Yeah, she's definitely copying that, any subset of those things sounds neat. As soon as she gets fifteen minutes of no impending emergencies to get used to becoming a dragon aasimar notebook human.

(Fantasy book characters always assert that waiting for a battle to start sucks. Now she's in a world with dragons and demons and magic spells, and guess what, waiting for a battle to start sucks.)

"Thank you! Can you explain what you mean by 'Good outsiders'?"

"Good outsiders, at least how we usually use the term, refers to any outsiders native to the three good-aligned outer planes. Other outsiders may be good, including some categorizations that consider aasimar to be outsiders, but they're not usually what is being referred to and weren't what I was talking about. In common parlance, this means lawful good archons from Heaven, neutral good agathions from Nirvana, and chaotic good azata from Elysium, as well as angels who can come from any of the three. They're often collectively known as celestials, and share some traits like their damage reduction usually only being bypassed by evil attacks, but the biggest shared trait is that the forces of good can make common cause even when we disagree heavily on our methodology, such as my working with Iomedaeans to defend this city."

"Iomedaens are another religious organization?"

Also: she's heard those alignment terms before. This is a Dungeons and Dragons universe. Or happens to share a lot of features with Dungeons and Dragons as implemented on her Earth. She's never actually played Dungeons and Dragons, just absorbed stuff from popular culture, and if she understood Alpina's explanation correctly this world is as likely to be 84% similar to the game as 100% similar, so she shouldn't rely on that for anything, but: Dungeons and Dragons universe. Does she have a character sheet? She wants to see her character sheet.

"Yes, Iomedae is the lawful good goddess of defeating evil. She used to be a mortal before she ascended about a thousand years ago, and she's become probably the most popular goddess in Mendev ever since the worldwound opened up and demons started showing up everywhere.

"On a separate note, do you plan to remain around civilians, or go out fighting demons on your own? I have two castings of magic circle against evil prepared, but most of the effects are redundant with your items other than it blocking mind control, so it's mostly a question of if you want to be able to to keep people nearby you safe or if I should be giving it to someone sticking close by to others."

"I--" don't know if I have the guts to fight or trust the Battle powers to stop me from getting killed instantly "don't know if I'm any good in a fight. You should allocate your spells on the assumption that I might turn out to be useless." Everyone probably thinks she's a cool fantasy world person and not a child from Iowa with no idea what she's doing, oh no.

Ramien looks abashed.

"I'm sorry about that, that was thoughtless of me. I know you said you were new to your powers, but I still let myself assume that your gear meant you were an experienced adventurer just missing local context even when you said nothing of the sort. If you wish, you should feel entirely welcome to stick by me when the demons come; I may not be that impressive to look at, but I'm one of the strongest adventurers in Kenabres and its third best healer. I can't guarantee it'll be completely safe, but demons tend to underestimate Desnans more than Iomedaeans because we're a less martial church so I'll probably have fewer people coming after me than Hulrun or Irabeth. Nobody with sense should take issue with you staying safe, and if anyone without sense does I'll have words with them."

"I. Want to help. But uh." It turns out that the power of Friends In Places doesn't make you eloquent when you simultaneously want to say the thing and avoid saying it. Maybe she could be saved from this conversation by the demons attacking now.

Demons aren't usually the type to go for helping people but in this case they're happy to oblige her! Some demons start teleporting into the square, their arrival staggered over a couple of seconds, while others shed their disguise as ordinary people or swoop in from the skies. People start screaming and rush towards the exits, which quickly become packed, filled with people desperate to get away.

Adding to the confusion are the town's defenders, who strike out impossibly quickly with glowing swords or shoot fireballs or loose barrages of arrows; the initial strike force is quickly annihilated, but not without casualties, and more demons pour in by the second.

And over there, there's a dragon! She seems to be cutting a swathe straight through the flying demons, their attacks largely unable to injure her, but every so often she'll see a particularly large clump of them concentrated on the ground and freeze them solid with her breath or call down a strike of holy flame. Lots of them try and flee as soon as they teleport in, but it's an inherently difficult task to achieve when one is trying to escape an enormous angry silver dragon.

Throughout this, Ramien at least is unafraid. He blesses everyone nearby, taking a bit of the edge off the fear, and then decapitates a disoriented incubus with a single blow from his starknife just as they arrive. He calls on everyone in earshot to remain calm, and miraculously many of them do.

No that's not what she meant she didn't want that at all--

Oh.

Oh.

The city is a chaotic mess of battles within battles, but Brenda doesn't see a chaotic mess. She sees every individual combatant and civilian in her field of view and what they're doing and where they're going, and how it all fits together into eddy currents of contested territory and momentum and morale, and has enough space in her brain left over to realize that the ironically named Battle Demon power is taking advantage of her unreasonably amazing headband. 

She strides into the fray along a path that won't draw attacks immediately, picks up a demon corpse and throws it into a flock of its living fellows, disrupting their attempt to dodge Terendelev's claws. She lets one demon get within range of her arms and punches it, not even as hard as she can, just hard enough to kill it instantly. She keeps going. Her mind is a clear pool of water in which the whole world is reflected and her hands are destruction and it was ridiculous to worry that she would be paralyzed by fear, why would she fear when she isn't in danger?

Ah, a high level adventurer! They were prepared for this. While she's distracted by a frontal attack from a trio of Babau with enchanted weapons, two Glabrezu veiled to look like reinforcements will teleport behind her and then try to take off her head with their (currently disguised) pincers.

She hears the teleport and spins, sees a pair of demons (what Veil? she didn't decide to be affected by any Veil), dodges fast enough to save her head but not fast enough to avoid having a chunk taken out of her arm.

Deliberate torture can't stop her Iron Will once she's gotten started. She punches the offending glabrezu with her other hand and whirls away, raining blood. 

(Her jacket sleeve is neither ripped nor stained.)

Ramien is finishing taking out a Babau of his own, a process which consists of stepping inside the range of its spear and then stabbing its heart, when he sees the injury. He'll channel positive energy to heal everyone around him for 4d6 hp, demons excepted.

Theoretically speaking, the correct response here is to immediate teleport in more overwhelming force on top of Brenda. They've just proven that it can work as a strategy, and if they don't then she'll continue to tear through the mid level demons like a hot knife through butter. Unfortunately, most of their best rapid response forces are already deployed, striking at Hulrun and Terendelev and the varying groups of paladins that are attempting to organize the defense, and the remainder rapidly decide to find other problems that they could plausibly be dealing with before Deskari notices they're refraining from going after her.

The demons can't coordinate? Sucks to be them. Brenda can coordinate, keeping demons off her allies and letting them keep demons off her, staying in range of the healers and baiting demons into area-of-effect spells and never blocking the view of someone with ranged attacks. 

It doesn't suck to be her right now; it doesn't really anything to be her right now. She's in the flow state she's been in a thousand times reading or taking tests or working on a project and never once in gym class, aware of everything except her own awareness. With no conscious input on her part, her eyes have become featureless glowing blue spheres.

Well, that's not going as well as he hoped, but he's pretty sure all the forces of good are committed at this point; there's nobody else secretly waiting in reserve to counter another push. He swings riftcarver, temporarily enlarging an existing tear enough to travel through at an unexpected location.

Time Stop. Greater Teleport.

Deskari cuts off the roof of the wardstone building, then seizes the stone and hurls it into the distance. Even weakened and in stopped time, it tries to burn him, but just as it wasn't able to stop his first wave of demons, so too does it fail to stop him now.

Greater Teleport.

And then time unpauses, with him in perfect position for a decapitating blow on the draconic irritant-

Nope! Actually, riftcarver will catch on a plane of force and be slowed just enough that, hasted and graceful as she is, it fails to hit her directly and doesn't penetrate her scales. But now that you've been so kind as to put yourself in close range, how do you feel about a banishment?

Irritating worm, you're not a match for me and you know it. Fine, it looks like we're doing this the hard way.

Holy shit, giant boss monster! That must be Deskari. On the one hand, he is definitely "dramatic and plot-relevant" enough to get her "glamorously wounded". On the other hand, he's so huge (at least thirty feet tall) that he's likely to have a hard time seeing her, let alone hitting her, and he's clearly the highest priority target here (unless you count fetching and if necessary repairing that very important magical artifact he just threw, but that will take too long to be the right move right now), and her powers haven't failed her yet. Brenda has by this point acquired a sword from someone with no further use for it; she cuts a path to Deskari's nearest foot and goes at it like Ares' own lumberjack.

So a mortal insect wants to die by his hand? It hardly deserves the pleasure, but he supposes he can show it the error of its ways with a kick-

Ow. That wasn't even an enchanted sword! He really hates smite evil, and that bitch Iomedae for thinking she can stop him without even showing up in person. Fine, new plan; kill the gnat, then Terendelev. How do they like half a dozen swings of riftcarver, each so quick as to seem nearly instantaneous?

She does not like them! She gets at least one building destroyed by using it as cover! 

Okay, once was bad enough, but at least Terendelev had the decency to be a dragon. A human doing this to him is simply intolerable. Let's try that again, but this time with all his swarms trying to blind and confuse and suffocate her. Oh, and how about he dispels whatever magic is affecting her, and all her items?

Dispel them how, exactly?