#that's why she's still single...

[naijawhims]

Following the life of the Judith Ward

[trappedinafantasy37]

I went to a very old save of mine in which I knocked out Minthara in Act 1 and I talked to her again in the throne room. If you knocked her out, this is how she looks at you when she questions you:

She seems genuinely disturbed over your actions. Can you blame her? You were the one who knocked her out. You brought her harm for reasons that she cannot understand. She can understand someone killing her as that is what she expects of those around her. She will criticize your choice of sparing an enemy and showing mercy to someone you have greater reason to kill. Even though she has doubts about you, she shuts herself down, thinking she should be more grateful rather than doubtful of you.

You can tell her that you saw her as a potential ally, but she will call you a hypocrite as Gut and Ragzlin were not shown the same mercy, nor was any other True Soul.

You can even tell her, "You were simply too stubborn to die" as a means of trying to take any culpability off yourself. To try to turn the situation into a little jokey joke. However,

Minthara does not take it as a compliment and she knows you are full of shit. Even though you took the "good" path, she does not trust you.

Minthara understands mercy and even she believes some people are deserving of it. Sadly, she does not see herself as one of those people and is disturbed as to why you gave her mercy. There is no answer you can give her here that will make her trust you. She knows you went out of your way to spare her and only her, and that frightens her.

Remember, this is not the first time in which Minthara's entire army was killed right from underneath her and she was deliberately left as the sole survivor. Orin slaughtered all of her men in a blink of an eye, and Orin's "mercy" only brought her pain and torture. Later down the road, Minthara criticizes herself for not paying more attention to Orin when she first arrived at Moonrise. And so she is giving you a lot of attention, she is watching you, studying you, because she fears that you are going to hurt her the moment she takes her eye off you. Because you already have. Your "mercy" gave her a concussion, your deception had her found guilty of incompetence, and she was then subjected to even more torture by the Absolute in which she was given permanent brain damage. She is afraid that the only reason that you spared her, is because you want to torture her. Even when you show up in Moonrise and enter into her mind prison, she is expecting you to kill her and begs you do it quickly. She is not expecting mercy from you, only death. She is only in that predicament because of you. Why would she think for a single second that your mercy comes from a place of good intentions?

She knows fully well that she owes her life to you and that her life is entirely at your mercy, one you can revoke at any time. She doesn't trust you, she doesn't trust the rest of the companions, but she cannot leave nor walk away. There is no good way out of this for her and she's afraid of the cycle repeating. She is not going to make the same mistake again. Instead of her oath to you being from a place of affection, her oath to you comes from a place of fear.