds." 

Lusilla nods, white-faced. 

"Come on, grandpa elf, I can take care of myself--I'm not a kid! I don't know what horrors you were talking about, but don't you worry about it, alright? Look after yourself!"

Deep breath. Lusilla wants very badly to find this Bladesmith and scream at him. 

"No, Finnean. That's not how friends work. Instead of everyone looking out for themselves, everyone looks out for each other--not being a kid doesn't mean we don't have to worry about you, it just means you get to worry about us too." 

"Haha, fair enough! But I'm fine, really." 

Yeah she can understand why he wouldn't want to remember everything. She's not sure it's good for him, but--whatever. She doesn't have any idea how to solve this problem and also he is, as he points out, an adult. 

She makes herself useful around the inn for a bit, but--there's something that's itching at the back of her mind. 

When she uses the Aeon's eyes to look at something, like the Moon of the Abyss or her dagger or Lariel's sword or whatever else, it makes clear something that she's been aware of ever since she first took them into herself, back in the square; they don't really fit her soul. She's too Chaotic, too 'actually angels being on this plane is a good thing actually.' 

She's worried that, at some point, she's going to knock them loose, and then what's left of that Aeon will be gone forever. 

On the one hand, there is a level on which this is an objectively ridiculous worry. Every demon that a crusader kills is gone forever; and there are a lot of them, and they have much more of a preference to continue existing than the Aeon seems to have. 

On the other hand, the Aeon isn't causing enormous problems that can't be solved non-lethally, and the incessant tragedies that pour through the world like rain don't make any single soul any less earth-shatteringly horrific to erase. 

Obviously, obviously what the Bladesmith was doing was horrific. But. The Aeon is already dead. If she could bind what was left of it to something that wasn't her...

She goes to the Storyteller with this idea.

"Hm. I do know a thing or two about item crafting. Here's what we would need..."

Gathering the raw materials is not, actually, the hard part; there are tools lying in abandoned crates in fallen wagons at the bottom of a fissure that Lusilla knows where they are, and there are magical traps and doors and so on in the Shield Maze that Lusilla can break until she finds one that was made of useful goodies. And the puzzle for the door to the room that had Radiance in it, which Lusilla never bothered with because Dimension Door is fun and funky like that, had gemstones as input triggers...

(Well. Not gemstones, as it turns out, just colored glass. But magic colored glass! Still useful.)

Lusilla actually ends up spending most of the day working with the Storyteller. Seelah goes out with some of the others to pursue a tip Anevia had, and that's fine; if the group is going to go out without some of its members, most of the time, it is okay for her to ever be one of the ones who stays behind. 

Nenio also stays behind. It occurred to Lusilla, after doing significant structural damage to a small section of the Shield Maze but before she and the Storyteller actually got to work, that Nenio might be helpful and would probably want to be involved. 

Nenio would want to be involved! This is fascinating! When else is she going to get to play with post-mortal soulstuff? Demons don't leave behind thinking pieces when slain! Yet, growth mindset, she makes a note to do science about that. 

And at the end Lusilla has a pair of blue glasses that tell her--more or less the same things as calling up the Aeon's soul-fragment in her own heart did. Not exactly. And, critically, more shareable. 

She...doesn't think what's left of the Aeon is, like, conscious in there. Which on the one hand is good because it means it's not suffering, but on the other hand is not good because if it just goes on being a pair of glasses forever then this will not be meaningfully more alive for it than if it had just dissipated. 

But it's intact. That bit is important. If she ever comes up with something better to do with the Aeon-fragment, she can deconstruct the glasses and retrieve it to do something better with it. And the glasses aren't going to unravel on their own.