"Hello? Woljif said you might want to talk to me. ...He didn't sound very sure of himself, so I can leave you alone if you'd rather."

"I do want to talk to you. Do you have plans that would preclude adventuring with our party for the next while?" Till you're ninth circle and can, for all Blai knows, tap it with one fingertip and close it up.

She bites her lip. "I thought I might stay here and keep healing people... but if you might need healing more often, maybe I should go with you instead?"

"I think the best way for you to help people is to get stronger so that your healing can do more things. What you do now is special and valuable and it is also not very dissimilar to a channel, and the channels are not usually packed full. Did you notice Select Stasia, waiting days for the Queen to arrive? And the Queen probably can't do it for an unlimited number of people each day. I think it is very likely that you could become the healer she would have needed, for whoever may be hurt that badly in the future."

She nods. "That would be really good!"

"And that's a major reason people do adventuring, is to grow like that. But I do also think we will be in plenty of situations where what you can do now is very useful on the way."

"That's good! It would be sad if I couldn't help anyone for years and years."

Nod. "So will you stick with our group?"

Smile. "I will!"

And here's Thall!

"Hello. Presuming all goes well when the Queen hears from you, are you interested in remaining with our party for ongoing adventuring?"

"Goes well like the Prelate doesn't kill me, or goes well like he doesn't kill any of my friends either?"

"...if what happens to your friends affects your answer then I would like to know about the range of possibilities. I only asked her majesty about you."

"If my friends are okay I'll probably stick around, assuming it's the kind of adventuring where you sometimes get to visit new places rather than the kind where you spend a year digging out an old tomb so you can see what's inside, and assuming Desna doesn't tell me about something else I really want to be helping with. If the Prelate kills them, then... I mean, would you want to stick around in a country that just had three of your friends executed, even if you were sure you'd be safe?"

"I have not led a lifestyle conducive to answering that question in a useful way but I presume it was rhetorical. If you wind up desiring to leave Mendev's shadow then probably my party is not the place for you to be. Elsewise I expect some amount of travel but mostly focused on the Worldwound environs and do not have a comprehensive itinerary."

What is that supposed to mean. Are Iomedaeans... not supposed to have friends? That sounds like the sort of thing someone would make up to make them look bad, 'they're supposed to spend all their time fighting demons and friends would get in the way,' not the sort of thing that would actually be true.

"I'm fine with mostly traveling around the Worldwound, if everything else works out."

"Then I suppose we'll await her majesty's decision. Thank you either way for all your help so far."

"The Queen's a paladin, I'm sure it'll be okay."

"She's very tired, and she's been hurt many times by people she thought were her friends, and sometimes that makes it harder for people to see that they don't need to hurt anyone. But I don't think she wants to hurt them."

"I'm not sure what she'll wind up hearing from whom, about this or any of the other cases."

Some of his friends are clerics of Desna. Surely the Queen doesn't need someone to tell her they aren't working for the demons.

It's not like that stopped Hulrun.

"I guess we'll see how it goes."

Here's Anevia, back with Woljif! "Heard you needed someone to confirm he's a free man?"

"It seems worth having clear, yes."

She claps Woljif on the shoulder. "Well, congratulations, Jefto, you're a free man. ...Don't go stealing anything else, mind you, if you break any more laws that's not covered."