does he have his holy symbol, he could stand to channel some energy maybe

He does have his holy symbol! He can channel energy! If this does anything to the wound, it's not anything he can feel.

"Hey, somebody!" (A different voice this time; this one belongs to a woman, and her Hallit has some sort of accent to it.) "We got a wounded fighter! Can we get a healer over here? Someone with more than just a Lay On Hands, I'm pretty sure he just channeled."

 "My, my, would you look at this?" (Male, different from the first voice, with a Mendevian upper-class accent, if Blai's met enough Mendevians to distinguish.) "But why would you drag a wounded fighter into the middle of the festival square? Couldn't he be carted off somewhere else, like... oh I don't know... an infirmary? Or an accommodating ditch?"

"Make room, everyone step back! Now, what's the matter? What happened to him?" (An elderly man comes into view, wearing his own symbol of Iomedae, with a stern expression; when he sees Blai's holy symbol, his face softens.) "That wound looks nasty — you said a channel didn't touch it?"

 "Yes, Prelate."

"Lesser Restoration." 

The pain in Blai's chest slightly recedes, and the worst of the bleeding stops, but the chest wound is still there and still painful.

He gulps slightly more air as the pain/oxygen tradeoff improves. ...he's never actually had Tongues cast on him, so his question is not "is this more like Tongues or more like Comprehend Languages", but: is it like Comprehend Languages? If it is he can't expect anyone to understand him in return. What does he have in his spell slots, is it still the same day - or has he been unconscious for all the intervening dawns -

He has the same spells that he remembers preparing at dawn this morning. If he's already expended any of them, they seem to have been... replenished, somehow? (Any food or water that he's created has disappeared.)

His subjective experience of the translation effect feels subtly different from and more comprehensive than a Comprehend Languages.

Maybe it's Tongues. "Thank you," he rasps. "Where am I?"

"You're in Kenabres," says the man who healed him. "Market Square, near the Inheritor's temple."

 "We found him barely alive outside the city walls," says the man who called for a healer.

The man who healed him frowns. "The enemy usually doesn't stray this close to the city, and my healing magic could barely touch your wound. Someone fetch Terendelev!"

(There are noises like an argument in the background, though it's still a little hard to focus on them, and then someone takes off running.)

"How did - I get to - Kenabres -" He's been there, once, when he was assigned to escort a Chelish fourth-circle party around the rim of the Wound for the teleport locations they would aspirationally be able to use in another few fights, but not for long.

"You don't recall why you're here?" says the man who healed him in a suspicious tone. "Where were you before?"

"Menador in Cheliax."

The man seems to find that incredibly suspicious. He squints at Blai for a couple moments.

"...Regardless, bearing weapons is not permitted during the festival, even if you are a fellow servant of the Inheritor. We will return your mace after the festival."

One of the crusaders attempts to pick up Blai's mace.

"- I don't think I'm - in festival attending condition - anyway - is there somewhere out of the way I can -"

"Terendelev is on her way now, she'll be able to heal you if anyone can."

It's then that a silver-haired woman stops by his side. "My dear Prelate — please, for the sake of the festivities, stop interrogating this poor man. He has been through enough already. Heal."

The wound in his chest closes and the pain recedes, leaving only the dull ache of a mostly-healed injury.

"There. You may rest in the Temple of the Inheritor if you would prefer to avoid the festivities, but either way, please be careful. This wound is no ordinary injury, and no weapon I have heard of in Mendev or Menador could have inflicted it. I have managed to get you back on your feet, but even my magic cannot heal you fully. Sooner or later, its pain may return."

"Thank you very much, Lady Terendelev. Which way is the temple, please?" That he did not visit last time he was here.

"It's just a short walk, right over there."

 "I can show him the way, ma'am," says the man who first called for a healer. Now that Blai can get a closer look at him, he seems to be a halfling, dressed in the same uniform as the rest of the Mendevian crusaders here.

He can probably get up now. Is his mace still on his person since he declined the festival invitation?

The man who ordered it taken is looking at him so suspiciously about it, but doesn't seem to feel like he has any grounds on which to overrule Terendelev.

Then he will go to a temple of Iomedae for the first time.

As he reaches the steps of the temple, the ground begins to shake. A few of the festival-goers shake off their magical disguises; vrocks swoop down from the sky; babaus appear seemingly out of nowhere. On the other side of the square there's something that might be a Vrolikai.

All of them start to attack the festival-goers, targeting civilians and crusaders more-or-less indiscriminately, save that all of them are steering clear of Terendelev. None of them are attacking Blai or his companion, at least not yet.

(Areelu Vorlesh had not been planning on calling down the attack quite this early, but needs must.)

That's - unusually bold, an unusually strong force - if they were holding a festival they can't've had any warning -

- he's not going to have much chance to be suspicious of how they aren't targeting him before he charges into the thick of it to drop a Prayer wherever it looks like it will go farthest.

One of the crusaders who sees this flashes him a grateful smile and then returns to attempting to smite the babau she's engaged with. 

Some of the demons notice him casting and decide he looks like a great next target! (Sure, they're not supposed to, but 'following extremely clear orders' is a bit of an advanced skill for demons.) Others of the demons notice him casting and decide they'd rather go after some squishy civilians rather than anyone who might possibly land a hit on them! This brimorak has apparently decided to ignore all of the actual people in favor of lighting random structures on fire!

Across the square, Terendelev is firing off Flame Strikes where the demons are clumped together, and the man who healed him seems to be holding his own against a Vrock. Most of the other crusaders are not doing nearly so well; the Prayer helps, but there's only so much can do for someone who's not even a strong enough paladin to be immune to fear.

There's a buzzing sound in the sky, and some sort of dark black cloud approaching the square from above.

IS THAT ACTUALLY FUCKING DESKARI okay whatever is going on here his job is to make sure the smallest possible number of demons, whether that number includes actually fucking Deskari or not, gets past the local defenses and disperses into the world. Step this way so he doesn't blind any crusaders and - Burst of Radiance - and then the mace comes out.

The crusaders appreciate this! They take the opportunity to take down a few more of the now-blinded demons.

Also, yes, it is in fact Deskari, accompanied by a cloud of locusts.

"Behold, crusader gods, behold, Iomedae, you poor Imposter," he says, his voice loud enough to shake the festival banners. "Your city will fall to me. Your followers will feed my hunger."

It's really very confusing that this is happening after the closure of the Worldwound but maybe Deskari just doesn't need such conveniences. He focuses on the adjacent demons. They aren't all dead and that's a problem.

However the demons got here, they seem no less vulnerable to being hit with a mace! This one is dead now. This one is trying to stab him — no, now it's running away? This dretch was already injured and goes down in a single hit.

"Deskari, Lord of Locusts, LEAVE. MY. CITY."

Terendelev moves like she's casting a spell, but when she completes the gesture, she's transformed herself into a dragon, as tall as the nearby buildings with a wingspan to match. She takes off towards Deskari, breathing a cloud of gas at him and his locusts—

And Deskari swings it at her once, twice, and she falls, her head cleaved straight from her body.

"Let the feast begin."

Wow, you hear about high-level fights being settled in a round or two but that was - yeah exactly that thing that just happened, he guesses. Is anyone already on prying a scale off for a Resurrection later, she's got to be worth the Arch-Healer's attention. If nobody's obviously doing it he'll maneuver his way through the demons to attempt it himself. Actually he'll do it even if someone is obviously doing that.

No one is currently doing that! He can push his way over some dead bodies and past the ongoing fighting towards Terendelev's body. (The demons seem to have converged on 'don't attack the guy with a mace who's actually managed to kill anyone.')

As he's peeling off the scales, the halfling from before — changes course and beelines directly for Blai, for some reason? He glances nervously between Blai, Deskari, and Terendelev's corpse.

"What're you going to do — fight or flee? If fleeing's your plan, let me help you out, I've got a scroll here with a good protective spell!"

(To someone with even the most basic familiarity with scrolls, the size and amount of ink suggests that it's clearly a first-circle spell, whatever it is.)

What in the fuck has possibly possessed this halfling to think this is an appropriate time to approach Blai with """a good protective spell""". The only first circle spell with a name that takes longer to say than that which Blai can think of is Refined Improvised Weapon. "Be about something more useful," he snaps. Scale off? Scale in pocket? Back to fighting?

Scale off! Scale in pocket!

Halfling flinches, reaches for ... a crossbow, apparently, but a pretty weird-looking crossbow? ... then apparently thinks better of it and ducks out of Blai's view.

At this point the demons solidly seem to be winning. There are a few crusaders still fighting, but they're clearly outnumbered by the demons, and no one seems to have any sort of plan for what to do about Deskari.

Yes, well, this is a fine way to die. Possibly he will wake up in three weeks in a temple with Arch-healer Naima standing over him and then go about his Convention business, if it's all that important. If it is not he will wake up in some afterlife and the more demons he gets the more likely it's Heaven.

Deskari has started swinging his enormous scythe at the square itself. Giant crevasse near this building, giant crevasse near this wagon, moderately sized crevasse near this banner—

—giant crevasse right where Blai was standing—

When Blai comes to, he's at the bottom of an enormous crevasse, at least fifty feet below the surface. He can still hear occasional shouts, but most of the noise from above has been replaced with the drone of locusts. 

Blai himself is remarkably uninjured, for someone who just fell fifty feet.

That's weird. He has... mysterious Feather Fall in addition to mysterious Tongues? But at least he has a channel left if he needs it. And Light. He lights up his holy symbol.

With the help of the Light, he can make out the contours of the cavern he's in. It extends all of about fifteen feet in the one direction, but much farther in the other direction, past the point where the tunnels fade into darkness again. 

"Hello?" a woman calls from farther down the tunnel when he casts the Light. "Is someone there? We could use some help over here!"

"Coming!" He hurries forward.

Down the hallway is a Garundian woman wearing a holy symbol of Iomedae, standing over a pile of rocks. She gives him a relieved smile when she sees his own holy symbol.

"Thank the Inheritor. There's someone trapped under these rocks, but I'm not strong enough to move them myself, can you give me a hand?"

He nods, gives each of them a Guidance, and sets about hauling.

Working together, they can uncover an injured woman in leather armor. She smiles weakly at them. "Thanks for the rescue."

She moves to get up, but winces. "Damn it, I think my leg's broken."

"Do you need a Moderate or just a Light?"

"A Light will get me back on my feet, at least. I think I'd need a Moderate to be at most of my strength, but I don't know what else is down here, it might be best to save it."

He nods and burns the Forbid Action for it. "Cure Light Wounds."

"Thanks for the help." She clambers to her feet. "I'm Anevia Tirabade, of the Eagle Watch." (Wince.)

"And I'm Seelah, paladin of Iomedae." She looks at Blai expectantly.

(Both Anevia and Seelah are speaking Hallit with an accent; Seelah's is more Katapeshi than anything else, and Anevia's is completely unrecognizable.)

"Select Blai Artigas. Would that we were meeting under better circumstances."

"You can say that again. I don't know what the city is going to do without Terendelev."

"That is among many things I do not know," he agrees. "I got a scale off of her, in case the Arch-Healer comes by at some point."

"The who now? It'd be worth the cost of the diamond, if we can get a cleric to come all the way out here, but if the demons are smart they'll have planned for that."

"...the Arch-Healer Naima Cottonet? My understanding is that she's some kind of arcane healer and not a cleric."

Probably whoever that is is really important where he's from? It would be great if she were actually a powerful caster and interested in helping out with the Wound, but even odds he's from some backwater where being able to cast a Restoration makes you some kind of hero out of legend.

"'Fraid I've never heard of her."

"I suppose not everyone can have. If more people may have fallen we should perhaps move along to find them."

Nodding all around.

A little further down the tunnel, a half-elven woman, covered in blood, is standing over a mutilated body, holding a rapier.

"Who's there?"

"Relax, friend, we're not demons or cultists! We fell down here when Deskari attacked. I'm Seelah, and this is Anevia and Select Blai. We're looking for a way to the surface."

She visibly relaxes, allowing her eyes to linger for a moment on Seelah and Blai's holy symbols. "I am ever so glad to hear that. I am Camellia, and I too fell victim to Deskari's... rampage."

...is there blood on the rapier?

Not at this moment! There's definitely blood on her hands, though, and blood on her outfit, and blood in her hair...

"Are you injured, miss?"

"No, Select, I was thankfully spared the worst harm of the fall." She glances at the mangled body of the man beside her. "Alas, I cannot say the same for him. I tried to heal him, but... I fear I was too late."

"You have quite a lot of blood on you, miss."

She sighs. "Yes, I am afraid I will most likely need to replace this entire outfit."

"Kenabres is overrun by demons, and you're worried about your outfit?"

"If you are not injured," says Blai, "and you attempted to heal this man, I would expect some blood on your fingertips, and a little transferred from there."

"Perhaps it would be so, with the magic of the gods, but the magic of the spirits can at times be more... personal."

Seelah frowns. "If she's Evil, she's not strong enough to detect, at any rate." Admittedly most people aren't, but probably she's not a demon in disguise or anything?

"I don't have Detect Magic today to check for an Undetectable Alignment, but it's probably possible to land well from this fall while too weak to detect. I would hardly know about the magic of the spirits. Are they well-known in the city, perhaps this is my own ignorance and you would have expected any passersby to be familiar such that you didn't think to disclaim unprompted."

She sniffs. "Even uncultured barbarians know about the shamans of Old Sarkoris."

"I've heard of the shamans, sure, but I've never heard of them being quite like... this. Only ever met a couple, though, and never for very long."

"I have met someone who called himself a shaman and he did not attempt to heal people with full body contact."

"Perhaps his spirit was simply less connected to the spark of life that runs through every living soul. Or perhaps he was deceiving you about the true nature of his powers."

"It is certainly always possible that someone is attempting to deceive me," says Blai levelly.

"I'm sure I misunderstand you, Select."

"That is also possible. Ser, what do you think?" he asks Seelah.

She fidgets with her holy symbol. "I've got a bad feeling about her, but... if we abandon her, and it turns out this was all a big misunderstanding, I don't think I could forgive myself."

"And - I didn't get your rank, Tirabade?"

"Head of Counterintelligence for the Eagle Watch." She laughs bitterly. "Fat lot of good I did us today. I say we bring her, I'd bet good money she's up to something but if she turns on us it's three to one. I want her where I can see her, though."

She sniffs.

"Very well, I concur."

Then they can proceed down the tunnel!

The tunnel has: More corpses! Another of Terendelev's scales, shining as brightly as Blai's Light! Centipedes the size of Blai's arm!

He picks up the scale and gives it to Seelah. "Since I already have one, in case both sets of possessions don't make it out for whatever reason."

Do centipedes like being hit with his mace?

She tucks it among her possessions reverently.

The centipedes do not like that at all. All they wanted was to kill the intruders and instead the intruders are killing them? They will try to bite him about this but they aren't very good at it.

He does have a Delay Poison but it's far better not to need it.

The centipedes are quickly dispatched.

Further down the tunnel brings: More corpses! Another scale! Flies the size of Camellia! Lizard longer than Blai is tall!

Anevia can have this scale. The flies and also the lizard can have the mace.

All they did was attack a heavily-armed group of adventurers and now they're being killed about it? Life is so unfair.

(None of the rest of his companions have nearly as much fighting experience as he does, but all of them are at least competent with their weapons; Seelah fights with a longsword, Anevia fights with a longbow, and Camellia has a little spellcasting of some sort in addition to her rapier.)

Down the hallway is a room with the remains of some sort of artificial structure. Crumbling stone columns still bear traces of more elaborate carvings, and even many of the stones in the rubble were clearly worked by someone's hands.

The man digging through the rubble now is a — tiefling? Maybe Abyss-spawn tieflings look like this? He almost looks like he's divided in two, one half human and the other half lizardfolk or something, but even the human-looking half still has a large curved horn protruding from the head. 

"No, I can't just walk away," he's saying as they enter. "It's got to be here somewhere." He notices them and blinks rapidly. "—Wenduag!"

A... blue spider-person?... steps out from the darkness in the back of the room. "Lann? Did you find — who are you?"

What the fuck are these guys. Well, besides "not attacking on sight", which is a relatively promising thing for them to be. "Select Blai Artigas."

The rest of Blai's party gives their names as well.

Lann seems cheered by the Iomedaeans, at least. "The four of you are crusaders from the surface, then? Do you know what's happening up there? We felt the earthquake, but we don't exactly get a lot of news from the surface."

"I am presently in a very confusing and irregular situation but am I suppose temporarily operating as a crusader. Deskari attacked in person heralded by a considerable force of lesser demons. Lady Terendelev was killed."

"Terendelev was killed?" He glances at Wenduag. "In that case we have to get to the surface."

"Lann, if you try to bring everyone through the Shield Maze, they're all going to die."

"What is the Shield Maze?"

"It's a deadly labyrinth infested with monsters and cultists. Most people who go in never come out."

"Our people's stories say there's a path to the surface through the maze." He sighs. "Going alone would be suicide, but if we can just find the angel's sword, we can convince Chief Sull to call together the tribes—"

"What, and get all of them killed too? Is this about the kids again? The kids are dead by now, Lann."

"You don't know that!"

"...presumably if there are cultists they have some way in and out for supplies?"

Wenduag fidgets with the end of her scarf. "However they're getting them, it's hidden well enough that no one's managed to find it."

"But some of them are human, right? So there has to be some way to the surface, we just need to find it."

"Or they're doing it by teleport, are they powerful enough to do that?"

Lann looks pointedly at Wenduag.

"I don't think any of the cultists can teleport. Maybe some of the demons." Fidget.

"Aren't the Wardstones supposed to prevent that?"

"Well, they clearly weren't preventing it today."

"It'd depend where relative to the line the relevant parts of the maze might be, I imagine, even under non-Deskari conditions."

"Most demons can't bring passengers, so if humans aren't common underground the cultists must be coming down somehow. Not every day Deskari cuts a hole in the middle of Market Square."

Lann nods emphatically. "That sounds right to me."

"You're just saying that because you already wanted to try to make it through the Maze."