A few minutes after Gorthoklek's arrival there is no one else moving in the wreckage around the villa. Cheliax is teleporting most of its emergency response teams out. There are some people walking through the grounds, identifying bodies, disabling trap-spells and unexploded fireballs from a distance with Unseen Servants. 

Carissa has forced herself to stop looking at the unnerving lights. If Asmodeus has decided to kill Zon-Kuthon then good, that's very reasonable of Him, nothing to it. 

Keltham has so many Additional Questions that don't seem like the right time to pester somebody with an endless list of.

"What now?"

There's still at least one emergency response squad nearby.

"I am needed elsewhere," rumbles Gorthoklek.  He addresses the emergency response squad telepathically.  "You.  Obey her."  A claw indicates the Asmodean in question.

Gorthoklek then launches himself into the air, beating his vast black wings in a way that is blatantly insufficient to actually support his weight in any way whatsoever to the eyes of anyone who has even heard of aerodynamics.  When he has risen above the Forbiddance, he teleports out.

Carissa watches him go, which is a mistake, because now she's looking at the lights again. "Is there an area of the villa that's been cleared."

The leader of the squad sends a message, receives a reply.  They've had very little briefing before the assault other than 'don't tip off the guy wearing weird clothes that Cheliax is Evil' which like ???? he's just seen a pit fiend but orders are orders.  That Gorthoklek addressed them telepathically may imply that he didn't mean weird-clothes-man to know that Carissa is obeying them.

"We are fairly sure that one wing was unbreached.  The other option is to begin clearing an area of the imperial palace for visitors.  We're awaiting clarification on that."  Namely hers, apparently.

She's in an evening dress befitting a countess's heir which is covered with blood in a manner also befitting a countess's heir, and her sword is incredibly expensive. She looks tiredly at Keltham. "Confirm: you're uninjured, as far as you know not affected by any mind-altering magic?"

His foot sort of hurts, now that he thinks about it.  Maybe some sort of slightly twisted ankle.  A very light push, a channeling of energy, and the feeling vanishes.  "Uninjured now.  No compulsions, the blocking spell was effective."  If for some reason it helps at all to have him say that.

Oh, so now he'll know exactly what Enchantment Foil does. "The fourth-circle one? We should get someone more senior to identify it for you, I'm still pretty sure it does something besides that but maybe your god gave it to you for that. If it's all right with whoever's in charge," she says to the emergency response team, "I think we'd like to go to the secured wing here so we can talk privately?"

Security made its stand protecting the library, and all the girls who could get to it in time - for lack of anything particularly better to protect, once they realized Keltham wasn't on the premises; might as well try to save Cheliax the cost of a few Raise Dead spells that Keltham would probably insist upon.  The surviving rooms are full of response team, but they could clear out one of the two rooms of the library without much trouble; this does imply going through the library first.

Asmodia was in her bedroom and got swarmed by shadows, after which some summoned monster or another gnawed off all of her legs below her mid-thighs; after Asmodia's body got retrieved, it was dumped in one corner of the library, for use in later Resurrection or Raise Dead + Regenerate.  A dead Security wizard's body has been dropped beside her.

Ione is unconscious, and would ordinarily have been evacced, but, library oracle; if she's got to be in some library that's not a triage center, it might as well be this library?  Ione's body is occupying the largest, best-padded chair in the library, arranged with some detectable amount of respect, hands folded in her lap like a noblewoman.  Things could have gone much worse without that brief warning to put up buffs and ready items.  If Nidal had been able to lock down communications before they could call for reinforcements, or get assassins past the wards without triggering them, it could have been much much worse.

The other girls are - reading, some of them; Paxti is talking too fast to somebody who's tolerating that; one of them is examining a spiky dagger with a gem-studded hilt, not in the manner of somebody who expects to keep it, but somebody who wants to take a good look at it before Security takes it away.

Keltham catches sight of Asmodia's body and after the first horrible gruesome shock is past, there's an odd sense of reassurance.  They wouldn't treat her body like that if death was going to be more than an inconvenience to her, right?  Ione's body is actually more unnerving, if you think of it that way, but maybe she's just unconscious and that's why she's carefully arranged.  Or - can they not resurrect her, if she's not really a worshipper of - "Is Ione okay?"

"Alive. Got a vision, warning us, right before -" Shrug. "People often make full recoveries from having been contacted directly by a god."

...any god but Nethys.  Any god but Nethys.  It could still have been some other god besides Nethys.  And if it was Nethys, there is nothing Keltham can do about it except raise up science and engineering in this world to a point where it can reprogram damaged souls, even if that takes a while -

Is all of this real?  Is this a LARP?  It doesn't make sense to hear about the one god who can destroy mind-states, and then Ione just happens to get touched by that one.  Nethys is supposed to not do that anymore.

"Can you tell if her mind's okay?  Did we temporarily lose anyone else?  Besides Pilar."

Quick messaged updates to Sevar from surviving Security:  Maillol's temporarily dead (and obviously top priority since Maillol himself could cast Raise Dead), Elias Abarco is temporarily dead, Ione Sala did in fact shout out warning of a Nidal attack moments before it happened, there isn't anybody left who could plausibly give orders overriding Sevar's.

Wow. Okay. Minimal lies to Keltham stands; this is, she thinks, good for the project on the whole, it will make Keltham seriously reconsider departing. She imagines they might now be at war with Nidal in which case resurrections will be in short supply. Probably Keltham should be informed they're at war with Nidal even if for some reason that's not happening, it allows for a lot of flex in supplies and resources for the next couple of months. 

"Her Intelligence shows up normal to the spell for checking that. We've been advised not to try to rouse her, just to heal her periodically and let her rest. None of your other girls are dead, most project staff are dead."

Keltham thinks of something he should've remembered earlier.  "I have healing powers left for the day, not sure how much, is that helpful right now - Carissa are you injured."

"I'm injured and have already had enough healing to keep me on my feet."

Security calls "heal" and persons still injured gather around Keltham within his channel distance, expectantly. 

Keltham is expecting a queue of people to be tapped, but once they explain to him that he can channel a burst of positive energy, he'll do that at everyone in his insanely huge healing radius.  (4d6 hit points apiece, 30-foot radius.)

...wow.  Keltham had no idea fourth-circle clerics were that kind of good news.

"I think I can do that again at least once and possibly more," Keltham says, still feeling a bit stunned.

"We could use one more," a surviving Security says. (The girls cannot; 4d6 is enough that the healing magic is running across the surface of their skin patching up papercuts.)

He does it again.

...he is - beginning to understand, from this, from the vision in the Early Judgment - that being a cleric is not entirely about, it isn't only - he doesn't have the words for it.

"Still have at least one repeat left," he says.

...shouldn't he be doing this every evening, to people packed into appropriately dense arrays around him?  Or maybe Cheliax is saturated on healing already, at most other times, if other clerics can also do this sort of thing.

His brain has some brief weird internal fight about the obvious thought that if healing is expensive he should do it, and if it's cheap he shouldn't, but common sense wins there.

"I'll ask if anyone else needs it," says whoever's apparently appointed himself Security spokesperson, and he trots outside to do that (and to inform the injured that the friendly LN cleric is not allowed to know Cheliax is evil.)

"So," says Meritxell, "who's angling for Duchess of Nidal." She's looking at Carissa, though she doesn't quite dare to say it to Carissa with Keltham right here having no reason to think Carissa's in the running for any duchies. 

"Sounds like a miserable job," says Carissa curtly, though, of course, she'd take it.  She is...concerned that Keltham seems to be having a religious experience about healing, that seems very much not ideal.