"Hm. Thanks." It's probably true. She saw a bit of what it was like to be an angel, and it was something only a tiny fraction of humans have ever approached. If demons are similarly alien in the other direction, then probably 'kill them all before they kill you' is the right strategy. Probably. Apparently her sense of narrative appropriateness likes this situation, because it let her get sent here, but she's not in the mood to evaluate the quality of today's events as an opening chapter.

She kicks a rock. The rock chips. 

"Where I'm from there's just humans, and no magic, and--well, things were still incredibly complicated actually, but I was less in the middle of them."

"I wouldn't ever take that trade myself, and not just because it's hard to imagine life without Beth, but I won't deny there are days I'd be tempted if it meant we stopped having demon cultists."

Wenduag can open the door, quietly enough to not carry even in the confined space, and lead them into the maze proper. She ignores the first few branches due to them being dead ends that terminate too close to the entrance to plausibly hold the kids, but pretty soon that stops being the case and Brenda's suggestion of taking the leftmost path means passing through a lot of branching corridors. The building isn't precisely in good repair, but some of the stonework looks newer than other bits and most of it is clearly not in any danger of collapsing. The light varies from a dim glow to brighter segments, sometimes lit by glowing mossess and sometimes by no apparent source whatsoever, but it never gets dark enough that Wenduag has any trouble seeing and they can usually see her clearly if not the rooms. Some minutes into their exploration, Wenduag motions them to a stop right before a corner; there's audible sound coming from around it, like some relatively large animal moving around.

She really should have asked to copy Wenduag's eyes but it would have been so awkward and it turns out that when you suddenly get the ability to know in advance when things would be awkward, without any corresponding practice at choosing to do awkward things on purpose, this can result in Poor Decisions.

At least whatever it is sounds large enough that she should be able to punch it half blind, if it turns out to be bitey. Or possibly Disney Princess at it.

Wenduag will speak to them in a low voice, though not a whisper since she doesn't want the sound to carry any further than it has to.

"There's some maddened neathers in the next room. We need to hit them hard from the start, ideally before they have a chance to alert anyone else. Anevia, you take the one on the right. Lann, the left. I'll take the one in the middle."

"Hold on, you want us to just kill them like that?"

"There's no helping them once they get to this stage. Believe me, I've tried."

She should have asked for a way to make Iron Will contagious. She tries a very quiet detect magic to at least find out what kind of madness it is.

If it’s a magical kind of madness, it’s not one that detect magic can identify, but they sure do seem to be acting differently from the neathers she had encountered before.

That's unfortunate in that it means she doesn't have a magic radar for them, but she didn't get anything that looked like a counterspell so there's nothing she could have done anyway. She doesn't have a role in the ambush plan as stated, so she'll just keep an eye out and help anyone who gets in trouble.

They go down very quickly to arrows, and Wenduag seems notably pleased at how much easier having three people makes this kind of thing. She would be fine herself, but it makes it much easier to get other people through.

"Who are these people? I'm not sure I'd recognize everyone that's gone missing and presumed dead, not if they were from the other tribes, but I wouldn't expect to not recognize three of this age. Are there other mongrel tribes on the other side of the shield maze that we've never heard of because it's too dangerous to cross, or something?"

"I've never encountered anyone I was sure wasn't from the tribes here, but I suppose it's not impossible there are some groups of Neathers not living with everyone else. You've always had a better memory for faces anyway."

There are more signs of the cult of Baphomet around as they continue, and the walls start looking to be in better repair. They have to stop so Camellia and Anevia can disarm traps twice, one of them just before they accidentally trigger it, and soon after the first torches start appearing on the walls. The rooms here look to be more lived in, with sounds of conversation coming from a nearby room.

Can any of them hear enough of the conversation to make out words, or at least tone and how many of them there are?

Anevia knows some tricks for listening in on people without them noticing.

"Baphomet cultists, it sounds like. I think we can slip past them here, none of them are paying attention, but it might be dangerous to leave them at our back if we get discovered later and someone raises the alarm."

"Slipping past them would be good. How much farther do we need to go through the maze?"

"It depends on what our goal is. We're a little under halfway to the other end, if you want to get to the surface, but there's a lot of maze where the kids could be kept in."

"So a lot less than halfway . . . how likely is it that this batch of cultists has the kids--or will know where they are if we can take them alive?"

"I don't think they'd be here; I'm pretty sure this is their sleeping quarters and they're hanging out there, not where you would hold prisoners or, well, keep corpses. I think we could take them alive since they're not prepared for combat now, but without them screaming would be harder and without truth spells it's tough to get reliable information out of people in a hurry. Might be worth trying though, I could give it a shot."

'If taking them alive turns out to be a bad idea we can always kill them afterwards' is another thing Brenda cannot say with her mouth words. Fucking why did she think it was a good idea to volunteer to get involved in a hostage situation again? Oh right, because she can punch really hard and the magic sword likes her. Ugh.

"I expect your judgement is better than mine." She wonders if this culture considers fourteen-year-olds to be basically adults or if everyone else is making a magic-sword-based exception.

14 is a little younger than Anevia would normally consider an adult, either by the standards of Mendev or where she grew up, but it’s hardly sensible to not take an adventurer or paladin seriously just because they look a little young. She’s also not sure that Wenduag and Lann are more than a few years older than that either, frankly, it might just be cultural differences but the two of them feel young.

One advantage of the years of experience she has on them, especially the time spent doing intelligence work for the eagle’s watch, is that it makes reading Brenda pretty easy even across the cultural gap. If she didn’t think they could manage it safely, she’d insist anyway, but she she’s met a lot of Baphomet cultists like this over the years and is pretty confident in her assessment of their abilities.

”I think it’s probably worth trying, then. You can do nonlethal combat with weapons but we want a silent takedown here, not just leaving them alive, which means hand to hand is better. If you have experience with chokeholds they’re ideal for this kind of thing but if not I don’t want anyone trying it for the first time; aim punches for their stomach and diaphragm if you can, to knock the breath out of them, but the throat is also a good substitute. It’s not  perfectly safe as a takedown without more healing than we have going spare but we’re prioritizing our safety here, not their survival at all costs. If you think one of them is going to scream and you can’t stop them, kill them first. Wenduag, Camellia, can I trust you two to handle that while Brenda Lann and I go for nonlethal takedowns?”

Camellia smirks.

”I think I can manage that, yes.”

Wenduag just nods.

Brenda's ready to go when Anevia gives the signal.