Shrug. "Urgathoa says it's just something about me. Apparently there exists a stronger connection between the soul and the body than Good would have us know. Undead have partial continuity with the body, total continuity with the soul . . ." yeah this is veering into territory where if she keeps getting prompted for further explication it's gonna get uncomfortable real quick.

"Urgathoa says? Have you spoken to her directly?"

"Were you not aware of how clerics work? Or that I'm a cleric of Urgathoa?"

"Didn't know who was or wasn't a cleric out of this little group but not a surprise you are, but I thought only really big important high circle clerics got direct communications from their gods."

"I mean, She didn't say it in so many words, but . . . without getting any communications from your god, how could you be a cleric? And that stuff about the soul vs the body isn't stuff She told me, it's stuff Somayyeh and them -- The Moth -- have figured out other ways. Well, I'm part of the Moth now, but."

"Beats me. I kind of assumed that if you weren't part of a centralized hierarchical church, you just kind of went with your gut, and the gods are smart enough to pick people whose guts align with their goals. Literally, in Urgathoa's case."

"She's pulling something fiendishly strange with me, then." Gods she's going to have to get into it, isn't she. She couldn't just not say anything.

"Yeah, like, do you know why she would cleric an Iomedaean, because I sure don't."

"I guess because I was really hungry.

I don't really understand it either.

I should really eat before we talk about it any more." More than I ever have, ideally . . .

"I really wish I could feed you."

you could, I mean

if they weren't all watching


idiot, use this

"Well, if you ever--find anything I could drink--I would be very happy." Probably not actually for very long, but that's obvious to Katie, right?

"Aren't we--supposed to be talking--philosophy, or at least things I don't already know?"

"I do what I want. If any of you don't like it, feel free to kill me about it."

For a second, she thinks Katie is responding to her mental pleas.

Reality crashes in. Ah, she thinks she doesn't have to help. Because Urgathoa OK-ed her.

Why can't they all be like Somayyeh? But she likes Katie.

"I can't say that attitude will get you killed--or that it won't, really--but it probably won't make anybody very happy." Evenly, offered in the manner of advice, not a challenge. Teg's only the [ now second- ]greenest cultist, it's not her cult, and the norm of Katie telling them things they didn't know wasn't Teg's idea. The only thing Teg has to defend is the peace.

"Well, you guys are sweet, and pretty, and I like you, so I'll do my best to be nice to you, but ultimately I don't let anyone tell me what to do. Anyways, so like, did it" she gestures at Teg's rotund body "happen all at once, or gradually?"

"Gradually."

"And uuuhhh... how did it feel? How do you feel about it?" God she's so stupid for asking but this is so hot, Teg is so hot, God she wants Teg to tackle her and bite into her neck while tenderly stroking her hair.

Unexpectedly, Katie's framing helps her pull it together and out of herself without too much fuss.

"It feels correct, like I'm supposed to be more this shape. And also very distressing, because -- uh. 

Because it's foreign and involuntary and because I want to eat so much more than I do." A twinge of resentment at having said so much. Resentment for herself or Katie, she doesn't know.

"Well, I can't claim to know how you're supposed to be shaped, but I must say it is a lovely shape. Gods, you're good at getting my sympathy. I don't even care if it would kill me to feed you, I just can't stand to see you go hungry. Are all paladins like this?"

"Most of them aren't as cute as me." She says it with the desolate factuality of someone who's long since accepted that cuteness is the vilest perversion of morality and has forgotten that there exist people to whom she's just complimented herself.

come on guys let me eat let me eat come on

noooo don't how about you don't kill her don't kill her

She can't map them to known divinities, but these two voices often war, within Teg.

She hadn't known how to react, internally, when Katie had blithely asserted that she wouldn't be told what to do.

Neither, really, had anyone else.

Would it be better . . . to throw her to Teg and maybe get her out of the picture? But what about Teg's mental stability in the aftermath of killing an [ another? ] innocent? What if there's a prophecy or something? She knows prophecy has been broken for dozens of years, but . . . there'd been rumors, about Project Lawful . . . but there had been every kind of rumor . . .

She needs to go drop off that fucking letter.

She kicks herself. Prophecy. Horseshit. The prophecy might be of Katie's death if there is one. It's stupid to protect Katie's existence just because it's the status quo. She's clearly a volatile element where Lastwall is concerned, without advance directive to the contrary. And if Katie really is all part of the plan, and Tiar is fucking something up by acting as though everything is exactly as it seems, well . . . morally sacrificing yourself in the one complicated world to save yourself in the nine normal ones is exactly the sort of thing the winning coalition is about. She thinks.

Fuck it, might as well make a pass at getting rid of Katie. It probably won't end like that, but. 'Work on the margins.'


"We should let Teg take advantage. It would help corrupt her."

There's no risk of confusing who the final pronoun refers to at this point.

There's rather different expected marginal return on effort, at Teg's vs Katie's respective current levels of corruption.

Danger, to Katie.

But . . . she suddenly realizes that she can't argue with the sum of in-play logic. Think, Tazich, think.