She nods to Lann, then steps forward, presenting the altered blade.

"We found Lariel's sword. Lann has told me about how your people have been here for a century. He says, and I agree, that it's time to return to the surface."

She looks back to Lann.

Lann grins at her, then at Sull. "So?"

     Sull frowns at the sword. He reaches out cautiously, pausing before he touches the metal to look at Miko for approval.

She nods. (And privately wishes that she'd let Lann hold it earlier, or knew at all what might happen when other people touch it. But—it's probably going to be fine.)

(The sword pulses reassurance.)

     Sull runs his finger along the dull back of the blade, feels the curve. "I have never šeen šuch a šword," he whišperš whispers. "It iš very lovely... the tales of Lariel špeak of hiš blade, but..." He shakes his head. "Adventurers have šwordš. Šome are very beautiful."

Lann looks mildly outraged. "You think I - what, hired an uplander to pretend her sword was Lariel's?"

     Sull whaps him on the back of the head, eliciting a more-annoyed-than-pained ow! "Calm youršelf, boy. I ašk only that she do šomething more than show me a pretty bit of šteel."

She experiences a brief flare of offense that Sull doubts her, but—he's not fully doubting her, just asking for proof. That, she can provide. She thinks.

Miko focuses on the sword a little more deeply, on the emotional common ground. Urges it to remember when it was wielded by an angel, to show these fine people that it remembers.

It does remember! It does! The joy, the glory - the clarity of purpose - a thousand voices roaring victory -

it glows brighter, casting a glow through the thin haze of smoke not yet risen, and the light carries with it a sliver of an echo of that glory, bringing a moment's strength to those it touches, the feeling of hope.

Like a Bless spell, if it were cantrip-strength and cast by an NPC class.

Then Miko feels the hard thing inside her - move? There isn't enough of it to think, but that echo of glory touches it too, and it echoes back one day mother one day i'll be strong i'll go i'll show them we'll be free i'll be strong they'll love us they'll love you i love you i love you, mama...

It flows through her into the blade, and the light comes back stronger, carrying with it a child's hope and innocence and love, and it shines for six seconds like the sun is here in this cavern.

Then it fades, and there's nothing but the slow trickle of blood from the wound in her chest.

The radiance shocks her, almost. She was expecting it, but…

It feels like it's been so long since she channeled Goodness like that. As something more than fighting Evil, as something that exists outside its opposition to Evil. It hurts, of course, but… it's a good kind of pain, like alcohol cleaning a cut.

She's taken aback by the thing in her chest. By the outpouring of childlike love. She managed not to wince in response to the initial flare of holiness, but this catches her off guard. (Absently, she wonders: why do I have so many intelligent artifacts? Will she need to try and communicate with this, too?)

She's still blinking when the round ends.

Conveniently, everyone else is also blinking! (The light didn't hurt, it wasn't that kind of light, but it was still light, brighter than the surfacers have seen in hours and brighter than some of the Neathers have seen their whole lives.)

"...that was... really something," Seelah says, awed all over again.

Camellia smiles, her pupils wide like they were during the Stone Telling. "Hm," she says without elaboration.

Sull... nods. He's squinting, not to block out the light but to restrain the beginnings of tears.

"I did not think I would šee thiš day," he rasps. "In another year, I will be gone. But I will have šeen the light of Heaven, that was lošt to uš šo long ago."

If Miko were a more touchy-feely person, she'd clap Sull on the shoulder encouragingly.

"Yes! And, before then, you and your people will see the light of day as well."

     He smiles, as thinly as he can around his tusks. "Yeš... and the light of čiviližation, too. I worry more of that one. But it doeš not do to ignore the šignš of the godš."

"It doesn't," Lann says firmly. "You'll call a conclave of the chiefs, then?"

     "Yeš. I will want the angel'š inheritor prešent with the Šword," he adds. "You will not need to repeat the holy light; they do not know bladeš aš I do, they will be content that it can cut through a ližard."

Miko nods seriously.

"Yes, it sounds like there will be some adjustment transitioning from a smaller community to a larger one. But I assure you it will be worth it."

The comment pushes a laugh out of her.

"Well! I would not object to doing it, at any rate."

     "For now... your companionš look exhaušted. Go and rešt; I will špeak with Lann a while longer."

Lann nods. "There's always a few spare tents, in case of visitors from another tribe. ...oh, good, Dyra's been eavesdropping - Dyra, will you lead the surfacers to the guest tents?"

          A young woman covered in wool squeaks, then bows her horned head. "Yes, sir!"

"Please don't call me sir. I'm not the Chief."

     Chief Sull grins. "You're not Chief yet."

"Which means I'm not the Chief," Lann says implacably.

          "Yes," Dyra says, rather than engage with the perilous question of honorifics. "Uplanders, please come with me! I - I'll show you the way, and... maybe you can tell me some stories, or, or show me some things from the surface, or..."

She goes with Dyra, since obviously Sull wants privacy, but—she'll have to check on Lann later.

… Does she have things from the surface to show Dyra? Obviously she's got a Bag of Holding full of them, but… it doesn't feel like her equipment yet. If she still had things from back home, she's sure that Dyra would be impressed by something from the South.

She does have stories, though. Long solo expeditions, fights against monsters, times from training as a paladin…

A lot of those memories are bittersweet, now. Not just because of her fall, but because they involve people who are dead. People who might not be raised, even, if things have gotten bad enough. But—she does want to share, so she's not just a mysterious foreign stranger. And maybe it's even more important to talk about the other paladins because they're dead now. (Don't ask her to explain why that is; she's not a bard.)

How about she lets someone else go first, while she thinks about what kind of stories to tell.

Seelah is always up for storytime. "Alright, Dyra!" she says conspiratorially. "I've got some stories, and I've got some souvenirs, but I can't tell all my stories at once - so how about I show you three of the souvenirs, and you ask me about one of them?"

     Dyra nods rapidly.

Seelah removes from her pack, first, what is recognizable to Miko as a porcelain hairstick; second, a silvered glass sphere with a swirl of sparkling multicolored fog inside; and third, a long red-purple-gold feather that flickers like a living flame. Then, as Dyra's eyes widen, she starts juggling them. (By the way it moves, the feather weighs as much as a solid length of metal the same size. Which probably helps the juggling.)

     Staring at the objects for a long moment, Dyra finally points at the hairstick. "That one. The others are probably too much."

Seelah looks slightly confused, but catches her trinkets and puts the other two back where they came from. "Alright. Well, this was a hair ornament, from a woman I met before I was a proper crusader. Her name was Wen Shanghou - though she'd say I was pronouncing it wrong, there was this thing she did like she was singing it... anyway, she did this thing in battle that wasn't like anything I'd seen before or since: instead of casting a spell or using a weapon, she just picked things up with her mind and threw them at people. It was brutal. She kept lead bullets in her pack, and she could put them through a man's chest in half a moment. But that wasn't really the part that mattered. She was stronger than me, and a lot smarter than me, and for some reason she liked me anyway. Liked me enough to take me along with her while she raided some necromancer's tomb, and liked me enough to share her bedroll while we were down there. I was seventeen, she was twenty-one, it was all very cute. And we cracked some undead skulls and got a fair haul of treasure. And I wanted to know where we were going next, and she said she was headed back to Tian Xia. And I asked if I could come along, and she asked why I wanted to... and I said, because I liked her, wasn't that enough? And she laughed, and said you're going to like a lot of people. Don't move to a different continent for the first one who likes you back. And she gave me one of her hair-sticks, to remember her by."

… It sounds like "Tian Xia" is what these people call the Southern Continent, which is… odd. Miko's never heard of a place that had different names for the continents. Maybe they're on… the Western Continent? Miko's never been out west, only up north. She vaguely recognizes the language that "Tian Xia" and "Wen Shanghou" are from, even though she doesn't speak it. She knows a little of the language that her own name is from, but nowadays Common is the official language pretty much all across the Southern Continent.

She can ask about geography later. Seelah's story is…

Miko can relate, she thinks, to the puppyishness. Not in the same way, really—she takes care not to dwell too much on being liked. It's a strength of hers, really: she still remembers O-Chul's answer when she asked him why he was joining an order of paladins despite nobody wanting him around, how that answer made it clear to her that doing the right thing was always going to be unpopular. But…

She knows the kind of feeling that inspires someone to move away from their home for the sake of someone they hardly know.

     Dyra listens to the story with a hungry intensity, nodding at what details she's given. Then she says, "How much?"

Seelah blinks. "...um?"

     "For the stick."

Seelah doesn't have a response for that.

Camellia does!

"What in the world would you want a hair ornament for?" she asks. "You have wool. It's not even longer on your head!"

"Shut up," Seelah says sharply. She turns back to Dyra. "...I don't understand why you'd want it either, though. It's not a... trade good."

     Dyra shakes her head, wool bouncing back and forth. "But - I'm willing to pay for it. That's what a trade good is. I have more money than you'd expect! I can give you a price that you're happy with!"

"There isn't a price that I'd sell it for, let alone be happy about!"

    A mulish look comes onto Dyra's face. "That's just not true. If I offered you five thousand gold coins, and you told me you wouldn't sell it, that'd just be stupid."

Seelah shuts her eyes for a second, then fixes Dyra with a stare. "I wouldn't sell it," she says, "because to you, it'd be a shiny stick, and to me, it's the memory of a dear friend."

     "Oh," Dyra says.

They walk in silence for a bit.

     "You've had a lot of friends, though, right?" she asks, eventually. Before Seelah can respond, she adds: "And... it's not just shiny. It's... beautiful. The first really beautiful thing I've ever seen, I think. And the memory of the first - the second - interesting thing that's ever happened to me."

Seelah being once again poleaxed, Anevia takes the fore. "Dyra, I kind of get where you're coming from. But - remember Seelah's story? You're going to see a lot of beautiful things, on the surface. And some of them can be yours, without taking them away from someone who -"

Seelah gives her the stick.

     It's Dyra's turn to look stunned. "Oh, thank you! How much do I owe you?"

Seelah shakes her head. "Not how this works. It's about... being a decent person."

     "Decent people deserve to be remunerated," Dyra says. "It incentivizes people who aren't naturally decent to be decent anyway."

"You are the most Abadaran sheepwoman I have ever met in a filthy cave. The bar is low, but you are making an acrobatic leap above it."

Glare.

"Dyra, if you pay me for it, that makes it... a different thing than I wanted it to be."

     "And if I can't pay you for it, that makes it different than I want it to be. I want to finally be able to make an actual, meaningful transaction that leaves both sides better off," Dyra insists. "Not just - bartering lizard meat for fish. Or old coins someone found, or a chunk of quartz. I want to make a deal."

Seelah... suddenly grins. "You want to make a deal?"

     Dyra nods. "That's what I just said."

"How's this: in exchange for that hairstick, you agree to take some of that money you mentioned, and when we get you to the surface, you buy us both dinner."

     "What?"

Seelah shrugs. "It's not as much as some people would charge for honest Tian porcelain, but it's something. And you stick by your principles, and I think it's worth getting to know somebody who does that."

     "What if I never even make it?" Dyra asks. "And - and I barely even know my principles!"

"Any good Abadaran knows that a risky investment is still an investment," Seelah says, patting her on the back. "And I think sticking to your principles when you don't know them is more impressive than when you do."