Jay, who has just stolen a terrified pirate's dropped sword and dropped it point-first on another pirate, would like to report that paladins are AWESOME and he feels SO COOL RIGHT NOW. 

That's very nice but Laila is slightly busy yelping and haphazardly swinging her staff through a doorway in an attempt to avoid being stabbed. 

This is also why she doesn't notice Ashoc is doing something. 

A hop, a skip, a leap, and he's hauling Laila out of the doorway by the belt, eyes glowing an ominous blue. 

"m͙̟̺̥̎̓͂i͈̜̬͔̭̗̞v͈ͦ̆̈́͢i̺͙̭̗͓̠̯̍̀͊͗ͨ̇́͡rͥ̒̓ ͯ̔̚҉̩͍m̶̫͈̤̽́̚̚f̮̻̗̮̮͕͉̉ͪ͝ḷ̭͙̺̟̥̂ͨ̓ͭq̳ͥ̃̎͑ͅy̪ͩͦ̈͐̋̓ͧr͈̪̓̔͐ͧͅw̼̮͍͔͎̳͓ͧͧ̔," he says, like those are words. 

Yes okay right she's a wizard she's not supposed to be hitting people with sticks what did he - "What did you just say??" 

The entire bottom twenty feet of the tower is engulfed in darkness. The darkness is audibly whispering and rustling. 

There are slurping noises, and then screams. 

Ashoc shuts the door. 

"What was that?" 

"The crowd," he reports cheerfully, "is controlled." 

And also the wizard totally did not get stabbed which is good because he feels like Serra would probably be mad about that and not in a fun way. 

The screaming of the devoured is audible through the door, but with the door shut they can also hear the slightly different screaming of the terrified from up top. 

Man why does she feel like they're super the bad guys right now. 

Evil pirates, Laila, she reminds herself firmly. They kill people, like, constantly. They literally just tried to kill me thirty seconds ago and I opened with something completely nonlethal. 

He helped. He is so helpful. 

Tail-wag. 

That's sort of cute, in a deeply concerning way. 

Shortly enough the screaming dies, however, and the darkness seeping out from the windows fades. 

The sound of slightly slower, more relaxed flapping heralds the return of Serra, with Jay flitting excitedly around her head in loops. 

Serra looks much happier, having successfully accomplished the simple, straightforwardly Good task of killing several Evil pirates. It's so nice to just be able to tell. 

"Success?" 

"No signalling appears to be in evidence, so I think yes!" 

Jay zooms over to his wizard and fussily brushes her hair back into place. She got way too close to a fight, in his opinion. Not that she's useless in a fight relative to an average human, exactly, he has definitely seen her lay out random rude townspeople, but she's a lot harder to fix than he is if she gets stabbed. 

That's a fair concern, Laila grumbles mentally, petting her familiar soothingly as he digs his claws into her shoulder and nitpicks her hair, but also, I am an Adventurer, we get in fights, it's like, the whole deal. 

Fights are admittedly pretty cool. He did just enjoy that one quite a bit. 

"Ashoc behaving himself?" adds Serra, frowning balefully at her ostensible apparently-teleporting prisoner. 

Doooooes she tell the paladin about the terrifying chaos darkness? 

... The terrifying chaos darkness did totally save her life, arguably. She could plausibly have held the doorway as a chokepoint with judicious application of firebolts once she'd got her bearings and only gotten slightly stabbed, and "slightly stabbed" is a lot less of a problem with a paladin right there, but six to one would've been a lot and Ashoc really had helped. Even if he'd helped in an incredibly alarming way. 

"Entirely!" she chirps. "He was very helpful and did not stab me even a little." 

Well, shoot, now he's tempted. 

"That's ... good." 

Laila isn't evil, she checked, so she has no reason at this time not to take her word for it. 

Their primary goal achieved, Laila glances at the sky, wishes not for the first time that she could cast sending, and sends Jay on his way.