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You briefly consider swearing an Oath of service, spending four years helping your Fellows as best you can – which for you, would be as a healer – but the whole ‘woman, living by herself, working as an unaffiliated Chirurgeon’ absolutely screams Witch. If you were able to find somewhere that was far enough off of the beaten path, you could probably get away with it … but then that sort of undermines the whole concept of helping as many people as you can.
After deciding against that, you them give serious thought to declaring yourself an Idoloclast, and heading out into Cimmaroon Territory to capture four Great Idols. In fact, you are surprised at just how much the thought of adventuring appeals to you. But … finding, securing and retrieving even just a single Great Idol will be a significant – and dangerous – undertaking … and you really do not have the first idea of how to handle yourself in a fight. Now, to be sure, the Oath does not need to have a time limit, but swearing an Oath knowing that it could potentially be years before you are ready to seriously attempt to start fulfilling it seems sort of like … cheating. And that is not even considering how you would be Judged if you were to die before an Oath was fulfilled. No, as appealing as the adventure may be, you need something smaller in scope.
Well … if you want to balance the scales, then why not bring peace to the souls and families of four murder victims by bring four murderers to justice? That would be something that you could start working towards right away, while still being appropriately difficult, not to mention logical form of penance.
So, lying under the thin sheet, you swear out your Oath. Oaths are typically preformed in the presence of a Priest, or at least a lay brother, so when the time comes for the Last Ablution, the deceased can be praised for fulfilling the Oath, or castigated for abandoning it. But, to the best of your knowledge, there is nothing in the Compendium that says that Oaths are only valid if sworn out in front of Men of the Cloth.
And even alone, actually speaking the words is harder than you thought it would be.
“For the four … lives that I took tonight, I, on the integrity of my Red Thread, swear that I will deliver four … other … murderers … to worldly justice, in the hopes that this service to my Fellows and the truth will lead to Wisdom.”
You do not feel any better, but.you are certain that you will once you start fulfilling it. But right now, all you can do is hope that you have done enough to account for your transgressions, say your prayers, and fall to sleep.
Just like last night, it seems like as soon as you close your eyes you are opening them again, though in this case, you are being woken up by the first call instead of the last. Still lying on your bedroll, you decide that it would be for the best for you to call out as sick today, to give you enough time for everything that you want to do.
