For all the talk of sunlight on the ship to Cambria, the sun seemed to be something of a non-issue so far. On the day after their arrival, Ber’s first full day in this new place, some clouds had rolled in, and they occasionally drifted across the sun to provide a welcome respite from the bright sunlight that briefly blinded him every time he stepped outside. Accustomed to the perpetually overcast days of Nevermere, the soldier hardly minded the transient shade as he and a handful of others received the grand tour of the village, which was certainly no Skia. Still, apart from the inhabitants who eyed him suspiciously and those who looked at him like a piece of meat, Ber felt tentatively hopeful that everything would go well once they had removed Isolde from power.

They had just finished their tour and started to disperse when they crossed paths with the creaky-looking woman whom Ber had glimpsed at yesterday’s meal. At first, his dark-eyed gaze roamed over her as it would any other Nevermerean, but the white creature she carried across her shoulders had him doing a double take. Until this point, he’d heard rather than seen more of Cambrian strength, but now he paused at the blatant display of it. No witch would be carrying a—

The elderly woman was talking. After a glance around to ensure that she meant him, Ber closed the distance between them at a light trot. “Certainly, ma’am,” He said of her request, casting a quick eye over the beast on her back to see how she had positioned it before moving forward to take it from her. With one of them wildly unaccustomed to handling the carcasses of large mountain animals and the other far shorter than the man she’d asked for help, the handover was awkward. As they shifted the burden from her shoulders to his, one leg briefly buckled under the weight - after Artos, he hadn’t expected this furry looking creature to be so dense - before he took a deep breath, gritted his teeth, and righted himself.

Ber could do it, probably, but he couldn’t fool himself into thinking it was easy. “Lead the way, ma’am,” He invited her, attempting to keep the strain from his voice but unsure of how successful he was. Quickly, please.

After a nod of understanding at the woman, a willingness to be helpful got Ber to take the first couple of steps toward her home, but determination, more than anything else, got him the rest of the way there. With a head lolling over one shoulder, the unbalanced deadweight on his back claimed most of his attention as he focused on staying upright and stepping carefully along the uneven paths - a task made easier by her warnings. Keenly aware of her presence beside him, he kept the woman in his peripherals so that he knew where to go, and up until the point that she began to speak with him, he had found himself content to listen to the sound of his own labored breathing rather than make idle conversation. Preferred it, even.

Lifting his head slightly, Ber paused quickly and glanced toward the woman, squinting as the sun peeled out from behind a cloud. “It’s nice,” He said, sentences short from the exertion rather than any particular issue with her. “Very different. But bright, yeah.”

She guided him through the door, and trying not to look too grateful, he deposited the carcass on the mat before standing upright and rolling out his shoulders. Before he could say anything, she pointed him to a seat, which he took after a moment and looked around. Though he hadn’t necessarily intended to take her up on her offer of food, it seemed rude to leave now, and he didn’t have other duties to attend to either.

“Some tea would be nice, if that’s alright,” Ber accepted her invitation of tea, which reminded him a little of Temperance in a bittersweet way. Whether it truly had the All-Mother’s blessing - truth be told, he was rather skeptical of her existence in the first place - hardly stopped him from expressing his gratitude once the cup was in his hands. “Thanks, Grissa.” Just in time, he recalled the prayer from yesterday and opted to wait until she did before taking a sip of his own. A touch of humor entered his voice. “I’ll think of you when everyone else starts losing their hair.” After a heartbeat, he gestured toward the creature on the mat. “What did you have me carrying? Besides your dinner.”

Grissa’s praise had a pleased little smile rising to Ber’s lips even as he ducked his head in acknowledgement of her words. “Thank you, ma’am,” He accepted the compliment, as he blew gently on the cup of tea he held in both hands. Though he couldn’t identify the aroma, the tea smelled different from the blends that Temperance usually made, and he was curious to see how it tasted.

While he waited for the tea to cool to a drinkable temperature, he watched curiously as Grissa settled down beside the mountain goat and began to dismantle the carcass with practiced ease. “I’ve seen normal goats,” Ber offered after listening to her explanation. “They don’t get nearly that big though.” A brief pause as he shook his head in disbelief. “Or climb walls.” Admittedly, he didn’t think he’d believe that particular tidbit of information until he saw it with his own eyes. Still, he did find it interesting to watch her expertly separate out all the components from the body; he’d never seen anything quite like it before.

By the time Grissa returned from outside, Ber had started sipping at the tea and found that he enjoyed the flavor, though it was quite different from Temperance’s usual brews. He nodded at her and raised his cup slightly as she moved to sit across from him. “This is good. What is it?”

But he wasn’t the only one with questions. Head tilted slightly and brow lightly furrowed, Ber paused and considered Grissa. “You sent a letter to our… our chieftan?” Genuine confusion colored his words, both over the missive itself and whether she meant the captain commander or the king, though the correspondence of both men was so far above Ber’s pay grade that the distinction hardly mattered. However, she had correctly deduced that they were intending to replace Isolde - not that the soldier had any plans on confirming her suspicions. Woodwick had been very clear that the reason for their deployment was need to know, and Grissa, though she made very nice tea, did not need to know.

With the confusion still written across his face, Ber chose to play dumb, an act that came more naturally than he cared to admit. “I’m just here doing what they tell me, ma’am,” He admitted honestly, shoulders rising and falling in a shrug. “If you sent a letter about Priestess Isolde, I don’t know anything about it.“ Technically, also not a lie. “Is that what you want, though? Her to be… disposed of?”

“Oh, yes, that would be the Captain Commander then,” Ber confirmed, not unkindly, though Grissa seemed not to care for such specifics.

Hiding the excitement that began to blossom in his chest behind careful sips of the mint and ironwart tea, Ber sat and listened quietly as the older woman made her case against Isolde. When everyone in the hall had appeared to take part on the prayer that Revna, Isolde’s second-in-command, had led the evening prior, his fears of a widespread revolt against the Priestess’s removal had grown. Despite her age, Grissa herself was a walking example of how outmatched any soldier like Ber would be against an angry Cambrian; she had still carried the mountain goat with far more ease than he had.

Ber’s brow furrowed as he parsed through her words, recognizing some of the terminology and titles from their meeting with Odina. “So Priestess isn’t a traditional Cambrian rank?” Though he already knew the answer to that question, he wasn’t sure how much she expected him to know of her people’s ways and decided to act less knowledgeable than he was lest she ask any uncomfortable questions. “And Isolde killed your daughter, Kore.” That was news to him. More importantly, however: “But people still follow her, despite her killing one of her own… sisters?” He shook his head slightly, some of his disbelief genuine. “Does everyone know about this? How many have chosen to support her anyway?”

Back in a conference room in Skia, Odina had told them as much about the Priestess and how she had combined two traditional Cambrian positions into her one role as the leader of the kingdom, but hearing it firsthand from the elderly woman sitting before him felt different. Odina had merely reported what had happened, whereas Grissa, though she kept her voice low and quiet, spoke with the conviction of someone who never doubted the righteousness of her cause. On one hand, such dedication was, in a way, admirable. On the other, people like that could be dangerous, if only because they would do whatever it took to reach their end goal.

Slowly nodding his understanding, Ber waited until the older woman had finished speaking before he asked his own questions again. “You would have us remove Isolde from her position as Priestess and split the duties of that role back into two others? The one who leads the warriors and the other who prays to the All-Mother?” He remembered, then, Terach’s question during that meeting in Skia: once Isolde was gone, would they reinstate the roles of— of— well, the other two roles? And if so, how would those positions be filled? Looking at Grissa sitting before him, Ber suspected that the elder’s preference and Nevermere’s preferences on such a matter would differ.

With the number of times the soldier had already heard the All-Mother mentioned in the short span since his arrival, it had become quite clear that spirituality was embedded far more deeply in Cambrian culture than it was in Nevermerean society. Sure, the covens had their goddess, but worship of her was hardly as widespread as the Cambrian’s belief in their All-Mother. Admittedly, Ber found himself rather skeptical that Kore’s spirit – if she had one – would be trapped anywhere, let alone talking to Grissa, but he could very easily believe that someone would betray their own for the metaphorical crown.

After all, such violence had entrenched itself in the fabric of Nevermerean society: everyone knew that was how the Rainecourts had ascended to power.

“No one else knows what happened to Kore?” Ber clarified, choosing to follow the overarching narrative even if some of the specifics seemed rather questionable. He wondered, idly, belatedly, if he should have been worried about what was in the tea that he had just consumed. “And why has Kore, um, spoken only to you? Why not to everyone else?”

For better or for worse, spirituality was utterly foreign to Ber. A childhood on the streets meant that he had learned to deal first and foremost with the concrete, tangible challenges placed in front of him, and he had never spared much thought for whatever intangible spirits or deities or what-have-you that some would say lingered around them all. If they existed, they had never bothered Ber; therefore, they had become irrelevant. And that was how he carried on with his life.

Such a mindset worked well for him – until now, when he found himself confronted with an old woman who very clearly believed in something whose existence he could not determine for himself. Stuck somewhere between belief and disbelief, Ber’s brow furrowed slightly when Grissa explained why the others couldn’t see Kore and subsequently described hearing her daughter’s screams, but her plea had him reaching up and scratching the back of his neck. “I don’t have any kids, no,” He said, a little awkward. “But that sounds really hard to experience every day.” Regardless of the doubt he had surrounding their lingering source, he at least trusted that the Cambrian’s pain and heartache were very real.

With a sigh, Ber finished his cup of tea and set it down on the table in front of him. It seemed fairly clear what she wanted from him: action against Isolde, or at least the promise of such. He folded his hands in lap as he regarded her for a moment before saying, “Look, Grissa, I can’t say what we will or won’t do. I can tell the captain what you’ve told me, if you want, or maybe bring you to talk to him yourself, but in the end, whether we help you is not my call.” Shoulders rose and fell in an equally helpless shrug.

Understanding was the best he could hope for. Offering what he hoped resembled a reassuring smile, Ber watched as Grissa rose to her feet and returned to the table with two bowls of stew. When the one filled to the brim with a heaping portion of stew ended up in from of him, his grin turned somewhat sheepish, but before he could thank her, she was already inviting him to leave. A little surprised, the soldier paused to try to discern whether she really wanted him to leave or if she was trying to be polite. However a quick search of her expression yielded nothing.

“Oh, uh, thank you, ma’am.” He didn’t want to impose, but it felt a little rude to take her food and run at the first chance he got, even if she was right about his interest level in her goddess. Picking up the spoon, Ber glanced toward the door as well before looking back at Grissa. “If you want the company, I can stay.” The offer was genuine. “Otherwise, I can bring these—” He indicated the wooden bowl and spoon “—back later. Maybe tomorrow morning after the meeting, if neither of us are busy?”