“Now, is that any way to speak to an old flame, my love? Don’t pretend you haven’t missed me!”

Hm…as much fun as it is to rile him, she can’t afford to let him stall her while the girl in white does unidentified things to the Wardstone.

“Unfortunately, I don’t have time for a proper reunion, right at the moment. Just let me—“

Lucy raises her head from the Wardstone, examines Minagho, raises her wand, and fires a bolt of brilliant light at her.

Minagho screams.

And Lucy lunges for Staunton and then they are out of there.

“What did you do?” he asks, once they’re safely clear.

“Just threw some purification at her. It was, uh, easier than with the Dretch, because with the Dretch I needed it to actually work.”

“A Lilitu is a powerful kind of demon.”

“Well, there’s a difference between being easy and being cheap. Anyway, let’s get farther away, I don’t think Lilitu get Trace Teleport just off species but I don’t know what else she is.”

He nods emphatically.

SAVAMELEKH GET YOUR IDIOT ASS UP HERE I FOUND SOMETHING THAT SUPER EXTRA NEEDS KILLING

This is not an efficient use of a Sending but Minagho does not, in fact, care. 

Savamelekh does not show up immediately. That would be like saying that Minagho gets to boss him around. But Minagho does not, generally, suffer from that particular delusion, which means that that message coming from her is probably actually something important, so he doesn’t keep her waiting that long.

“So I didn’t get that much more detail on the Wardstone,” she explains to Irabeth a little later, “especially compared to if I had had longer, but I think the people in it are celestials of some stripe—getting all the Abyss out of that Dretch was actually pretty helpful, I think, for identifying Outsider natures? I could be wrong. But they’re definitely Outsiders and they’re definitely not demons.”

“There were angels participating in the first crusade,” Irabeth says slowly, “they left, saying they had a different mission…and then the Wardstones were given to us.”

“That lines up with what I sensed, yeah. The good news is I don’t have to wait until I have enough mana to fix the entire Wardstone in one go, I can cleanse individual angels who have things wrong with them. The bad news is, uh, Minagho was there.” And had some kind of History with Staunton, which she hasn’t pried into yet.

“That’s some pretty awful news.”

“Yeah. It took her a little while to show up, though, she can’t be everywhere at once. Not even every part of the Gray Garrison with access to the Wardstone.”

“Do you expect to be able to consistently accomplish something in the interval before she arrives?”

“…Maybe not, if her reaction time improves.” Which it pretty much has to, right, it’s not like only the good guys are allowed to learn from experience.

“It may be possible for my people to create a distraction. But—not repeatedly.”

“…I…assume you mean because there would be casualties, not just because she would get wise to our tricks.”

“There are always casualties, on the front lines against the demons.”

“Okay, well, for now let’s call that Plan B. Um, is there anything else I could be doing right now, to help.”

“We were hoping to find a more suitable long-term base, when you originally scouted the Grey Garrison,” Irabeth reminds her.

"Right. I would guess that Staunton can, uh, evaluate a place's suitability as a base, if he sees it, for whatever criteria are less obvious than 'is it filled with demons' and 'is it mostly intact.' Because that is the level of obvious that I, personally, am qualified to evaluate. But, like, if you had a map, to show me places that would be good candidates, that'd be helpful? Because I'm not qualified to evaluate that either."

Irabeth can’t help but smile a little bit at that, lips twitching.

“I’m afraid we didn’t happen to have a great many maps on hand when the demons attacked, but I’m sure we can manage.”