"Kybele the curator! And Tirabade too, we were wondering where you ended up."

He gestures to two of his subordinates, who escort the person he was interrogating back into the group of prisoners at swordpoint as he heads over to speak with her.

"It's good to see you haven't succumbed to your wound yet, that's the crusader spirit. I'll need to check some of your companions are who they say they are, but that should be quick. And who's this?" he asks, turning to Dyra. "You've captured a demonspawn for me to interrogate?"

"No sir, this is Dyra, cleric of Abadar, one of the population we found beneath the city upon falling into the chasm! Their homes are no longer safe due to the recent quakes and they wish to come to the surface, where I'm sure they will be delighted to contribute to the rebuilding efforts. What are these people here accused of?"

Hulrun's eyes do something, twice over, as he looks at Dyra; whatever he sees evidently surprises him enough that it shows on his face, but he doesn't seem displeased. "Good for her, rising above her kind. Kenabres could use more Abadarans. The city's not safe at the moment - there's still fighting house to house, and plenty of demons have slipped past the lines to hide or disguise themselves among the mortal population, but if they can fight it's safer than being crushed to death. The people here are captured on suspicion of being enemies; cultists, looters, deserters, and of course demons. We've been hard at work sifting out the guilty, although of course it's hard to be sure with the clever ones; those ones over there are mostly clear." He gestures at the group with burnt limbs. "In a couple of days things will calm down enough that we can spare the channels to heal them safely, and they can return to their lives under supervision, but if we let them loose while the situation is this chaotic we'll have to recapture some of them."

"Understood. Then your advice would be not to bring noncombatant neathers to the surface at this time?"

"Not unless it's about to collapse. They'll be attacked by anyone looking for easy pickings, and if the demons start pretending to be them it'll be harder for me to notice - not to mention any cultists among their numbers."

He turns to Iskander and Camellia.

"I'm low enough on spells that I'll have to trust you to know whether your brother is a cultist, and I'm fairly sure Camellia isn't unless she's given you some sign, so we just need to make sure that neither of them have been replaced by demons while you had your back turned. I'll need you two to stick your hand in the fire; we'll heal you afterward if it burns you, but it's a foolish risk to take and we don't have enough holy water going spare to use that."

Camellia looks faintly mutinous, but not nearly enough to try and argue with prelate Hulrun in a crisis from inside sword range.

"Camellia has not exhibited any obvious signs of being a cultist, and of course neither has Iskander. It seems like it might be easier to control the damage if we touched a hot coal rather than an active flame, or do I misunderstand the purpose of the exercise?"

"Demons are resistant to fire; some of the stronger or more clever ones can fake it, but you'll catch a lot of them by forcing them into flame and then seeing if they get burned. Coals work fine if they'll definitely be burned from them, but you don't want to grab something too cool and then end up with a false positive from not being burned."

Anevia has enough control of her face to not let on how incredibly distasteful she finds this entire process, but some of it is leaking into her voice.

"It's just that as you can see I am wearing a lot of paper."

"You're fine, I can tell you're Good. Any demon strong enough to fake that result isn't going to get caught out by the fire anyway, it would be a waste of spells. The same goes for Tirabade and Seelah. It's just those two that don't give a read, which is much easier to fake."

"Are you sure this is a good idea," Iskander whispers to Kybele.

"No. Dyra can heal you."

Iskander approaches the fire and elbows something hot and yelps and displays the burn.

Camellia will do the same, albeit with more stoicism.

And one of the guards will place his hand on their shoulders, praising Iomedae, and they'll be healed! He looks grateful to finally have a chance to actually help someone.

"Thank you," says Iskander, and he scurries back to his sister.

"By your leave, then, we'll go back down and let them know that things are still somewhat chaotic up here. I will leave the ladder in case of sudden quaking making it more urgent that they come up, though. Where would you assess I'm most needed?"

"If your paper can exert significant force, there's a lot of collapsed houses and rubble in the streets it would be valuable to move and difficult to do by hand. If you can fly or use long distance attacks and are confident in your strength, doing something about any of the Nabasu or Vrock hanging around would be immensely valuable but my guess is that they would kill you if you tried. If you have some form of truthtelling or can tell when people are evil, there's always plenty of call for that; Dyra, if Abadar gave you any zones of truth this morning I'll pay above normal market rates even if they've got an easier save - Rathimus is too busy to sell me his. Otherwise, I recommend linking up with the army or eagle's watch and taking the fight to the demons - last I heard, Tirabade was preparing to take back the grey garrison later this afternoon. Oh, and if you catch sight of Ramien or any of his Desnans bring them to me, they're wanted on suspicion of treason."

"I'm afraid I didn't prepare that, Prelate. I have two of Abadar's truthtelling but no zones of truth."

"Ramien, Prelate? Surely you're joking - I know you've had your disagreements, but Desna is a Good goddess and Ramien has always worked for the wellbeing of Kenabres!"

"Desna may be a good goddess, but she's not reliable where it counts, and this time I have more than that. Those out of town Desnans of his broke into the wardstone building yesterday to sabotage it before the attack, though they denied everything when we caught them in the act, and the Voyager broke them out of custody last night. Best case scenario, some succubus hit him with a dominate and he'll be fine once we snap him out of it, but it's possible he's been replaced by a demon or was a traitor all along."

"I'm afraid I wouldn't know these people to look at them and my range and exertion of force are both pretty limited. Where would I find the garrison?"

"It's the big fortress building over there - the one with the wardstone half sticking out of it."

"Thank you. Iskander, perhaps since you're less of a combatant you ought to go back down and tell everyone what we've seen."

"What if they decide I've been replaced with a demon while we were separated?"