We decided to stay in Razhinoch at least until tomorrow. Considering the mess caused by our rescue of Tora’Sor, it is only fitting we help them deal with it. Their village survived the blast, along with the jungle to the east, but everything west of the garden is a barren wasteland of smoking embers as far as the eye can see. I expect the villagers will take advantage of the cleared land, and use it to expand their village or grow crops. However, their immediate concern is replacing the roofs of their mud huts, since hot ash caused several fires over the last two days.
Yolo regained his captaincy over the Red Exemplars, and now has them assisting Razhinoch. He said the Red Exemplars would remain as long as necessary, and gave the village all the horses they had. Yolo told me we could leave as soon as we wanted to continue my expedition, and that he’d give me up to five Red Exemplars as an escort, but I declined his offer. However, I asked if the Red Exemplars would head back toward Torheem or Forada. Yolo said they weren’t planning to do so, but he could consider sending two Red Exemplars to gather fresh supplies. Upon further discussion, he decided to send the two Red Exemplars, and they will send the current contents of my journal to Atalan. This will be nice since it means I won’t need to keep carrying as many pages. From here, the only real hardship I anticipate is trying to leave the jungle, and we’ll have two Sisterhood operatives keeping us safe. Besides, the chief said he would give us an escort out of the jungle whether we want one or not. He even said we’d be riding the horses from the Red Exemplars, and teaching our escorts how to ride them.
We had much to tell Tora’Sor about the things she missed over the past few years. Our encounters with the Lunari, the journey to Nazada and back, the Huvudets and Dawn, all of it intrigued Tora’Sor after her lengthy captivity. She was especially interested in the tales we told of the romance between Rar and Krista’Mil, and decided they‘d make a good pair. She then asked Niahla’Sen if she’d had any success in her search. Niahla’Sen only gave a quick negative reply, but did mention that Zhethou said she’d eventually be successful.