We decided to release the elves, scolding them for attacking us, when it were the water elementals that attacked. I reminded them that we had there lives in our hands. That we were choosing to forgive them, and I let them know, that, when I would come back, that it would be to ask them to join a revolution. Ending the reign of the Marid. The Mercreature scoffed at it, but in its eyes I could see hope glimmering.

When we came back to Alzjarera’s ship we ran into another problem though. Alzjarera had been watching using his water elementals and came at us, angrily asking what we had done with his portion of the slaves.

I argued to the nasty frog that we had not taken any slaves, and therefore owed him nothing. That it was his own fault for not being making better deals. To which his response was to go back on our deal and a no deal clause. If we are leave him when we arrive at Valesh without having taking any slaves, of which he would be to take 10% we would owe him, 2 merfok slaves, or 1 trained merfolk slave. Calculating lives of intelligent creatures to money still makes me sick to me stomach but in this society this would entail 1250 platina pieces (12.500 gold), an enormous fortune. We did manage to get another discount from his brother in Valesh for it though, so not all was lost.

I was not the only one queasy about the trading of intelligent life. Garritas had his problems with it, though he kept repeating. “If it gets me home faster, I’ll take it”. Redemption her god is in strong opposition to the keeping of slaves, so she decided to take some time to pray to him. As she went down on her knees and grabbed her holy symbol something strange happened. Wind picked up, wind inside of the building, and starting to swirl around her. And a strange glow started to originate from her, and I could clearly detect a divine presence. Her connection with her god was unusually strong. A flicker of emotion ran over her face, and thought I saw a small nod, before she suddenly..

Split in two

Or maybe more accurately, another Redemption split away from her. The other Redemption was white skinned, and had golden eyes, while the still “normally” blue Redemption now had silver eyes. Both Redemptions stood up and drew their swords, swords that slightly differed from what we had seen before.
Before any of us could act the blue Redemption attacked the white one, unleashing all her divine fury on the other version of herself. Ricardo took a look at the scenario, another look, and punched the blue redemption on the temple sending her unconscious. I was sceptical at this point, who was was who, why did this happen, why kill each other?! I prepared a healing spell to make sure nobody would be killed without any communication. However, the white redemption tried to cast darkness. I could see no reason for her to do so, instead of trying to run away, so I stopped the magical from ever coalescing. However this meant, that when she attacked to deal the finishing blow.. I was unable to intervene..
And the new white Redemption died.

Redemption told us that she had defeated an evil part of herself, got rid of any duplicity in her, and was now strong in her cause again. It was hard to read her, this is not something this happens very often. We had no choice but to believe her, but I would be watching her closely, the consequences if this was all a lie, and the evil side was winning inside of her would be.. catastrophic.

It was a day later, when go intercepted by a.. tax collector? If we would be found inside we would need to pay “the Tax”. Deciding to preferably not pay a piece of soul, we all made each other invisible, and I decided to try out the newest spell in my repertoire, wind walk.
So yeah we all turned into clouds ran away, from them, until they left and we went back. Easy.