Onward, If Not Homeward

These four people: one my dearest friend, one a brief battlefield companion, one a familiar (and obnoxious) sellsword, one a stranger, have saved me. Or, us; the habit will return in time, I suppose.
 
So, we are saved: now what?
 
The talk with the High Priestess at the temple was, in turns, illuminating and disturbing, and while I don't think it's helped *me* very much, it has...recast the way I think about the earlier years of my life. The existence of The Other (I prefer Pretender, but it's not my faith being imitated) - nearly one hundred years of falsehoods hidden behind devotion, countless believers completely fooled - was a hell of a shock. Believers including, well, Cina. I remember when she took me to Granmukata, on our strange trip across the continent and then the sea. We stopped in Ravenhold - such an odd place, it had a coldness I could never shake, regardless of the blankets piled on our bed - and it was brief, but it was, well, sweet. To see her in the place she grew up. Showing me side streets and alleyways she gamboled down as a kid; introducing me to people she'd known back then, all Drow, all very kind, but all guarded in a way she didn't see. Couldn't see.
 
She was never the most devout of followers in the temple, but she was diligent, and believed strongly in the dignity afforded to those crossing beyond - she never shirked, and that scythe shone every morning when she departed for work. Capable, compassionate, and wholly lacking pity. Her belief was genuine, but her care was weighted towards the followers of the Raven Queen, rather than The Matron herself. It seems cruel, all that dedication to a lie.
 
Does she know that her belief is a lie?
 
I feel as though this information should send reverberations across the planes - The Feathered Lady is being imitated. Her worship siphoned away, her teachings hollowed out, puppeted by a pretender. For nearly 100 years! The skies should shatter. There should be something more than the quiet equanimity of a High Priestess in the Shadowfell. There should be fury, and fear; a reckoning.
 
When I followed Utrixia, especially as a child, I wouldn't have believed her capable of watching, stoically, as her daughter was made to look a bit of a fool. Now I'm more open to the idea, I suppose. She has an infinite capacity to disappoint.
I never thought myself capable of pitying Cina, much less a god, but there it is. Will she ever know?
 
 
As for me, the High Priestess - painfully attractive, I must note; while in her presence, I was acutely aware of the long months I spent alone in that desert - added some details to my understanding of what happened to us, maybe. There is a trace we bear, she said, though the ghostly remnants are apparently fading. We carry through us a trail of magic, and, according to the distracting priestess, it is reminiscent of the magic of The Immortals. Still, though, no clue why that magic anchored you, and then me, here.
 
 
One final note, one strange, discordant note, before I tuck you away and sink into a dreamless sleep - Li'Lain. I can't get a read on her. Still. She's been an enigma since I met her. My understanding is that her missing brother - missing, no, *stolen* in childhood - has been driving her for years, spurring her forward. And today, Gustavo managed to scry on him, to show him - and he wasn't that far from us, or at least, we were on the same plane. Strangely, I recognized his face - all those years ago in Ravenhold, some high-ranking political figure - and there he was, slitting the throat of some unlucky fool in the sand of the Shadowfell. Draudur Skuggi: a title, I think. Like something in a children's story, meant to scare.
 
I looked to her face when we saw, and there was so little reaction. Shock, maybe - I've seen it in plenty of wounded, and this must have been a hell of a wound.
 
On her request, we departed for the material plane; I wonder.