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We spent the last three days trekking with the remaining 30 or so refugees back to the abbey, where I felt the monks would likely give them shelter and care for as long as they needed. Abbot Manfred was quite generous in taking them in. Mel received a letter at the abbey ordering him all the way back to shale with the knights of Elk, so we are now down to three. I was surprised both that he remembered me, and that once he did, he welcomed me into the abbey even to share a dinner and pray evening prayer with the monks. We talked with Abbot Manfred about our quest and learned a couple of details about the past of Vicar Alec Ger and Eldred of Sunda. Apparently Gur, whose been vicar here for 20 years, and Deher were classmates back in the seminary and Eldred was rector at the time. The Abbot also told us that Eldred was obsessed with the evangelii, and that his part in the quest changed him, drove him to insanity. Reminiscent of what Torsten heard from Urdick before he died... Yet the most helpful piece of information from the abbot is that we may be close to actually finding one of the evangelii; the third one is rumored to be at Forevale Priory, and the abbot hinted that perhaps it is hiding away amid the heavily guarded collections at Hoofenshatz Mall.
Even if we can get in, how will we know how to identify it?! (I could use the identify spell, but we would have to have a lot of time to cast it on many different items, and even then I only have a limited amount of magic capabilities...
After a monk named Franklin showed Wolfgar and Torsten to their quarters (and offered me sleeping quarters in the monastery as well!) I made the hour and a half walk through the forest to my dear home. I have been away from this place for nearly a month, and yet it feels like an eternity! How overjoyed I was to see my mother's face, to wrap myself once more in her arms. I cried through the whole night as I recounted our travels and the terrible misdeeds we have gotten mixed up in and even initiated ourselves. I bore my whole soul to her and spoke of the unbearable stain upon it left by the bloody violence of our journey so far. She has spent my whole lifetime in exile atoning for one sin, for one mistake, and doing so with such an admirable grace and virtue. Yet here I am in front of her, full of sin and ugliness-- having played a part in so many deaths, and now having helped trade with a bloodthirsty warlord who the very next day somehow destroyed an entire city. Did those crates have anything to do with what happened at Trader's Haven? Perhaps we'll never know. But I do know I was too afraid to check what was in those boxes, too afraid to know for sure the truth about the delivery we were making....I think I fell asleep in my mother's arms, my face soaked with tears. She kept saying to me, "The Rose can forgive all. You don't need to go any further. You can stay here with me."
Perhaps I will. Perhaps I'll live out the rest of my days in the same fasting and prayer that Mother has dedicated herself to for my entire life. But how can I ever make right before the Rose all the wrong we have done, all the evil we've been mixed up in, from Darren Calla's execution to Dolmition's murder to the needless loss of all those crew members that didn't survive the shipwreck we caused, and now to this decimation of an entire city by a villain we traded with. How can I ever hope to be forgiven? You chose the wrong Halfling for this quest, great Rose! I have nothing to give to it but evil, ugliness, and fear! I must go back to sleep again, and perhaps the best thing that could happen is for me never to wake up.