Love in Judgement’s shoes clicked evenly as she paced around Theo, examining him from all angles. He wasn’t sure how he didn’t hear her coming, but he certainly heard her now.

“It wasn’t unexpected for us to lose materials when on missions, but we were very surprised when someone came back missing a hand. You can understand why we have been…rather proactively judicious.” She looked at Sparrow’s wounds like a painter examining their work. Sparrow glared back, defiant yet not giving her the satisfaction of struggling. “But now that this has come back to us, I think we can be a little lenient. I was going to take a hand for a hand, but now I think I’ll settle for an eye.”

She reached into her sleeve and pulled out a small, ornate dagger. It looked like it was made of obsidian, or something equally dark. She leaned down, squatting in her robe as she bent down to reach eye-level with Theo. He looked her straight in the eyes, even as part of him desperately wanted to look away. “You must think us monsters. But she who stares into the abyss may find something useful in the darkness.”

She stood up, returning the dagger to her sleeve, and began pacing once again. “I’d say the suspense is killing you, but that’s just the toxin bringing you to the point of almost dying.”

Theo started to understand why Jenny felt the way she did. To nobody’s surprise, being affected by a paralytic toxin wasn’t fun. The only things he could move were his eyes and eyelids.

He could barely breathe, just enough to not die from suffocation. It felt like being trapped underground with rubble on all sides. Except if that happened, Theo could probably get out of it with some magic.

Right now, however, there was no way to use magic at all. He couldn’t move, or make a sound, or do anything to trigger action magic. His breathing was too shallow, and even his eyelids moved too slowly for either of those to accomplish anything. Internal magic was also out of the question, as his muscles felt like they simply didn’t respond to his commands.

Being paralysed was a difficult sensation to forget.

He sent a prayer up to Gilth, for any way at all to get out of this. At least that still worked. An errant thought wondered if that was how she’d been alerted to his presence.

Love in Judgement stopped pacing, standing still. This was the first time he heard fury in her voice. Not when he tried to rescue Sparrow, not when he paralysed her fellow priests, but when he prayed. That was when she got angry.

“You seek to mock us, sending a prayer to the Gods as if they’ll help you? This is their holy land. We are their voice, their presence given flesh!” She yelled, echoes travelling through the empty courtyard (but less than Theo would have expected).

Theo had doubts about how much the Gods favoured Etol, but even if he was currently capable of speech he would have kept that to himself. “You are a heathen. You have not earned the right to their attention. We will teach you to be pious and respectful and how to properly worship, through whatever means necessary.”

She paused, realising how much her shoulders shook with the ragged breaths she sucked in. Love in Judgement took a moment to compose herself, and all emotion fled her face once more.

She even resumed pacing.

“I apologise for my outburst, my dear guest. I wouldn’t want to be rude.” That familiar fake smile was reapplied to her face, and she looked identical to when she had shown the tour group around the temple.

Theo wracked his brain for any way to get out of this situation. At the very least, she was still alone (or at least, it looked like it). Which either meant she was confident enough that she didn’t need any support to handle this, or just like how she seemingly appeared from nowhere, there was an unknowable number watching and waiting to help if needed.

“I would extend an offer of tea or biscotti, but given your current state that would be more like taunting than hospitality.” She tittered, in a way that was taunting enough as it is.

Theo would have grit his teeth, but even that was beyond him. He tried to force his muscles to move, to push anything he had, but nothing had changed from before. If anything, he felt slightly weaker, eyelids struggling to move as easily as before.

He had a feeling that time was running out, and they wouldn’t be so charitable as to cure it before he was in a much less favourable position than he was currently.

He sent off another prayer to Gilth, partially to see if it could throw her off balance again, and partially because he really needed a miracle right now.

She levelled her gaze at him, and Theo couldn’t tell if she was irritated or unimpressed. “Clever. But that will not going to work again. I suppose I must applaud you for being so resourceful, even now. But there is a limit to how resourceful one can be given what they have to work with. You are paralysed. And soon you will join your friend in re-education.”

It became clear from the way that she moved, that this time Love in Judgement wasn’t just pacing, but leaving.

If he was going to try something, this was the time. Before the paralytic toxin weakened him further, while he was still next to Sparrow.

The question was what he had at his disposal. She was right about how little he had to work with.

But little didn’t mean nothing, and as Love in Judgement walked away with footsteps as measured as always, there was a thought coming to life in the recesses in his mind as random fragments of information connected and joined together. And a spark of almost divine inspiration helped hurry the process along, nudging things into place. It seemed his prayers hadn’t been ignored after all.

If Theo had been physically capable of smiling right now, he would.