Ipaxalon does read the missive before he leaves, because Straydus did not appear to be lying when he claimed she offered permission, and there might be something within that she wished him to know. 

Father,

I am well. I am not free, but none of us are, are we? I was hurt somewhat early in my stay, but nothing I have not healed from a dozen times in your service, and not since the Edict - earlier, even. I have been treated as an honored guest, if one behind bars and locks, for almost all of the span. I am allowed to walk around the keep as long as my Iron Walker's arms stay under watch, and Straydus has been as kind as caution permits. I agreed not to collect numbers of soldiers, nor provisions against the siege, inside the walls, as part of being free to move, and in any case it's likely changed little from your last reports. They have been honorable, and I think they will continue, so so will I.

I love you,
Amelia

He notes the vagueness of "hurt" and the possibility that a few lines might contain important subtext, but nothing here looks like a cry for outside help. It's concerning they didn't want him to meet her, and the lies in the previous conversation could have been about her, but he has other business, and needs more trust and leverage before he tries to unravel this. Something to ponder again under the effects of cultural adaptation, perhaps.

He stops by the courtyard to collect his borrowed flag, then bids farewell to the guards here and sets out for the Unbroken camp to update Janos and company. 

The camp's still where it was, and active, though Janos isn't in evidence. Some of the sentries look up and salute when they see him approaching, and Captain Rodica gets them to clear a space for him to land.

"Sir Ipaxalon! I take it you spoke to the Regent?"

"I did, and I have news.

"First, I have decided to support Stalwart against Kyros. It was overdetermined, really, since even the Overlord's own forces admit he invaded without much cause, is responsible for multiple genocidal Edicts, and apparently employs the appalling travesty that is the Scarlet Chorus. 

"Second, the First Regent expressed openness to negotiate the reunification of the Unbroken. Not necessarily under his rule, if the Edict can be ended and an alternative governance peacefully established. I am bound for Duskwatch, next, to communicate this offer, unless my information is outdated and I should look elsewhere." 

"That is... fantastic news, all of it. We're extremely grateful," Captain Rodica says, "And Duskwatch wouldn't be a bad place to look, especially if you still want a good map. They're besieged, but they're toward the edges of the storm, so we have birds going in and out with orders and reports, short range, and sometimes scouts. But it's not where Mattias will be; he'll be further south, one of the canyons that turned into a maze. Janos is on his way there, but I don't know if he'll have arrived; you move rather faster than anyone else."

That would perhaps explain why the earlier promise to contact Mattias parsed as a lie. Maybe they hadn't yet decided to send Janos or weren't confident in reaching him if they did. Ipaxalon will keep his musings to himself either way. 

"How difficult do you think it would be to spot Mattias from the air? Is he likely to be in imminent danger or on urgent business, such that I should prioritize locating him over delivering my news to Duskwatch and attempting to collect an envoy?"

"If the sky's clear... It might be easy. Or it might be no easier than usual, which around there is cursed hard. Depends a lot on which spot he's picked as his ground to hunt Disfavored in. The Furrows, probably easy. Trapper's Junction, there's a lot of the bronze spines, so depends if he's being cautious about the clear skies. Lupei's Tombs, no way you'd see him, that's practically tunnels. Sorry, that's probably not much help. He's been there long enough it's probably active fighting, but one he's picked. I'd probably go to Duskwatch, but you're very fast, maybe giving it a look's worth your time."

"I think I will check the area but not spend overlong searching, then, if you can describe the relevant landmarks for me. I also plan to treat with Graven Ashe, both to open diplomatic channels with the Disfavored and to sound them out for turning against Kyros if my presence proves decisive. From what I have heard of the Scarlet Chorus, I do not expect General Graven Ashe to make commitments on their behalf, but the Disfavored at least seem disciplined enough to hold to an agreement. I expect I'll do so after visiting Duskwatch, but if there's anything else you feel I should know about the Archons involved in this war before I meet with one, now is the time to share." 

"Landmarks, hmm. From the air, probably the first thing you'll see is the Titan's Ribcage..." She goes on to describe five or six more things, trying inexpertly to guess what they look like from above.

"Ashe was in our position once. The last general of the Northern Kingdom, leading his legion and turning guerilla when the capital fell. He drew out Blood Ruin, Archon of War, and killed him. Then Kyros brought three more, Pox and Nerat and... the Archon of Lightning, I think? And he saw he couldn't win and chose to kneel to protect his army and Northern culture as Archon of War. They're all, the Disfavored, descended from that army. Or at least they say so."

And by all accounts the Northern Kingdom is still extant, and Kyros does seem likely to be willing to threaten it with ruin to maintain Ashe's loyalty. Ashe himself may know more...something to consider. 

Do they have a sign or signal he should give at Duskwatch to indicate friendliness, or any reports they'd like him to communicate? 

The blue flag's always good, if he can carry one while flying. Once he can land, well, she's literate, and so is Captain Agathon, the fort commander, so she'll write a fast letter of introduction.

Excellent. He stows the letter in his chest-slung extradimensional backpack. The flag can go in there as well, actually, since he might wind up in an active combat zone before Duskwatch and doesn't want to send mixed signals. 

He thanks the Unbroken and takes his leave. Time to go looking for Mattias!

It's difficult. From a little before the Titan's Ribcage (a pattern of the bent spikes of corroded metal that show up everywhere in Stalwart-that-was that looks uncannily like an enormous ribcage), the ground's very broken, with gullies cut down into the stone by water or wind that look relatively new, a higher density of the corroded metal shaped into sheets, and general twisting of the ground into more of the third dimension than it usually occupies in a narrow space.

Fortunately(?), if he narrows it down by "there's active combat over there, let's take a look" he'll find that there's something happening in The Furrows. Brief inspection will find that there are Unbroken on the high ground, but they're cornered; one of the slopes up is fortified and three soldiers are holding off eight Chorusers, but on the other side, there's nothing built up, and despite the defensive and outnumbering the Scarlet Chorus on this slope, they are having trouble and probably already pulled back twice.

Chorus hordelings look marginally better than 'horrifying Abyssal death cult' but only marginally. They all have blood-red war paint, many of them as permanent tattoos, often with scarification to make the color stick. Most have rusty weapons and no armor to speak of, or just a tough boiled-leather helm and some makeshift bronze pauldrons or belly-plate. Each cluster has one or two in better gear, still makeshift but making up most of a suit of armor and a sword or spear in good condition, not just a dagger. Only half a dozen have armor that looks mostly made for them - four with full covering leather and distinctive side-to-side crests, one in spiked bronze armor and red silk, and what's probably the leader, also in bronze but bare-faced with long dark vertical stripes of war paint over his eyes, and what could be a saber if it didn't end in a wheel of spikes rather than a point.

The Unbroken make a sharp contrast, all of them about equally well-protected and well-armed, even the man they're deferring to, who's probably forty, with very dark hair (under the dust and grime) and pale skin. He's helping with first aid on one of his fallen as he talks to a woman, who nods and takes a coil of rope to another side of the bluff they're stuck on.

Is this storm literally generating iron? It has to be, that's way more metal than even an army usually carries. To think, a mage with access to matter creation on this scale, and he's using it to lay waste to a country because he wasn't conquering it fast enough. 

He has been told that the Scarlet Chorus (a) employs mind-altering effects and a literal mind controller, (b) press-gangs conquered civilians, and (c) spends troops like water. He really does not want to kill these people.

Protection from evil, because while he's really difficult to enchant, it could be truly catastrophic if someone managed to land one on him anyway. 

Time to find out how much nonlethal damage it takes to down their leader. (He's a monk; he does not really have to hold back to inflict nonlethal damage, and he can get in a lot of attacks on a diving pounce. He does plan to use his first strike to calibrate on his target's resilience.) 

That is a good question that no one has asked! They're kinda busy lately.

Here is - a fucked-up torture man. He does not try to dodge the claws; he tries to strike back instead. The first blow... mostly doesn't affect him, actually? He just grits his teeth a little and sneers. Not trying to kill him? What, you're going to make him hurt? He knows all about pain. Better than you, enormous sky lizard thing.

(Meanwhile everyone else around him except the other guy in good armor are panicking. They're not running away, but they are definitely scrambling backward. The women in the distinctive helms are being more chill about it but they're also backing away and making sure they have clear escape routes.)

Impressive, in a horrifying sort of way. There are minor tactical advantages to being hard to take alive, but Ipaxalon is getting a sense these are not the proximate cause of this man's apparent resistance to nonlethal damage. He is really going to hate the Scarlet Chorus with every fiber of his being, isn't he. 

Ipaxalon is very, very hard to hit. He is also, separately, hard to damage by mundane means. If the Chorister is not wielding a magical weapon, he is unlikely to even scratch the sky lizard. If he is wielding a magic weapon, well, uh. Being an ancient silver dragon with a Wisdom bonus to AC (i.e. a really good sense of which hits he can tank and how to disrupt, blunt, and redirect them) and bracers of armor, Ipaxalon would actually find it difficult to injure himself in a fight. 

...not all of the damage has to be nonlethal to knock someone out. Magical healing exists. Ipaxalon will break bones if need be.

His awful-looking sword-like object is very slightly magic but it doesn't seem to be enough to help, but he does get one strike in between the scales that penetrates enough to seriously hurt. The other armored man attacks with a spear and growls. "Fight, you useless idiots, if you don't want to be raw materials for the Voices!"

They're slightly more terrified by that prospect than by Ipaxalon and stop looking to flee, though they're still try to dart away as soon as they try to stab him, and also are completely ineffective. Two of the be-helmed women get closer and attack with paired swords, but this doesn't do much other than making him split his attention.

And it doesn't take long to knock down the bloody leader, and when he collapses everyone but the spearman and the dual-wielders breaks immediately.

Do the rank and file look to be enchanted?

"Surrender and be spared!" he bellows. It's not a mage's decree but it is still very loud.

This is clearly a case for saving whomever he can. He's holding back the aura-of-supernatural-scariness, because he doesn't actually want these people scattering, but he's plenty mundanely terrifying. He follows this up with a calm emotions on as many of the rank and file as it can cover. It's not quite as good as a magic circle against evil at suppressing hostile enchantments, but it works even better on mundane panic. "Let the Voices contend with mine, if they dare!"

The quartet of elites exchange glances and then scatter, more "running for cover" than "fleeing in panic." There's still a few doing the latter, but most of them drop and cower.

There's no enchantment visible, but the spearman shouts in rage as his allies flee and tries a desperate stab for Ipaxalon's eyes. And there's a brief flare of magic (divination and necromancy) around him when he does, though it doesn't look like he did anything to cause it, or indeed to show he's aware of it at all.

He doesn't try to hold concentration on the calm emotions for long, its main purpose was to give people a moment of lucidity in which to reevaluate their life choices. 

The spearman can now have his (mostly) undivided attention. Is he resistant to nonlethal damage? 

No, he's just tough and angry. And now unconscious. (The aura's still there.)

The Unbroken can probably handle the other eight on the fortified slope, now. "Unbroken, I stand with you. Please accept surrenders," he says over his shoulder. "Soldiers of Kyros, drop your weapons and do not flee." And he will cheerfully pounce on anyone disinclined to obey, starting with the elites. 

He will get the two Scarlet Furies who hit him with swords; the two who were further off with bows will probably manage to break line of sight and one might be hidden before he gets to her, they went in different directions. (And are pretty good at this; it seems like the stereotypical ranger weapons went on rangers despite the complete lack of shared culture to justify that. Weird.)

If he looks over to the eight who were attacking the other slope, they've been running since around when the Crimson Spear yelled at his guys. They don't have anyone actually well-armored but they do have two guys whose weapons are newish unrusted iron and who have bronze breastplates that basically fit. They're still leading in their retreat. The Unbroken on that side aren't pursuing.

The ones on this side are... not aggressively pursuing. But they do push down past the two fallen Choristers in proper armor, and one starts relieving the Spear of his. Another flips Jagged Remedy on his back and eyes him with his shortsword; if Ipaxalon wants him alive he's probably going to have to interrupt his pursuit to say so right now.

Honestly, those weapons make sense for people with the supernatural grace to wield two weapons efficiently and the strength to draw a bow. (The saber with a wheel of spikes, on the other hand...)

There is a high chance they can't convince the unconscious leader to abandon Kyros, don't have a good way to feed him, and have to kill him anyway. Whereas every other frightened Chorister who gets away is a probable victim that he might be able to rescue and rehabilitate. On the other hand, the leader might know things, and might also be subject to magic Ipaxalon can poke to figure out how to combat Chorus magic. And if any of the surrendering folk see the Unbroken stabbing the helpless, they may have second thoughts about surrendering.

Well. If he can see them, they can probably hear him. He banks to yell at the stabby one. "Leave them alive!"