She kills it, barely. She's not entirely sure she'd still be alive if her crown wasn't holding her together. She feels like absolute shit, and that black eye from earlier has swollen nearly shut.

She pockets the disenmonstered cultist without really stopping to think, and then stands there for a few seconds wondering if she should have a reaction to that, and then sighs and goes home.

Joobre is valiantly trying to feed all the starving Followers, but there's only so many berries to mash and they've already run out of fish.

The Lamb unpockets another load of fish and gets to grilling alongside Joobre. (Valefar is too weak from imposed starvation to help.)

Together they will feed their people! Hoo...ray?

Yes. Hooray. Definitely hooray. Look, she's smiling.

Hutrear needs a quick trip to the healing tent afterward—maybe he ate too fast? that's the going theory—but apart from that, everyone seems fine. She has successfully saved her cultists from Heket's vengeance.

What else... right. New Follower in her pocket.

She unpockets them onto the smaller stone circle.

"Do you... want to join my cult?" she asks, trying to imagine what tone of voice she should be using. The tone of voice she is using is 'exhausted', which seems wrong, but she can't come up with a better one.

The lumpy red monsterfolk does want to join her cult! She gives her name as Zepar and hesitantly accepts transmogrification into nonmonsterhood, ending up as a rather lovely spotted brown horsefolk.

It's not as if she had much of a choice.

And that's the problem, isn't it.

As the Lamb adds another bed to the dormitory, she thinks, exhaustedly, about what she's doing and why she's doing it. She remembers realizing that it's not worth it, to purchase safety at the cost of becoming a Bishop. Well, what is she becoming? She used to be able to feel things besides tired despair and the looming premonition that if she remembers how to have emotions again she'll be instantly crushed under the weight of them. She used to react to Heket's nonsense by rushing home to save her people. She used to be able to consistently remember to wait for people to express a decision before she pockets them.

Or did she? Can she remember for sure? She can't think through the fog in her head. How sure is she, that she's asked every single time?

And if she did ask, or wait to be asked, every single time she took a follower... so what? She bought Hutrear from that spiderfolk; sure, he seemed to be grateful for the rescue and eager for a new life as her Follower, but how hard did she actually try to check? Sure, she didn't really have better options—releasing someone into the woods alone isn't much better than killing them—but if someone would rather be released into the woods alone than join her cult, she should offer them that, and she hasn't been.

And... even if it's the best she can do, and even if they did all choose it from among their small handful of shitty options... it still, fundamentally, doesn't sit right with her that she's doing this. It still, fundamentally, isn't right, that she's doing this.

What other choice does she have, though? Would her followers thank her, if she "freed" them all to starve and die alone without her? She hardly thinks so. Would the One Who Waits Below take it kindly, if she jettisoned her whole camp and trudged back into the mushroom forest for a suicide mission against whatever the next awful beast is? Not bloody likely.

Night falls. She fishes. Dawn breaks. She cooks.

Joobre and Valefar help!

She makes herself smile for them, and thinks she might have some vague notion of what it once felt like to smile and mean it.

Upsettingly, her Followers' gratitude for being saved from starvation seems to have brought several of them close enough to the glowy-eyed state that another Sermon tips them over. She and her Crown collect enough of their worship energy to forge the next Doctrine: the Grass-Eater, offering her followers yet more ways to potentially survive without her active assistance.

They shouldn't be so grateful to her for saving them from trouble that only came calling because of her in the first place. But if it helps them stay alive, she'll take it.

She... needs... to do something... can't just stand around staring blankly into space forever...

Bereft of good ideas, she paces the perimeter of the camp, then crosses the big stone circle at the entrance to pace around the little area with the doors and the crown statue. She stares blankly into space some more. She stares blankly at the door to the Darkwood, and wonders if she should confront the fact that she went back there and killed a bunch more people when she didn't have to, and finds herself too tired to think about it. She stares blankly at the crown statue—is that writing, engraved around the base? She peers at it.

Here Godly blood was spilled. Here did Death no longer wish to wait.

Well that's certainly portentous but fuck if she knows what it portends.

What happened between the Bishops and her patron, anyway? It's very unclear who started it. Not that it matters, she supposes, except - except it would feel a little worse, to be doing this, if she knew for a fact that the One Who Waits Below was fully at fault, had started it all by betraying the rest of them for no reason—and it would feel a little better, if instead it was the other way around—

But she doesn't know, and she can't know. Add it to the list. Important questions she needs to answer and can't, Part Something of Too Many.

She paces back onto the big stone circle.

Should she go fishing?

She could go fishing.

Fishing will not solve any of her problems.

She could venture out into the mushroom forest again, and nearly die, again. Or maybe actually die. If she had any hope that death would be an escape, that option might be starting to look kind of appealing right now.

She could... visit Ratau...? She doesn't want to visit Ratau. He's going to say something fucked-up about how great it is to have a cult and she's going to cry, or stab him, or just stand there and feel hollow inside, and none of those are good outcomes.

She could visit whoever that was with the mushrooms? She feels exhausted just thinking about it.

She feels exhausted just thinking about anything.

She feels exhausted.

If she goes out again like this, she might die.

She doesn't know how to stop being like this.

If she just putters aimlessly until the One Below's patience runs out, she doesn't know quite what will happen but she assumes it will be at least as bad as death.

She doesn't know how to stop being like this.

—no, she can't have a breakdown in public, having a breakdown in public will kill her—

Okay. Okay.

Her options... are to go through life glassy-eyed and hollow and die of inattention or lethargy, or have a huge messy breakdown while the One Below is watching, and possibly die of that. Or maybe have a huge messy breakdown and then go right back to the hollowness, that also seems like a possibility.

Those options suck. She needs better options.

Hey, she thinks, slowly, uncertainly, staring down at the stone beneath her feet. When you take me traveling... how does it work?

(Her crown isn't sure what she means. It can try to explain but they know by now that its explanations of how it does things are often not... good.)

How far can you go? she asks, trying not to get too excited when all she has is the tiniest scrap of a seed of an idea that she doesn't even know is possible. How hard is it to follow?

Her crown thinks perhaps it's starting to see what she's getting at. And... it would be possible... it should be possible...

It would burn a lot of resources. They're lucky to be so full up on Devotion and bones. They should maybe do a round of blessings first to collect more energy. Even with all that... they'll be launching themselves into the unknown with, frankly, not enough power to be sure they'll survive the trip.

But, her crown thinks, they do have enough power to be sure they'll be far out of reach before dying.

I don't think I can do a round of blessings first. I think if I take one step off this circle I'll lose my nerve.

Well. Then it's up to her. Her crown is with her either way.

Go, or stay?

Stay, or go?

Abandon all these people she's half-promised to protect, or keep gathering more when she's not even sure it's the favour to them that they all end up thinking it is?

Cast herself out into the great unknown and probably die alone with her crown in a faraway realm, or keep marching onward under her patron's orders until she fucks up and dies anyway?

At least if she dies out there she might escape eternal torment. Unless whatever faraway realm they find has the sort of gods who like to eternally torment people just for fun.

And she really does feel a responsibility to her Followers... but the way Heket keeps treating them, she doesn't know if she could keep them all safe, even if she was on her game, which she isn't and realistically won't be. And who knows what horrors the next Bishop might subject them to? Who knows what dangers might be able to creep past whatever forces guard the camp against the likes of that fucking spiderfolk?

She looks down at the worn grey stone, and she tries to weigh cost against benefit, tries to decide what she wants, what she's afraid of, what she believes in.

And the answer is: she doesn't know.