"I guess that makes sense, yeah. It's going to have to wait until we're back at the inn, I'm assuming you're good with that?"

"Yes, that's fine."

"Got it, Chief."

Twenty paces up ahead, a trio of quasits is buzzing around the heads of four badly injured people with no armor and no weapons.

"Attack, mortal worms!" shrieks one of the quasits. "Or you will face our punishment!"

The quasits disappear. The mortals look around in terror at the spot where they had been, then at Blai's party. One of them balls up their fists and starts running half-heartedly towards the party.

Squint squint — "They're out of my range."

"I've got one Glitterdust left, but if they're smart they're flying in the other direction."

"Try it, we don't have other errands today," sighs Blai, drawing the mace and preparing to either charge at a quasit or try to nonlethally take down a random person.

"Glitterdust."

One quasit and the three civilians near it are now covered in sparkling golden dust. The other two quasits were apparently smart enough to get at least a few paces away from the area.

Blai aims a Burst of Radiance to catch the quasit and any that are close enough to it but out of the Glitterdust's area.

The quasit hisses in pain. "I said, attack!"

It jabs at one of the civilians with its claws and ducks behind some rubble.

Ugh, that's annoying, it totally ruined the shot he was lining up. He runs towards it, trying to get a better angle.

The civilian takes a really half-hearted swing at him.

Yeah-huh. He's actually just gonna ignore the guy, that's not going to drop him unless it happens about thirty more times. He's going to summon a lantern archon to chase the fleeing ones in the air with Detect Evil, and then go see about the one stupid enough to stay in range.

The lantern archon is a little faster than the quasits, and the quasits hadn't gone so far as to miss the show! It can locate the two hiding ones and attempt to drive them back towards the party with its beams of light.

He can't see them, but he and Finnean can still try to shoot at them!

"What those demons are doing is disgusting! Forcing innocent people to be their weapons... come out and fight us face to face like a warrior, cowards!"

One of the invisible quasits is going to attempt to fly away as fast as it can! The other one swoops back towards the ground and attempts to claw one of the civilians to death! (The visible quasit drops.)

Thanks for revealing your approximate position, invisible quasit!

Ow! No fair, it wasn't done—

Second quasit drops. The civilian it was trying to execute is unconscious and bleeding but still alive.

(Meanwhile, Nenio manages to tag the third quasit with a Blinding Ray. Judging by the sounds emanating from the area, it seems her hypothesis that this would impair its movement was correct!)

Blai stabilizes the guy and then goes after the sounds.

The lantern archon will helpfully drive the last quasit towards the ground for him before it disappears! The quasit goes down in another moment.

(The guy who'd been attempting to punch them is going to take this opportunity to attempt to flee.)

...yeah Blai does not actually think he has to chase him down, though he will call, "If you wait there'll be a channel!"

Nope, he's not buying it.

 "I swear, we didn't do anything to help the demons!" says one of the ones who's still around, wrapping her arms tightly around her knees.

"I have no particular reason to think you did anything other than being out and about at a poorly chosen time. Count Arendae, if you would?"