"All right. Were you on the Abyss side, or on the material when you were captured?"

"I was captured in the rifts," he says as if she is very dense. "I didn't come to the mortal world until after I had my new powers."

"All right. Thank you."

"Can you describe your new powers. What changed, specifically."

"I'm stronger and faster and deadlier."

"In any particular way? Different energy resistances, lack of vulnerability to cold iron? Specific powers you've noticed?"

"Nothing hurts me as much as it used to, because I'm stronger. I hit things harder and faster."

"I see."

"Tuvan, is there anything specific you wanted to ask? I think specifics would help."

"Does cold iron cut you ordinarily, or only with a strong hit?"

Ah, definitely a sensible question to answer for your enemies. Not. He can see where this is going. He shows his fangs. "You want to come check?"

"Ember would stop me," he says, which is true only because he'd let Ember stop him but is - the only answer to that he can think of offhand which isn't an implicit threat, and while he's willing to do it he's categorically unwilling to threaten to do it. 

It is not the answer he expected. "The little girl?"

"She is a companion of the Knight-Commander, and they have all of them toppled giants."

"I'm just stronger. It's not a trick, it's not like a spell you can find a way around, I'm just stronger. And better. And you can come and test, if you want, and have the skin melt off your mortal flesh."

He would have Protection from Acid up while poking babaus but this is not a line of argument worth pursuing. Abadar's symbol hasn't flickered. "Cold iron still cuts you, but you have the strength of a great warrior so you can survive many cuts."

Fangs again. "Yes."

That shouldn't be possible. If you could use a ritual to just level people - 

- everyone, in every plane, wants that. Has tried various things to get that. Heaven and Hell don't know how to do it. 

"Thank you," he says.

"I'll have you sent home in the morning, when we have the spells for it," she says. "Thank you."

And she leaves the dungeons, with Arsinoe trailing behind her.

Ember stays behind, at least for a minute longer, to reassure the demon that it will definitely get to go home soon.

He leaves with Korva.

"There's a range of things powerful ritual magic can do. Some very cool stuff. Crop yields across an entire empire, giving out spells to every soldier in an army, giving all men the strength of trolls.

What he's describing - no magic known to any power I've ever heard of can do that. I would be surprised to learn gods could do that at any scale, even in their own planes where no agreements bound them."

"Yeah."

"Jerribeth spoke of a transformation that changes the core properties of a demon's soul. She couldn't be any more specific, either. Or wouldn't, but - I don't think she knew. I don't think any of them know exactly what's being done to them. I suppose it might not be impossible to question Xanthir Vang about it, although I think he's - still somewhat indisposed at the moment. We should double check that, I guess."

"And we should tell the people holding the other borders. They'll presumably have noticed the higher losses, but it'll be useful to them to have an idea what form that's taking.

If the ritualist is in the Abyss that's going to be - quite a pain to address. People with clones are very hard to kill for good, and operating in the Abyss is spectacularly risky. It might be better to just accelerate the plans to move the wardstones in and thereby make them - strong enough to handle even this, if moving them will do that."

"I think it might eventually. The wardstone barriers are stronger the closer together the wardstones are, and if they're closer to the wound itself, each of the barrier lengths will be smaller and therefore stronger. But it'll require moving all of them in closer, and rebuilding all of their associated fortifications, if the problem is now that the existing barriers aren't strong enough to hold the demons. Our current plans for spring mostly involve retaking ground from only one direction. We would have to expand our operations - a lot, if we wanted to make the whole barrier stronger."

"Retaking from one direction is good practice with the problems an effort like that would face, though, and good proof that it's possible. And of course we should also contemplate a strike on Mutasafen, have a Trap the Soul item made up for him, but - from what I presently know I'd guess your team's not strong enough yet."

"That makes sense."

"We could maybe make plans to move a couple more wardstones in from the same direction, to try to take as much pressure as possible off of at least the Mendevian front. We'd need plans to build new fortifications immediately this time, and we'd need good locations that are capable of defending the wardstones, but the demons have some structures to the southwest that might work as additional locations, if we could clean them out first."

"There's no cheap way to build fortresses, and we can barely pay our men. But - we should run the numbers, see how long it takes to pay off in fewer losses and less border to cover, and maybe get a loan from the Church of Abadar, if the numbers look correct. And we'll eventually regret relying wholly on the Mansions but I think they do take off some of the pressure to build new permanent fortifications immediately. 

It's probably worth having a diplomatic envoy to Lastwall who can negotiate some of these things with them, too, trade them some of our spellcasting in ordinary circumstances for backup in an emergency so the Mansions aren't a full commitment of all our seventh-level slots in a crisis, maybe move one of their wardstones if there's one where the land is convenient for it."