Shoot, shoot, shoot, shoot the evil wizard!

Wizards are notably squishy. It's phrasal, even. They make excellent pincushions. This one turns to raise his lightning wand in Haley's direction.

The mouse is on the ground, after the lightning, lying very still. Very picturesque, really, except for how his snowy white fur has gone hugely static-fluffy.

Then the wizard turns, and the mouse is no longer on the ground. Instead, the heel of his foot is whipping at the wizard's head at terminal velocity.

Crack goes the skull. Flumph goes the wizard.

"Nice distraction."

Any other obstacles to the stables?

Nope!

Great!

Keeping in mind the trusted wisdom of just because there aren't any traps you can detect does not necessarily mean there are no traps, Haley enters.

There are five entities in this room.

One is a green woman with live flowers woven through her hair. She is so angry that, were she not actively casting spells, she could easily be mistaken for a barbarian.

One is a green-scaled cockatrice, twining around her ankles and hissing aggressively.

One is a brain on legs, which is trotting around and gently headbutting random objects with its squishy surface, and seems greatly amused to be doing so.

One is a snake-woman, who is cackling and shrieking about "the coming of the Eye".

One is a black-masked man in heavy red plate armor, who is using a morningstar to smash a large crystal set into the mechanism currently keeping the snake-woman in a bubble, as it appears he has already done for the brain and cockatrice. The crystal explodes, and he turns to take his implement of destruction to the furious dryad in turn.

… Ugh, stopping the mask guy is probably gonna make Diplomacy checks with the prisoners a whole lot harder. And she's probably gonna have to babysit the brain.

"Hey!" Elan says to mask guy. "What are you doing?"

"Removing impediments to my aims," he says, the mask's mouth moving with his own and making him sound rather inhuman.

     "A mission of mercy!" crows the snake-lady. "Setting us free, that I may drag this city into the muck and mire as it richly deserves!"

          "Trying to kill us so Aribeth can't cure the fucking plague," the dryad grunts, hitting mask guy with a Glitterdust. "Care to make him stop that? Or are you here to gawk?"

     "He won't kill me," snakelady purrs.

          "Gods above how I wish you were wrong."

(Elan shoots Haley a glance. He'd like to help out, and is already coming up with puns, but he knows she hates firing into melee.)

(Small headshake.)

Okay, so the snakelady is on mask guy's side, but she's also apparently insane. And the dryad seems to be the opposite of that. She goes ahead and fires at mask guy, hoping that if Mouse Monk wants to dart in he can avoid being friendly fired.

He seems to have that in hand; he gets mask guy's body between him and the arrows in short order, and then starts wailing on said body with his tiny but powerful fists.

Mask guy tries to fight him off, but it turns out that without facing in Haley's direction, he's subject to Sneak Attacks. And Haley can make a lot of those in a combat round. He starts to slump to the ground – then, there's a flash of purple light, and he's gone. Jojo's attempted circle-kick lands on air, and he corrects his own balance belatedly.

"Is that all?" he asks, confused.

Ugh, Contingency spells are so annoying.

"Well, assuming that mask dude doesn't come back with half a dozen friends, we gotta keep these guys from escaping."

She's most concerned about snakelady. And the brain thing. At least the dryad seems to… mostly be reasonable.

Elan seems to have come to the same conclusion, because now that the combat is over he's approached her!

"Hi there! Aribeth told us to protect you guys and keep you here. Can you tell us more about what's going on?"

The presumable dryad wipes some sap from her brow and takes some deep breaths. "Plague sucks. Neverwinter wants me to help, stay here for a week then cut some of my hair. I say cool, sounds good. They're rooming me with this yuan-ti, who would really prefer to be anywhere else including Hell, but they need a vial of her blood same way they need my hair. Great, I love rooming with insane witches who want to kill everyone. Also the cockatrice and the brain thing, the cockatrice is chill and I hate the brain but at least it doesn't shriek at me. Six days in, wow, who'd have guessed, there's some kind of spy who told the baddies if they kill me the plague keeps going. Enter you guys." Huff. "Thanks for that, by the way."

(Mouseboy heads back out into the hallway, possibly seeking Aribeth or going to fight more goblins.)

"I'm just glad that we could help! I'm Elan, by the way, what's your name?"

Haley's mostly keeping an eye on any sudden moves the guys who were on Mask Guy's side might make, but she can spare an:

"And I'm Haley. It sounds like you and the cockatrice are here voluntarily, but what about the others?"

Slightly tense smile for Elan. "I'm Desyyra. The cockatrice is basically just a fancy magic chicken, doesn't have much of an opinion if you feed it enough rocks. The brain... gives me the absolute willies and I can't tell what it wants, but it hasn't tried to leave. Unlike her."

And they're supposed to be keeping those three from leaving. It's a shame that all the bubble crystals have been broken.

"Okay, snake lady. Is there anything we can do to convince you to not try to leave this place and trash the city?"

She doesn't really expect an honest answer, but if she can't stall long enough for someone who actually works here to show up, she can at least team up with the monk to knock her out. Probably Aribeth will be annoyed about that, but as far as Haley can tell it's better than her escaping.

 The snakelady glares at her. "Why should I be convinced to die here, fool? Do not think me willing prey!"

Haley narrows her eyes. Nobody mentioned this before, which could mean that the snakefolk woman is insane/misinformed/making this up entirely.

But it could also mean that there's some sort of long con going on.

"This is the first time I've heard that this might be lethal to you guys. Explain, please?"

She's mostly fishing to see how much Not Willing Prey seems to honestly believe her own story.

"I have seen what they will do!" she rants. "The visions cannot be but true... an altar, a knife, cutting the heart from my scaled breast! They say they will only take a little – how old, this lie!"

"Okay, but visions of the future like that pretty much always have some twist to them that means the thing you saw isn't what it looks like in some way!"