Three invisible, three flying, one Telepathic Bond between Knight-Commander Aspex, who leads first team, and Regill, who leads second, and Irabeth, who'll remain at the command center. 

May any powers that happen to feel like it bless them all in their endeavors. 

Some people would call it a pretty well-oiled operation but only because they haven't seen a real well-oiled operation. 

First team is himself and Daeran and Nenio and Ember. It would be objectively stupid to have him and Alfirin, the two people wildly more powerful than they're pretending to be, on the same team so he never does it even though he really enjoys watching her fight. He has opportunities when they're not moving as two teams. She's gotten good with a sword, somewhere in there. He wants to compare notes on spellcasting in armor but he wants to not ruin the game even more.

And they find themselves just outside the Sarkorin village of Wintersun, where the villagers have nailed the crusaders to posts and left them to die. 

"Shall I go ahead and -"

If it's a trap it's not a magical trap; there are no signs of magic as far as Detect Magic can see. It's also not a mechanical trap; the ground is uneven and overgrown, lumpy with the roots of trees, but doesn't contain any dug pits or hazardous land formations.

They're still flying.

"Go ahead." 

Daeran pulls the nails out and heals the dying crusader. The man was far enough gone to have a bit of a hard time with being abruptly restored to full health; it probably isn't helping with his disorientation that his rescuers are invisible. 

He pulls himself together and explains that they got disoriented in the fog, saw a village, went to the village, and were then attacked and nearly all killed by the villagers. Throwing stones and carrying sharp sticks. Dozens of them, and they weren't expecting it -

"- is everyone else dead?"

"Yes."

He calls the second team. Possibly the village is cursed, possibly it's just religious and obeying their understanding of some stupid god which could very well be Iomedae, regardless you'd rather have a full complement of people on-site. 

Ember teleports team two; they arrive visible and on-foot since Ember doesn't have invisibility. Seelah summons Arnisant and mounts up immediately.

Orders, knight-commander?

"We don't know where we are, we Teleported. Presumably this village is in Mendev and near the fortress where this patrol was expected, but we don't know that, someone could've moved the prisoner for many reasons including 'causing an international incident of some kind'. We're going to ride up and say hello, and do nothing that could reasonably be illegal if the village isn't in fact in Mendev and we're now in, I don't know, Ustalav. Invisible and flying people will remain that way. Catherine and Seelah can do the talking." That was his policy before he learned who Catherine was, because she seemed to like it and be good at it. 

"Yes, sir." Catherine in front, Seelah in the rear until they reach the village, Regill guarding Ember in the middle. They approach the village.

Hello villagers?

Alfirin isn't a Good person, and - he was never sure how strongly these facts were related - did not particularly like being treated as one. She'd save civilians, of course, if the opportunity presented itself, maybe just out of personal loyalty to Iomedae, maybe because it was what the rules said to do, maybe because it was the right thing to do, but she would tend to avoid their adulation. He was never sure what to make of it. In any event she seems to have grown out of it; Catherine likes playing the hero. Of course, Catherine plans - he's very sure at this point, he looked up the relevant Galtan history - to take the throne of Cheliax from Abrogail Thrune. This obviously requires to accept the adulation of crowds, to be seen as a good person and be comfortable in that spotlight.

Psychoanalyzing a person off who they were nine hundred years ago is probably a fool's errand. 

The guards at the walls of the village - it has pretty impressive walls, eighteen to twenty feet up and made of logs planted like trees closely together, enough to deter most things that plague villages and are corporeal and cannot fly -

- cry out an alarm and set their spears against the ground. "Demons!!"

"Did you hear that? I think they think we're demons."

"Cut the chatter Litran. Defensive positions!" Which mostly means that he and Seelah move up in front of Ember.

Knight-Commander?

Message. "Wall of Force, Nenio." Message. "Ember, pretend you cast it." For some time to think where they at least will not be mobbed by villagers they'll have to either slaughter or risk being overrun by as the patrol was. 

This is almost certainly an elaborate trap laid by a demon. The question is which of the many possible elaborate traps laid by a demon. The one Marit thought of first and already warned his men about is for the injured crusader to have been moved - for this to be a village on the southern border which Lastwall controls, or a village which has a dragon protector, or something - so that when they kill the people in this village who are now predictably trying to kill them it'll cause some problem for them. Or, alternatively, if they hesitate to kill the people, they'll get killed.

But demons aren't Tar-Baphon. This is extraordinarily fortunate in many respects but it makes demon traps harder to predict, because Tar-Baphon chooses from the set of good ideas, and demons choose from the set of all ideas. 

There is, he can see now that he's looking intently for it, illusion magic in the air, spread so thin the aura is masked. "Nenio, figure out what that illusion is doing," he says. ...loudly enough that Alfirin can hear him. He wants her eyes on this too.

Catherine zoned out for a moment or two while Team Two was waiting around for Team One to call them in, and somehow this resulted in one of the people using her eyes doing so with arcane sight. Funny how that happens sometimes when Marit's not around. And, yep, subtle illusions everywhere, probably related to the thing where the villagers think they're all demons.

Not that Alfirin is going to act on this information in any way unless it's really quite the emergency. Nenio will figure it out; Nenio's good at illusions and is decent at investigating a puzzle once it's been pointed out to her.

Indeed, Nenio's Wall of Force hasn't yet dissipated when she declares triumphantly that the illusions cast over this region make demons look like crusaders, and crusaders look like demons, to the villagers. 

Marit misses fighting Tar-Baphon. 

All right, second team pull back, he tells Regill. There's an illusion up that makes outsiders look like demons. ...and demons look like crusaders, apparently. I have a number of theories but my leading one is 'someone thought that was funny'.

"Withdraw in good order."

Like they ever do it any other way. She rolls her eyes a tiny bit because she's not actually worried and the wall of force is still there.

The villagers don't pursue them, which is the behavior you'd expect of villagers who think they saw demons. 

- aaaand then Lann is the first to notice and call out that there are some actual demons approaching from the other direction, and an actual fight on their hands.