Then, as he's walking up the staircase, he'll sense another fiendish presence, its aura as powerful as the vrolikai's, and his spell will cut out! As with the vrolikai, it's enough to momentarily immobilize him.

(There are two other auras within range of his spell, but their strength is completely buried under the strength of the more powerful aura.)

"- nf," he says helpfully, in case he needs to be quicker about alerting Ser Tirabade et al than he can produce a complete word.

She signals to her forces to halt. "Select, report."

He gets ahold of himself. "Aura's consistent with a vrolikai. I saw one in the maze underground but I do not expect I can replicate the irregular thing that chased it off then on demand."

And if she checks — yes, it's strong enough to stun her too.

A moment later: "Vhane?"

An armored dwarf, wielding a hammer as a weapon and a holy symbol simultaneously, steps forward. 

It stuns him too.

"A vrolikai... might be strong enough to stun him. Not the way I'd bet, though."

"It could be something worse, yes."

"Does anyone in your party have spells that would be useful for scouting?"

"Not if I recall Miss Camellia's loadout for the day correctly."

"My apologies, Select."

Right.

They're currently expecting the Queen's army to arrive in roughly a week. It's possible that Fiducia Rathimus will manage to get ahold of someone capable of and interested in helping sometime in the next week, but it's not currently her best guess. If the Queen's army is sufficient to retake the garrison and handle the issue with the Wardstone, and the demons won't be able to do anything with it in the next week, it would be better to retreat and focusing on rescuing civilians. If the demons will be able to cause irreparable harm within the next week, and there's something they can do to prevent it, retreating would... probably be a mistake, unless they expect it to make success more likely, which seems improbably; the demons will be better-prepared the second time around, and they don't know how soon the demons intend to carry out whatever their plan is.

The Inheritor has been choosing paladins, which means she thinks there's something they can do that will help. If she meant for them to focus solely on disaster relief and rescuing civilians, she would have chosen primarily clerics instead. Probably. Irabeth is not as certain in that as she would like. 

They do have a handful of scrolls of Augury. One, on Irabeth's person. The stakes here are... high enough, she thinks.

"Select Artigas, I would like you to read a scroll of Augury, details to be specified. Will you be able to?" He's a cleric, in theory he should be able to, but in practice she's seen people come up with a truly astounding number of ways to mess this sort of thing up.

Did all of the strike teams still posted at the Wound die to Deskari in person yesterday? And they ran out of Sendings before anyone had the audacity to try an archmage? "I don't have Read Magic today and will need some time to look it over but after that yes."

She hands it over. "The plan I would like you to ask about is for me, some of my forces, and whichever members of your party prefer to join us proceed forward, while Anevia, the remainder of my forces, and anyone from your party who does not prefer to join us returns to the Defender's Heart. The specific forces I intend to bring with me are—" She points out several names, disproportionately the more competent warriors. The dwarf is among them. (The guy who was considering defecting is not.) "Does anyone have proposed modifications to this plan?"

(None of Irabeth's people do.)

Blai looks at his erstwhile party.

Seelah is assuming he's asking her if she's in, not that he's asking her if she wants to suggest changes. Irabeth has been a paladin for a lot longer than she has!

"I'm in. Even if it's dangerous, someone's got to do it."

Nod nod.

As fascinating as death would be, Camellia does not in fact prefer to hasten it. "I will accompany the reserve force. I have two castings of Sleep remaining, and I expect they will be far more useful against threats within the city. ...You might consider any buffs you intend to cast before proceeding, in case that helps the spell to read your intent."

He doesn't have much left but he's got a Divine Favor. Is anybody here not wielding cold iron - Seelah? Is Lann out of arrows? He can blow the Weapons Against and rely on paladins for any more healing that needs doing. He really REALLY wishes he'd had five minutes to tell someone likely to survive the hour about Camellia being a murderess but a-fucking-las, he's not petitionary-prayer-ing about it because he knows She's occupied but he is going to be vaguely distressed in Iomedae's direction. Anyway. The scroll. He sets about reading through it.

(Lann has a few cold iron arrows left; as instructed, he's been focusing on the cultists when available. Most of Irabeth's paladins have cold iron, disproportionately the ones she's proposing press forward.)

This course of action will bring both WEAL and WOE.

"Weal and woe," he reports.

That's as good as can be expected, under the circumstances. She orders the forces to split up as planned, and directs everyone to form up for buffs.

And then they can proceed forward.

Hey magic angel sword do you have anything to say here or should he just plan on dying fighting.