"There was that one elf - the storyteller, or whatever his actual name was, from Kyonin. He was here to study the wardstones, so it seems possible he'd know something. He was researching in Blackwing library before the attack yesterday, but I don't know if he's still there now."

"It'd be a place to start." Is her wound better?

Not all the way better, but it's stopped bleeding again and the pain has died down to a dull roar. The exhaustion has also mostly passed; she feels some amount tired, but only moderately more than you'd expect from all the fighting and moving she's done today.

Which is still too much, she's a fucking illustrati, but it's tolerable. She will let herself be carried as long as her bearer is willing.

Irabeth has 19 strength; even counting her own full plate armor, carrying Kybele is not even a particularly heavy load. She can quite literally keep this up all day, though it won't be as effortless as it would normally be because she only has one lay on hands left and is saving that for an emergency like getting Kybele back on her feet in a hurry, and thus can't just heal away any fatigue. Unless Kybele indicates that she wants to be put down or Irabeth needs her hands free to fight, she has no intention of forcing the person who just exhausted themselves probably saving their lives to be responsible for their own transport.

"Do you think you'll be recovered enough inside the hour, or would you rather we drop you off somewhere relatively safe like the defender's heart or the festival plaza? Rathimus probably has at least one lesser restoration left, if that effects your calculus, but we picked the spot to be a bit out of the way for a reason; it's a fair bit further from the library."

"I don't know, I don't have very much experience with this wound yet to guess what it's going to do. It doesn't seem to be getting worse right now."

"Let me know if that changes, then; I still have one lay on hands left I'm saving for an emergency."

With that settled, they can make their way to the Blackwing Library, though not before Irabeth dispatches three of her people towards the festival pavilion to let Hulrun know that they're dealing with a Lilitu. He'll be suspicious of how they survived, of course, but frankly suspicion is an entirely sensible response to dealing with a Lilitu so she's less inclined than usual to hold it against him.

Inside the blackwing library there are:
1. Lots of books, some of them on the shelves and some of them piled up on the floor
2. A group of what appears to be crusaders and an elf, tied to a pole at the center of the pile.
3. Another group of what seems to be crusaders, standing guard to prevent the other group from escaping.
4. Someone with a flint and steel trying to get books to light on fire and at least thus far failing horribly.

"Whoa, there, folks, what seems to be such an emergency as to burn books about it?"

Their apparent leader startles at the sight of them and takes a moment to reply, although it's hard to be sure what he's startling at.

"Demons, ma'am! We've caught some cultists here masquerading as crusaders, and we're trying to get a blaze going so we can find out which ones are only pretending to be human. They're a tricky lot; baphomet cultists, I think."

"I see. And your side of the story?" she asks the tied-up folks.

They're gagged and can't reply.

Yeah that does seem like an impediment. She and a little paper knife will start slicing gags off.

"They're lying! We're the real crusaders and they're the baphomet cultists!"

"No, don't cut the gags! We're pretty sure at least one of them is a succubus, that's why we gagged them in the first place! It's not safe to have them all out and free to use suggestion!"

"So, here's my question, ladies and gentlemen. If they are cultists... then what will burning them reveal?"

"It'll let us figure out which ones of them are demons in disguise, so they can't just fake being dead and slip away once our back is turned!"

"And what led you to suspect these folks to begin with?"

“We caught one of them in the act, trying to convince people to go commit arson. We tried to arrest them, of course, but they pulled a runner, and just when we’d nearly caught up to them the rest of these fellows pulled an ambush on us. Of course, we were less surprised than they’d hoped, and it didn’t go that well for them.”

"And I presume that as soon as some fire is obtained you'll all be happy to take the same test?"

"Of course! We're no demons!"

"Is there," she wonders to the room at large, "any similar test for merely being a cultist."

"Kybele, as much fun as it is to watch you argue circles around them, the person you're talking to has an abjuration up; unless they're really picky about temperatures, it's undetectable alignment, which would be why your paladin friends aren't detecting evil on him."

"Thank you, Camellia." She manifests her paper sword. "Can you check the others too, or is someone going to jump straight to discovering why it's a terrible idea to fight Gazette in a library?"

"None of the other ones have any magic on them, but I'm pretty sure the rest of them are just too weak to detect so they didn't feel a need to bother."