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When she had control of herself, Devanya clung to Sable and insisted that they need to make their way to Chancel to seek an audience with the Choristers. "They have to be told," she said, "they have to know that the great old ones have returned."
Sable didn't like the sound of that, but she reassured Devanya that she would drag her to Chancel come hell or high water.
When they ran out of food, Sable left Devanya in a placid grove and began to forage. She surprised a beautiful young woman picking berries. The woman dropped her basket and stammered, "Oh, I didn't see you there. Mother sent me to gather fruit. She's making a tart."
Sable ran her good eye up and down the maid's comely form in what she hoped was a rakish and suggestive way. "It looks like she already has made a little tart."
The lady blushed.
But she also invited Sable and Devanya to stay with them and be fed before they resumed their journey to Chancel, which Sable described, half-correctly, as a "pilgrimage of sorts." Whatever else transpired in that humble cottage must remain a mystery, but Mandalia, so the girl was called, did leave her childhood home and accompany Sable and Devanya to Chancel.
* * *
The contrast between that rustic idyll and the muddy, smoky streets of Chancel could not have been more pronounced. Devanya was able to arrange a meeting the the Choristers. They paled at what she had to tell them, but the exact nature of that meeting, and what directives they may have given her, were hidden away behind closed doors. However, it was clear that when she emerged from the cathedral, her status as a priest was restored and she had been re-embraced to the bosom of the Church.
Sable, meanwhile, has roved the streets in search of a new companion who could provide aid in their quest to find the missing heir to Krevborna's throne--a fell task that been given to them by Thronzeker. Her search of the kind of places adventurers frequent--taverns and gutters, mostly--turned a likely candidate: Malachi Vulcra, an inhuman warrior who had previously been a member of the Knights Labyrinthian. Malachi's strange physiognomy--impossibly lanky, with mottled green skin stretched over a gaunt face--evidenced a link to the ancient Lilitu, but more promising still were his claims to knowledge of tracking, arcana, and the history of Krevborna's royal line.
* * *
Previous Adventures
Losing a Fight in a Frontier Tavern
In the Court of the Vampire Queen
