Viveca's lavender eyes stared at the gauntleted hand wordlessly. Struggling up into a seated position, she clearly wasn't skeptical of Shannia's words, but seemed to be debating something in silence.<br/><br/>She'd been ready to face the end, and realizing that her preperation was unneccessary, there was of course, relief and yet also disappointment. There was a certain calmness in the borderlands between this world and the next, a certainty for the pious that this was simply another step in their journey.<br/><br/>After a few moments, her fingers stretched out to the paladin, fragile and thin like the bones of a bird. Her slender hand grasped as firmly as she was able, as she pulled herself arduously to her feet, leaning on Shannia for support. She seemed to weigh almost nothing, small of body even before her long imprisonment.<br/><br/>They had said she was a jubilant soul, and it was clear as they journeyed to Dinaa. Despite exhaustion, she offered a smile when Shannia turned to check on her. She had the blush of youth still, deep underneath the grime, and her arms were tight around Shannia, as if she were afraid to let go as they rode.<br/><br/>She slept for three days, waking briefly only when forced to eat, drink, or tend to the neccesities of life. Though the town was overjoyed at her return, there was an awkward shuffling between the townspeople as to who would tell her what had transpired in her absence. The destruction of her chapel, the appointment of a new chaplain at it's ramshackle replacement, and the numerous dead, every one a friend known to Viveca.<br/><br/>Gone so long, life had continued without her. The people of Dinaa tried to cover the wound left by her absence, and upon her unlikely return, there was much room for awkward explanation.<br/><br/>She was alive, but her life was over. They had moved on.<br/><br/>It wasn't the news one should hope to share with a young woman who had just escaped hell.<br/><br/>Meanwhile the purging of the cult site was a long and arduous task, the spiritual taint thick and cloying. Upon banishing the wicked humors and confiscating the heretical volumes, it was only on the third night that the final solution was applied. The flames licked high into the night as the last remnants of the sect were consumed.<br/><br/>As such it was a surpise upon the morning Shannia was to leave, Viveca was there to greet her. Much cleaner then she had been when they had first met, her hair cropped in the short straight style of a monastic paige, she bowed her head. A tremor in her shoulders as she moved betrayed her as being weak from her long ordeal, even after the bed rest, "I had wanted to thank you properly before you left, Lady Shannia."