This attack has been an absolute clusterfuck.  Herding demons is usually like that, but they actually had a plan!  And somehow Deskari managed to fuck it up in the first three rounds!  Apparently someone sent an extremely powerful outsider… at least that’s the common assumption.  A report by a succubus smart enough to stay blended in as a human once they realized what was going on has clued her in otherwise, and another report by another demon smart enough to survive the initial plaza events provided even more hints.  

Her current theory is some freak variant of an obscure type of pseudo-caster.  Notably, they would be a mortal according to this guess, and as a pseudo-caster wouldn’t have all that strong Will despite their raw attack power, so Minagho is willing to bet some other demon’s lives on testing it. 

So she has 4 (it would be 5 but one bitch bailed once she realized what they were planning) succubi lined up to teleport right on top of the ‘heavenly’ visitor and dominate the shit out of them.  She timed it so that any longer duration fifth circle spells (assuming that’s what they were getting at the cathedral) will just be expiring.

She just needs to cast a few buff spells on the succubi to help their odds as much as possible.  She goes to cast her first buff…

Tanya is above the building and off to the wrong side and has to move in order to hit the right exterior wall, which together with the charging time means the target gets to cast its three-second spell.

It also means that when a bolt of light sufficient to seriously wound Deskari slams through the wall of the fort, she is moving much faster than the leisurely 100 kph she has mostly kept to.

She immediately begins charging up another spell. If the mana signature is still present in a second, she'll hit it again; if not, she'll target the place it was previously at.

There are now 5 mana signatures trying to teleport, the strong one she just shot and 4 others!

Fuck, fuck, fuck.  She barely survived, she just needs a few seconds and she’s out of here, but she knows the attacker rarely allows for that long between attacks.

She fired off the first shot the moment the mana signature disappeared. She can't confidently recognize the local teleport spell signature yet; she was banking on the target not running yet and it looks like she got lucky.

But the enemy will surely try to teleport now, even if they don't leave the city, so she's not going to charge for a whole several seconds; she'll just fire every half-second or so until all the mana signatures disappear, and then fire some more just in case. And shoot a precious enchanted bullet, timing it to explode behind the targets and hopefully fling them out of the building and/or disrupt their casting.

One of the signatures teleports faster and completes a teleport out before the explosive bullet lands.  The strongest mana signature and one other are somehow, impossibly, nearly unmoved by the explosion, seemingly deliberately moving just a slight bit before the explosion connects.  The other three signatures are flung by the explosion, but maybe not quite as far as Tanya hoped.  One loses their teleport, the other two manage to keep teleporting.

The follow-up optical attacks eliminate the strongest signature, but have no effect on the other signatures, with two of them completing their teleports.

Yeah, she wasn’t planning on going along with Minagho’s suicide mission, and just needed to bluff her well enough that Minagho didn’t realize she was planning on bailing.  Which meant she had a teleport readied for when the angel or whatever the fuck it is got the drop on them first.

He spots them a moment before Tanya.

(Over a message): “Two succubi, near where you were about a second ago, should be already out of range for a dominate.”

They shouldn’t have any chance of succeeding at mind control through his protection from evil, but he’s ready with his suppress charms and compulsion just in case.

Keep accelerating, up up zigzag up while spinning around. Two aerial targets with heat-only shielding, two shots each through heart and forehead - another tumbling through the air where it was thrown by the explosion, same treatment - does the room look exploded enough, are there mana signatures in the rest of the building she can go after or should she keep collapsing this wing, she is not flying close enough to confirm any kills on targets that have mind control.

The succubi that teleported up die quickly, probably just the headshots would have been enough.  The succubus on the ground somehow manages to dodge one bullet but goes down quickly enough to another.

The room she attacked is pretty throughly exploded!  The rest of the Garrison has lots of mana signatures now.  Tanya’s attack seems to have kicked the proverbial ant nest and now lots of demons are trying to escape, and casting spells to enable that (making their mana signature nice and visible)!  Some can teleport out, others are running outside, if she’s paying enough attention she might notice some slipping away through some underground passage.

“I believe the two succubi I saw teleport up are quite thoroughly dead, and I should be competent to see through illusions the majority of the time, but preemptive evasive maneuvers are the right choice, you don’t need my spotting for this, and it seems the demons, at least briefly, finally managed the optimal response to you, so caution is reasonable.”

He’s stating the obvious, but best to make sure they are on the same page.

There is no follow-up attempt at countering Tanya, just panicked demons and cultists trying to flee, and obligingly using lots of spells that Tanya can target the mana signatures of.  If any demons or cultists figure out they should avoid casting spells to be avoided being targeted, they apparently don’t tell their “allies”.  (Someone else casting a spell is someone else making themselves a target.)

Tanya can only hit a few mana signatures before the others teleport away; it takes time to build up enough power to penetrate the stone wall, and she can only target two sides of the building and it takes more time to fly around it. Then she hits the locations where she last sensed them, in case of stragglers.

The ones fleeing on foot she can mostly snipe as she goes. Once she notices the underground passage she spends a few seconds on collapsing the entrance.

She can't keep up this rate of fire forever but she won't have to: shock and awe is order of the day. It works wonders both on fleeing enemies and on prospective employers during an interview.

It doesn’t take long before there are no detectable mana signatures or visible demons left to kill in the Garrison.

Throughout the rest of the city it seems the demons have finally learned not to be visibly a demon anywhere open to the sky.  There are still occasional mana signatures of spells being cast, but no clear way to discern if they are from allied or demonic spellcasters.

Terendelev is visible below in her natural draconic form, flying between groups of the city’s defenders and coordinating them in clearing the city building by building.

Terendelev can fly up if she wants to talk. If Jon has no other suggestions Tanya can keep overwatch for a while. Today she is Kenabres' benevolent fairy in the sky.

The Lord may be on the side of the bigger battalions but Tanya prefers the company of the bigger guns. The Rhine proved the king of the battlefield mightier than the queen, and if he is missing in action she'll just have to substitute.

Then over the next few hours Tanya will occasionally have a demon or two to shoot as the city’s defenders gradually sweep the city, isolating it building by building and killing any hidden demons, or at least driving them out where the “Angel” can kill them.

As the pace slows, he takes the time to think carefully, reviewing the full set of his interactions with Tanya.  He also runs through language associations within her language, making cautious inferences on how much she and her culture already know about a variety of key subjects.  

Discussing the bigger picture with Tanya shouldn’t be urgent on the scale of hours but it is on the scale of days, and she has at least a few major misunderstandings and confusions to unpack.

Eventually, he says something other than bland tactical advice (it’s been over two hours since they cleared the Garrison, 5 minutes since the last building clearing drove out a demon for Tanya to kill, and likely 10 minutes before the next building-clearing drives a demon out).

 “Would it be too distracting to talk about the broader context now?  I’m fine waiting, nothing should be too urgent on the scale of hours, and I can speak up if you’re about to make a critical mistake regarding the broader context… but I think it is critical for you to at least start to understand on the scale of days…”

Multitasking is a key skill for mages. Now that the battle's winding down Jon will naturally want to keep her mission from being a cakewalk, to make the best use of his paid time as an observing consultant / interviewing superior.

"Please go ahead; it won't be too distracting." She will not make any critical mistakes.

“First I wanted to apologize for trying to cram in the list of Gods earlier… kind of a rookie mistake unconsciously forgetting how uncommon eidetic memory is in mortal humans.”  He says that last part with a slight shift in tone to indicate a minor joke.

“To start with one point that will contextualize a lot of others… Have you noticed the discrepancy between this planet’s technological level and the technology I am familiar with?”

A socratic question format should help to engage and also set the trend which might be necessary as he edges near knowledge guarded by treaty which he is less sure Tanya already knows.  He has been carefully mentally reviewing techniques for communicating with mortals.  (Outsiders do not need Charisma for their spell like abilities, although offensive abilities scale in potency off of it, but Jon’s abilities are defensive and utility.)

On one hand, Tanya is relieved to be facing bog-standard interview techniques; she's interviewed more than her share of candidates (in each of her lives) and knows all the right answers. On the other hand, it is in fact impressive (and a bit intimidating) that the senior employees have eidetic memory! 

And so he of course leads with a memory test. The first question is always a softball; she doesn't even need to surreptitiously check her orb recordings (but she prepares to look up the ones with the god-list, obviously). 

"You have been careful to describe magic, technology, and abilities such as flight speed as 'this planet's," she answers promptly. "You stated that you were aware of different rates of," mental sigh, "divine intervention and consequently common magic on different planets, and different prices at which knowledge is sold to them, implying technological differences persist over time." Despite interplanetary communication? Whatever, she's not trying to make sense of it right now, just repeating what he said. "You did not ask me to clarify some things I mentioned - different kinds of guns and bombs, artillery, AA fire - but affirmed they did not exist on this planet. Of course that is not nearly enough to conjecture what other technology you may be familiar with, and I'm afraid I cannot read your or Terendelev's body language so I do not know if either of you meant to show surprise at some point."

“Yes, that’s correct!”

He was worried she’d forgotten, they’ve had a lot of combat!  This is also a positive sign for her remembering her planet’s science and technology enough to help reproduce some of it here.

“The divine intervention treaty limits are quite steep around information, and inclusive of proxies.  I count as such a proxy.   And they are inclusive of the Gods’ divine domains and entire Outer Plane.  So, for example, as I was called out of Heaven, any information I share with you not already known to you or more generally to this planet will be very expensive against a treaty-moderated budget allowed to Heaven in general and Iomedae specifically.  Sharing well known information is cheaper, sharing more obscure information is more expensive, sharing ultra-secret information is nearly as expensive as sharing entirely unknown information.  Some topics, such as magic or technology with destructive or transformative potential, are more expensive than others.  I’ve been trying to gauge your level of knowledge to avoid making Heaven liable for extreme costs.  In general, around certain topics I might phrase things as questions, or phrase things in terms of what is known on this planet, to minimize the cost.”

Be an active communicator.

“What to cover first… just to gauge your priorities (not as a treaty avoidance measure): Would you like more explanation or examples for the motivations of this treaty?  Would you like more explanations or examples of what this treaty covers?  Would you like me to focus on how this is relevant to you and how you actually have some extremely lucrative opportunities here?  Or, I actually had some questions about your planet I could get into…. To be clear, I intend to cover all these topics, just whatever would help you understand best.”

Active communication!

What a long-winded way to say that as an interviewer he needs to evaluate her knowledge without contaminating the results! ...maybe this is a politeness thing, attributing things to the gods as a way of saying 'unfortunately my hands are tied here'? She gives him a professional smile. (He is on her shoulder but they can see each other in one of her rear-view 'mirrors'; her orb includes excellent wrap-around-vision functionality.)

"I believe I have a working understanding of the motivations for the treaty." The correct answer is to talk first about how she can benefit the company not how she can profit from them, she's not sure which one the 'lucrative opportunities' is meant to signal and it's best to avoid looking greedy. Talking about her home planet is obviously important and will happen no matter what she says and is also an opportunity to demonstrate her value to them, so - "if I cannot ask you about other planets, questions about mine seem like a good place to start if you can point out which things are most different from this one."

He doesn’t think she could actually understand the treaty already if she’s coming from a background of ‘no real Gods’.  …he should say that out loud, in words.

“I’m going to just note this confusion now, the treaties doesn’t make sense in absence of understanding the Gods’ motivations goals and values. And my understanding was that your knowledge of them is, at best, distant legends of past divine activity, or, at worst, entirely fictional and wrong.  So I suspect your ‘working understanding’ is badly wrong… I intend to try to explain properly in more detail.”

He should make sure she doesn’t feel bad (or worse, threatened), he’s recalled some worrying things about how religions can develop under minimal divine intervention and other confusing circumstances.

“It is completely reasonable to not know anything at all about this, especially considering your background!”

“But anyway, let’s discuss your planet first.  So… I may have actually heard of your planet ‘Earth’, it’s not one I’ve specialized in knowledge in… the most recent thing I read about it was a major industrialized war between the colonial empires centered on the continent of ‘Europe’.  This war started… 8… no 9 Earth years ago… actually I don’t have the exact date, sorry, less than 10 years ago, minimum 8.  I recall specifically the comment that with a better knowledge of writing treaties, the European powers could have avoided the war, an assassination in one minor country triggered smaller countries to go to war which drew in bigger countries via treaties until the entire continent was at war.  Does that sound like your planet?”

He’ll leave out the incongruous detail of Tanya’s magic and see if she comments on it.

Damn it, she was overconfident. These people are real believers, she has to remember that! Talking like you can divine the mind of God without being properly instructed on the matter is sure to be a huge faux pas!

And then all of that is driven completely out of her head by the next thing he says.

They already know about Earth? Observing it like good little green men, refraining from actual contact - probably acting in secret - 

She can go home - 

Nine years?! She's been gone for four years?! 

Think think speed all the way up think think think. What does he actually know or thinks he knows? Is he invested in one side of the war on Earth, does he represent a whole organization that might be interested in the war's outcome - she already introduced herself as a Germanian citizen and anyone who knows Earth knows an aerial mage means an army officer and a combatant - he may have recognized her name, even if he hadn't known it yesterday he could have read her file during those ten minutes or for all she knows during the past hour, she has no idea what kind of communications and information-storage systems they have and it was ridiculous of her to assume the swords-and-longbows were typical of an interstellar civilization, damn it, is that what he was getting at by asking what technology she thought he knew about?

...

She is at a complete disadvantage here. If he wanted something nefarious, he could get it by arranging for her to have an accident or just steal her orb in her sleep or mind-control her himself. Terendelev might be honest and might be grateful to Tanya but she can't actually stop an industrial civilization from getting what they want unless they want to be bound by her word and local law. Treating Jon as an enemy would mean burning all her bridges and she's likely to promptly lose that fight. She has to bet on him not coercing her because the alternative likely isn't winnable.

What does he actually want? Why didn't he say he knew about Earth before, why did he say it now, why not where Terendelev can hear?

It's been several seconds since she responded and she has to say something but she doesn't feel any closer to knowing what to say.

"Please give me a few moments to think," yes good filler buying time now what.