"I've used up most of my healing, but I still have all my other spells and a couple uses of my spirit weapon. I say we go for it."

It's not that she's incredibly gung ho about saving children per se, but it's not objectionable and now that she's here she's realized she would really rather not stay the night. Besides, the shield maze probably has things to kill.

"Sounds like we're all ready to go, though I'd like to get more of a primer from Wenduag on what kind of hazards we can expect in the maze."

While Lann leads them over to Dyra, Wenduag can answer.

"It's not a constant spread, but usually I encounter a mix of monsters and the unknown; there are a lot of of things in the shadows or that make noise and I just avoid, like piles of rock that move and attack. Occasionally you'll see demons, though usually not very many of them, and some demon cultists following around after them. Plus whatever thing or things drives people insane."

"There are demons in the shield maze? Why did you never say anything about it before now!"

Lann seems genuinely upset at her having left this out.

"Not so loud! And of course I didn't say anything about it! Imagine what would have happened if I had - you think this is bad? Think about how many idiots would go off running into the maze if they thought that was their duty as crusaders! Half the young hunters would be dead or worse, for nothing."

"You should have told me."

"Are you trying to tell me you wouldn't be one of them?"

Wenduag manages to impart a surprising amount of scorn into her words.

Lann looks hurt, but doesn't seem to be able to muster a real response to that.

What if instead of interpersonal drama they did more strategizing. "Do you have a map of the maze? And/or a way to narrow down where in it the kids are likely to be?"

"What's a map? And no, beyond probably not near the entrance or at least one of them would be out by now."

"Oh man, maps are so cool, you draw a picture of an area with a line for each wall and you can use them to find your way to a particular place, or mark off areas you've searched so you can be sure you've searched everywhere--sorry, that's a side issue, we can just stay to the left again." She's pretty sure that was rude, but, but maps.

"Normally I just remember where everything is? Like if I want to get to the other end of the shield maze, I just go down the route that gets me there."

Probably there's a reason to use them beyond not having a good memory but it's not instantly obvious, maybe she'd have to see one first.

Dyra is also a neather, though somewhat older than Wenduag and Lann; she seems to be in good health, but is probably less ridiculously fit than they are. She apparently also runs something of a shop, with a sign labelled in pictograms and some unknown kind of text that Brenda can still effortlessly read advertising the services on offer. There's fishhooks, arrows, weapons, firestarters, string - all kinds of things you might want and would still be able to make underground - but also apparently magical services on offer. The sign proudly lists prices for "channeling," "cures," "truthtelling," and "carrying capacity," as well as mentioning to ask her for a quote for other castings. Around her neck is a necklace with a stylized symbol of scales that a native (or Brenda, if she has a good memory and read the right books from Areelu Vorlehs' library in her short pre-kenabres binge) might recognize as one of Abadar's holy symbols. 

"Lann, Wenduag, you brought uplanders! Welcome to Neatholm, and feel free to let me know if anything catches your interest or you have questions. I love to trade with new people! I'll take trade in barter, not just gold, but prices are higher if I'll have to sell it to get any use from it or it's the kind of thing with a limited market."

"If your memory's that awesome then you really only need maps if you want to give someone else directions, yeah." . . . Oh hey, she can actually remember the entire route they took to get here in quite a lot of detail, including all the options for turnings they didn't take, and she wasn't even especially trying to. She loves her headband so much.

She doesn't immediately have ideas for things she should buy or sell at Dyra's shop; she contemplates trying to arrange something with the science books but she's going to leave soon and it'll be hard to come back.

Lann does. He wants to buy a channel to heal them and especially Anevia, paid for by his future earnings as a hunter. When she points out that it seems pretty likely that he’ll die and thus those won’t materialize, he instead offers his hut as payment in that eventuality and hunting if he does return, which she accepts but says she’ll want witnessed since in that case he wouldn’t be around to confirm it.

 Once she has his word, she holds aloft the symbol of the scales on her necklace and glows; Anevia and Camellia are the ones that most benefit, but Lann, Wenduag, and Seelah all look somewhat appreciative.

Channeling energy is very cool and it's too bad wizards can't do it; even if there was a god she'd make a good cleric of she's not sure she wants that kind of relationship.

Onward into the shield maze, then?

According to Wenduag, the fastest way to get to the shield maze is by boat across the lake; there's a path along the shore that'll get them there, but it's significantly longer even if they take the side of the lake with only a very narrow lip of dry land between the water and the cave walls. They're not especially fancy, but they do seem waterproof and their equivalent of oars are good enough at moving water to allow them to travel at a decent clip. Once there, the entrance is rather unassuming; you have to slip through a narrow crack where a wall of what probably used to be a fortress at some point is coming apart, but she promises it opens up more once inside and is mostly only an issue if you're trying to leave in a hurry.

"It's only an issue if you're trying to leave in a hurry" sounds like foreshadowing, and possibly the existence of the metanarrative means she should be on guard for anything that might be foreshadowing, but she's not going to not go into the shield maze about it, so she casts the demon detection spell again and keeps moving.

Once through the crack, she'll find herself in a side chamber of some kind, with a dull red symbol on the wall that looks almost black in the lighting. There's a door leading further on that's closed, with a dim light coming in through the cracks.

"That's Baphomet's symbol. I guess we know whose cultists they are, if it being a maze didn't give it away."

"Does that tell you anything about what their strengths and weaknesses are likely to be? Also, are demon cultists usually being mind-controlled by the demon or are they" more of a Jonestown situation "acting of their own accord?" She's not sure which possibility is more fucked up; it's a very competitive field.

"It means we should expect to see more cultists using glaives than scythes, if we encounter them, and more of an emphasis on clever plans and traps than brute force, though it's not an exact science there. As for who becomes a demon cultist... it's a complicated question. Some people just inherently find that the way demons operate, cruelly excercising your power over other people without regard to any rules or laws, to be inherently satisfying, and certainly many of those become demon cultists. But there are those kind of people everywhere, and most countries don't have as many demon cultists as we do. Sometimes you get people who are afraid of dying, and think that being a cultist will keep them safe or at least have some measure of control. Sometimes you get people who have all their friend group join cults, and get brought along with them as they become more and more surrounded by bad influences. Sometimes... you have people who feel desperate, like all of society doesn't give a shit about them and they could die alone on the street and nobody would care, and to them, the demon cults promise a sense of community and purpose, or a way to strike back at the society that they feel wronged them. And sometimes people don't even know they're in a cult until they've been there for months and by then peer pressure is enough to hold them."

She pauses to think.

"As for mind control, well, it does sometimes happen that someone just gets dominated into serving the demons. Succubi are rather fond of it. But even when mind control happens, it's usually stuff more like whipping up a crowd to stone somebody accused of being a witch, or someone who gets suggested into committing a serious crime and then doesn't think they have any good options if anyone ever finds out - often times, they don't even know they were manipulated. And then as part of the cult they're called on to commit more and more crimes, until there's no way out. It's not necessarily all that hard for a powerful demon to totally control a human being, but they can usually only get a limited number of them at a time and there's always a chance that someone will break free at the wrong moment from the more comprehensive types."

Well fuck. Now she really wants to avoid killing any cultists.

"That makes sense . . . for that matter, what's the demons' whole deal? Do they ever make demands, or just show up and attack?" Whatever answer she gets is of course going to be from the perspective of someone on the other side of a war from said demons, but it could still be informative. 

"Demons... aren't really the kind of thing you can do negotiations with, unless you've got overwhelming force and the negotiation is for something they can do right then and there and you can check it, like leave. Maybe that's not true of demon lords but I expect it probably is. They're all chaotic evil, which means they don't keep their word or act honorably or obey rules, even from each other, and that they delight in hurting people and causing misery and killing people and so forth. Mostly not all at once for the last bit, you'll get different demons with their own specific evil goals and one who wants to spend their time torturing victims might not care if the other people they fight manage to get away, but sometimes you do get ones that approach universally evil. Occasionally you'll here stories about some succubus promising to repent if only you'd spare her or trust her or sleep with her, but I've never heard of it being anything other than a trick and I'd expect to. The closest thing there is to tame demons are quasits who sometimes work for evil wizards, some of them are even nearly as opposed to the wound as we are and they can mostly keep their familiars in line."