Oh, he's awake. "No, just you. Vynsiel thinks he couldn't get it off if he had all day and a bucket of pearls. Cansellarion's seeing if Lastwall has anyone."

"Are in we communication with Drezen, was there a simultaneous attack there? This was well-planned, someone was spying on our preparations. 

How did you realize?" He can't even figure out how Alfirin would have, though of course if it's Alfirin she'll give him whatever cover story she thought of.

"No attack on Drezen.

Iomedae sent a vision."

Marit does not particularly have Lastwall's neuroses about this. Aroden sent Iomedae visions a lot. He sits up, rubbing his head. "That tracks. Must not have seen it in advance, or she'd have told us not to try, but once it happened - I had received no orders except to cancel my contingency, which I did.

Nocticula could've done it but I wouldn't expect her to. Other than that - someone we thought was dead or gone is not."

Lot of that going around.

"That sounds right. You were in a magic circle, so - someone who can get a dominate through one of those, which before today I thought was impossible, or someone who's not Evil."

Nenio's not paying attention. Daeran's - only mostly not paying attention. 

"I think I read once that Tar-Baphon could do that," he says, "and surmise a demon lord could too. 'not evil' is a simpler explanation except that if the intent wasn't to get us killed or worse, Iomedae wouldn't have intervened, and if the intent was to get us killed or worse, it's a bit hard to imagine one is Neutral."

"I can imagine most mercenaries who'd work with demons for something like this would be Evil, yes. And I gather the spell was powerful enough that 'demon lord' sounds more likely than 'chaotic neutral wizard-for-hire'."

He cannot say that he read in a book that Tar-Baphon usually cannot Dominate him. "I think it's unlikely the caster wasn't an archmage or a powerful outsider. If we're having trouble getting it off, that matches my impression. ...does Lastwall not have Greater Dispel Magic at will?" Oh right, Iomedae had to give her sword back to ...an imperial duke in what's now Cheliax. 

"I don't think they do, or Cansellarion would have offered that. You could ask him when he gets back?"

He nods. Sits up. He's turning very colorful with horrifying bruises. "Well. Good work."

"Thank you, sir." It was mostly not her but they can correct the record on that in private.

Iomedae does not send visions often, but there are procedures for when She does. Catherine de Litran, not being an agent of Lastwall or otherwise servant of the Goddess, isn't required to undergo the long debrief; They just explain that it would be very helpful for them to know the contents of the vision, for determining whether the vision was actually from Her (and for avoiding situations where the Goddess has to intervene with a vision like this at all).

Is Litran willing, once the situation is at least somewhat in hand, to tell them about the vision?

Litran does not actually know what was in the vision, and Alfirin isn’t telling her.

“I’m sorry. No. It was - very intensely personal.” She strongly suspects that isn’t a lie.

Which is a good thing because is in fact an inquisitor present whose job is to check if it’s a lie. Lastwall is good enough at its job that visions from Iomedae are rare, rare enough lies about visions from Iomedae are somewhat more common than true visions. It's a bit of a point of pride and a sore spot at the same time. "Was there anything conveyed in the vision that you think we should know about, apart from that the Knight-Commander was dominated?"

Conveyed to her? No.

...Alfirin doesn't volunteer anything either but she doesn’t know if that’s because there was nothing else or it's just that Alfirin loves keeping secrets.

"No."

Well, there’s not all that much more they can do with that. They'll put a commune question toward verifying that Iomedae sent Litran a vision, of course, which is important if Litran starts later making claims about its significance, but apart from that they will leave it be. It doesn’t really serve the Goddess for everyone She chooses to speak to to be subsequently hassled over what is ultimately not wrongdoing. Unless they’re lying. And Litran is Lawful Good and probably not lying and probably just for whatever reason the person among that crowd that it was easiest for the Goddess to speak to or the best-positioned to act.

There will of course be an incident report, but they don’t bother Litran further.

Daeran is cheered when Catherine returns from the inquisitors apparently intact. "I take it the murder-happy ones are off duty! May we be free of this place while that remains true? I miss my own bed, and my hot tub, and my rosebush, and people being better at pretending not to glare at me."

"Hmm, yes, I think so - go tell Ember and the wizards to prepare teleports, I'll confirm with the Knight-Commander - I think we at least want you and the Hellknights out of here, but I don't think there's reason for anyone to stay besides the Knight-Commander who is still dominated. He might ask me and Regill to stay - maybe just me, I bet Lastwall's not thrilled about having Regill here. But the rest of you can almost certainly head back."

"Excellent! Our fortress is just as gloomy but at least it has the excuse of being in a war zone."

And what does the Knight-Commander think of this plan?

"Yeah, get them back to Drezen, I'm still jumpy that something will happen there. Or they'll cause a diplomatic incident here; I'm sure Daeran's trying." Marit doesn't like being in prison, even in cases where it's wildly better than any alternatives. His face is bruised and puffy and he's pacing unhappily. Lastwall has guards on duty who (understandably, Marit tends to feel the same way about his prisoners) would clearly rather he stay still, and also clearly are not allowed to tell him to (this is also how Marit runs his own prisons).

She'll round everybody up and organize the teleports home, then.

Marit's interests are better-defended by having Alfirin and Irabeth in Drezen than by having them here to keep him company. It'd be genuinely a little surprising for Lastwall to have him murdered in their jail. 

He nonetheless spends most of the day on an emotional level expecting it. The longer it drags on without an explanation of their plan to free him, the moreso. He doesn't know much about them; they manage to give off to external observation the sense they have little internal dissent, little politics, just devout service to their goddess. Who probably doesn't want him dead; she could've had it for free, today. She might want him held and forced to make some concessions, but he can't even think which ones. He works for Her, if grouchily. 

In a place with politics, some people would want to see the Crusade succeed, and some want to see it fail, and some want Galfrey to take over from him and some want her gone herself. Some would be offended with him, about the proposal to Iomedae, and some would see opportunity, and some would mostly have noticed that he's really outlandishly wealthy. 

In the country they wanted to build, everyone would just want to win. But there are a lot of countries that would choose to try to look like the country they wanted to build. 

He paces, and does not eat when they offer food even though his Ring of Sustenance isn't working.

Cansellarion returns about half an hour after the rest of the Crusaders departed.

"Aspex. We have two options here - one is to wait until tomorrow when one of our more powerful priests is available to try repeatedly to dispel the dominate while you're unconscious. The other option would be to kill you and immediately raise you, which we could do now, unless there are complications." Permanent spells that would be lost, or a clone that would be used up, or contingencies that would activate.

He doesn't have a Clone yet because he doesn't have an eighth circle wizard yet. His Contingency will fail to activate if they kill him and raise him. He used to have permanent Arcane Sight and See Invisibility, cast with Shining Crusade resources, but he's died since he came to this world. "I think you should go ahead and kill me now," he says, while a loud part of him notes that this is also what you'd say if you, well, wanted to kill him.