Miko's thoughts are a jumble right now! In no particular order:

1. What in the world just happened?
2. If this is the Celestial Mountain (and it can't not be the Celestial Mountain. it can't.), why does she hurt?
3. What is that smell? Alcohol? Foreign alcohol?
4. Seriously, what in the world just happened?

She reluctantly opens her eyes.

(Note: Miko's icons have been updated to include an edgy red-and-black color scheme. One can pretend they were always drawn that way.)

She's looking up at a sneering Northern-looking man in armor, who is, reciprocally, looking down at her. "Good," he says, not sounding like he means it. "So you're not completely unconscious. You drunks dis..."

He trails off, his contempt fading to background levels. "You're bleeding."

He's right. The dyed leather makes it harder to see on her skin, but she's lying in a small pool of blood. (It doesn't smell right. Paladins get used to the smell of blood; this isn't it.)

For a moment, she seethes. How dare this Northerner accuse her of drunkenness? But—

Her hands go to the place where it hurts: her chest.

(Her more recent memories resolve some more, leaving her thinking that shouldn't the pain be lower? But she can't dwell on that right now. She can… pray. Once she's alone.)

There's a hole there. It's been very competently stitched together, but... there's something beneath the skin, something hard. As her hands touch it, the pain flares.

Speaking of her hands: on each of her wrists, there's a beautifully engraved platinum bangle. They're inscribed with zodiacal circles, and they feel important.

"You haven't died yet," Hulrun notes. "Even with that kind of hole in you. That probably means you'll survive long enough to get to a proper healer, which I'm not... but, here. Cure light wounds."

His hand brushes hers, and fire spreads through her from that point of contact. It's not a lot; maybe seven hit points. Not enough to really mess up her day. Even in the condition she's in.

Gah! Her hands flinch away from her chest wound like a hot stove. Something else to ask the Twelve Gods.

Seeing the inscriptions on the bangles, she feels hope for the first time since… earlier. The Twelve Gods sent her here. Which means that, even though she wants to ask how far she is from Azure City and in what direction, what she needs is to stay put and listen for their guidan

Gah again! This person's Cure spell appears to be broken.

"Thank you," she says. "I can heal myself the rest of the way."

She lays on hands.

Works fine.

(Well... her chest still hurts. But it doesn't feel like a wound, really. And she's not bleeding.)

Hulrun's eyebrows shoot upwards, and he raises a gauntlet to his chest. "You're a paladin? I apologize for my insinuation earlier, your armor confused me... how were you injured?"

"I accept your apology."

The armor is confusing to her as well, honestly! At least it isn't beige and grey anymore. That… that was almost as bad as everything else she lost. And… has regained? Yes, of course. There's no other explanation.

"There was…"

She can't call it an accident. She made her choice deliberately, even if it turned out that she had been mistaken in deciphering the clues sent to her by the Twelve Gods. But anything else feels… also wrong. She reframes:

"A war, in my hometown. I destroyed something valuable to prevent it from falling into enemy hands. The explosion… I was not expecting to survive; the Twelve Gods must have spared me."

She almost asks if he knows what they sent her for, but—maybe he'll come to the correct conclusion and tell her on his own.

Hulrun sucks in a breath. "My sympathies. Some manner of artifact? Could have teleported you, or cast you through the planes... well. You know already you're lucky to be alive, but I'll say that I'm lucky to have another battle-hardened crusader land at my feet. Gods know I need as many as I can get."

… Well, they are Gates. She's pretty sure that there's a difference between the Gates and the spell Gate, and that the gods normally want to stay away from them rather than sending valuable paladins through them, but… it's the best theory she's got.

She doesn't smile at her fellow battle-hardened crusader, but she feels warm regard anyhow. A feeling that… reminds her of how Greenhilt reacted to the dirt farmers. Irritating.

"I'd be happy to lend aid," she says. "What do you need?"

A woman comes into view. Her hair is silver, her ears pointed, the air around her cooler than the summer heatwave-shimmer.

Miko isn't Detecting Evil from her, that much is clear. But she's Detecting something - something overpowering, like staring into the sun. This woman is more than she appears.

"Prelate," the woman says, amused. "Are you trying to recruit this poor lady before she has had a chance to wash the blood off her armor? At the festival? Do I need to put some kind of sign on you?"

The Prelate startles; he hadn't noticed his apparent superior's approach. "Milady, please. I am trying to do what is best for -"

"Hulrun," she says calmly.

He stops.

She turns to Miko. "Young paladin, what is your name?"

For a moment, she's too distracted by… not fear, but awe… at the elf. (If she really is only an elf, going by those speech bubbles.) And then at the demeanor she holds towards Prelate Hulrun. It reminds her of how Shojo used to be.

She inclines her head politely towards the elf.

"Miko Miyazaki, milady," she says, taking a cue from Hulrun.

"Oh, please don't call me that," she laughs. "If Hulrun starts a trend, I don't know what I'll do. I am Terendelev, protector of this city. And I am as glad as my Prelate that you are here, but I think we can set aside the crusade pitch until you've had time to get your feet under you. Why don't you have some fair food, get the blood Prestidigitated off you? In the morning, we can speak of what you can do for us and vice versa; until then, please, enjoy the festival."

Hulrun grumbles quietly. (Not entirely unlike O-Chul.)

Miko is heart-achingly endeared (well, on top of the more physical heartache) to both of these fine people. The Twelve Gods have been… kind.

"All right, Lady Terendelev. If the matter is not urgent I suppose I can wait until morning."

She doesn't particularly want any food, actually. Maybe these bracelets are like Rings of Sustenance? Another kindness from the gods.

"It is no more urgent than it has been for the last hundred years," Terendelev says, in that tone of voice that only someone who has lived through each of those hundred years can affect.

Then she sweeps away.

Hulrun grunts. "Well, you heard her. ...I hope I don't have to tell you not to let your guard down. If the demons come today, they won't care if everyone else is having a lovely time."

And he goes off as well.

… Elves.

She nods.

"I agree. But I'll try not to alarm any innocents before that happens."

(Hopefully Lady Terendelev won't take offense to that if she can still hear them.)

All right, she's on her own now. She does want to clean up, and maybe find out what country they're in and what the festival is for. But first:

She starts walking, looking for someplace she can take a moment to herself and pray.

There's a lot of people in the town square (an alley off which she woke up in), but there are still quiet corners. Places where the crowd doesn't flow, whether because of natural fluid dynamics or because they're specifically set aside for calm and comfort.

There's a tree of the latter sort, some kind of silver-barked deciduous specimen surrounded by flowers, with another elf sitting underneath. This one looks much younger, not even fully grown, and she's covered with dreadful burn scars; her eyes are closed, and she's humming under her breath as her fingers trail through a patch of poppies.

(She's got the same quality as Terendelev, much more faintly; a sort of luminosity, oddly soothing but still setting Miko's teeth a bit on edge.)

… There are a lot of elves in this city. Although… maybe this isn't a young elf. Miko attempts a Will save against the mysterious effect. And…

Detect Evil?

Nada.

Not "nada" as in "the elf detects non-Evil", though.

"Nada" as in "she abruptly comes to the realization that the sensory modality she's been trying to access has been on since she woke up, and instead of Detecting Evil, it's been Detecting this, which is, to reiterate, definitely not Evil."

For a moment, the thought flashes through her mind that maybe both the elves are Evil and she accidentally pledged her loyalty to Evil ends again.

But—this isn't what Evil feels like. Even the sense of unease that normally accompanies detected Evil is different. She's detecting… Chaos, perhaps?

No.

Deep in her gut, she knows what it really is.

But why did the Twelve Gods switch out her Detect Evil for Detect Good?

Maybe… maybe they realized that she needed more help determining which causes she should align herself with. After the confusion with Lord Shojo. He was clearly Neutral, at best. And if she'd had Detect Good back then, she would have known. Could have done something.

Then why does it feel BAD

It isn't appropriate to question the judgment of the gods, especially when they've given her a second chance.

The elf is looking at her.

"I'm sorry," she says sincerely.

… She doesn't know what this child is apologizing for. She still feels instinctively suspicious of the elf, but. The gods are telling her that she is Good. She needs to trust trusts the gods.

"You don't need to apologize, little one."

(Her voice is shaking, a little.)

She tilts her head to one side, birdlike. "No one needs to apologize... you do it because it might help. Whatever hurt you, I didn't want it to; so, if it was me, I'm sorry."

Miko could say that it wasn't the elf girl, but that would be lying.

But "I was put at ill ease because of your Good alignment" would also give this kid the wrong idea.

She supposes she can truthfully say that she was more hurt by realizing that the gods took away her Detect Evil and by Good feeling bad than by the elf herself.

"I see. Still, you did not do anything that hurt me."

After a moment:

"Thank you for your concern, though."

"Oh," the elf says, troubled.

"You're welcome," she says a few seconds later, "but I wish it was something I'd done. It's usually better that way... then I could change it. You can't learn if you never do anything wrong."

She wanders off, humming distractedly.

???????

She… wishes that it was her fault???

While she's trying to process that, Confusing Elf Girl leaves.

Miko's tempted to follow, but—she's conveniently alone, now. She kneels down near the tree, amidst the poppies. Normally she'd light twelve candles, but all her belongings were confiscated when she was arrested.

Then again, she's not wearing the same armor she died almost died in and has a pair of new magic items. Maybe she's got new inventory?

Her new inventory includes:

• a headband she hadn't previously noticed, which seems to be boosting her Wisdom and Charisma at the same time despite being neither a Periapt nor a Cloak

• a belt, doing the same for Strength and Dexterity

• her armor, which turns out to be enchanted both for protection and for ??hygiene?? - it's absorbed the blood she spilled on it, and looks glossy and somehow satisfied

• two sheaths, sized for katana and wakizashi but containing no such weapons at this time

• and general adventuring supplies (sans rations) in a Bag of Holding, including fourteen candles. (Also a collapsible ten-foot pole and two hundred feet of silk rope.)

… Wow, the Twelve Gods have been very kind to her, as far as magic items are concerned. She'll need to take good care of them to properly show her gratitude. She wishes that she'd been able to keep her weapons, and would plausibly trade the headband and belt for them, but. She's not going to be ungrateful.

Besides, before she was a paladin she was a monk. Perhaps the gods are telling her that she needs to take greater advantage of her monk levels.

(She's still going to prioritize getting her hands on a proper blade, of course.)

She's amused by the ten-foot pole. Apparently she's now one of those adventurers.

She—moves away from the tree so she can have enough room around her to set up her candles in a circle.

She lights them one by one, murmuring each god's name in turn. Rat, Ox, Tiger, Rabbit, Dragon…

"Thank you for sparing me. And for the magic items. And for restoring… most of my class features. I promise to use them, and my life, and—my ability to Detect Good. To do your will. I promise to help Terendelev and Hulrun without asking for anything in return. To—to do as Lord Soon asked of me.

"Please, Twelve Gods, if you can tell me… how did you save my life? Why? What do you need me to do? Why do I have something strange inside my body? Why am I here? When can I go home? Is Azure City in good hands?

"I only ask for understanding so that I can be a more effective servant to you. I am faithful to you always."

A strange insect has landed on the ground before her. It begins chewing on the poppies, ripping them out of the ground with strength belying its tiny size, not even eating them, just destroying them as fast as it can.

Then there are two.

Ten.

The locusts swarm out of nowhere, droning a horrible drone and shredding through whatever they can reach. All around, festivalgoers are screaming - or they're cackling as they shed their illusory human forms to reveal demonflesh beneath.

And the drone reaches a fever pitch, and the sky is torn in half, and a great and awful creature steps through. Gargantuan, at least, with a scythe of bone and chitin, and wing-like swarms of those same demonic locusts flapping behind it.

Terendelev rushes forth into the square, casting spells left and right, blasting demons like papier-machê. And she starts to change - her neck lengthens, her hands grow razor talons, and wings burst from her back, until she stands not as an elf but as a full-grown dragon with scales like moonlight.

"Back, Deskari!" she bellows. "Return to your fetid pit, away from my-"

The scythe swings down into her with a terrible inertia. It goes straight through her skull and pins it into the shattered flagstone beneath.

"No," he says, simply. It reverberates through the courtyard, above the screams.

She opens her eyes, shocked. Her first impulse is to Smite them—but no, they're clearly a symptom of whatever disaster has struck, not the cause. She abandons her prayer circle to rush into the town square.

Why did the gods take away her ability to Detect Evil? She could have—

No time to think of that. She has to focus on what she can do now. She can tell that she personally stands no chance against Deskari, not if it instantly killed a dragon like that.

She can attack the demons on the ground, though. Her slightly-less-short-term goal is to protect Terendelev's body and increase the odds that a cleric who can Raise Dead has access to her.

She's joined by a handful of guards, who seem to think clustering around the high-level adventurer sounds like the best idea available.

This lasts until a Glabrezu blasts her location with a Cone of Cold, which she handily evades, and which the low-level warriors around her don't.

"Hsst!" hisses a halfling down a semi-blind alley. "Over here, woman! You can't dodge forever!"

Miko ignores the halfling. A paladin never retreats, and certainly never abandons those weaker than herself.

(Even though currently she's defending a handful of corpses.)

Besides, 90% of people fighting a seemingly endless wave of demons give up right before defeating the demons.

"Damn it all," the halfling mutters, and dashes out to press something into Miko's hand.

It's a throwing knife, made of... obsidian, maybe? It won't do her any good in close quarters, but it's well weighted and it'd carry well through the air. It glows, in a way that feels right.

"Aim for the big bastard," the halfling says grimly. "Give him one in the eye."

Then he's gone.

See? Obstinately sticking to her principles rather than selfishly prioritizing her own survival was the correct move. It even inspired the halfling to a moment of bravery!

She appreciates the feel of the dagger for a moment before lining up a shot and aiming for Deskari's eye. Dexterity-and-strength-boosting belt, this is your chance!

The dagger flies true. As it flies, it seems to grow - not in physical size, but in meaning. In import. This, it says, as it soars closer and closer, means something.

It sinks deep into Deskari's compound eye, and he screams. Black ichor wells up from the wound, and one perfect drop of it falls to the ground, turning to crystal along the way and clinking off under an overturned food cart.

He turns and sees Miko.

"Insolent little traitor," he snarls. "I will send you to the pits, and you may tell whatever sniveling fiend favored you that its days are numbered."

His scythe has long since been freed from Terendelev's corpse. It comes down faster than sight, and the earth splits beneath Miko's feet.

… If she sees the halfling again, she will thank him.

She knows that Deskari is much more powerful than she is, that she's almost certainly going to die again. And she's—confused, by what it says. She's not a traitor to anyone and she certainly doesn't comport with fiends!

That train of thought takes a backseat, though.

She wakes to a distant voice. "-it's not that bad. Um. Really, it's not that bad... I've seen worse..."

"Lies," grunts another voice, "are not anesthetic. You're thinking of alcohol."

Honestly, this isn't as bad as the first time she woke up today. Unless she's somehow in yet another foreign city with even worse demon problems.

She opens her eyes.

She's underground. Looks like she fell a few hundred feet. Doesn't look like the crevasse she fell through was considerate enough to stick around after she was done using it.

Also, either this cavern is surprisingly well-lit and her armor lost those red accents, or she's got Darkvision for some reason.

Honestly, either one of those possibilities seems roughly equally likely. That first one would make three significant costume changes in two days, though, which is just ridiculous.

Either way, she needs to get her bearings. She can hear people talking—wounded people, by the sound of it. She makes her way towards the sound of their voices.

One of them's strongly Good, wearing heavy armor, and trying to figure out how to lift several rocks at the same time.

The other is not strongly Good, and has several very heavy rocks on top of her legs. She has also placed an Everburning Torch next to her, which casts her immediate surroundings in color. 

She gives Miko a little wave. Decidedly ironic. "Welcome to Party Town."

Well, apparently she's got Darkvision now.

Miko nods towards the one who's pinned under the rocks, then joins the group. Her first instinct is to test the strength bonus of her belt, but those rocks look precarious. One wrong move could spell disaster.

She turns to the one who radiates Goodness.

"What happened?"

"Fell down a hole," she says grimly. "...some of us took it better than others."

"I really think it's unfair. I'm not even the one in metal trousers. ...Seelah, if you get in position to push on the pile with your shield, and she can shift the big one on the bottom layer, then they'll roll away from anything important."

"...they won't break your feet? It looks like they might break your feet."

"I'm not going jogging anytime soon anyway, and if this pile stays the way it is, my legs aren't going to survive at all. Break my damn feet."

Miko gains appreciation for the one under the rocks! She's not sure how many more hit points she can heal today with Lay on Hands, but she doesn't have any spells prepared; she can just load herself up on Cure spells and whatever else the others think may come in useful.

"I can heal some of the damage as well."

And then she gets into position, awaiting more specific instructions so they can get this girl free.

Seelah reluctantly gets in position. "On three, I'll start pushing with my shield. Lift the biggest rock up and off her, then get out of the way before they fall on your feet. Got it? One... two... three."

The rocks start moving, pushing against the big one (really more of a small boulder) and threatening the pile's stability.

She lifts!

Wow. That belt's good.

The rock comes up like a dream, and the pile comes down. There are a couple of unfortunate crunching sounds.

When they've concluded, the woman of the crushed legs starts industriously shifting smaller rocks off her newly crunched feet. "Hi," she says belatedly. "I'm Anevia Tirabade. Thanks for the assist."

It really is! Between landing a hit on Deskari and now this, Miko's extremely grateful. She helps Anevia with the smaller rocks.

"Miko Miyazaki. It's my pleasure, really."

Still moving rocks, she looks towards Seelah.

"I think I heard your name earlier. Seelah, is it?"

"Indeed," she says. "I'm a paladin of Iomedae. I'm... preexistingly acquainted with Anevia."

"She tried to cave my head in while I was posing as a cultist of Baphomet!" Anevia says brightly. "Almost started crying when the Smite failed and I gave her a look... good times. You'll go far, I mean that. Can someone please heal my broken everything."

"I'm a paladin of the Twelve Gods. Is Iomedae from the Northern pantheon, or the Western? And—why were you posing as a cultist?"

Once the number of rocks on top of Anevia has reached zero: lay on hands?

As Miko's hand approaches Anevia's leg, the hairs on it make a valiant effort to stand despite a liberal coating of blood. Anevia's eyes widen.

As contact is made, she cries out and lashes at Miko's hand, knocking it away.

There's a perfect black handprint on her already-ruined thigh.

Seelah's hand is on her sword hilt. "Anevia! What-"

"Seelah," she gasps. "Don't. Move."

Miko yanks her hand away! What the hell!!!

Anevia looks at Miko, her eyes intense. "You. Didn't know that was going to happen."

It's not quite a question.

She can't quite meet Anevia's eyes. She's shaking her head. She can't breathe—

"No. No, I swear it! I don't understand, it worked perfectly earlier when I healed… my…"

Anevia's head lolls back.

"What a fucking mess," she enunciates.

Then she passes out.

Seelah stares at Miko, as Miko stares at herself.

"I'm going to heal her," she says, as calmly as she can. "You are going to stand over there."

Miko nods, stepping away from Anevia and Seelah. A little further back, even, for good measure.

Seelah pours her last trickle of natural healing through her palms, which fixes the new damage. Then she grits her teeth and casts a handful of low-level Cure spells, which... at least make Anevia's legs look less ruined.

She still takes a little while to regain consciousness. Contrary to popular belief, getting someone back into positive hit points doesn't always make them pop back up like a Jack-in-the-box.

Everything strange that's happened so far—Hulrun not being able to heal her, the lack of hunger, the Darkvision—clicks into place. And—

Detecting Good instead of Evil. The way her armor ?drank? the blood. Inflicting damage when she tried to heal it. The color scheme. Is…

Is she Evil now?

She doesn't feel Evil. But—she can't deny what her touch did. She remembers what Soon said, before she died. (She died. And now she's… whatever this is.)

Is she even Miko anymore? Maybe she's some undead spirit that only thinks it's a paladin, shoved into a body that isn't really hers.

Seelah's watching her.

It started as the wary kind of watching you might do to someone you're not sure isn't going to try to kill you. It's turned into something else, though - more the uncomfortably sympathetic look of the only other occupant of the women's restroom during a catastrophic nervous breakdown.

"...knew a vampire once," she says. Apropos of nothing.

Oh, Seelah's talking to her.

"What happened to them?"

"Not much. Uh... we weren't friends, really, or enemies. We just. Met. He was kind of a dick."

She looks at the floor.

"Not bad enough that I'd have killed him. Better than some of the humanoids I've known. ...I've known some pretty bad humanoids. But."

She manages to laugh, at that.

"I see. Well. That aside, if. If you want me to stay away from you anyway."

She doesn't know how to finish that sentence. But—she can strike out on her own, if needs be. She probably needs to figure out what she is now, if not a paladin, anyway. Before she hurts another innocent person.

Seelah shakes her head, hard. "Good and Evil are questions you argue about in temples. Not in a cave while somebody's got two broken legs. ...and you wanted to help."

A nod. A cautious step closer.

"All right. Well—I'm going to meditate. I need to find out what my new class features are so that—that—doesn't happen again."

Seelah looks confused, but doesn't question this. She should probably get some poultices on Anevia, while she's waking up.

She finds a clear spot to kneel and tentatively looks at her character sheet.

MIKO MIYAZAKI

Monk 2/Paladin 9 (Fallen)/Blackguard 5

Undead (Augmented: Graveknight)

BAB 15/10/5 (Flurry 13/13/8/3)

STR 21 (23) | DEX 18 (22) | CON -

INT 13 | WIS 17 (21) | CHA 23 (27)

HD 2d8 + 15d10 + 136

[...]

It goes as one might expect, from there. Her feats are the same, except for a few paladin-specific ones which have been switched for blackguard-specific ones. She's got some nifty special abilities.

Her "armor" isn't actually studded leather; it's literally just an enchanted leather jacket and trousers, treated as clothing. (They're very well enchanted, though - armor bonus of breastplate, and the first time each day that at least 25 HP worth of blood is spilled over them, she gains Fast Healing 5 for a minute. Also, they're the focus for some kind of undead-enhancing aura.) She's got a couple of other items of interest; notably, those scabbards on her waist are... a minor artifact? Named(???) Finnean?

Her Lay on Hands is instead a Touch of Corruption, which does the same thing but with negative energy. It's good if she needs to dump a lot of damage into a living enemy in one hit, and she's used to mixing unarmed attacks into her Flurry. Her Divine Grace is now Dark Blessing, which is literally identical. Her spell list is different, though not that different.

She's got Sneak Attack 2d6. That'll be pivotal, probably.

And she's got a fiendish companion. An undead nightmare by the name of Ashrider.

… Okay.

On the day she died—that is to say, yesterday—she woke up in prison to a succubus offering to trade in her paladin levels for blackguard levels. Despite the answer Miko gave the fiend, this seems to have been what happened whenever she… turned undead. At least she can take some solace in depriving the demon of the riches she would have gained in exchange for her paladin levels. And resolve to never let the succubus see her current outfit, which shouldn't be hard.

She feels uneasy about her scabbard being an intelligent artifact—at least, that's what she's assuming based on the name. She can talk to it… later. When she's properly alone.)

The same applies to… Ashrider. She's tempted to refrain from summoning the nightmare, but—no. She can't flinch away from something as valuable as a mount out of sentimentality.

Finally, she looks up at Seelah.

"All right. I can still prepare Cure spells separately from my… touch of corruption. I'll probably need to do that at dusk, although I haven't prepared any spells yet today and might be able to right now. I'm not sure what caster level I'll be preparing them at, though; I have more remaining levels in fallen paladin than in blackguard."

Seelah looks morbidly fascinated. "Levels. Like... you're not from around here, obviously, but is that what they call spell circles in Tian Xia? And blackguard I'm guessing is like some kind of undead paladin... it kind of makes sense they'd be able to use positive energy sometimes, undead don't always get along. Not that mortals do, but. I'm babbling, aren't I."

"I'm from Azure City, actually. And yes, though 'level' refers to more than just spell level or caster level. There's also character level and encounter level. Blackguards… don't have to be undead, which is probably the primary reason for the Cure spells being on the list."

She is now realizing, possibly thanks to the boosted Wisdom and extremely boosted Charisma, that she has essentially invited Seelah to ask what a blackguard actually is and possibly also how she fell. Oh no.

"Alright."

Seelah leaves it at that, and gently shakes Anevia's shoulder.

"Fuck you," Anevia mumbles, her eyes still closed.

"I'm not your wife. You're in a cave and we don't have food or water. I'm not giving you five more minutes."

Anevia glares blearily at Seelah. "Damn it. I should have known nightmares don't hurt that bad. ...you're going to have to carry me, if I try to walk it's not going to be pretty."

Seelah sighs, and hoists Anevia onto her back. "You have to cling to me, I'm not giving up my arms for the foreseeable future."

Thank you, Seelah.

She weighs the pros and cons of offering to summon her new mount. On the one hand, if the nightmare is as cooperative as Windstriker, it would be a massive help. However, she doesn't know that, not having summoned it yet. Also, Anevia might be too injured to ride.

She decides to wait. For now.

"Are we just walking until we find a way out of this pit, then?"

"Do you have a better idea? -not a gripe, just asking."

She doesn't have any navigation spells on her new list, so no.

"No. I can lead the way if you'd like; I seem to be able to see in the dark now."

"That's good. You've probably got better range than the torch, and won't disturb any monsters like the light would... I'll wrap the torch until I can just barely see you to follow."

Seelah does this; once the phantom torchlight illuminates barely a 5-foot radius, she holsters it on her belt and allows Miko to lead the way.

Miko takes the lead, giving the two an amount of space designed to communicate I trust you but also understand you have valid reasons to be on guard around me. She keeps an eye out for clues and hazards.

It's half a mile before Miko begins hearing another humanoid. She's singing to herself; it sounds like some kind of prayer.

+8 racial +10 combination racial and magic item bonuses to Listen skill checks: really nice.

"I hear someone," she reports, pointing in the correct direction.

The singing does not pause.

"...I don't. But I'll take your word for it. Hostile? Friendly?"

Yeah, because of the aforementioned bonuses.

"Right now she—it sounds like a woman, anyway—is singing. I don't think she's noticed us yet. And…"

She Listens a little harder, trying to catch more specific words.

"Stone mother, tooth of earth, swallow him and make him whole again... fire mother, tongue of sun, lick his bones to purity... water mother, river's heart, wash him well and bring him home..."

(It scans better in Elven. Or whatever language that is.)

Some sort of… druid thing? She realizes that the language she's hearing is different, though she can still understand it fine. She has no idea what language it is… Elven, maybe. It would make sense, given the density of the elven population she's observed so far.

"It sounds like—funerary rites, maybe."

Which isn't very heartening.

"...huh," Seelah mutters. "Well, demons don't do that. I vote unwrap the torch and approach openly."

Miko likes the sound of this plan!

"Do you also want to take the lead, since you have the torch?"

"Mm. I would, but I've got a spidermonkey."

"Don't call me a monkey."

"I've got a spider," Seelah corrects herself.

Miko's happy for them! She really is! They sound like they have a strong friendship with—with trust, and understanding, and…

They remind her of Yunji and Jiaya and—all the other paladins, really. Who liked each other but avoided her. And Seelah and Anevia already have an extremely good reason to avoid and mistrust Miko, or to at least keep their distance.

(She shouldn't be bothered by this. This isn't social hour, it's Serious Business time. It shouldn't matter that she probably won't make friends with these two; the important thing is that they all escape this pit and that she makes amends to Anevia and that the demon menace is defeated.)

She continues listening to the singer up ahead.

As they approach, she comes to the end of her song. Then, there's the sound of striking flint - she stops before a fire is lit, remains silent for a few moments.

"Is someone there?" she asks, quietly enough that it shouldn't attract unwanted attention.

Oh, good, a distraction.

"Yes!" she calls out, at a nigh-heraldic volume. "We're trying to get to the surface."

There's the unmistakable auditory quality of a raised eyebrow to the next sentence. "It will be easier to get to the surface if you don't broadcast our location to every giant spider in a three-tunnel radius. Just a thought."

A dim light comes up, casting flickering shadows along the tunnel leading towards: a half-elven woman, her hair very black, her hands very red. At her feet is a mangled corpse; much of it has been eaten, and the blood has been used to paint runes on the intact portion of the body and on several nearby stones.

"I imagine this fellow could have used similar advice."

Miko immediately bristles—it isn't her fault that not everyone picks a class with decent Hit Dice—but remembers just in time that she isn't, actually, the leader of the budding party. Or a real paladin. She clears her throat awkwardly.

"I. Apologize; I wasn't sure how far away you… were…"

She looks between the bloodstains on the woman's hands and the runes.

"What are those."

"Seconded," shivers the real paladin.

"The ritual I performed here was once practiced by the shamans of this blighted land. It lays to rest a soul which might otherwise be enraged by violent death, in addition to strengthening and healing nearby nature-spirits. I could not save this man, but I could bring him peace, and ensure his death was meaningful."

Miko has zero ranks in Sense Motive. She makes the check anyway.

… Yeah, she's probably fine. Okay.

"Thank you. Not everyone thinks of the souls of others during times of difficulty."

Camellia inclines her head respectfully. "It's a simple thing, but it means a great deal. Thank you for understanding." She glances at Miko's companions. "Mrs. Tirabade I know... and I've seen her companion, on occasion. You're not so familiar."

Nod.

"I'm from Azure City and haven't been to this country before today. Miko Miyazaki."

"Azure City? I've never heard of it... though I wouldn't have, if it were over the Crown of the World. I am called Camellia. May I join your merry band, dame Miyazaki?"

Anevia has been squinting at her; she nods, something clicking in her mind. "Right, you're Horgus Gwerm's girl. Can you fight?"

"Yes," Camellia says without elaboration.

Anevia waits a second, then makes a noise of amused exasperation. "I really don't know what I expected."

"I have no objections."

Miko glances at Seelah-and-Anevia, more specifically at Seelah.

Seelah looks like she'd be rubbing her forearms, if they weren't covered in steel. "...fine, but keep the rituals to yourself, alright?" she says. "My soul is the Inheritor's."

"I wouldn't dream of interfering with that," Camellia says pleasantly. She glances to Anevia. "Mrs. Tirabade, may I assume you'd prefer your legs to work?"

"Please assume whatever you like," Anevia says tightly.

Tap. Cure critical wounds.

Anevia twitches repeatedly, experiencing Mythic Half-Dragon Pins-and-Needles. Within a few moments, though, she sighs with relief and slides off Seelah's back.

"...thanks. Seriously. And I guess I know more about how you can fight, now."

Miko isn't jealous at all! It's straightforwardly a good thing that Anevia is up to full hit points now, even—no, especially—if Miko wasn't able to do anything and in fact was antihelpful!

She still wants to slightly change the subject though.

"Who's Horgus Gwerm?"

"A nobleman."

Anevia rolls her eyes. "You could call him Camellia's noble patron. She goes to the parties he goes to; she doesn't go to the parties he doesn't. He's also an honorable, devoted man, who has given the city of Kenabres no reason to doubt his commitment to the Crusades and the safety of this world, and if anyone forgets it he'll yell at them for about an hour and a half."

"What she said," Camellia agrees. "Honorable. Dutiful. Pious. Truly unimpeachable. If I speak of him for five more seconds, I will fall asleep."

Miko continues to be reminded of how the other paladins would talk with each other! She's also suspicious of this Horgus Gwerm character.

Well, there's nothing she can really do about either of those things right now. She nods to Camellia.

"I see. I wouldn't suppose that you have a better idea of how to get to the surface than we have?"

"I can cast Stone Tell, once per day or by preparation, but that won't be much good for navigation... I could summon a bulette, but they can't take more than one passenger, and it would only be for a few minutes... if I'd prepared Commune with Nature, that'd be fantastic, but I didn't, and I can do it tomorrow but that doesn't help us today." She shakes her head. "Until then, I suppose we take the path before us."

"All right. I've been leading the way because I have Darkvision; Seelah's been keeping the torchlight at just high enough a level to see where I'm going."

"I should be fine with that; I don't need much light to see."

She falls in behind Seelah.

And they're off again! Presumably at a brisker pace, now that Anevia's on her own feet again.

Their brisk pace brings them, after a while of marching (no one has an hourglass) to a widening stretch of cavern. Again, Miko is the first to hear voices.

"What do you plan to do with it?" wonders the first - purring, more fond than exasperated. "Do you even know how to wield a sword?"

"It's not about hitting people with it," says the other, definitely more exasperated than fond. "It's about making a point."

"That is the part you hit people with," she agrees.

… That sounds like a pair of dumb kids. With five levels between them at the most. Who may or may not have stolen a sword that they now have no idea what to do with.

Optimistically, they looted it off of someone who was also knocked into this pit and was simply less fortunate. It would make sense, even, with how inexperienced they sound.

"I hear two people up ahead," she says, just loudly enough for Seelah/Anevia/Camellia to hear.

"Good to know," Seelah murmurs. "Same strategy? Worked out last time."

"Yes, I think so. I'll. Try to not let every spider in a three-tunnel radius know, as well."

Ha ha?

A genuine chuckle. "Sounds like a plan."

It worked!!

She continues to listen to the voices ahead as they march forward. She'll speak up (at hopefully a more reasonable volume; she's not actually sure how loud she should be) when it sounds like they notice the party, when she sees them, or when someone else in the party can hear them, whichever comes first.

Camellia indicates after a few seconds that she can now hear the annoying kids.

"Hello up there!" she calls, at a more reasonable volume this time.

Pause.

"Hello!" calls the deeper voice, approaching their location. It reveals itself to belong to some kind of fucked up half-lizardman, with a bow and arrows strapped to his back. "I - are you surfacers?"

The higher voice, presumably, belongs to the girl following him at a more leisurely pace. Her aesthetic is more cohesive; blue skin, cat eyes, spider legs on her back. None of this patchwork nonsense. She's also got a bow and arrows.

She looks like she'd really like to act like she's not even interested, but she's having a hard enough time keeping herself from immediately running up and sniffing them all personally, so she's compromising by glaring at them.

Miko looks back at her companions for a moment before looking back at the pair of… teenagers.

"Yes. What else would we be?"

This doesn't bode well for their chances of getting back up. Hopefully Camellia's Commune With Nature does its job.

"You could have been Neathers like us. With really subtle tells. I knew a girl who looked almost like her on the outside," gesture towards Camellia, "it was weird, you couldn't even tell she was one of us until she took off her-"

"Wenduag!!!"

Unspoken: don't be weird in front of the surfacers!!!

Camellia frowns. "I have been likened to more unpleasant beings, but I might like the implications here the least."

What! What even is a Neather! When you learn the Secret Lore of the Sapphire Guard you kind of tend to assume that there aren't any more insane secrets left to learn!

"I don't think we have… Neathers… where I come from."

"You might be more familiar with the common term mongrel," Camellia contributes. "Not that I knew they were real, but. One does hear stories."

Wenduag bares her teeth. "Don't call me that, you unblooded -"

"Wenduag!" Lann's voice is firmer this time. "It's just a word. And it means what it means. Yes, we're the mongrels... back during the Crusade, almost seventy-five thousand gongs ago, a few units of crusaders were sent underground, and their blood no longer ran true. They looked like we look, and their children did too. We don't know why that first generation didn't return to the surface; they could have. Since they didn't, no one is willing to... or, well, a few have left, but no one will actually try to mobilize the population to get us all back up. So we're just a story to scare little kids, instead of being a part of the world again."

The usage of "mongrel" Miko's familiar with is people who are deliberately trying to be rude about half-orcs. She doesn't volunteer this.

"… Interesting. How long is a gong? Do you take damage from the sunlight? Was it the simple fact of being underground that corrupted you?"

She does NOT want to become even more of a template stack.

"A gong is half a surface day, we've got keepers to track them. The sunlight never hurt me when I went up, but it's... disorienting, for the first week or so. And no. We're not corrupted, and what happened to our ancestors was unique and singular, all at once. There's a few surfacers who ended up in the tunnels one way or another, and they get pale but they don't get like us."

Mental math, mental math… if Lann is correct, then this happened about a hundred years ago, it sounds like. She doubts his claim that this could be anything but corruption and wishes she had access to a Restoration spell. Maybe Camellia can prepare it; she'll have to ask her if they don't find the surface before she has the opportunity to prepare spells.

At least if he's telling the truth she won't necessarily wind up a Neather on top of everything else. She's not sure how much she trusts that, though. And there's something else important that he just said:

"We're trying to get back to the surface right now, actually. Would you be able to help us?"

"Yes!" Lann says immediately. "And - will you help us as well?"

Wenduag looks sharply at him. "What are you doing?"

"If they can find the Sword -"

"Oh, yes, they'll find the angel's sword and then hand it to us, no trouble, these filthy mongrels have a prior claim, it's not like we play by finders keep rules -"

"Crusaders have honor," Lann says stubbornly. "And this woman is a crusader."

Wenduag makes an angry cat noise but doesn't have words to go with it.

Oh, good, they brought up the sword first. And it's not as bad as she first feared—it sounded like they had maybe looted it off a body, at first.

"Tell us more about the sword?"

"The angel Lariel, one of the celestial warriors sent from the Upper Planes to aid the crusaders, came with our progenitors down to these caverns. He was killed, in the battle they were sent to fight. His tomb is somewhere around here. They buried him with his sword, a powerful artifact of the forces of Good. Generations of Neathers have searched for it, to no avail. If I can find it, I know I can convince the chieftain to bring the tribes aboveground. It'll be a sign."

"If it doesn't burn you for your corruption," Wenduag hums.

Abruptly, she remembers Terendelev's comment—it is no more urgent than it has been for the last hundred years—and connects it with the time that the first generation of crusaders was changed. These crusades have been active for almost twice as long as the Sapphire Guard has even existed, then, and dangerous enough to kill a celestial. In comparison, the issue of the Neathers is less serious, but—obviously still important to these children. And obviously related. It only makes sense that finding the sword will solve their problems.

"I'd be happy to try my hand at finding the sword."

She turns to Anevia, Camellia, and Seelah.

"I would appreciate any help you would be willing to lend, but—I can't actually compel you."

Because she "technically isn't party leader" on top of "not being a paladin anymore."

"I'm happy to help," Seelah says immediately. "Whatever help I can actually be, I mean. I'm not very smart."

Anevia's already squinting around. "Hmm. If I were going to hide a tomb somewhere in these caverns..."

Camellia looks at the party and... sighs heavily. "If everyone else is doing it, then the only thing refusing will do is force me to stand around doing nothing, which is even less interesting than looking under rocks for a sharp piece of metal."

See, Seelah gets it! Miko's a little annoyed at Camellia, but—she did say that she would help, and she's the one who'll be able to prepare a spell to let her leave on her own if she gets bored. So it's probably fine.

Now. How should she go about finding something like…

Oh.

Something like an angel's sword.

"I can detect Good within 60 feet. Does anyone have a spell or spell-like ability that can boost my range?"

"...no," Camellia says slowly. "But one of the things Stone Tell can do quite well is get information on nearby hidden chambers and passages. It's near-useless for navigation, because natural tunnels have lots of 'hidden' passages that go nowhere. But if there's one that has a good story, or at least a list of them and we just, ah, aim you at each..."

Miko nods.

"Yes, that would combine excellently! How long does the spell last, what's its range?"

"Minutes double circle - so, almost a quarter of an hour. And the range isn't the thing, I'll be talking to the stones and asking if any of them have air behind them or if they were moved from their current spot by human...oid hands."

"I see. Is there anything we need to do before you begin speaking with the stones, then?"

"Hmm. Be ready to move rocks, I suppose. I have Stone Shape, but I'm not wasting it on this; it's too likely to be useful later."

"Agreed—I have a +4 belt."

Also, the rocks probably won't be as delicate as the ones on Anevia were.

Camellia closes her eyes and sings a chant, then opens her eyes again and turns to the nearest rock. "How long is your memory, Brother Stone?" she murmurs. "Long enough, long enough. Where did they come, when many of them came - the beast-men, bearing a radiant thing? The radiant thing, older than you and your brothers? ...hm. Thank you."

She moves about fifty feet through the widening tunnel. She strokes a smooth wall there. "Sister, sister, do you remember? Did you hear? ...oh, good sister, please try... ah. Ahhh. Thank you. Thank you, dear sister."

She enters the chamber where Lann and Wenduag were first searching, and pats a great pile of stone along one wall. "Brothers, is it true? Did you stand here? Did you fall? Did they lift you up, were you tumbled down?" She pauses. "Oh, brothers, I am sorry. Thank you for your service, brothers."

She cuts the spell and gestures as her pupils return to their normal size. "These rocks were Stone Shaped, about a century ago, into a beautiful stone door. Then an illusion was put over it so no one could see the door unless they were worthy... or moderately good at seeing through illusions. Then, about four years ago, somebody came along and opened that door. They went inside, then came back out. And then they put a keg of Alchemist's Fire in the doorway, lit a wick, and walked away."

Expressive hand gesture. "Boom."

Well, that's not great. Presumably if the rocks had more detail than that Camellia would have already said.

"… I find it likely that the vandals also stole the sword, but I'll check anyway."

Detect Good?

There's Good, but... residual. Something beautiful was here, something holy and sacred, and now it isn't.

...there is something beautiful and holy and sacred nearby, though. She can kind of see it, like a torch held behind her back.

She's about to report that the sword has definitely been stolen when she picks up on the decidedly non-residual Goodness. She turns in place, trying to get a better look.

It's not in any of the cardinal directions.

…Down? Up?

Yeah, it's down. This chamber's floor is less rocky than the tunnels - there's patches where the floor is covered in dirt. Apparently, some of that dirt is thick enough to block Detect Good from anything other than a 90º angle.

She scuffs a 井 into the dirt with her foot.

"There's something down there. Does anyone have a shovel?"

… She might be "anyone," actually, given all the new equipment in her bag. Her pole probably won't do a very good job of digging, but there might be a trowel, at least. If nobody immediately volunteers to dig, she'll rifle through her bag again.

"My shield's good for it," Seelah says.

She chunks the tapered bottom of the shield into the dirt, wiggles it around, and levers out a decent pile. Then she does it again, and again. It's not as good as a proper shovel, but it's not bad by any means.

Seelah is great. Miko decides to look through her bag anyway and, if there isn't anything more shovel-y than Seelah's shield inside, kneels down so she can move rocks out of the way.

No, there's absolutely a shovel in there. It's really nice, too. Polished darkwood haft with a steel head and leather grips. Who makes a shovel out of darkwood?

Clearly she should have checked first.

"Thank you, Seelah, but apparently I had a shovel in my bag this whole time."

She extracts the shovel and gets to digging more efficiently.

Seelah gives way, wiping off her shield. "Part of being prepared for anything is knowing that you're prepared for it," she chuckles.

Miko nods. And digs!

She also keeps an eye on the beautiful-and-holy-and-sacred aura below.

Clearing two and a half feet of dirt isn't that hard, not with a good shovel and a +7 Strength bonus. It's not long before the shovel clangs on metal. A little more lateral digging reveals the sword.

It's covered in dirt. It's still beautiful. The blade is shining silver, etched with delicate golden runes. The hilt unfurls like a pair of white-gold eagle's wings, with a perfect opal set between them.

Seelah looks on it with awe.

Lann looks on it with awe, too.

Wenduag looks on it with something very like dread.

Miko hesitates. What if she's too unholy to touch it? She's not scared of being injured, of course, but…

It would still be unbearable.

Still, she's the closest. And even if it—burns her—she's just handing it to Lann.

She reaches in.

She touches the sword, and it's... confused. That's what it is. It doesn't understand what's happening, who this is. She's a champion of the gods, a worthy wielder. She's an undead husk, a mockery of all that is right. She's been taken in by fiends, she's someone to save. She's just a woman like any other, in over her head.

It doesn't know what to do. It's not an angel - it's all that's left of one. It wants to do the right thing. It doesn't know what's right. It knows what's good, but that's different. There's a thousand good things you could do every second, and only some of them are right. It's desperate to do what needs to be done. It's been down here for a hundred years, unable to do anything - they sealed it away, that's not what you do with a sword. It wants to help. But so much is happening, so suddenly, and it doesn't know how to help or who to help or what to help with.

All of this rushes through her in the first moments she's touching it. It's pulled in so many different directions that it's paralyzed. If she lends it her own guidance, it would believe her, whatever she said, just so that it doesn't rip itself apart.

During times of stress, the brain sometimes overstimulates the vagus, the longest nerve in the autonomic nervous system. This can lead to nausea, pain, and muscle tightness in the chest. In another word: heartache.

The undead don't have biological functions. It comes of the whole "dying" thing. But they often imitate biological functions: walking, speech, in some cases feeding. And intelligent undead can have emotional reactions of equivalent complexity to the properly alive.

In short: even if it doesn't make physiological sense, undead are perfectly capable of being overwhelmed with emotion.

She doesn't know what to do either. She was planning to hand it over to Lann, and logically speaking that's the right thing to do! He has a noble cause and everything.

But.

She empathizes with the sword, more strongly than with anyone else she's met. She—

Doesn't want to leave it alone?

This is, objectively speaking, foolish. She's just as lost and confused as the sword is, unsure what she needs to do for the gods to take her back. Both of them need someone better to guide the way.

She picks it up, brushes the dust from the hilt.

It reaches out to her again, and it feels -

the way their hearts are broken alike -

blades that cannot wield themselves -

to have had a master and to be left uncertain -

it shifts, in her hand. The broad, straight blade narrows, curves itself. The inscriptions are rewritten. The wing-hilt wraps itself tight, the proper guard for a katana.

And it glows, with a soft silver light.

???

She looks up at the others, then back at the sword. It's—beautiful. It's so beautiful and she feels guilty for feeling… she doesn't even know what she's feeling. Relief? Happiness? It's the same way she felt nearly twenty years ago when Shojo told her he saw power in her, that the Twelve Gods had chosen her.

She turns to Lann.

"Will this… will this still serve as a sign? For your people?"

"Yeah," he says, still awed. "If you back me... they'll know coming back to the surface is the right thing to do."

"It isn't, Lann!" Wenduag finally bursts out. "Do you know what the surfacers think we are? Demonspawn. Do you know what they do with demonspawn?"

"How would you know?" he growls.

"You're not the only one who knows how to find tunnels upwards, you lizardbrained jackass!"

She suddenly feels much more comfortable stepping up into a leadership-type position, now. On account of the angel sword.

"But you aren't demonspawn. Lariel knew that, and I'll vouch for you as well."

Wenduag looks at her, and there's anger in her eyes, but mostly it's fear.

"And who do you think you are? You, with your shiny sword and your eyes that look through the earth and your heart that doesn't beat?!"

"I am chosen by the Twelve Gods of my homeland," she says, because while I am a paladin isn't true on her character sheet it's still true in her heart. She thinks like a paladin, she's been a paladin for years, she was the strongest of the Sapphire Guard even before its numbers were whittled down to nearly nothing by a mad lich.

(She just has to show the Twelve Gods that she's still worthy of serving them.)

"Gods," Wenduag spits, "only help those who don't need help."

And she scurries off into the shadows.

"Wenduag, don't be a - she's already gone," Lann groans.

He turns back to Miko. "...I'm sorry for her. She... she's good to have on your side, but it's too easy for her to decide you're not on hers."

Wow, that doesn't sound like anyone Miko knows at all! She nods sympathetically to Lann.

"Are you worried that she'll try to stop us?"

"What? No! I mean... she'll be furious. But she wouldn't hurt us. She'll... brood, and probably come and try to argue with me tonight, when she can perch on me like a night terror and look dramatic, and say everything she wants to say without other people listening... she's kind of predictable, really." He sighs fondly. "She'd say the same of me."

Nod.

"All right."

She looks at the others.

"What's the plan, now that we've found the sword? Will it be possible to get an escort before the entire community is mobilized? If my help is needed, I'll gladly provide it, but there was a disaster on the surface and I'm sure several of us are anxious to be out of this cavern."

He frowns. "I want you to show off that sword once today, to Chief Sull, and once tomorrow, to whatever other Chiefs he can gather in a gong and a half. Old men don't trust easily. But once that's done, I'll personally bring you through the Shield Maze. It's the quickest and most direct route... and it's dangerous, too, but you've got Lariel's blade."

That doesn't sound too bad. Plus, it's not like she has concrete obligations on the surface. She does want to touch base with the Prelate again, and Terendelev, once she's been Raised, but she hardly expects them to be waiting on her. She can be patient for eighteen hours, especially since eight of them will be…

Oh, right.

She'll still probably be fine.

"I have no objections. Does anyone else?"

"It'll probably be better to get a good... whatever time it is... sleep before we go up there anyway," Seelah confirms. "If the situation's under control, it's under control; if it isn't, we'll be better able to help if we're in fighting condition."

Camellia nods along. "It would have been convenient if I had been able to prepare this morning's spells with a demon invasion in mind," she mutters. "But I suppose that's why they do it this way instead."

"I'm going to be fidgeting the whole time, but we've got to stick together and that means letting you magic types do what you need to," Anevia says grimly. "...and it's not like I couldn't use some sleep, after the day we've had."

Sounds like consensus, then! Miko turns back to Lann.

"I think we're ready to go, then. Are there any particular laws you think we should be aware of?"

Lann squints. "Are laws not... the same... usually? That seems complicated and bad???" He shakes his head. "Um, the laws... here... are that you don't steal things and you don't touch people unless they want you to or they're breaking the law. And, uh, if you do something bad that isn't one of those people will tell you to stop. And if you don't you'll get exiled."

"I think the ones you outlined are universal enough. Some places require more specific ordinances—for instance, a city on a river would have a law against dumping garbage into the river, while a city not on a river would have no need. To use the most basic example to come to mind. I don't expect that any of us will be doing any proverbial dumping, especially not in such a short period of time, but—I would be negligent of my duties, if I didn't ask."

She glances at Seelah for backup.

"I lived in a place once that had laws against spitting on the street," Seelah says. "It wasn't even a nice street. It was packed dirt. It was a stupid law. But I followed it, because it was the law, and I didn't know why it was the law, just that somebody cared enough to write it down, and if you don't follow a law just because you think it's stupid you'll accidentally break a law that's there for a good reason. Like Miko's example."

(Seelah would love to be more helpful, but she's dispositionally Chaotic and only qualifies to be a paladin due to extenuating circumstances and childhood trauma!)

Lann stares.

"That's abhorrent," he says. "Making laws about - stupid little things like that. Laws matter. The true law is written on the inside of the heart, you write it down to make sure you have recourse - no one has don't spit on our dirt written on the inside of their heart."

"You would be shocked," Camellia comments. "At any rate, if all of your laws are the important ones, I think we can manage. Lead the way, good sir Lann - I'm so anxious to see what your people call a village."

Lann scowls, decides not to engage, and turns to lead the way.

(Meanwhile, Miko has harassed housekeeping staff over the "do not remove" tag on anachronistic mattresses.)

She wants to defend Seelah, but—Lann's young and, from the sounds of it, from a small enough community that he just doesn't understand the point of laws that aren't obviously intuitive. He'll learn when…

Actually, she can just say that.

"How large is the village?"

"Almost a hundred souls. We're one of the larger tribes... if you run above a hundred fifty or so, generally somebody cleaves off and starts out for another cave."

"Ah, that explains why you don't need as many laws. My hometown has over five hundred th—"

"Had. Over five hundred thousand souls. Before it was invaded."

But she's going to fix that!! As soon as she gets her paladinhood back.

"So I… expect that when you return to the surface and reintegrate with the populations there, things may change."

He whistles. "Five hundred thousand. I... could see how you'd need a few extra laws. If everyone spat on the street there it'd be a river."

"Yes, exactly!"

By the Twelve Gods, did she just make a successful Diplomacy check?

The rest of the trip to the village is quiet, by the standards of such things. A monitor lizard the size of a pony tries to eat Anevia, but she doesn't even need the party's help to stab it in the brain, and Camellia fixes up the bite easily.

Then they're there.

"Does this village have a name?" Camellia wonders. "Spiderberg, or what have you?"

"We don't name our settlements," Lann says. "The tribe is called Iron Arrow."

"Ah. After a single iron arrow of fetishistic significance?" Camellia guesses.

"...we're a clan of archers and we settled near a hematite deposit."

"Is archery typically practical, in a cavern? I suppose there are more and less enclosed spaces…"

"Even a small wound can go bad without much magic to go around, especially if it's something like a spiderbite that already weakens you. Best to pick off your foes before they get close, and switch to melee only if you must."

The village is set up in a large chamber with a reservoir-lake. Huts are built on a sort of archipelago of mossy rocks bridged together. The construction is a patchwork of hide-and-bone and hewn rock. (Wood is predictably scarce.) Atop the tallest island, there's a stone building with a tall chimney, currently releasing a trickle of white smoke to join the haze at the top of the cavern. Lann points. "Chief Sull's seat of power. And his forge."

Miko looks at the village. It isn't much, but—she can see that that's because of general scarcity, not out of a lack of effort and care. For a moment, she thinks about the children, even younger than Lann, who live here. Who will be moving someplace different within the week. Someplace that's better, that offers more opportunities, but still… unfamiliar. Scary, even.

She nods to Lann.

"Should we see him right away, or is he working on something that shouldn't be interrupted?"

Lann grins. "If he is, he'll let us know. He's getting on in years, but his voice hasn't gone anywhere."

Onward. The slope is gentle, and the moss has a decent grip. It's not a hard climb.

"Sull!" Lann calls. "I'm back!"

     From inside the forge a creaky but firm voice calls back "Well timed! Jušt need to pommel the... and... there, that'š..." There's a pause of several seconds. A white-haired old man with an impressive pair of tusks - not in the orcish style, but jutting forward from the sides of his mouth and leaving him with a strong lisp - exits the forge, hanging a pair of thick-scaled leather gloves on a post. "Oh, visitors... uplanders? Lann, what have you brought me?"

Lann looks over at Miko and makes some motions of eyebrow.

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 whišpers whispers. "It is very lovely... the tales of Lariel špeak of his blade, but..." He shakes his head. "Adventurers have šwords. Šome are very beautiful."

Lann looks mildly outraged. "You think I - what, hired a mercenary 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 čivilization, too. I worry more of that one. But it does not do to ignore the šigns of the gods."

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

     "Yeš. I will want the angel's inheritor present with the Šword," he adds. "You will not need to repeat the holy light; they do not know blades as I do, they will be content that it can cut through a lizard."

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 companions 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."

… Miko's fond of both Dyra and Seelah. Dyra, for her desire to meaningfully provide, and Seelah, for… something. She's not sure she has the words for what it is about what Seelah did just now that touched her cold undead heart, but it seems—good. Odd, that something so small would seem so meaningful.

Something she does have the words for is: what in the world is an Abadaran? She makes a Knowledge check and, when that turns up nothing:

"What is an Abadaran?"

Seelah looks to Dyra. "You want to field this one?"

    Dyra still looks slightly dazed, but she nods. "Abadar is the god of trade and commerce. He delights in the free exchange of wealth between peoples, that grows the wealth of both - if you have chosen to trade, you wanted something, and someone else wanted something you had, and now you both have something you value more than what you had. I... don't know much about Him. He chose me, five years ago, when I set up an exchange post to trade fresh fish to other tribes, and I received a vision of Him, but it was... heavy on glory and light on details."

Miko's starting to feel embarrassed about all the gaps in her knowledge about the Western continent!

Still, she nods at Dyra approvingly.

"Well, congratulations. Being chosen by the gods is an immense honor."

"It is," confirms the other person present chosen by the gods.

"Yeah, woo, gods," Anevia says before Camellia can say a godsdamn word. "Let's all rest up, though? The city's still burning, and the sooner we can tackle the Shieldmaze the better."

Seelah nods her assent. They've come to the lodging, anyway; it's a set of bone-and-leather tent-huts, one apiece.

     Dyra looks a bit disappointed that storytime is over. "Sleep well, uplanders!" she says, chipper regardless.

Miko's also somewhat disappointed!

… Well, there's nothing stopping her from catching Dyra's eye.

"I don't need to sleep." She can almost manage a conspiratorial tone, right up until she clarifies: "I'll still need to rest mentally to prepare spells, I think, and I don't have any convenient mementos, but if you're interested I can tell you about how I took down a party of criminals all near my own level. Twice."

Dyra bounces!

"The mementos aren't strictly necessary! I would love to hear your story!"

"That's convenient; all my equipment is brand-new anyway.

"A few months ago, the head of my paladin order at the time sent me to the Northern Continent to apprehend an adventuring party. A member of this party had destroyed a magical gate and thereby weakened the fabric of the universe. I spent some time tracking them down. When I found them I was able to inspect half the party with Detect Evil and discovered that the leader was strongly Evil. Because of this, I decided that it would be better to subdue the entire party immediately than to check the other half. I offered them the opportunity to surrender; they declined and I attacked."

Her first impulse is to say that her surprise round allowed her to make short work of the Order, but… she's supposed to include details, she thinks.

"In the party was a wizard; I restrained them with a tanglefoot bag. I also had my mount run interference and protect me from one of the warriors of the party, a halfling that I would come to learn is one of the most odious men on the planet. The gods were favoring me with fortune, as well: it was rainy enough that their thief could not shoot me and their bard had broken his sword arm. Their cleric noticed this and surrendered.

"The leader, however, was stubborn. He insisted on fighting even when his own wizard hit him with a Fireball intended for me. Eventually, I damaged him enough that I could strike a fatal blow using Smite Evil.

"Imagine my surprise when Smite Evil seemingly had no effect."

Dyra looks very engaged!

"Then - the aura was an enchantment of some kind? Or he was just that powerful, but if you hadn't been Smiting him in the first place..."

Dyra's got a quick wit! Miko smiles.

"It was an enchantment. He was wearing a crown around his neck that had once been worn by an extremely evil lich. Once he handed it over to his cleric, I used Detect Evil on them again. Sure enough, the cleric now seemed strongly Evil and the leader no longer read as Evil at all. The leader realized that, as a paladin, I was acting legally and agreed to answer the charges against him back in the city-state from which I had come."

Miko sighs.

"It was not to be nearly that simple. The party's discipline, as I'm sure you've gathered, was terrible. Half of them—the thief, halfling, and wizard—protested openly the entire time, the bard had the disposition of a hyperactive child, and the leader was infatuated with me. The halfling also taunted me with his Evil alignment and frequently talked about how much he wanted to kill my mount and me. After less than a week they demanded to rest at an inn. They also demanded that I pay for it, despite having two wagonsful of gold and jewelry taken from an Evil dragon. It didn't seem worth it at the time to try and force the issue, but…"

(Dyra doesn't look very horrified by the Order's antics, but she wasn't there, so she's not going to say anything about it. The halfling does sound like an asshole.)

"In the middle of the night, the bard and cleric came to my room and told me that there had been an attempted assassination on the party leader and we needed to evacuate the other patrons. We managed to do this without causing panic before the assassins set off an explosive and the inn caught fire. The wagons were destroyed; it was a disaster.

"As we prepared to set out in the morning, the party leader apologized for flirting with and using pet names for me. I accepted his apology, but it turned out that he had primarily wanted to berate me for being 'overbearing' and 'socially inept.' He said that his party was no longer going to peacefully accompany me and that I would have to drag them to Azure City in chains if I wanted to do my job.

"Naturally, I attacked. Despite having invited me to do so, nobody seemed to have expected this. I stunned the halfling with an unarmed Smite Evil attack; my mount occupied the thief. Nobody else had the reaction speed necessary to do anything before I incapacitated their wizard. They're an elf; it wasn't that hard. The cleric didn't surrender, but he also didn't fight me, and the bard was useless. I was able to focus on the party leader until the cleric healed the wizard and the wizard tried to Disintegrate me. Fortunately, I trained as a monk before I became a paladin and was able to dodge their spells.

"It didn't take long for me to knock out everyone except the leader and the cleric. Both the leader and I were badly injured; I think he was trying to weigh the odds of how likely he would be to succeed if he attacked me. Evidently the odds were against him; he surrendered and I chained the entire party except the cleric, who stabilized the others enough that they could walk under their own power. Except the halfling.

"Nobody talked much after that."

"Huh," Dyra says. "You know, if I wanted to escape from you I would have done it in the aftermath of the inn's destruction, rather than telling you to your face."

"In fairness to them, the thief was distraught enough by the dragon's treasure being lost that she didn't do anything for several hours and the others didn't want to leave her behind. I also think that the attempt to part ways was a spur-of-the-moment decision. But yes, they seemed to have an issue with underestimating my intelligence."

Dyra nods. "Well, I'm glad you beat them, because you're the one who came down here and got the sword and that means Chief Sull's going to bring us to the surface, and I don't know if the human would've done that but it certainly doesn't sound like the halfling would."

Miko grimaces. Clearly Dyra took the Craft: Disturbing Mental Image feat.

"If the halfling had woken up in the same situation I did, he likely would have taken the side of the demons when they revealed themselves."

She shakes her head.

"Best not to dwell on that possibility. I'm also glad that you get to go to the surface now."

(The Creepy Items Merchant archetype gets Craft: Disturbing Mental Image as a bonus feat replacing their enhanced alignment aura, actually. It's widely considered pretty cheesy.)

"Yes! I have heard such things about vegetables."

Miko imagines how O-Chul would react here. It's bittersweet.

Does she have a tent to herself? She can share, obviously, but if she's going to be doing that she'll want to find someplace else she can privately talk to the intelligent artifact she's apparently been carrying around all day.

She does! It's reasonably spacious, and retains heat well.

That's very good of the Iron Arrow clan! Even though she's not benefiting from the heat retention, she imagines the alive people are.

She removes the scabbards so she can try addressing them directly.

"Finnean?"

If nothing happens she's gonna feel really stupid.

"Hells' teeth, what a hangover," complain her scabbards, melting into one. The eye inscribed on the larger, now inscribed on the one, opens, though it doesn't move as such. "And... hmm. I'd make some quip about not recognizing you in the morning, but I don't see sunlight, and I try fairly hard not to have sex."

Well, at least it (?) isn't trying to mind-control her. Or command her, she supposes.

"I don't know what time it is on the surface either, but locally it's evening. Or close enough."

She's just going to let the sex comment pass.

"Hmm. Dragged me beneath the earth, have you? You're not secretly drow, I hope. I've had enough of them for a lifetime."

"No, I'm human. Well. Formerly-human undead. I don't have elven ancestry¹, drow or surface."

More dryly:

"If it's any consolation, I'm not down here by choice either."

¹Since Miko is an Azurite, this is technically an untrue statement. Not that she knows that.

"If neither of us is steering the cart we're on less lopsided footing, but that doesn't mean I like it. You're clearly better oriented than I, at any rate; what's the situation?"

"I don't like it much either. I'm doing my best, though."

At any rate, she can give a report!

"I woke up this morning in an alley on the surface with unfamiliar equipment, including you. There was some sort of festival going on that was soon interrupted by a demonic attack. I tried to fight the demon lord; it knocked me into this pit along with some others who I found and joined up with to find a path to the surface. On the way we found a small village of people descended from the crusaders of a hundred years ago and an angel's sword; due to the latter the former is going to return to the surface and take us with them in the morning, or at least what passes for morning down here.

"I think the plan for what to do then will hinge on a lot of information that I don't know yet, mostly about what state the city is in after the demon attack. Or if the attack is still ongoing. The city was nominally under the protection of a silver dragon but she got killed only a couple of rounds into the battle and I don't know if she's been raised yet."

Finnean is quiet for a long moment.

"Unfamiliar equipment," he says, slowly. "Including..."

Miko's impeccable tact strikes again!

"Oh, I thought you knew you were a scabbard."

This coming from the woman who didn't realize she was undead until she accidentally reverse-Laid Hands on someone.

"Hm."

Another long pause.

"I do not feel my legs," Finnean remarks, his tone neutral. "I have... a sensory modality that I am coming to realize is not sight, along with one that I am beginning to realize is not hearing. And... if you will excuse me a brief experiment?"

There is now a hilt protruding from his sheath, with an eye on its pommel; the eye on the scabbard closes, as it was before he awoke. "I see. How very... efficient. Would you do me the favor of unsheathing me? I will need to acclimate quickly, and there's nothing like total immersion in one's absurd new circumstances."

Miko briefly entertains the notion that the talking sword might be lying to her and she should not do as he asks just because he asked. But, well…

He's been there since she woke up, along with all the other equipment that so far has only helped her. And she has another sword, at any rate, in the event that Finnean tries to double-cross her. And it'd be better to know sooner rather than later what his true nature is.

That's not the real reason that she takes the eyed hilt of the sword and pulls it from its sheath. In reality, she empathizes with this man who woke up in an entirely different form with entirely different senses and who has no choice but to, in essence, swim.

The blade is black. Not shining obsidian, nor matte wrought iron; it is darkness, nothing more or less. A hole in the world, with a razor's edge. It's not very long, by the standards of such things, and there's a curve to it that she's familiar with.

Finnean hums thoughtfully as he cuts the air before her. "There is something to be said for efficiency," he muses.

He bursts into flames. The flames tighten into coursing loops of lightning, which freeze into jagged thorns of ice, which soak back into the blade like nothing was there. There's a few more shifts like that, mostly not as obvious - a shift in balance, or in one case weighing nothing at all.

He settles on a configuration. The air around the blade is strange - it keeps trying to settle, to organize itself into pure geometric forms. Like watching snowflakes crystallizing and melting away and reforming, half a dozen times a second. His balance is perfect, magically enhanced beyond any blade she's held in her life. And she can feel the way he's just slightly out-of-tune with reality, the better to carve through foes who aren't properly real, or shouldn't be where they are.

To put it in terms she'd understand: he's a +4 Axiomatic Ghost Touch Demonbane wakizashi.

Miko makes an appreciative noise at the various enchantments and enhancements. He may have been put into this situation against his will, but even so: it's objectively really cool.

"Are you making these adjustments yourself?" she muses aloud.

"Yes. Ah... this is not, perhaps, as drastic a change as you had imagined. I was a Black Blade in life, one who externalizes the soul in the form of a weapon. Not the part of my soul that directed the day-to-day affairs, you understand, but enough of it that this is not a total sea change. And one of the main things that a Black Blade does is adapt. When one's weapon is 'enchanted' only by one's own will, that magic is far more malleable."

That's a pretty cool prestige class.

"Interesting. Is this… something that normally happens to Black Blades? Or do you know as much about what happened to you as I know about how I became undead?"

"Mm. Depends how much necromancy you know, really. I know a good amount about item enchantment, and sentient items were an area of interest, though I never made one myself. Still, I have enough expertise to know that this would have been beyond all but a handful of people - and people here should be construed broadly."

Well, obviously she doesn't know any necromancy, because that's Evil and only the most twisted of villains would ever use any necromantic spell for any reason.

"Interesting. I'm not sure if I'd be any use in helping you find whoever did this, but…"

She thinks, weighing Finnean in her hand.

"You automatically took the form of a wakizashi. Is that a kind of blade you typically projected, before?"

"I was wondering," he comments. "I imagine it's your weapon of choice? Mine was a bastard sword."

"Half of it," she says idly. "It's meant to be wielded with a katana."

She thinks for a moment.

"What are your immediate goals? I intend to stay here as long as it seems I'm needed, then return to my homeland."

And hopefully this entire subplot will feature her getting resurrected properly and becoming a paladin again.

He thinks about it.

"These crusaders," he says eventually. "From a hundred years ago. Do you know what they fought against?"