Siiiiigh.

Right, okay. Guess this is his problem now. Another cult. Hooray. He's so excited. Maybe this time they'll all dress in ominous red cloaks instead of in ominous black ones. Well, no use whining about it. Let's go down the standard cult procedure list.

  Does this particular cult have a history in this town?

After some asking around: yes. About nine years ago, a demon attempted to invade Toril. He was foiled by a travelling adventurer, who sealed the portal and prevented a minor demonic invasion cropping up. He's glad to hear it got foiled. Sounds like they want to have another crack at it. Which of course means that they think this time it will actually work, which probably involves the girl they kidnapped. Speaking of:

  Who is the person they kidnapped and why would they want to snatch her?

Soon enough, he learns that she's the orphaned daughter of the adventurer who sealed the portal. Probably her blood will help unseal it in some way, because of course it will, or maybe the cult's just feeling vindictive. Still, they will probably be at the spot they tried this last time, so:

  Where was their portal located last time around?

He gets a cave marked on his map. Damn it. Another cave. Why doesn't anyone set up in a nice little cabin on the lakeside, or something? He'd set his base up in a nice little cabin on the lakeside. Whatever, fine, another cave, yep that's fine.

He wheedles a rough estimation of how powerful these cultists are out of a frightened farmer. After approximately three worried sentences from the frightened farmer, he quietly infers that he is not going to have any trouble with the cult. A dozen half baked wizard wannabes and a mid-tier demon lord? Yeah, okay. Maybe this will spiral out of control like his last two adventures, he'll definitely be careful, but uh. Yeah the cult itself isn't going to be much trouble.

But that's no excuse for sloppy work, so before he goes running off to foil the cult, he politely knocks on a door. Time to ask the kidnapped girl's parents about any special qualities her kidnapping might bestow upon the cult.

The door opens.

A woman with a few too many frown lines and a few too few laugh lines in a Respectable dress and Proper hairstyle opens the door.

"Yes?"

A slightly scruffy looking man in far too much black and far too much jewelry to qualify as either Proper or Respectable smiles politely back at her.

"Hello, ma'am. I'm sorry to bother you, but I heard your daughter was kidnapped? I was hoping I might be able to help."

"Foster-daughter," she corrects. "My cousin's child. And yes. What, ah, what kind of help were you thinking of?"

Something in him twitches a bit at the correction to foster, like that's somehow more important than the word daughter, but he doesn't press the issue. Now is really not the time.

"I have some experience with these kinds of things. Cults and demons and the like. I was hoping I could ask you a few questions so I could better handle the situation, if it's not too much trouble."

He doesn't look particularly imposing. Average height, wiry build, no noteworthy scars to be seen. He has a couple of swords at his hip, and his armor looks like it could maybe stand up to something, but he lacks the imposing aura typically found on someone with a lot of power. Someone inexperienced with adventurers might not notice the way he carries himself, like a man with so much experience that the dangerous tasks before him have become dull.

She looks skeptical. "Young man, are you sure you know what you're getting into?"

Oh, Tymora. This is why he misses Valen. Or Aribeth. They would look properly imposing and prevent this kind of condescension.

"Cave full of wizards attempting to summon a demon of mid-level position and power and open a portal to the Abyss. The sooner it's handled the better, before there's a swarm of demons to deal with," he says, trying to sound professional without talking down to the woman, sounding arrogant, or dismissing her concerns. "But if your daughter has any strange bloodlines or the like, that might complicate the situation. Anything that you know of?"

"Certainly," she sniffs. "Her father, if you can call him that when he never even stuck around long enough to meet her, was half-Celestial."

"Ah," he says. Yep, that definitely explains the kidnapping. He is reminded of a deva kept by a different cult, and how they'd used her blood for creating flesh golems. He rather hopes that this one has treated its victim better than that. "Any idea where he left to, and if they might be interested in using her as bait to try and draw him into a trap?"

It's a long shot, but hey, he's half-Celestial. Maybe being half of a fundamentally good Outsider is enough to nudge him towards parental responsibility in a crisis. Or maybe not. Maybe he's just dead in a dungeon somewhere, the expected end of most adventurers.

"I haven't the faintest idea. My cousin might, if she weren't two years dead."

"All right. Thank you for your time, I'll do my best to see to it that your daughter is safe."

Awfully unconcerned about the girl's welfare, though, isn't she. That 'foster-daughter' correction sure did set the precedent. All spite and condescension and entitlement, no room left for a young girl that lost her mother and probably feels pretty damn alone in the world. Yeah, he knows your type, lady. He'll... figure something out. Some way to make this better. He's not sure what, yet, but he'll figure it out.

"Thank you," she says, politely, but without a lot of conviction that he can actually do anything.

That's fine. He doesn't particularly care what this woman thinks of him.

Off he goes, to save the day.

The cave isn't hard to find, especially when he's got a map to it. He finds the cave. Any defenses on the outside of the cave, traps, guards, the like? He's expecting magical traps over just about anything else, because these are wizards and of course they're going to use magical traps first and foremost.

The magical traps seem to favor quantity over quality. This place is hella trapped.

Of course it is. Well, at least they put in the effort. Unfortunately for them, quantity over quality doesn't really help when you're dealing with someone like him. Quantity over quality means that people that specialize in disarming traps will just eviscerate each and every one of the poor quality traps with ease. Like Veron. Veron is a man of many talents, and one of those talents is 'disarming traps.' Comes from being the type to sneak around ahead of everyone. The traps get disarmed while everything's quiet, so the people in metal armor with large sharps don't have to worry about stepping on them.

What was that about hella trapped? It's not, anymore, now it's just a cave entrance.

Onward!

There are some cultists inside!

Neat. He'll just keep on being an unstoppable (and currently transparent) teleporting master of stealth, then. They can go right on not spotting him.

Where are they keeping their victim/potential hostage? She's his priority.

She is, it transpires, tied to a chair in a worrying style of fancy, involving bones and blood and all kinds of things an eight-year-old probably shouldn't be exposed to let alone tied to.

She is looking down and sitting very quietly and has a lot of bruises.

Veron is a man who knows his bruises. He's had more than enough of his own. Some of those are way too old to be from the cultists. Yep. He's fixing that. Also the part where she's tied to a really gross chair. That's also getting fixed.

Right, okay. Anyone immediately nearby that could potentially hurt her if things get hairy?

There is a guy taking a whetstone to a shitty sword and keeping half an eye on her sitting about a meter away from the gross chair.

Hmmm. Should he try talking to these people, that tie eight-year-olds to chairs and try to summon demons?

... Nah.

Right then. He considers the girl, quietly weighing his options to remove her from the line of fire as quickly as possible. This will probably freak her out a lot, but he does not like where she's situated in this room, and he doesn't think he can properly warn her without potentially losing his element of surprise. She's been through a lot, it would be understandable if she immediately reacted upon learning that someone's come to save her. And from what he can tell, she doesn't look like the type to scream and kick.

He slips behind the man who is sharpening his shitty sword, and tidily whacks him over the head with the pommel of his much nicer sword. Then before the man has the chance to hit the ground in a heap, he hops over to slice through the girl's ropes like his sword hasn't even noticed they're there, and in a smooth motion tosses an orange potion at some of the nearby cultists, scoops the eight year old up into his arms, and pulls her with him into a shadowstep.

The whole world turns grey and freezes. The potion hangs mid-air, the guy is frozen mid-slump. It's like he's stopped time, but of course, that's not actually what's happened. They're just moving and perceiving so quickly that it looks frozen.

"Hi," he says, projecting calm confidence as he carries her to an out of the way corner where she will be out of the line of fire. Doing this kind of thing is tricky, and he definitely can't keep it up forever, but he has long enough for a couple of sentences. "Sorry about the surprise, I'm getting you to a safer spot. Stay very still and quiet, okay?"

"...Okay," she says, a little stunned.

He sets her down in the corner. He smiles warmly at her.

"It'll be okay," he assures, with absolute sincerity.

And then the world regains its color and time starts to move again. All at once, there's a crack of glass breaking followed by a fwoosh of fire, and then he fades to black and disappears. Or, well, shadowsteps away from her.

These cultists are about to have a bad time.

The cultists are having such a bad time. Some of them would like to file complaints to his squishy organmeats with their shitty swords. Others prefer fire, lightning or acid as a method of communication.