Take the third option

You go over your options again and again, unable to decide where to go from here. Neither condemning Ithwen as a goddess the world doesn’t need nor defending her as the perfect head of an imperfect organization seems like the right move. Eventually, you can’t take the silence anymore and say, “I think your Goddess is just confused.”

“You mean like this whole thing was a mistake?” Her tail doesn’t stop, nor does her mood lighten.

“Not exactly,” you say. Do I tell her I’ve met Ithwen? Fuck it, why not. I’m a demon lord, I can do whatever I want. “You know, when I got here, she welcomed me personally.” Lia looks instantly skeptical, but you press forward anyway. “I got way too cocky and scared her, so she declared me a demon lord.”

“What did you do?” she asks, “To this hypothetical Goddess, I mean. Like I’d believe you actually met her.” Something in her tone of voice suggests to you that she might actually believe it, just a tiny bit. Which is good, because it’s the truth.

“The short answer,” you say, “is that I suggested she wear more revealing clothes. Oh, and I kissed her a couple times.” Lia just stares at you, mouth agape, for several seconds. You see movement under the cloak that you think is her arms moving to cover her chest.

“You… you defiled the Goddess?”

“Hey now, to be fair, I didn’t know she was the Goddess of Purity at the time. She was just a beautiful woman who I made a move on.” I did kiss her again even after I knew, you think, but I’ll leave that part out. “And it really was no more than kissing. I didn’t feel her up or anything.” Even though I would have loved to.

Lia’s eyes lose a bit of focus, her hand sliding up under the cloak to reach a couple of fingers up to her lips. The erratic movements of her tail seem to even out, and you catch her eyes flicking over to you a couple of times. Then, like a switch being flipped, she pulls her hand away and plasters a look of defiance onto her face. “Doing such things is disgraceful.”

“That doesn’t sound like you,” you say. “Are those your words, or Jean’s?” Lia lights up, eyes wide, ears perked, body tense for just a moment. She really needs to work on her poker face, you think, laughing mentally. “Blythe doesn’t know about the kissing, by the way. She knows I pissed off Ithwen, but I never told her how.” Telling her that what she just heard is a secret between the two of you seems to ease her stress a bit, as you see her stiff shoulders relax underneath the cloak. “Anyway, I only bring this up because it looked to me like Ithwen was lying to herself. Like the Goddess of Purity was who she’s supposed to be but not who she actually is, or wants to be. I think maybe the Goddess’s personal beliefs don’t perfectly align with those of her clergy.”

“And I think you’re reading way too deep into whatever fever dream this ‘meeting’ was a part of.” Lia presses the toes of both her boots into yours for a few seconds before easing off again. Despite her dismissal of your words, they seem to have lightened her mood somewhat. Or maybe she’s just trying to move on from this topic. Either way, the sad tension behind her eyes has disappeared, replaced by mirth that hasn’t spread to the rest of her face yet.

“Ha, maybe,” you say. “I must admit I know pretty much nothing about the religious practices of the Empire, so maybe I’m totally wrong. Could you tell me a bit about them? When you showed me the little temple in town, I assumed the Goddess’s worship was kind of a loose, personal thing, but everything I’ve seen and heard since then makes it out to be a way bigger deal.” Since the mood has lightened a bit, your stomach hits you with a strong reminder that you haven’t eaten in hours. You fish out some bread from your rucksack and split it between you and Lia. She’s apprehensive to take it at first, but does eventually start eating it with you.

After a while, she starts talking again. “I can’t really say much. In Evris, I think it is a pretty personal thing. The temple is small, and merchants and adventurers come and go all the time, so there aren’t any big events or things like that.”

You pull out your canteen and down the last few drops of water. After a moment of thinking, you’re able to remember the incantation for the refilling spell, but then you remember that magic doesn't work in here. If you don't find more water soon, you'll be in trouble. “Have you heard of big events that happen in other places?” you ask.

“I think there are weekly ceremonies in the capital. Other than that, I don’t know.”

“Weekly ceremonies, huh? That sounds pretty similar to what people would do in my homeland. What’s the leadership like? So far I’ve met a priest, and you’ve mentioned a priestess. Are there people higher up the chain of command than that?”

“Well, yeah,” says Lia. “There’s the angels. You mean you’ve really never heard of any of this?”

“Nope.” With your mouth full of the last bite of bread, you say, “Please continue.” As your mouth is full, it comes out more like “bleez gondinoo,” but you don’t mind, as your lack of table manners seems to finally boost Lia’s mood enough for her to smile. Is this the first time I’ve seen a genuine smile from her? you think. I hope I’ll get to see it more often from now on.

Lia goes on to tell you about the three angels you’ll have to contend with at some point. There’s Lady Phoebe, Lady Anna, and the archangel, Madam Lydia. Apparently, they’re widely known but almost never seen, and there’s usually only one in the Empire at any given time. Lia says she laid eyes on Lady Phoebe once, when she was a child. The angel had been passing through Evris on her way to Auremport to travel overseas, and everybody in town was talking about it. She remembers seeing the angel’s gorgeous face through the window of a carriage, but not much else about the event. The other two, she’s never seen, nor has she ever overheard any believable stories of people seeing them in person. You ask for physical descriptions of the angels, but Lia just laughs and says you’ll have to wait for her to find you some pictures of them when you all get out of this place.

“Speaking of which,” she says, “come on. Break’s over, so get up and read. I wanna get out of here.”

“Aye aye,” you say, offering her a playful salute. You stand up, then hold out your hand for her to take. She stands on her own, though, so you drop the gesture and turn to face the glowing paragraph once again. Reading through it, you realize that it’s a logical reasoning question with four possible answers to choose from, kind of like something you’d see on any bog standard IQ test. You read it aloud to Lia, and she listens with mild interest as you walk through your train of thought while working through the word problem. “The answer, then, would be the second choice. We could eliminate the other options to be sure, but we already know the answer, so that’d be a waste of time. Now, how are we supposed to actually select an answer? Touching the lettering doesn’t seem to do anything.” You look to Lia, but her attention is focused elsewhere, her ears standing upright. Suddenly, she reaches over and squeezes your arm.

“I hear something,” she says. She releases you, steps towards the entrance of the alcove, and draws her knife. Then she presses her back against the right-hand wall. A brief glance back at you is enough to get you to grab your {if@ sword = true}sword{elseif mace = true}mace{elseif spear = true}spear{endif} and join her. After a few moments, you start to hear something too: a wet sound, like something slapping and sliding along the floor. Actually, like a lot of things slapping and sliding along the floor. The sounds get louder as whatever is coming gets closer and closer. Just as whatever is approaching sounds like it’s right around the corner, Lia leaps out into the dimly lit corridor.

As soon as her feet hit the floor, black, worm-like tentacles shoot out from the shadows and wrap themselves around Lia’s ankles. She swears loudly as the tentacles pull her off her feet and send her butt crashing to the floor. Another tentacle appears and grabs her wrist before she can manage to cut anything with her knife, and the blade clatters to the ground a ways away from her. Finally, a giant red eye, large enough to fill the entire corridor, opens up in the darkness and stares right at Lia.