>>5328537“What do you think the Chaplain will think of this thing?” you ask.
“Who cares?” the Novice asks. “Why do you worry so much about that fool’s approval?”
“He was mentor and caregiver to me,” you note. “Practically parental.”
The Novice scoffs.
“You are thinking like a mammal again,” she admonishes. “He was treating you like a valued asset. I well know—I am much the same.”
“Because you are an accomplished Novice among the Fleshweavers? Yes, I suppose despite your REGRETTABLE oversight with the not-kobold, I can see how you might SEEM useful in such a capacity.”
The Novice rattles with laughter, and you turn to look at her in confusion.
“You cannot imagine his irritation when I proved my merit in that field,” she says, leaning back and looking up to the distant, upside-down spires of the ceiling—stalactites, hovering like divine daggers waiting to plunge.
“Why?” you ask, befuddled.
“Our family’s bloodline is valuable,” she says. “A female’s main use, when she has such blood, is to be broodmare. I would have been traded by now, laying a clutch of eggs for some more highly-placed member of the Priesthood, and bought my father an alliance. Maybe then, he would have been more than a forward base Chaplain, trading off of the endeavours of a dead Degenerate and forced to raise her False Dragonborn spawn.”
She looks back to you, and you sense no malice—at least none directed at YOU—as she speaks again.
“I do not care what the Chaplain thinks of my work,” she says. “I know my own value.”
How do you reply?
>Say nothing—you know not what to say to that>Acknowledge her worth as well, and give her an earnest compliment>Tease her further—she has left herself open, and it will be funny>Shift closer, and attempt physical affection>Write-in 