[IRP] Return to the Dread Isle

[Alusq]

Idiots. You forgot the lingonberries. Renata mentally chastised what she was certain was the Dread Isle's final trick, one that would lull all of them into certain doom. But it wasn't a bad way to go out, all things considered. In exchange for such a blissful moment, she was fully willing to go quietly into the night, and she was several bites deep into the feast by the time she was starting to think this wasn't a fever dream after all.

A rogue? Renata looked around before realising that the rogue in question was her. Now that was something she never expected to be called... but it made sense. A rogue was someone who went their own way, and in light of everything that had happened, Renata would gladly accept such a moniker.

"The Church..." Renata began an explanation only to cut herself off. It was evident that Renault had been living here for a long time, and if he was a bishop he was likely one of the last of the old church who had not been purged. She owed it to him to start from the beginning. "The Order of the Saint is no more, Your Excellency. In its place is the Church of the Preservation, a creation of the Lycian emperor. To destroy anything that defies imperial doctrine is its only purpose. Even..." She looked down at her food, suddenly guilt-stricken. "Even the Dragon's Gate." Telling Renault everything would mean revealing their original purpose in coming to the Dread Isle, something Renata wasn't sure her comrades would approve of, but she also felt he deserved the full truth. It could very well mean his survival against any further expeditions by the Empire... or even the survival of the old order itself, much of whose scripture was likely committed to this man's memory.