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You don't need words to answer the Princeps' question. The black thorns of the curse mark that crawls out from the scar on your left hand tells the story well enough when you show it to him. Though your unspoken thoughts devoured and purified the remnants of that lance of shadow, the chain-devil with which the Justicar sought to bind you, the scars still remain. Its power sinister, something you would not draw upon lightly. When you point at your right eye, bound beneath the relic lent to you by the Hospitaliers, the point is cemented.
The Princeps' frown deepens as he arrives at your meaning. "Which of them did this, Lady Louise?"
"The Justicar," you answer, having no reason to lie or mislead him. "I happened across her in the Briarcrown not two weeks back, whilst aiding the locals in hunting down an apostate cult. Honorable, for one of the Dark One's get. She could have cut me down after I forced her into a position to lose by the terms of our engagement, but she stood by them in some twisted form of chivalry."
"Yet she took your eye and left you with a curse," the Princeps says. You do not bother correcting him on that matter, for it is close enough to the truth. That state of <span class="mu-i">gnosis</span> that your curse eye showed you is something you wish to keep close to your chest. "Would it be that <span class="mu-i">she</span> were the Knight I sought your aid in hunting. Alas, the one I hunt goes by a different moniker: the Samaritan."
"An apostate knight is an apostate knight," you tell him. "<span class="mu-i">Especially</span> one that twists a name from scripture towards their own perverse means. I will settle things with the Arbiter in the fullness of time, I am sure, but I will gladly aid you in cutting this so-called Samaritan down. Though I will need to speak of this with the Earl of Lavendel before we depart. It serves our greater end, but it would leave him without his honorguard..."
The Princeps nods, and asks if, "This earl, he was the older gentleman among your company?"
"Yes," you say, a note of worry entering your voice. For all his apparent vigor, the man was getting on in his years, "The Somnumblume did not take him to his eternal rest, did it? It would be an ill joke for a man who's survived a hundred attempts at assassination to be done in by a stroll through a bed of flowers..."
"Nay, nothing like that, Lady Louise," the Princeps assures you. You can see the spark of a thought in his eyes, one that he keeps to himself. "He and your men-at-arms shall rest for some time more, I think. You all spent two days in those fields, which my doctors tell me is enough to make a man sleep for two weeks straight."
You shrug, keeping the sheets high enough to hide away things that the Princeps has no business looking at. "I'm sure they will wake soon enough, Princeps."
He shakes his head, a thin smile crossing his face. "Nay, it's you that's woken far too early, Lady Louise. It's not been two hours since we found you."
