Anevia and Horgus have not woken up in the last five minutes. Seelah has donned her armor. Camellia has not murdered any of them.

"Lann remains interested in looking for the purported angel sword."

"It's probably just a barbarian legend, but if you're set on looking for it I suppose I would be willing to help."

Seelah looks indignantly at her. "These people are our allies! Just because their houses aren't as nice as the ones in Kenabres doesn't mean they're lying."

"They wouldn't have to be lying to be operating on thin information, Ser, and they might be. But the sword could be real and if real is probably valuable."

Nod. "Still, no sense in wasting time. Lead on."

Blai nods and beckons Lann over. (And wonders if Camellia is working on actively circling up to evade arrest later or something, but there's no helping that; anything powerful enough to help her is powerful enough that he'd be putting someone else's life at risk having her sit out.)

Here's Lann! "The stories of our ancestors say that they left it near Lariel's grave. —That's where we were looking for it when we first met you."

"If the location is known so precisely why hasn't it been collected before?"

"It's probably under one of the big piles of rubble. Not a lot of people want to dig through a pile of rocks just to find a sword that they're scared might burn them."

Well, it's not like Blai didn't know that they weren't throwing particularly capable adventures who do capable adventurer things, he supposes. He will bap everybody with Guidances and start hauling rocks.

It's just a short walk back to Lariel's grave, and then there are plenty of rocks to go around. He has to refresh the Guidance several times as he digs through rocks, rocks, more rocks, even more rocks—

This rock looks much like the rest, but when he moves it out of the way there's something shiny and metallic under it.

"I may've spotted something." Will it tug loose?

The moment he touches it, the metal begins to glow, starting with the hilt of the sword and expanding in an instant to fill the room. His companions are no longer visible, and the columns of the room stand intact, with none of the piles of rubble he was searching through a moment earlier.

 Lariel's grave, too, is gone. In its place, Blai can see an angel, badly injured, lying on the ground, hand gripping a sword; in the same moment, he is the angel, and through the angel's eyes he can see a crowd of people, people he had come down from Heaven to protect, standing around him and closing off all escape. The wound on his chest, or perhaps the angel's, is bleeding again. To one side of him is a girl, terribly wounded, and a dreamlike sense of certainty tells him both that every other person he can see betrayed him, tricked him, left him to die the final death of an outsider, and that this girl alone fought by his side so that he could have even the tiniest chance of victory. The others jeer at them, jeer at him. They will die here, they say, and he will have bought nothing by his sacrifice.

There is anger burning in the angel's chest, fear twisting in the angel's stomach. He is running out of time, and he knows it. The same sense Blai would normally have for his own spells tells him that he has a healing spell left, a weak one. It would probably not be enough to save the girl, even if she managed to escape. It would certainly not be enough to save him. Or, with his other hand, he could take his sword, call on its magic, and try to strike down the traitors. But even if he could somehow kill every last one of them, he knows there is another power, far stronger than any of them, hiding somewhere far beyond his reach, and it is too late for him to defeat it. Either path will probably be futile, but inaction will certainly be.

The pain is immaterial, the mockery is immaterial. Annihilation of the soul is material and getting his ally out makes that happen only half as much - wicked people being free to kill again matters and cutting some of them down would make them less effective at it - Iomedae, what would You have of me - She doesn't answer, of course.

When Sarenrae smote Gormuz, this, he is given to understand, was a mistake, even though they really had been corrupted by Rovagug's influence, really had slain Her herald -

- he heals the girl.

Blai can only watch, now, as he relives the angel's memory. The angel's healing staunches the blood coming out of the girl's side, though the wound itself remains open. She tries to get to her feet, but stumbles. A dozen conversations pass through the angel's memory in an instant — the girl before him, asking if it's true that the angels are departing on a mission to stop the demons forever — an army of angels, swearing an oath of service — a hundred mortals, stargazers and paladins and repentant bandits and Sarkoran refugees, standing side-by-side in that first desperate attempt to drive back the hordes of the Abyss—

Don't waste your strength healing me, says the girl, your mission is more important, and it would bring her comfort to know that he would have died regardless, but every extra sentence of communication to her costs Heaven another drop of its resources, and Heaven will need all the resources it can bring to bear for what is to come.

A shadow emerges from the other wall of the cave, and with the angel's last strength it tries to strike at it, but its blows are too slow and too weak to do anything but cause it pain. In his last moment, as the shadow taunts him, he plunges the sword into the rock, willing as he does that its power remain until someone arrives who will wield it for the cause of Heaven.

The angel's eyes close, and Blai's eyes open, and he's standing in the half-collapsed room once again, surrounded by his companions. The sword is gone, but in its place Blai has something that feels almost like an extra orison, with a somatic component almost like the motion to draw a sword.

Seelah has fallen to her knees in prayer.

"That — you found it!"

"- where did it go - the -" He fumbles through the sword-drawing somatic in case that materializes it somehow.

The image of Lariel's sword appears in his hand, made of pure golden light, and bathes the area six paces in every direction in a warm glow for an instant. Blai feels very slightly hardier, as though someone had just cast a Virtue on him, and his companions are blinking at him like something happened to them, as well. He has a sense that the light could be used offensively too, the same way it's harder to fight when you're facing into the sunset, and that just like a Prayer it can help his allies and harm his enemies at the same time.

"What was that? For a moment there it looked like you were an angel!"

"I'm - not, the sword's doing something - I had an entire vision of Lariel's death, why would there be a vision embedded in the sword! -" Is the lightsword still there or does it vanish after a round?

The sword vanishes, but the Virtue-like sensation remains even after it's gone.

"Heaven has blessed you, Select Blai. If I had to guess, the vision could've been... something Lariel wanted you to know? But I've never had a head for theology." She laughs.

"Perhaps Heaven had more budget to spare at the time?" he wonders faintly. The sensation of choice in the vision was probably an illusion. Lariel did something and Blai - was steered that way in its grip and rationalized it, or guessed correctly what a real angel would have done and would've found himself confused if he'd gotten it wrong, something like that.