And here's a human girl appearing out of nowhere! She doesn't show up all at once, but gradually over several seconds, as a distortion in the air that moves colors into new locations until suddenly it resolves into the image of a girl and then the image becomes real. She's wearing strange but sturdy-looking clothes and a bulky backpack and holding a notebook and pen, which she promptly stuffs in a jacket pocket as she says probably-a-greeting in an unfamiliar language.

She looks around excitedly. New universe! Cool red-eyed alien lady! Room that looks like a laboratory of some kind, which would be extremely awesome!

An unfamiliar language is fine, Areelu Vorlesh spent the diamond dust to make tongues and comprehend languages permanent a long time ago. No, what takes her aback is the girl's appearance. It's... not the same, and it wouldn't be even if you changed out what she was wearing and swapped how she styled her hair, but it's surprisingly close - especially for a wish wording that ought to prioritize personality and give no thought to appearance. For a moment, she wonders if she made a mistake on her wording, but even in retrospect it's not clear how this would have happened. Areelu knows the plan calls for her to use mythic sleep here, to transport her to Kenabres in time for the attack unknowing, but she finds she cannot bring herself to do it. Instead, almost despite herself she finds herself fighting a smile.

"Hello," she replies, echoing the girl's greeting in her own tongue.

Huh, English. Possibly a coincidence, probably language magic. "Hi, I'm Brenda. What's your name? And would it be rude to ask what species you are?"

Ooh, there's the making-friends magic kicking in; it's easy to focus on the other woman's face and on what she might be thinking. She's not surprised to see Brenda appearing, for one thing; maybe the Isekai Roulette hooked up to a corresponding summoning ritual on this end so she'd land on someone who was okay being landed on. Polite of it, if so.

"I am Areelu Vorlesh, and I was born a human, but if you're asking about my current form I ascended to become a half succubus. Forgive me my surprise, I was expecting to summon you but your appearance caught me off guard."

"No problem; sorry for surprising you. I hope being a half succubus is fun." It occurs to her that Areelu could potentially be another person empowered by the Spirit of Femininity; she did agree to meet such people and it would explain expecting her. The jury is still very much out on whether Brenda wants to become part-succubus herself; she doesn't necessarily want sex-themed powers yet even if they're cool and she's kind of attached to the idea of becoming part notebook before anything else.

Areelu Vorlesh can't help herself; she laughs.

"I'd certainly say I enjoy it, although I can't say the same for the process of acquiring it. Why, were you hoping for a transformation of your own? I think the ritual would be a lot easier to set up the second time, but it would come with its fair share of social problems, so I'm a bit cautious about reccomending it to you."

Definitely not the Another One, then, if she's telling the truth about the ritual. And social problems aren't going to be mitigated by the "you get the benefits without the drawbacks" thing, unless it's something like being some kinds of fictional vampire where the social problems are downstream of the drawbacks.

"No need to set up any rituals for me, but thank you. I'm excited to learn more about this world."

"You're currently in my laboratory; it's in a private demiplane, but it opens up to the country of Sarkoris on the planet Golarion of the prime material. I had planned to send you to Mendev, a neighboring country, since it's significantly more friendly to humans and is about to suffer an attack by Deskari, which would be an opportunity for you to earn some goodwill from them without any serious risk to you if you wanted a warmer reception than they would give an unknown traveler; in that case, I would advise not mentioning I sent you since I'm not the most popular there for rather understandable reasons. If you have any immediate questions, though, I'd be happy to answer them - there are a couple of magical items I planned to give you before sending you off."

One. It was one magical item, and now she finds herself laughing at the idea that she would ever have been satisfied with that half measure and some quiet shadowing. What would she have done if she somehow lost her again, after getting closer to getting her back than she had ever dreamed of?

"Thank you, both for the advice and for the magic items. Who or what is Deskari? And why did you summon someone; is there something you'd like me to help you with on Golarion?"

Areelu seems weirdly--excited about Brenda? Happy to see her? She clearly wants something; hopefully the fact that she got Brenda rather than anyone else means it's something Brenda will be able and willing to do.

"Deskari is a demon lord, commonly known as the lord of locusts for the swarm he brings with him wherever he goes. The reason he's headed for Mendev is to take out Terendelev, the dragon that protects Kenabres, but it's not exactly safe for him to stick around on the prime material for too long so he'll probably stick to a small handful of priority targets, which won't include you even if you attack him as long as you keep your distance. And no, you don't need to do anything for me besides stay alive, I've already gotten everything else I wanted out of this experiment."

Areelu Vorlesh doesn't, in fact, have that many extra magic items lying around. There are research projects she has, both largely half finished and not expectedly useful, and of course her own personal supply, but building up a surplus is hampered by the fact that she both already has pretty much all the ones she actually needs and her acquisition is largely limited to the things she crafts herself and that she can purchase in Alushinyrra. Getting to Absalom or Quantium from here is a major pain that involves multiple plane shifts and a teleport, and still leaves her with the issue that she doesn't, actually, have all that much in the way of normal money and no way to turn her spellcasting into that like most other archmages manage. Fortunately, her own personal supply is a broader term than might be expected, particularly given that it includes the backup items she leaves by her clone so as to have on hand after decanting if she dies. It's a bit risky to go without, but she hasn't actually ever died since her ascension and all that would really change is it taking longer after her death for her to be safe to be out and about again. She can pick up a cloak of resistance and ring of protection, both of reasonably high quality, and then a headband of intelligence and a belt of constitution and - no, not her robe of the archmagi, that only works for evil people, but yes to the amulet of natural armor. And she still has the gloves she crafted a century ago and couldn't bear to be rid of, that she didn't manage to finish in time for them to achieve their goal but would now have a second chance.

"I think this should cover most of your bases. Would you like me to grant you a permanent tongues and comprehend languages, or would you prefer not so you can better sell being a foreigner?"

The magic items are So Awesome and Brenda is very appreciative! She wants to learn to make stuff this cool eventually. The headband of intelligence in particular is the most amazing item she has ever encountered unless Alpina counts as an item.

"I already have some language magic, but I haven't tested it out yet and I don't know how long it takes to get conversant; if the city's about to be attacked I should get whatever will be faster. Will it interfere with actually learning the languages later?" It would be kind of sad if she didn't get to learn any languages, but warning Terendelev is obviously more important and maybe she can get it taken off when there isn't an emergency.

"It might interfere a little bit, but you can suppress the effect if you try to hear the actual words being spoken and you can always get it dispelled later if you decide you want to go without - actually, with my caster level that's probably a bit of a pain, but since I'm using limited wish to pretend it's you casting it you shouldn't have any issues with it if you do it yourself, even from a scroll."

"Thank you! I'd love a primer on this world's magic system but I know there's an emergency looming and I don't know what else you're busy with. If I tell Terendelev Deskari is going to attack, is she likely to take my word for it?"

"I don't know if I have anything I'd call a comprehensive guide by itself, but I do have what I consider to be a fairly excellent library. You're welcome to borrow anything you like, with a bag of holding if you'd prefer, though I'd recommend starting with 'Wizardry and Sorcery: an adventurer's guide,' Andrea's 'Memoirs of the hero of Odranto,' Camellia of Eldir's 'on the Question of Sorcerers,' and 'The Druids of Sarkoris that Was.' You should be able to supplement these from the library in any major cities, but I'd be wary of the ones that talk about witchcraft; they mostly aren't worth the paper they're written on.

"As for the attack, I would guess it's unlikely since he's never done this before for good reason. If you warn her about a more general demonic incursion, however, that's significantly more plausible and will have many similarities in how to prepare for it. If you really want to be believed on the matter, you could mention me by name, but this will probably make you seem very suspicious or be dismissed as crazy."

Books!!!

She will take the advice under advisement, but privately she thinks that she's more likely to be dismissed as crazy if she doesn't provide any evidence. And if nobody in the city will believe something because Areelu said it then maybe she shouldn't either; it's not like Brenda has information on Areelu's trustworthiness that anyone else doesn't. She'll share the evidence she has and let the people with local context do what they want with it.

Also if the wizardry books aren't already in the bag of holding when they enter her possession, she's going to start reading them. She's only human (so far. There was a mention of Terendelev being a dragon.)

There are definitely also books on dragons in the library, though none of the four recommended to her seem to be about them and only the discussion of sorcery gives it serious page time, and also on gods and monsters and angels and demons and devils and elementals mixed in with imposing academic treatises on subjects like spellform optimization and soul surgery and planar interactions and of course more normal works like geography and histories and holy books and biographies of famous individuals. If Brenda isn't careful, she might end up filling her bag of holding entirely with books.

What else would you fill a bag of holding with??? (Also this world has so many species, it's great, she's going to meet as many of them as possible and be fifty different things!) Would Areelu like to look at some of Brenda's science books from Earth? She doesn't want to loan them out long term because they're irreplaceable but if there's magic to duplicate them Areelu is welcome to make copies. Also she makes no guarantees that any given fact in them is true on the Material Plane.

There's no easy way to copy that many books in a short amount of time with magic from golarion, but that mostly just means Areelu Vorlesh is showing off when she taps each book in sequence and a quill starts copying each one significantly faster than is usual for scrivener's chant. If she has any objection to Brenda apparently deciding it is her life's ambition to carry as much of a library with her as possible at all times, she certainly doesn't voice it.

"I'm planning to keep an eye on you with scrying for the next bit to make sure you get through the attack safely, but feel free to wave me off if you decide you want more privacy than that going forward as soon as you're not in immediate danger or just want me to stop watching for a bit. If you do and decide to contact me, a sending should typically work to get my attention as long as you can find someone willing to send me on your behalf; I can give you a couple of scrolls if you'd prefer that."

"I have no idea how much any of this is costing you or how many people can cast Sending, so I'm fine with whatever makes sense to you. You can contact me easily enough if and when you need your stuff back, right?"

In that case she’ll slip three scrolls into Brenda’s bag, though it’s coming up on the limit of what it will fit.

”Don’t worry about it, none of the items are stuff I can’t replace and I made half of them anyway. I wouldn’t advise selling them, but mostly because you’d only get a fraction of what they’re worth.

”When you’re ready, I’ll transport you to Kenabres, but we do still have time if you have more questions.”

She wants another sixty seconds or so of detail on where to look for Terendelev and how long until the attack is expected and if there are specific things Terendelev or Kenabres should do to prepare, but then she's ready to go.

(She's nervous, and trying ineffectually to hide it. Theoretically her Battle Maiden power should let her "be a match for" Deskari, but she did not ask enough questions about what that meant or where it applies because she had planned to avoid fights. She would still really like to avoid fights! But if it turns out that she got sent to this particular place and time so she could protect people she doesn't want to let them die by being too scared. And she can feel the belt making her tougher and the Inner Strength power sitting unobtrusively behind it, hinting at what she can do only by making everything she's currently carrying feel effortless.)

Then Areelu will shapeshift into a more ordinary looking woman, and take Brenda’s hand to transport them. It’s a multi step process, first bringing them to a desolate rock with unusual coloration and a purple sky, then 6 seconds later the air over an ocean, but then they’re in a back alleyway of a probably preindustrial town.

”Terendelev should be in the festival plaza, but she’s rather difficult to scry so I’m not completely sure where. You want the woman with silver hair and eyes, but pretty much everyone should know who you’re talking about. You've got about half an hour before the attack, but other demons should start showing up before Deskari makes an appearance.”

Ooooh teleportation she wants to learn that, what was that place with the purple sky, was it another planet, does Areelu have interplanetary travel, is it FTL focus Brenda you have a job to do.

"Thank you. I'll see you later, I hope."

Areelu smiles at her.

"I expect I can manage to arrange that, yes."

Then she vanishes.

Kenabres is bizarrely empty, but that can probably be attributed to the sounds coming from the nearby square; there seems to be a celebration in full swing, with excellent attendance. Most of the people are human or look it, but there are some shorter individuals that might be dwarves and a handful of more exotic persuasion. Terendelev is not immediately obvious.

Yesterday this would have completely sucked but today her magically implanted instincts let her identify someone who seems less busy than most of the other people here and confidently walk up to them and say with a friendly smile, "Pardon me, have you seen Terendelev? I just got into town and I've been given an urgent message for her."

(Also she is staring at everything like a tourist because new planet with nonhuman people eeeeee.)

Wow those look like magic items, this is probably an adventurer! Or at least a cleric, which is almost as cool.

"Certainly! She was just here a minute ago, she should be around here somewhere. Follow me!"

It takes a bit of looking, but they find her within a couple of minutes, greeting some of the citizens and asking about how they're enjoying the day and if there's any problems that aren't being solved.

Brenda thanks her guide and gets the attention of Terendelev. "Excuse me, ma'am, there's something I need to tell you right away but it might be better to do so in private." 

Someone she doesn't know, which isn't all that meaningful on it's own since she hardly has Hulrun's memory for faces, but with that much magic gear she'd definitely remember them. The magic items she recognizes are the kind you'd expect to see on a 7th circle, probably a wealthy one, except she doesn't recognize the gloves which means probably custom work. Definitely someone from out of town, almost certainly from outside of Mendev, who she didn't know to expect coming. Terendelev rarely thinks in terms of how likely something is to be an ambush, but this might actually be one.

On the other hand... even if it is an ambush, she probably does also want to be away from the townspeople when it hits, since they're a lot squishier than she is, and if it's not an ambush there might well be a good reason for privacy.

"Certainly. Would you all mind giving us some space?"

The citizens of Kenabres are, by and large, genuinely grateful for their protector - largely because she doesn't ask for much. When there is something important enough for her to request of them, they're pretty good about following through.

She wasn't actually sure until this moment whether she was going to go for the full truth or strategic omissions, but she looks at Terendelev and chooses truth. 

"I just got here from another planet, and the first person I met told me Deskari was planning to attack Kenabres today and asked me to warn you. That person introduced herself as Areelu Vorlesh and said you might not believe her, but she seemed serious and I wanted to pass on the warning. I hope you have some way to confirm or disprove it or some precautions you can take without being sure."

...What. Even as a ploy, that's completely ridiculous. Not the infighting between demons; really, it would be in some ways more surprising if Areelu wasn't stabbing her master in the back when she thought she could get away with it. But if that was the plan, it wouldn't involve admitting her involvement in a way that Deskari might be able to later learn about and would make more sense. In the incredibly unlikely event that a demon lord would decide to manifest on the material plane at a predictable time and you wanted to betray them about it, you would tell Lastwall so they could have a few dozen invisible paladins waiting in the wings to kill him before he has a chance to respond, not give Terendelev a bit of warning but not enough to actually matter. But that still leaves unanswered the question of what the goal of the intervention is. For Terendelev to blow her spells preparing for an attack, and then kill some patrols when she can't support them because she's out? Possible, but probably not worth the cost of revealing you have a high level wizard under your employ and risking losing them. To get her to cancel the festivities out of paranoia? Even less payout, especially as demons tend to reckon things. Get her paranoid and have her bug out when you trigger a normal demon attack, leaving the city without its best defender? Possible, and it might even work, but the story is still pretty confusing even if you assume that. Terendelev is beginning to feel lost, like her conversational partner is playing at something she's only half understanding, and it's pretty uncomfortable position to be in.

"I do have some spells that I could use to prepare for an attack, but most of them have a fairly limited duration, so if I cast them too early and often I would run out before too long. Did you happen to get a time? And, ah, I'm sorry to doubt you, but this story sounds rather unbelievable and that's giving me some issues, and you seem more than capable of faking most of the things I could check. Is it an immediate emergency, or do we have time to bring you to Rathimus and see about having him cast Abadar's truthtelling on you? That wouldn't erase the doubts, but it would help rule out some of the possibilities."

"I understand that it seems completely crazy and I'm taking someone else's word for it myself. If she's right we have a bit less than half an hour and other demons will show up a bit before Deskari does; I don't know how long it would take to get Rathimus and I don't know how to check whether Areelu Vorlesh lied to me but of course I'm happy to get an Abadar's Truthtelling if you want."

"Please follow me, then; it's slower than flying but less likely to give away that something unusual is happening."

Rathimus is apparently a relatively elderly but well dressed man; his clothes aren't especially decorated, but they're noticably higher quality than most people around him and very clean.

"Could I purchase an Abadar's truthtelling from you, at standard rates?"

"If the lady doesn't object, yes. To be explicit: Abadar's truthtelling will prevent you from speaking falsehood while it is in effect. It will not prevent you from being mistaken, deceived, or forgetful. If you try and resist, you probably will succeed; if so, Abadar's holy symbol will disappear from your forehead to signal it is not in effect any more. Is this acceptable?"

If it actually makes her tell the truth instead of just detecting whether she's lying it's possible Iron Will will block it, but if she focuses on wanting to be affected it ought to go through on the same principle as communicative telepathy, right? At least it will be obvious whether she accidentally blocked it or not.

"Yes, that's acceptable. I'll try not to resist it."

Then Rathimus will call upon Abadar to guarantee the truth of these words, and there's a delicate feeling that settles over Brenda's mind that compels her to honesty. She could break it, easily, but bypassing it without causing it to shatter would be a far more difficult to achieve. Upon her forehead (though not directly visible to her) is the image of a key.

"To the best of your knowledge, is everything you said to me today true? Is there anything you have stated or implied to be fact that you would not expect to know if it was false? Is there anything that you expect to, when it becomes known to me, lead me to believe you have substantively attempted to deceive me in this conversation? To the best of your knowledge, are you currently working for or have you ever worked for Deskari, Baphomet, any other demon lord, or any subordinate or comrade thereof? And for the sake of completion, do you maintain that you expect Deskari to attack shortly, and were told this by Areelu Vorlesh?"

"Everything I told you today is true to the best of my knowledge. I wouldn't expect to know if the person claiming to be Areelu Vorlesh lied to me about her identity or anything else. I don't think I've left out anything that would lead you to believe I deceived you unless I forgot to say I was from another world or it's important that I have a weird grab bag of magic powers and no practice using them. I'm not working for any of those entities and never have. Someone claiming to be Areelu Vorlesh definitely told me Deskari was going to attack this city in half an hour and if I had to bet I'd bet that he will."

The symbol doesn't disappear from her head, not that she can see this.

Okay, so she's also from another world. In a sense this is something rare enough that it ought to be striking her as even more implausible and raising the odds of her having beaten Abadar's truthtelling somehow, but at this point every option she's considering involves several very improbable things at some point in the explanation which means she's just wrong about something. And there's definitely a sense in which Brenda being from another world makes things hang together better; it implies there are a lot of specific circumstances and constraints and cultural gaps going on that she just has no context for and thus looks nonsensical from the outside. She's not definitely legitimate, but the odds are good enough that Terendelev does not want to take any chances.

"Alright. Thank you very much for the warning, I'll get started coordinating our defense shortly and appreciate you putting up with this. In the meantime, though, if you're new to Golarion there's some things you really ought to know. Areelu Vorlesh is an incredibly evil person who does frequently work with demons, especially Deskari, and is responsible for pretty much the entire ongoing war with the Abyss. She's also a 9th circle witch and thus one of the most powerful magic users on the planet - I'd offer to try and dispel you to remove any malign influences, but I'm not sure I could even dispel something she put together no matter how many times I tried; you'd pretty much need to go to another archmage or have a a cleric cast dispel evil on you, which I don't think Rathimus has prepared. I'd like to bring you to Hulrun so he can cast Magic Circle against Evil, and at least give you another save against any effects - actually, no, I should get you to Ramien, he's better at removing mind control by a fair margin. If the attack you've described materializes, even if Deskari doesn't show up in person, we will of course reward you for your help unless it seems likely you specifically caused it. Is there anything else urgent from your perspective?"

"One of my grab bag of powers is that I'm supposed to be immune to mind control but I haven't tested it and don't know how it stacks up against anything here. I might also be able to help fight but I've never been in a fight before either. I don't think there's anything urgent. --Good luck."

Terendelev will ask Rathimus to escort Brenda to Ramien and then meet up with her, Hulrun, and Irabeth to ready their defenses for an attack. After getting his agreement, she hurries off a little short of a run.

Ramien is apparently one of the non human people; he has some kind of a halo above his head, and his eyes glow golden. He's wearing a fancy set of robes embroidered with stars, and a around his neck is a silver chain with a butterfly pendant.

"Greetings! It's always great to meet someone who has traveled from so far away. What brings you to Kenabres?"

"It's good to meet you too. I sent myself to an arbitrary world looking for one with interesting magic to learn and lots of kinds of people to meet, and the person I landed near sent me to Kenabres to warn Terendelev the city was about to be attacked. I've done that and now I'm--waiting to see if the warning was a true one, I guess. It shouldn't be a long wait one way or the other."

"Oh good. I tried to warn people of what was coming myself, but I'm afraid I somewhat lack credibility in such matters and I didn't have anything so useful as a source, much less the actual time it would occur, so the most I could manage on my own was readying our temple for anyone the attack injured or displaced and positioning myself to help as many civilians as I can. How long do we have?"

"Less than half an hour, probably more like fifteen minutes at this point. How did you know it was going to happen? If it's independent that makes it more likely."

She puts a hand in her pocket; Alpina is still there. She hopes she'll get a chance to tell her what's up soon, either before the attack or afterwards; from her perspective Brenda said go and then went totally silent.

"It was revealed to me in a dream."

He then smiles disarmingly.

"I mean that literally; I'm a priest of Desna, the goddess of dreams, travelers, luck, and the stars, and she tends to relay us important messages through them. She's not the one speaking directly, since it's in words and not metaphors, but we're pretty sure she has someone spying on the demons and feeding us what intel they can. Still, it's hard to confirm any intel except by waiting for it to come true, and while lots of Iomedeans are quite lovely people they have a tendency to be suspicious of anything that strikes them as insufficiently serious. They've been assuming the sheer scale of what we're being told means that it's a demonic trick to lull us into a false sense of security and then spring a trap once we trust it, never mind that we sleep in a hallowed temple and trying to infiltrate the dreams of a Desnan cleric is a particularly foolish strategy."

She does not have nearly enough context to evaluate how much anyone should or shouldn't have acted on Ramien's warnings. Maybe someone fooled his source, maybe that's impossible, maybe his intel has been reliable in the past and maybe it hasn't. In this case it's probably correct, and she squashes down her sense of relief that she didn't start off her time in this world by crying wolf and replaces it with anxiety about incoming demons.

"My world doesn't have gods, so I don't know what to expect from them, but Desna sounds like an excellent ally to have. Are your eyes and halo because you're a priest, or are they just part of how you look?"

"I'm quite pleased with her! I resonate most strongly with her aspects of freedom and of being an Azata, but of course even amongst her followers that's hardly universal; I suspect you would resonate strongly with her aspects of travel and of fortune should you choose to follow her. She's not the right goddess for everyone, but there's a lot of room for you to be all kinds of people and still follow her. The eyes and halo are not completely unrelated, but the link is tenuous. I have them because I'm an Aasimar, the term for humans descended from good outsiders, which I think definitely contributed to my choosing to follow Desna, but of course the count is also an Aasimar and famously spurns all the gods. If you're a particularly powerful spellcaster of some sort you can temporarily embody the aspects of an angel as well, but the only ways I know of to do it permanently without dying are either extremely expensive or more rumor than fact."

"The process by which I came here gave me several other abilities, one of which is the ability to take on some of the traits of any kind of person I meet. Would you be alright with me potentially becoming more like an Aasimar myself? No need to answer right away, unless being an Aasimar is especially helpful for fending off demons and you think I should do it before we're attacked."

"I'd be delighted, though of course I wouldn't consider myself to have the authority to forbid you anyway. Quite aside from my being altogether too chaotic for that, Aasimar will randomly pop up in distant descendants of angels as long as their parentage happens to line up right, so it's not like there's any way to definitely say someone couldn't be an Aasimar. The halo is quite nice as a light source and offers some defense against attempts at blinding me, though of course I also have excellent night vision so it's not always needed, I can use glitterdust once a day without preparing it, and I have some minor resistance to acid, cold, and electricity. If I suddenly turned into a human I wouldn't consider myself especially more vulnerable to demons, but the advantages are often quite nice on the margins."

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?

It's just one thing after another today, isn't it.

The swarms are impairing for a moment, and then she reaches in a direction that wasn't there yesterday and acquires a beekeeper suit complete with mesh veil. (It's a very elegant and stylish beekeeper suit, with blue and green accents and lines that flatter her figure, and it goes under her magic items when possible and over them when necessary but doesn't conceal any of them.)

Anyway, STAB.

Deskari doesn't normally bother to hate mortals; they're too far beneath his notice for him to even care. Even Iomedae's own herald barely rates that kind of attention, which he typically reserves for his rivals amongst demon lords and anyone sufficiently connected to Aroden. But right now, he thinks, he's willing to make an exception. If he can't kill her now and be done with it, he'll at least get her out of his way. Deskari goes at her with his scythe once more, but this time in the hopes of getting her to dodge close enough to one of his legs that he can kick her and then imprison her.

She can tell he's trying to sweep her that way so she's going to dodge this way. It takes her out of stabbing range of his legs (she has got to learn some magic so she has ranged options) but if she lines things up right she can hack at the scythe handle, or try to get Deskari overextended so Terendelev has an opening--

He's hardly going to lose this fight. He's not sure Terendelev has enough anathema of his on hand to beat his spell resistance or his will save, much less do so reliably enough that she can manage it with the number of slots she has left, and while this mortal is incredibly annoying and her attacks actually hurt he can open up the range for a bit if she ever starts dealing damage more quickly than he can regenerate it. He'll get lucky eventually, and then it'll be over - if they don't die first of running out of spell slots or buff duration. The problem is, he doesn't actually have all day. What Deskari actually has is a probably small but unknown magnitude amount of time before one of the good gods notices he's hanging out on the prime material and decides to come smite him for it. Which would be one thing if it meant he got a chance to fight Iomedae at a time of his choosing in land half-tainted by the abyss, but he's pretty sure it'd be Desna.

And that means that if they won't die quickly and won't let him get close enough to trap them magically, he'll have to do it the old fashioned way. This girl can dodge a lot, but can she dodge a 20 meter wide chasm appearing right under her feet just as she lands? Riftcarver comes down like a meteor in a great overhand blow and splits the earth.

Nope, she cannot dodge that, now she's in a hole. As soon as the rocks stop falling under her she'll start climbing right back out, but while she's falling she falls basically like a normal human.

Climbing out? That sounds like a problem for someone who doesn't have earthquake as a spell like ability. There won't be a way out, unless she can teleport or turn intangible. Now, as for Terendelev-

Plane Shift.

Well, they’re not dead, but at least they’re gone. Now, who here is strong enough to be worth a moment’s time to kill them?

Maybe some of those butterflies gathering?

Did he say worth a moment? Actually, he meant just leaving.

Greater Teleport.

Brenda has missed the end of the fight, because she's still in a hole. Actually it's more of a cave at this point. Good thing she packed a flashlight! What's down here, apart from rocks and more rocks? (Her beekeeper suit has replaced itself with a (beautiful yet understated) long sleeve shirt and pants and knee-high boots.)

A short way down the crevasse she's in is a woman wearing metal armor, who seems to be struggling to move some of the rocks next to her. She looks up when the light falls on her, but thanks to how flashlights work she isn't able to tell who is holding it.

"Who's there?"

Brenda points her flashlight at the ground between them to stop blinding the other woman with the glare. "My name's Brenda. You were fighting the demons too, I take it? I can help with those rocks if you want."

“Thanks! Anevia got caught under them when we fell, but it’s a bit difficult for one person to move.”

"Oh, yikes. Is she okay?" Brenda can pick up rocks one at a time and put them down somewhere more convenient, while being careful not to let anything slide down farther onto Anevia. She feels kind of bad about it probably having been her fault that there was a hole to fall down in the first place, and now that she's not actively fighting she feels some kind of way about having killed enough demons to lose count of without having thought through the ethics of it first, but getting someone out from under a bunch of rocks is uncomplicatedly helpful.

“My leg is killing me, but I think that’s as much from the fall as the rocks. Seelah, you wouldn’t happen to have another lay on hands in you, would you?”

“No, I used the last one so I could get up after that landing, and all the rest of them before. That fight sure was something, though; just a couple of minutes of it and I already feel exhausted.”

She should have packed a first aid kit. And learned how to use it. Crap.

"I got here from another world about--wow, less than hour ago still. I have a weird grab bag of magic powers but no healing, sorry. Um, Seelah, is your healing ability something you were born with or something you learned? If it's the former I might be able to mimic it."

"They're a gift to me from the goddess Iomedae, not something I was born with; I'm a paladin, which means I swear to follow a code and stay lawful good and in exchange I get powers useful for fighting evil. I'm sure some people have innate healing powers but you'd have to be, like, an angel, or maybe a dragon. And wow, from another world? I guess we get all kinds here crusading at the worldwound."

"I can try mimicking Terendelev in case she has any and I manage to get it. . . . I hope I can do it without looking at her; I only got the grab bag of magic powers when I came here and I don't have much practice with them yet." The wording really makes it sound like it ought to work but she really should have asked yesterday.

Okay, how does this work and does she want to try it with Alpina first? . . . No, she wants to wait to try it with Alpina until she can tell her about it immediately. She wanted Alpina to be her first copied species but trying for healing now is more important.

So then, what does she do to make this happen? She wants to discover her dragon heritage--

There it is.

Scales that shine like polished silver appear on her temples and the backs of her hands, and her hair turns silver to match; her fingernails lengthen and harden into metallic claws and she knows instinctively that she can switch them back and forth at will. A sense of inner warmth blooms in her chest; she could walk outside in a t-shirt in the Iowa winter and not be bothered by the cold. Spell structures crystallize in her mind, waiting to be unfolded into the world.

"Woah! Your hair just went all silver, and your skin- can you just turn all the way into a dragon now, or is that as much as you're able to get?"

"This is as far as I can go. I got some spells too, though! Let me look at them and see what I can figure out about what they do . . ."

There are eight of them, five simpler/smaller ones and three slightly larger and more complicated ones. The simpler ones look sturdy, almost springy, like she could push them out into the world and they'd take effect and then fold themselves back up again; the more complicated ones are also more fragile.

"I've got two that do extra senses, one that looks like it's for analyzing other magic, one that's for moving things without touching them, and a communication one, and it looks like I can use those as many times as I want, and then I've got some fragile ones that might be single use or need to recharge between uses or something. . . . One of the fragile ones is healing, I think! And then there's another extra sense and some kind of defensive spell I can cast on other people."

To sum up: being part dragon is awesome.

"Woah, you can just pick up sorcery? I think normally you have to be born with the knack for it, or at least do a lot of training to bring out buried talent. I guess it's not really all that more surprising than being able to turn into a dragon, since they're supposed to all be sorcerers, but still. Could I trouble you for some of the healing?"

"Technically the thing I'm doing is getting the abilities I would have if I had a dragon ancestor, except I don't know if humans being descended from dragons is a real thing that can happen or if my magic is making it up. I will definitely try the healing spell on you." She taps Anevia's hand and her leg gradually starts feeling better, though it doesn't get all the way to fixed.

"That's definitely a thing, plenty of sorcerers are descended from dragons. I think it might even be the most common kind of sorcerer, though I wouldn't swear to it and there are lots of kinds."

She does some careful stretches with her leg, wincing at a few points, but seems overall quite grateful.

"Thanks a ton, that's a lot less painful. I'll still have to be careful how much weight I put on it but I should be good to walk. I hope this crevasse opens up to the surface somewhere, or at least some larger cave; I'm not optimistic about how fast they'd be able to move enough rock for us to get out, not when they don't even know we're alive."

"I hope so, yeah. If you want to lean on me as we go you're welcome to." (Friends In Places is such a good set of powers; she'd've been far too awkward to offer, before.)

Anevia will gratefully accept this, and with her help manage to make pretty good time down the tunnel.

Her flashlight will illuminate a young woman with pointed ears and a rapier in fancy clothing and a ball of glowing light above her head; a bit down the way there's a corpse on the ground.

At some point she really needs to sit down and process all the death she's interacted with in the past hour; she's pretty sure she's only as chill as she currently is because of the "You can be upset but not traumatized" aspect of Iron Will and it's definitely upsetting.

"Hello. Are you alright?" She doesn't offer condolences for the dead person because he might have just been standing next to the woman when the chasm opened.

"I'm a little injured, but nothing impairing - I just decided it would be smarter to save my healing for if something else happened since I didn't have a lot prepared. I was fine before I fell, which probably helped; a cambion got in close and it hurt him pretty badly before he killed it."

"We're looking for a way back to the surface; want to come with us? Safety in numbers, after all."

"That seems quite sensible. Does anyone need me to cast light for them, or has your magical item been sufficient so far?"

"It has limited energy reserves and once it runs out I have no reliable way to replenish it; if your light is usable indefinitely I'd prefer to switch." Actually now that she says that it occurs to her that she might be able to use Dressing Room to acquire a headlamp, but she doesn't want to count on that without trying it. 

"Orisons don't have a use limit, though my lights only last ten minutes a cast so I'll need to refresh them with some frequency and they mostly only illuminate around you. Perhaps save yours for occasional navigation or close examination, and make use of this for the meantime?"

She can give each of them a little glowing sphere that situates itself above their head to avoid blinding them, and with multiple light sources the shadows are only moderately annoying.

"That's very handy, thanks!" She stows the flashlight. And now that she has a hand free and has confirmed that reusable spells are in fact reusable she's going to try out her new extra senses magic! 

"Oh, this is useful, I can see where there's magic now! And the other one looks for demons. Unfortunately I can't keep them both going at the same time; probably the demons one is more important." Which is too bad because magic is cool and there's any around to look at.

It requires some digging to get enough rocks out of the way that a human can fit through without crawling, but the crevasse does open up into a larger cave system! Their light and voices will attract the attention of some large and aggressive insects, but none of them are even as dangerous as the weakest of the demons she just fought.

Brenda has no problem with hauling rocks and killing any bugs that get past Seelah and keeping a magical eye out for demons, and in between she introduces everyone to the new person and finds out her name is Camellia. Not getting tired from physical exertion is surprisingly fun. If the larger cave system is branchy she suggests the "stick to the left wall" strategy.

The cave does branch, but sticking to the left hand wall doesn't seem to lead them down any dead ends. Before long, she'll be able to hear some conversation coming from up ahead!

Man, so many people fell down this hole that was made specifically to trap Brenda. She should have made different decisions. Maybe if she hadn't rejected the idea of trying to grab the scythe.

For now, though, the four of them can walk towards the conversation.

"It's not in the shrine, but I'm not seeing it anywhere else either. Do you think it was buried under the rocks?"

"I'm not sure. It's hard to imagine anyone else choosing to make coming here to grab it the priority, but I can't rule it out."

Oooh, what a cool pair of species! She should ask Camellia about hers as well. 

"Hello! What are you looking for?"

"We're looking for the angel's sword! It was here before the earthquake hit, but I can't seem to locate it."

"Oh, sure, blurt out why we're here to the first person you meet. I don't see how that could possibly go wrong."

"We're looking for a route to the surface. Is the sword likely to show up to magic detection, and would you like me to check?"

"I'm not sure if it will; I can't do that myself, and I don't know if anyone I know can. It doesn't come up much, what with how the only magic around here is usually what Dyra is doing. If it does work and saves us a lot of effort, I'm all for it. But if you're looking for a way up to the surface, you're in luck - the reason I'm looking for the sword is so I can rally the tribes to challenge the shield maze, which leads to the surface."

"I'm happy to try looking for the sword. When you say tribes, you mean there's a whole society down here and you're trying to convince them all to move topside?  My name's Brenda, by the way, and this is Anevia, Seelah, and Camellia."

"Well, the goal isn't really to get everyone to move topside, though there's definitely some talk about it from people nervous about a followup quake or damage from the first one leading to more tunnels collapsing. The problem is that yesterday some kids decided it was a great idea to go explore the shield maze because they were told not to and they went missing, so I'm hoping with everyone working together it'll be safe to go rescue them. Wendu's good enough to explore it on her own, but she doesn't think she'd be able to get the kids out safely, and nobody else is good enough to manage even that. Ah - my name is Lann, and this is Wenduag. We're mongrels, been here since the first crusade."

"Would it kill you to show the slightest bit of self respect? I'm not asking you to be like Sull and call yourself an underground crusader, but don't you think it's a bit much that you immediately decide to self identify as a mongrel and share your life's story the moment someone from the surface shows up with a pretty face?"

"I apologize for prying, and I'm sorry to hear about the missing kids. I'd be happy to help look for them. But anyway, about that sword--" she drops the demon-detecting spell and puts up the magic-detecting one, turning slowly to scan the pile of rubble.

It's not in the first pile of rubble she scans, but if she goes looking there sure is something really powerfully magical over there!

"I don't know if it's what you're looking for but there's definitely something buried over that way," she says, and looks at the two locals for (verbal or nonverbal) cues as to whether they'd prefer she dig it out or stay away from their valuables.

Lann doesn't seem to have any problem with her pitching in, but he'll get straight to digging himself where indicated rather than waiting on help.

Wenduag, meanwhile, keeps a wary eye on everyone involved but doesn't seem to especially focus on Brenda, even if she joins Lann.

Dig dig dig Alpina's list was not kidding about her similarity to construction equipment. Beats the pants off punching demons.

She is both pretty fast and able to aim straight for the magic thing rather than just pointing at it. Does it turn out to be sword-shaped?

It does! It's a very fancy sword, too, and starts glowing as soon as she touches it; if Brenda doesn't stop it, it'll try to pull her into a vision.

Her powers specifically allow purely communicative telepathy and also she's so curious what magic angels put on their swords!

Then Brenda will find herself reliving the last moments of the angel Lariel. She can feel everything he felt, and while on close inspection the experience is clearly happening to somebody else it's really quite immersive. They were betrayed, stabbed in the back by the very people they descended from heaven to protect from the demons, and now they stand, mortally wounded, with their strength beginning to fade and a deathly foe approaching. Which would you choose, the memories seem to ask of her, though there are no words. Would you heal the one who stayed loyal to the end and risked everything to aid you against this betrayal, even though it didn't save you and it's unlikely all your help will suffice for her to survive? Or would you strike down those who turned on you, even though you know they are just the puppets of a darker power whose strength is too much for you to slay?

Well, it depends, doesn't it, on whether healing the friend was completely doomed or merely a long shot, on whether striking down the enemies would solve anything, weaken the one puppeting them or even just release them from a fate worse than death. But if it was a choice between two equally long shots--and maybe even if it wasn't--she'd try to help her friend. Because her friend tried to help her when all was lost, and because if you're going to die pointlessly, better to die trying to help someone than trying to kill someone.

But also that's a really awful situation and it's not like she's in any position to judge whatever choice Lariel made.

Her body is standing perfectly still, clutching the sword-hilt, crying. Not entirely for the angels.

The sword seem to pulse with approval, either at her choice or her reason, and in the vision Brenda-as-Lariel reaches within themself for that golden spark of heaven's might before breathing it out, the wounds of her companion mending themself before her eyes. Her companion is still weak, from the days and days of deprivation and the attack, but with the worst of her injuries mended she finds the strength to speak. Her voice is barely more than a whisper, but somehow it seems to carry enough to fill the entire cavern.

"Lariel... you said that everything was going to change soon? That all the angels had been recalled for a mission to stop the source of the demons? If that's true... then you shouldn't have stayed to help us, and you definitely shouldn't have saved me. We're not that important."

The echo of Lariel shakes his head. How can he explain to her, that people like her, so bright and shining and good despite all the pain they go through are the reason he fights? That the forces of heaven bind themselves never to break their word, because destroying that trust and abandoning their comrades is a far greater blow than their deaths ever could be? Perhaps he cannot, but there is not much left to him but to try.

"Do not diminish your own worth. To save a life... sometimes, we cannot bear the price such a task demands of us, but that does not mean that succeeding at it is not the right thing to do. And even if I die, heaven will not be defeated; there are countless others who will pick up the torch I now carry, and there always will be as long as goodness and honor reside in the hearts of mortals. You could be one such soul, if you wished it; were you to become an angel, I would be honored to count you as my comrade. But that is not the only option available to you; you have already given so much for this world, and Heaven is a place of healing as well as war. Worry not about your destination; I will not allow him to lay a single hand upon you."

Then Lariel calls out, his voice booming in the confined space and not advertising even an iota of the pain wracking his body. His sword glows like a second sun, and for a moment, the shadows are driven back.

"Deskari! Show yourself!"

Then out of the shadows comes the monster who trapped her in these caves, appearing far more horrible through the eyes of an angel. With every step comes a horrible rasping sound from his armor, and the buzzing of the swarm is a cacophony upon her ears. Lariel is not his match, not as Brenda was, and with an unhurried gait he advances, the unholy blade of Riftcarver seeming to vanish at the speed of his swing-

The vision comes to an end, but the light remains. Her whole body is glowing now, not just the sword, and the light radiating off her seems to take the form of wings. She can feel it bolstering her and everyone around her, a blessing of protection gifted by the angel from beyond the grave.

She wants to be like that. Not in the Dragon Fairy Elf Witch way, not right now, that would be--she has never cared for religion but the word that comes to mind is "blasphemy"--she wants to be that brave, that wise, that full of love, that able to look at the situation in front of her and know what the right choice by her own values is and make it. 

It takes several seconds after everything stops glowing before she remembers to move or speak again.

"Woah, did you just do that trick from before and become part angel? That's not really what I would have expected that to look like but that's more because I don't think I really had any expectations, my mind is coming up blank."

"I don't think so? The wings Angelic Aspect gives you are white, at least, and if it didn't look like that I'd expect something more of an Aasimar kind of deal. But I'd be the first to admit I'm far from an expert about this kind of thing."

Lann is currently doing a bit too much staring at Brenda with open mouthed shock to contribute to the conversation, check back in a bit?

"I, no, I didn't do anything, I just picked it up--it had a message in it. Lariel--the angel whose sword it is--was--he died protecting people, fighting Deskari--he knew he was going to die and he did it anyway, he never gave up--"

"So the angel really did save us. Lariel... we didn't even know his name."

Lann shakes himself from a moment of melancholy.

"Still, this is great news. If the angel's sword will respond to you, that would make rallying the tribes even easier!"

"I don't know if it does that every time someone touches it, I don't know if it will do it again or only the once--do you want to try holding it now, or wait until the people you want to show it to are watching in case it only happens once per person? I don't know anything about how magic items work, sorry."

"It's never responded to any of us in the years we've been down here; I sort of figured it was because we've been tainted. Old Sull might talk about a glorious history as underground crusaders, but it's not like anyone can't tell the difference between us at a glance. I don't have a clue whether it would work for everyone from the surface or just you, but it would be a bit surprising if it only worked once - it's not like the angel would have only had one occasion to use it, and you'd think if they did it would have been used before you touched it."

Brenda isn't sure if "tainted" means they're all literally magically cursed or if it means this fantasy world has fantasy racists (or both), and there's really no good way to ask.

"Well, if it will help with your plan for saving the missing kids I'm happy to try to do it again. When you say you're crusaders, do you mean against the demons or something else? I literally arrived on this planet a couple hours ago and I have no context."

"We're the descendants of soldiers from the first crusade, who fought alongside the angels against the abyss when the worldwound first opened up, and have resided in these caves ever since. We usually call ourselves Neathers, but underground crusaders is a common appellation from those who want to hearken back to the glory days or just want to hype themselves up. Lann would fall into the latter category, but he doesn't have any self respect so he's decided to embrace the term used for us by those on the surface - perhaps because he thinks if he uses it first, it'll hurt less."

Fantasy racism is probably less bad than a demon curse but still disappointing. Anyway, given the number of giant bugs down here she should roll with the amount of context she has and do whatever gets the missing kids rescued fastest instead of trying to get fully oriented.

She smiles at Wenduag. "Thank you for explaining. Where to now?" 

"Neatholm! It's the biggest village in the underground, and it's pretty centrally located so everyone else will have an easy time getting to it."

He gestures off to another tunnel on the opposite side of the room than they came in from, and then makes as though to lead them.

Off she goes, offering one arm to Anevia again and holding the sword awkwardly in the other ha--no, apparently her outfit acquired a tooled-leather belt and scabbard while she wasn't paying attention. She'll stick the sword in it.

She's gonna get to see an underground city! Just like in Lord of the Rings except instead of everyone having been killed by demons, not that!

On the way over, Wenduag will wait until Lann goes to retrieve some of his arrows after a fight with some giant flies to pull Brenda aside. She doesn't seem to mind Anevia listening in; apparently the one she wants privacy from is Lann.

"I know Lann talks a good game, but you shouldn't show off the light of heaven. Maybe say you can't make it glow on command, or that he must have been mistaken, or even just say you'll only demonstrate it in private. The shield maze is dangerous, and if Lann brings in everyone like he wants to it'll just get a lot of them killed. If you need to get to the surface, I can lead you through the maze, but even for me it would be hard to keep more than a small team safe, and nobody else can even manage that much."

"That's a solid argument but I don't want to resort to subterfuge if I can avoid it. But I assume you've already tried to talk him around and failed--is the problem that the maze is full of physical hazards, or hostile creatures? What's Lann's theory for why more people would be better?"

"Both, and also worse things. There were a bunch of us young hunters who thought we could brave the shield maze, and we figured we were good enough to deal with whatever we found. Every so often whenever someone was out exploring, they'd get lost or ambushed, and die, but we figured we were more careful, stronger, better, and we'd learn from their mistakes and be fine. But some of the people we thought were dead, weren't, and that was even worse. They'd come back changed, maddened, unable to even communicate but hostile to everything that moved, all in the form of someone who looked like your friend. There's a reason why I'm the only one left.

"Lann never went to the shield maze. He was more responsible than that, spent his free time hunting for more food to feed people better, or just practicing his skills, but he doesn't take the danger seriously. He thinks that if he just tries hard enough, everything will work out fine, and if it was just him I'd try to help him but he's going to get a lot of other people killed with him if he gets his way."

Brenda shudders a little. "I'm sorry, that sounds horrible. I'm immune to mental alteration but I don't have a way to make other people immune. I'd really like to try talking Lann around; maybe two of us will have a better shot at it than one."

"I haven't managed to get anywhere with him, but maybe you'll have better luck. He did seem pretty enthusiastic about your whole lightshow."

"It would be kind of ridiculous if the light show made him believe me when you've been in the shield maze and I haven't but I'll take what I can get." And she flags down Lann.

Lann remains just as enthusiastic about her as he was before.

"So what did you want to talk about?"

"Tactics for the shield maze, basically. I want to help look for the kids. Can we go over what you know about the situation--how many missing, when were they last seen, that sort of thing--and the current plan?"

"There are five of them that went missing. I don't know most of them, only one of them was from Neatholm, but they were friends, really adventurous kids, always clambering to go exploring and hunting and so forth. But early this morning they dared each other to go explore the shield maze, and we haven't seen them since. One of their group backed down and got teased for it, which is how we know they went missing - when their friends didn't come back a few hours later, they went to chief Sull about it. He didn't want to go make a rescue party since he didn't think it would be safe, but I figure with the angel's sword you could go rally everyone from all the tribes, not just Neatholm, and then we'd have three or four times as many people and we could handle whatever's waiting there. Most hunters aren't as good as Wendu or I but with enough people you can handle most anything easily and maybe we'd be able to move fast enough to rescue them."

"Wenduag is worried that if too many people go in some of them will get separated from the group and die, and a smaller team of just the best fighters will be better off, and I haven't seen the shield maze but she has and I think she's right. I think you, me, her, and maybe a couple other people who know the area can move faster and more quietly. And we won't have to spend time going around to all the tribes and convincing a whole big group to go."

"Do you think that would work? Nobody other than Wendu has managed to get very far into the shield maze, not consistently... I guess I also don't know how people on the surface fight either, and you do have the angel's sword and Anevia is really good with her bow. Are you all veteran crusaders or something?"

"If she's the only person who can get very far that's all the more reason to have the search party small enough that she can guide it effectively. I don't know how experienced Seelah and Anevia and Camellia are or whether they'll be willing to help." She looks at Anevia for comment, mostly because she's relevant but also to buy time to figure out something true and nonmisleading to say about her own combat ability.

"My wife and I used to be adventurers before we settled down in Kenabres, and we got pretty good at it. I'm hardly one of the legendary heroes you read about in stories, but I've got years of experience against monsters and demons and cultists by now, and I make sure to stay in practice. Seelah and Camellia are a fair bit less experienced, but if we might be facing something evil I'd rather not pass on Seelah being able to smite it and Camellia can spellcast and fight, which is a fairly uncommon - and useful - combination."

"I only have one battle worth of experience but the weird grab bag of magic powers I acquired this morning are extremely useful in a fight." 

Lann doesn’t have a lot of experience with magic, and indeed has only ever met one spellcaster in his life prior to today, but he has heard stories and ‘can do magic’ is a pretty good selling point if it’s all going to be as impressive as the bit with the angel’s sword earlier. Fighting demons is also the kind of thing that’s supposed to separate crusaders from just hunters. 

“If you’re confident it’s for the best, I’ll trust you on this.”

Presently Neatholm will come into sight around the one of the corners. It's not the most impressive sight; the architecture is largely composed of huts made of mud, rock, and chitin, and the buildings are all short and squat. It has a bit of a stench, some of which Brenda might be able to identify as coming from fish, and it's frankly not that big a town. Still, it does have the advantage of being situated on an underground lake, which is quite something to look at, and the inhabitants - who range from the slightly inhuman to as unusual as Wenduag - seem more curious than hostile.

Alright, so it's not as flashy as the dwarven cities in Tolkien, but Tolkien never had to handle the logistics of feeding and housing people underground with limited access to the surface. (Does this world have dwarves? That would be really cool. Also, wait, is there a universe that's basically Arda? Is she going to end up there at some point if she gets enough dimensional travel? (Wow, this intelligence headband has improved her tendency to go off on recursive tangents only inasmuch as she can now do it faster.)) She smiles at the city and the lake and the people. 

"How tired are you all feeling? Now that we're decided to go as a small group, there's a part of me that wants to get some healing from Dyra and then press on today since we don't need to wait on gathering all the tribes, but this is going to be dangerous enough without trying to do it exhausted."

"I wouldn't say no to one of Beth's lay on hands if she was here, but that's mostly for the healing. If Dyra is good enough to fix my leg, then I'm good to press on; I've fought while significantly more tired than this before and not been impaired."

"I'm fresh out of smites and healing and won't be able to change that until dawn, but even without the goddess' help I can at least swing a sword."

Brenda really really wants an hour to talk to Alpina and get her thoughts in order, but that's not the same as being physically tired, and any given minute could be the minute the kids die or get hit with whatever mind control Wenduag witnessed. And once she's actually into the shield maze, Just A Little Longer should keep her moving until they get out. "I can keep going. Camellia, how are you holding up?"

"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."

"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.

She waits a few seconds to make sure they haven't been overheard, then gestures to go. Anevia can cleanly take down her first opponent in seconds, leaving them gasping on the ground, then go to grab the next one in a chokehold. Lann and especially Seelah are clearly less able but they're both physically stronger than the cultists and aren't caught completely by surprise. There are two people that Brenda will have to take down before they can scream if she wants to stop them from raising the alarm.

She can punch one in the stomach, then turn and kick the other while he's still drawing breath to shout. Once they've both had the wind knocked out of them she can figure out getting a hold of them before they recover. 

Anevia will jab the one that Seelah is trying to silence in the stomach, then start ripping up sheets for use as gags and ropes. It's much more ad hoc than she would like, but she thinks she can tie them tightly enough to prevent them wiggling loose soon, at least.

"Good work."

Then she continues to the group more quietly, stepping away from the prisoners.

"Do you think you want to stick around for the interrogation, or wait outside? I'm not going to torture them, but I'll probably have to threaten to kill them and may have to follow through, and it's probably not going to be pretty. I won't think less of anyone who doesn't want to watch."

Brenda is going to go be a coward in the hallway. 

Then Anevia can start with the most important looking cultist, holding a knife to their neck as she removes the gag.

"Scream and you die. Now, tell me more about what's going on here - how many cultists are there in the maze, who are your leaders, and where are you keeping the kids?"

"Fuck you. Why should I tell you shit, you're just going to kill me anyway."

"Do you think I care about some cultist goons? Sure, I'd as soon kill you as look at you, and I will if you don't tell me what I want to know, but I have bigger fish to fry. If you tell me what I want to know, get me in a good enough mood, you can end this encounter alive and you'll stay that way if you stay out of our way."

"You're crazy, bitch. You don't stand a chance against Hosilla, and then he'll torture you to learn who told you and then that's even worse for me than dying - he's way scarier than you. And at least then when Baphomet takes my soul he'll know I was his loyal servant until the end."

"Break me with torture? That's a laugh, kid. I grew up in Nidal."

Anevia rolls up her sleeve, showing off some of the intense scarification on her arms.

"Believe me, whatever he can do to you, I can do way worse. I bet even my parents hurt worse than he will, and they were soft on their kids. In fact, now that I mention it, I might not have all of my tools with me but there's some things you can do with just a knife.."

Yeah, that's fucking terrifying. The cultist will start talking like their life depends on it.

A few minutes later, Anevia emerges from the room.
 
"Good news is, I know where the kids are. Bad news is, whatever bigshot demon is running the show here is planning something that they don't want to be interrupted during, so the magical barrier requires both of this Hosilla fellow's 'hands' to open to prevent trivial matters from interfering; we'll need to track them down to take whatever key or token they have. One of them is apparently down dealing with some kind of flooding, and the other is overseeing construction of new rooms. There's also a bunch more cultists that have started taking up residence here recently, but most of them aren't any scarier than these fellows - I think the only actually dangerous one is probably Hosilla, who's apparently a cleric or inquisitor or something, though we shouldn't take the others lightly."

It's a Dungeons and Dragons universe; the fetch quest is par for the course.

"Thank you. Hm, construction guy first on the theory that we want the flooding solved, or flooding guy first on the theory that he's more likely to finish the job and go somewhere else quickly?"

"I say flooding. If it's easily fixed, then we should get there before they finish, and if it isn't we should deal with him before before it gets worse and we have more water to deal with when fighting him."

"Sounds good to me." She mentally flips through her list of powers for whether she has anything good for fixing flooding and concludes that she can't really tell without seeing the flooding, but at least her clothes might turn into a scuba kit if the occasion calls for it.

Once they start heading down the stairs, it becomes clear that the flooding is actually fairly serious. In the lower level rooms, the water comes up past their ankles, and has an unpleasantly cool temperature. Fortunately the cultists also seem to want to avoid it, and if they're careful to avoid making a lot of noise splashing in the water they can find someone rather better dressed than the earlier cultists carrying a glaive and looking nearly as harried as his subordinates. He seems to be trying to seal up a door without proper tools for it, and is not having a lot of success.

(What unpleasant temperature? Brenda's boots are both waterproof and nicely insulated. And they match her backpack.)

If it doesn't look like he's doing better than any of them could do, they should probably take him out and go through his pockets. Unfortunately with the water level "take him out" basically means killing him, doesn't it. That or doing a lot of loud splashing around carrying him back up to the dry areas, which may not even be dry much longer if they don't get this over with and fix the flooding.

She reminds herself that he abducts kids and hands them over to demons, and that he'd probably be happy to kill her if he needed to go through her pockets for something, which helps a bit. If nobody has a clever idea, she can take his head off with his own glaive, because if she's going to be making this kind of decision she should actually make it and not hide behind other people.

Does anyone else look like they have a clever idea.

Does killing him painfully count?

Brenda doesn't share Camellia's sense of humor. She sneaks up behind the cultist and takes his head off with his own glaive. There's blood on the door and blood in the water and no blood on Brenda or her clothes.

He had better have that plot coupon on him.

His corpse has:

A magical-looking key.

A handful of healing potions.

A golden unholy symbol of Baphomet, set on a steel chain.

A paper sheet with orders from Hosilla written on it, instructing them to do something about the flooding, get the maze expansion back on schedule, and find a better hiding place for the paladin sword.

Healing potions get passed around to anyone with inventory space appropriate pockets or bags, magical key goes in Brenda's pocket because so far Dressing Room has done an excellent job of protecting Alpina from various hazards, everything else can go wherever, now how do they stop this flooding.

"Actually, do we need to stop the flooding? Obviously we do if it will endanger Neatholm or another city but I don't know the geology around here. Lann, Wenduag, you're the experts, how high is the water likely to get?"

“We’re currently further down than the lake’s surface, so I think that means there would have to be a lot more water than there is now before we notices? It depends on how high it’s going to get; if Kenabres has another lake on the surface that’s causing the flooding, that might be bad.”

“Well there is the Sellen, but it seems unlikely that the flooding is caused by water coming in from there; you’d expect the higher up floors to spring a leak first. Probably they just hit the water table, though in that case I have no idea why they were trying to seal the door instead of whatever wall is letting water in.”

"If they hit the water table that's not going to make the lake rise, unless the lake is fed from above. I guess the other risk is if it gets high enough to cut off access to the surface but I get the sense you don't really need access to the surface very often anyway." She's not going to push for a final decision either way; it's not her city.

Lann is perfectly happy to leave it, he's mostly just here to rescue the kids. Maybe it'll be an issue later or maybe not, he's already at the extent of his knowledge here.

Time to go back up and look for the construction area, then. 

Getting to the under construction area of the maze requires passing through the central area, and one room they can't avoid has the distinct negatives of being too open to sneak through and filled with armed cultists. Nobody seems to have sounded the alarm yet, so they aren't specifically readying themselves for battle, but unless Brenda has a plan to get them to move aside there's probably going to be a fight about it.

Someday she's going to be a wizard and have twenty different species powers and be able to avoid so many fights, but today what she has is the ability to ambush people and punch them.

Anevia has seen Brenda's takedowns, and while she's really even better than Anevia is at it there's no way she's going to clear this large a room before someone can sound the alarm. Add in the fact that she's not sure they can take this many people prisoner... Anevia calls for lethal force in the surprise attack, with priority targetting on those near the far door. If Brenda thinks she can take down her opponents safely that's fine, but for everyone more squishy holding back in this kind if fight is an easy way too start losing people.

That's very reasonable and she absolutely doesn't want to get her allies killed over what's not even a principled stance against killing so much as a persistent sense that she should be able to do better. She will punch to kill. (She's not using the angel sword for this.)

With lethal force on the table, the cultists are a relatively easy foe; one of them turns out to be a cleric, but none of the people engaging in melee combat are vulnerable to a panicked first level negative channel and the same isn't true for his comrades. The one Seelah is in the middle of stabbing drops like a rock instead of successfully blocking, and the other ones aren't much happier about it. It's frankly a bizarre room once you get past the corpses; there are four incredibly garish pictures hanging on the wall and a magically-maintained pool of what looks to be blood at the front of the room. If this is the design sense of whoever runs this place, it's definitely for the best that it's still under construction.

Pool of blood: gross and creepy. Do any of these people have the second key on them?

No, though the cleric does have a less fancy version of the same unholy symbol.

"This room is new; there was a cave here, but it wasn't this wide and it didn't have the lighting or decorations. Back then, there were two sets of branching tunnels; one of them lead to the other end of the maze, while the second was a dead end. Since I can't see the first one, I expect it's the one that was sealed, but presumably the expansion is taking place branching off the other one at some point, which means we need to go looking on the other side of that door."

Past the doorway is a long hallway. It heads downward, but via long straight stretches and then stairs rather than a steady slant. There are numerous doors off to the side of the main corridor.

She hopes the person they're looking for is at the end of the tunnel, because if he (or she) isn't they're going to have to go through all those rooms until they find them.

At the end of the tunnel is a set of prison cells, currently empty but with clear signs of recent habitation. Guarding the area are some red skinned humanoid demons, looking bored; there are what look like torture implements on racks along the wall, and one corner of the room is conspicuously free of cages.

All of that: fucked up! 

This room looks like a dead end but one of the demons might have the second key. She doesn't know how hardy they are and given the interior decor she's fine not pulling punches if the others don't know either.

"Cambions. They aren't all but immune to weak attacks like most demons but they're notably tougher than an untrained human, about on par with a veteran soldier. Try not to let them use their magic; it's not especially powerful but most of us aren't paladins so they'll sometimes succeed at controlling us if they try."

"Should I go in first so they waste the mind control on me, or would it target everyone at once?"

"Enthrall can hit multiple people, but it'll break as soon as they attack someone and you can interrupt it by stopping them from singing. We've got a lot of people here who can fight at ranged, so yeah, I think it makes sense if either you get in close with them while the rest of us hang back and shoot them. Maybe you and Seelah, if you think you'll want some help; she should also be pretty much immune to anything they throw at her."

"Alright." She and Seelah can line up and go in simultaneously on a hand signal. Demons: get punched.

And cut, and shot with arrows! The cambions are quite skilled with their scimitars, which is to say they are notably less dangerous than anything trying to fight Brenda back at the festival square, so she shouldn't have any serious problems dealing with them. One of them tries to command her to fall prone, though asking nicely probably would have been more effective, and about half a minute later none of them are in any condition to fight.

But do they have the macguffin of the day, is the question.

They do have keys on them, but none of them look like the first one or show up to detect magic; the same goes for any of the other sets in the room. The empty area of the wall does show up, though, which could be promising.

"Ooh, I think there's a secret door. Or something else is making the wall show up as magic but my guess is secret door." She starts poking around for hidden buttons/switches/etc.

There are four magical sources, each a button with a small painted rectangle above them in red, blue, green, and yellow.

"Great, I hate dealing with Baphomet cultists that think they're smart. It's usually not half as clever as they think it is, especially since they need their own people to be able to solve it, but it's always annoying trying to figure out what they're going for."

She stops, thinking for a moment.

"You know what, I bet it's either yellow red blue yellow, or that backwards; that's the order on the paintings back in the main hall and I suspect they use that as a reminder. They're certainly not for the ambiance."

"Is it likely to lock down or sound an alarm if we get it wrong, or can we just try both?"

"You should be able to try both, if it locked down every time it got one wrong they'd have to unlock it often enough to annoy them. It'll probably try shocking you if you get it wrong, since that won't hurt demons."

"Okay." Once she has her hands over the buttons, concealed from the others' view by the rest of her body, she deliberately adds rubber gloves to her ensemble over top of the magic ones. Yellow red blue yellow?

It tries to shock her, but in between her gloves and the magic gear she can barely feel it.

Yellow blue red yellow?

That'll do it! The wall slides apart to reveal a small room that apparently serves as storage for some kinds of valuables. In center stage is a golden longsword, but there are also a few items of jewelry with the same holy symbol as Seelah uses and some suits of armor.

From the moment she gets a glimpse of it, Seelah's eyes are on the sword.

"Is that Radiance? I know the orders said to find a better hiding spot for the paladin's sword, but I had no idea it'd be this one. I can't believe it wasn't destroyed!"

"Awesome! It's not showing up as magic; is it historically important?"

"Incredibly! It was used by the paladin Yaniel, a hero of the fourth crusade who ventured into the worldwound to rescue captured crusaders! She's an icon for a lot of us unaffiliated paladins since she wasn't part of any orders either."

"That's so cool! I'm really glad it's intact."

Probably none of the other things in here are the second key, since it was supposed to be on someone's person, but she'll go through all of it just in case. And then put on some of the armour because this whole situation they're in is really an armour kind of situation as much as it is a spelunking one. 

This about armor - it's really quite heavy, especially if you get the good stuff that actually protects you. Obviously it's designed for people to be able to wear, so it's not impossibly so, but armor will slow you down, reduce your flexibility, and tire you out quicker. It's the price you pay for staying safe, unless you're a monk and think of that as more of a skill issue.

Most people, however, do not have a strength stat of 40. Armor that picks a reasonable point on the tradeoffs of cost, weight, and protection for a normal person will not actually be much harder for her to lift than normal clothes.

Also, when they head back out to search some more rooms, she deliberately ends up at the back of the group for a moment and then it fits her perfectly.

The first room she checks is empty, but the second has several animated piles of rocks digging away at the walls.

"More humans!" one of them says, angrily, with a voice like tumbling stones. "Must you come to torment us more?"

". . . We're a different group of humans. We come in peace. Are you okay, do you want help?"

"A different group of humans? What do you mean, a different group of humans?"

"Yes, send us home!"

"You can't be trusted, this is a trick!"

Upon hearing she can understand them, the stone creatures start responding all at once.

"I don't know how to send you home but I will if you tell me how!"

"Use your human magics to send us back!"

"Idiot, she's got a sword and armor, humans with those don't do real magic. Kill the person who enslaved us here!"

"Keep hitting him until he agrees to send us back!"

Aaaaa?

She looks back at the rest of the party. "Does anyone with more local context know what to do here because I really don't. Will killing the guy send them home or trap them here forever or what." She wants to read all of the books in her bag of holding and be a WIZARD and have half a clue what she's DOING.

"Oh, is that what they were asking about? Killing demon cultists doesn't get rid of the demons they summon, even when we're certain the demons aren't just being smuggled over the line, so I expect the same holds here. I doubt it would trap them here forever but it might force them to finish whatever task they were bound for anyway. You can send them back directly with reasonably high level spells - I assume you can get them from your bloodline eventually since Terendelev had them - or you can get whoever is supposed to command them to declare their task finished."

"Da--drat. Okay. Thanks."

She turns back to the elementals. "I'm sorry. I don't have enough magic to send you home. I'll--if I figure something out I'll come back. Can you tell me what the person who summoned you looked like?" She doubts she could successfully describe one of these beings to the other one and maybe they have the same problem with regard to humans, but it can't hurt to ask in case he's wearing a cubical hat or whatever.

"He looked like you people! Tall, with a weapon and armor!"

"He was... loud?"

Yep, same problem. "Okay, thank you. Good luck."

Time to totally bail on that sidequest for now and hope she gets a hint later! What's in the next room over?

A completed room with a statue of Baphomet! There are some cambions there, but none of them look more important than the others or like the previous hand she defeated, and they seem to mostly be carrying bows and scimitars. They seem very bored.

Then killing them should be easy, but will it turn up the second key or just prevent them from joining in when someone inevitably sounds the alarm?

They do not. The next room looks significantly more promising, though; there's someone dressed similarly to the previous hand of Hosilla, berating another set of animated rocks in badly accented Terran to work faster.

"Does it at all make sense," she whispers after Anevia has peeked through the door, "to offer to leave him alive if he gives us the key and sends all the rock people home? I understand if it's too dangerous but I'd like to help the rock people if we can."

“The punishment for being a committed demon cleric is death unless you turn yourself in and give up your fellows, and often even then if you don’t get lucky with the inquisitor judging you. They’re all guilty of treason and pretty much all guilty of murder, and they’re tough to hold prisoner when they can take an experienced guardsmen in a fair fight unarmed. I’m not a paladin, so I could lie to them about it, but there’s no way they’d buy we plan to live and let live with them.”

She pauses to consider.

”Maybe if we could convince them we were also demon cultists instead of crusaders, and that this was an inter factional dispute where they could just switch sides, but I can’t really think of a good way to fake having the right connections to some high level demon without tools I don’t have.”

Oh right, they're nominally in the territory of some kind of government with laws and stuff. Are they going to get in trouble for the murders they've been doing? Nobody else looks worried about it and it's not like any of them have an incentive to tell the cops.

She nods. "We've got those necklaces but it'd probably be obvious we stole them. If the elementals will get to go home eventually I guess that's something."

Sailor Moon and Matilda had way fewer trolley problems than this. Fuck her sense of literary merit for thinking this is an interesting story.

"Worst case scenario, we should be able to find someone to send them back whenever the crisis is over and spell slots are at a bit less of a premium. Rathimus' prices for his stronger spells are pretty eye-watering but maybe this is the kind of thing that Ramien can do too."

"Oh that's good, I didn't know how hard it would be." At some point she's going to end up with the ability to earn lots of money so she's not going to worry about how broke she is at this particular instant. Instead she is going to kill a demon cultist and loot his corpse like a normal gamer (and wonder if he had a family and if his parents know where he went).

He seems more perceptive than the last few sets of enemies, in that he spots them as they come into the room and demands to know who they are, but not in the sense that he realizes what he's up against. Since channeling negative energy might kill the earth elementals and set him even more behind schedule, he'll instead try to charge with his glaive.

That's a pretty reasonable response all things considered, but even if he can get through her armor he'll have a hard time getting through her flesh, and unless he's tougher than the last guy he won't get many tries at it.

The Hand of Hosilla puts his whole body into his charging blow, his form flawless, and tries to take her head off. It instead skitters off her armor and leaves her completely uninjured, which leaves him pretty dumbfounded, at least until her counterattack hits and he suddenly has more important things to worry about.

Brenda has only the vaguest unverified popcultural osmosis regarding this universe's afterlife setup. She should probably get more informed about it if she's going to keep sending people there. Does he have the key on him?

He does! And about all the same equipment as the other one, really, Hosilla seems to have been keeping them balanced.

The earth elementals are very excited about this outcome.

"He's dead! No more new orders!"

"That's--good. I'll look for a way to get you home when I'm done with my other emergency, if you haven't already solved it yourselves by then."

Onward to where the kids were supposed to be! She really hopes they're still alive. At a minimum she's made it harder for the cultists to do this again.

They seem to find this offer a little doubtful but don't let it interrupt their happiness at the disappearance of their tormentor.

The door will open just fine for her when presented with both keys. There's a long spiral staircase leading upwards on the other side.

Extremely reasonable of them to doubt her; she is flying by the seat of her pants.

Sneak sneak sneak up the stairs. Carrying the Hand's glaive, this time, in case the upcoming boss fight is against someone it's inadvisable to punch.

The stairway lets out into a balcony overlooking a large, circular room, with staircases curving back down the walls to reach ground level. What looks to be a group of young teenagers are tied up, overseen by a someone in a fancier version of the Baphomet cultist uniform with a glowing magical glaive. As they arrive, a tall, four-armed batlike demon teleports in carrying a weakly struggling man dressed as an Iomedaean priest.

"Everything is prepared for you now, Hosilla. I want to see the ritual ready by tomorrow."

They're alive! And there's an additional guy who also needs rescuing.

Does the big demon look like he's about to teleport right back out? The faster and easier this fight is, the less likely anyone she doesn't want to hurt will get hurt.

He doesn't, no. While the now-confirmed Hosilla spouts some platitudes about his loyalty and service, the demon seems to be examining the captured kids more closely, though it's not obvious what he's looking for.

Well in that case she's going to sneak as close as her battle instincts say she can get unnoticed and then CHARGE. How about that demon inspects the business end of her glaive.

It resists the attack nearly as thoroughly as Deskari did, though the injuries do look deeper. In response, it manifests four incredibly nasty looking black flaming knives in its hands, and as soon as it gets a look at her there’s a feeling like something is trying to take away her life force.

“Oh, another sacrifice delivers herself right to me? I suppose it would be rude to turn down a gift.”

She doesn't hear his words. There is nothing but the dance of attack and counterattack, the winding road through possibility to the reality of winning. She throws the glaive in his face and draws the angel's sword, ducks inside his reach and tries to put it through his chest. 

The Vrolikai dodges enough not to take it straight on, but the sword still slices right through his side without any noticable resistance and leaves a bleeding gash. Lariel’s blade pulses reassuringly on her hands, bolstering her even as one of the knives lands a glancing blow and tries to rip out a chunk of her life force again. Hissing with anger and shock at this sudden shift, the demon fires off a lightning fast bolt of crackling darkness at her.

Brenda ducks down and the sword comes up and if he's not fast he'll have three hands.

The vrolikai is incredibly fast, but Deskari was faster, and it turns out to be a bit difficult to keep your hand out of range from a sword if you're also trying to stab them with a knife. How about she never does that again and instead just stays still while he kills her?

Hm? What was that, did he want her to do something? Anyway stab stab stab.

Where the abyss did this girl come from? The list of people in Mendev who can do that should have exactly one entry and this is definitely not Queen Galfrey. Also, for someone he's landed multiple stabs on this person does not look very drained of energy - which is a serious problem because if they have a death ward up it means they almost certainly knew this fight was coming. Add in the fact that they are, for some damned reason, down here in his maze when the entire city should be just overflowing with targets for a high level adventurer, all adds up to one conclusion: one of his rivals has sold him out. Even if he wins here, there's probably going to be another attack dropping by to take advantage of the damage their patsy did.More mongrels to transform would be nice, but he can just go back for them directly later, and even a relatively useful pawn like Hosilla isn't worth dying for. Time to cut his losses, and hope his regenerates are enough to fix all these injuries.

Greater Teleport.

Being repeatedly stabbed and energy drained does in fact suck, but not enough to stop her from turning to see what Hosilla is getting up to right now. Hopefully he's up to getting rekt by Anevia and Camellia and Wenduag and Lann.

It's not going amazingly. Hosilla didn't notice her companions at first, but they fired on her when she started trying to interfere with Brenda's fight with the Vrolikai, which resulted in her switching tactics and charging up the stairs. Thanks to the distance she had to travel under fire, said fire support, and the positioning advantage, Seelah and Camellia haven't lost just yet. It's not looking good though, and she's ranting about getting back at someone for their betrayal.

How about instead he gets a back full of cold iron, courtesy of Brenda charging up the stairs behind him.

Since she has no idea Brenda's coming, Hosilla has no particular ability to avert this, and a good sword will go straight through her defiled armor. What it doesn't do is kill her, and instead redirects her from trying to gut Seelah to slicing open Brenda. For someone with a hole in her chest, she's an astonishingly capable fighter - Hosilla isn't quite as hard to dodge as the Glabrezus that jumped her earlier, much less the Vrolikai or Deskari, but it's still enough that Brenda has to exert some effort into not getting hit by her attacks.

She will put in that effort! And be distantly glad she put on some armor. And stab him again, can't forget that part.

Then she'll go down relatively quickly, not helped by the fact that her trying to heal hermself involves stopping attacking Brenda and leaves her free to focus on hitting her harder. She's just surprisingly durable for a human, not proof against sword wounds. Once the fight is over, Seelah starts downing a potion; she got hurt pretty badly trying to keep Hosilla from getting past to their archers.

"That was incredible! That demon was so terrifying it was hard to think clearly, and Anevia said the rest of us probably wouldn't be able to do more than scratch it, but you chased him off like it was nothing!"

"It, I, thank you," says Brenda as her brain reevaluates its relationship with the passage of time and changes said relationship's Facebook status to It's Complicated. She leans against a wall and blinks several times and draws the connection between her ongoing dissatisfaction and her knife holes. "I'll be back in a second, I gotta, thingy--" she pulls one of the other healing potions out of her backpack and quaffs it. "That thing. Everyone in one piece? Kids all accounted for?"

"That's as many people as Lann said was missing - I guess one of them could be someone else in disguise, we should check that because we're dealing with demons but I don't expect it - and the priest the demon kidnapped is still here and alive."

"The only other thing I'm concerned about is what Hosilla said in the fight. Wendu, she knew you by name and expected you to help her.  What was that about?"

"What did you think happened when I came here? Not everyone can be lucky enough to be chosen by an angel's sword and be able to defeat any enemy. They made me go through the same ritual they were planning for those kids, it's just I was strong willed enough to stay sane."

"Why didn't you fight back! We're the descendants of crusaders, it's our duty to fight evil, not go work for it. If you didn't think you could do it yourself, you should have gotten help."

"And accomplish what? Get all the neathers killed for nothing? At least this way kids going missing was a rarity, not what happened to everyone!"

"Lann--did Wenduag actually help the cultists, or just let them think she would and then came back with overwhelming force? It would have been better if she had explained everything sooner, because then maybe the kids wouldn't have gone into the shield maze at all, but--Wenduag, it sounds like you were worried warning people would have gone badly? Either way, I'm really glad you're alive and able to help us."

"She's been covering up what's really in the shield maze for years! Lying to everyone to help hide the demons, and she didn't even tell us when we arrived here to deal with it," Lann protests.

He feels that really ought to be enough.

Wenduag shows some relief at Brenda's words.

"Yes. And now she's dead, and will never try to command me again."

A vicious smirk shows on her face as she looks down at the corpse, but she doesn't respond to Lann.

To Lann: "It's pretty reasonable of you to be unhappy about being deceived but I don't know what would have happened if she'd told you years ago. Wenduag, can you explain more about why you didn't tell anyone? . . . More importantly, is there anything else you haven't been saying that we should know, and if so what would make it seem like a good idea to tell us?"

"I didn't tell anyone because there's nothing anyone could have done. The best case scenario was the same thing that happened this way, the worst case was everyone got killed because some people wanted to be heroes. As for other secrets, I'm pretty sure there's not another set of Neather tribes. The maddened people Lann didn't recognize were from our set, just years and years back; whatever he does with his ritual makes us live longer, just at the cost of our sanity if we aren't strong enough."

"When I came to Golarion I didn't tell my family on Earth that I was leaving, because I was worried they'd try to stop me. I just left them a note and snuck out. I don't regret that, but if I go back someday and they're angry at me, and decide not to trust me in the future, I won't blame them. And I'm never going to get to know  for sure what would have happened if I'd trusted them."

That seems to boil down mostly to 'you didn't do anything wrong but Lann might not trust you,' which is perfectly fine by her.

Now that the immediate concerns are dealt with, Anevia is going to head down the stairs to help out the priest and untie the kids. No need to leave them there any longer than they have to.

"So, back to Neatholm or whichever city the kids are from? We'll need to go back through here to get to the surface but possibly that should be tomorrow." Please no more emergencies for a little bit, universe?

"I'd like to get back to the surface today, since I'm pretty sure Beth is worried sick and there are doubtless a dozen fires to help put out, but you're not under any obligation yourself. I can handle reporting the cultist den we found here for a full sweep later, and even though we've dealt with the worst problems in the maze it's not amazingly safe for kids, so some people should be escorting them back. Does anyone else have a strong preference for which group they go with?"

"As bad as the city undoubtedly is, it's certainly a more attractive offer than sticking around underground."

"I'll stick with Brenda. There's not that much I could contribute up there without any smites or lay on hands, and it's always helpful to have more than one person who can fight close up to protect people."

Lann and Wenduag echo her agreement, probably rather unsurprisingly.

Brenda smiles gratefully at Seelah and the Neathers. Clearly she should have asked for a version of Just A Little Longer that covers long chains of tangentially related projects.

"Anevia, Camellia, it was great working with you and I'd be happy to do it again sometime. Wenduag, what's the best plan for getting them to the surface and the rest of us back home without anyone having to go somewhere in a dangerously small group? I don't want to just assume you're fine navigating around a bunch of pissed-off cultists alone."

"We shouldn't need assistance. Our cultist friends that I interrogated didn't know the way out, since they're apparently brought in blindfolded, but it can't be a very long journey because they have to transport down enough food to feed everyone, and demons can't carry much supplies with them on teleports even if you could get them to. Between that and where they were when they were inducted into the cult, there are only a couple of places this can let out to the old tunnels, and those things aren't actually very complicated to navigate -  you don't actually get a warren like this unless you're trying for it, much less one where which direction to go in is ambiguous both coming and going. My guess is that in under half an hour we'll let out somewhere in the inner city, though that bit's a tad less precise."

"Ah, excellent. Didn't mean to impugn your skills, I just have no idea what's a normal amount of " don't say dungeon it's not a dungeon "tunnel system. I'll see you around!"

"You as well! And take care."

The trip back to neatholm is faster than the journey up; even with the extra issue of having to guard the kids and make sure to keep them out of sight of any cultists, not having to go searching down side hallways or do combat more than makes up for it. When they get out, the boat is rather more cramped with two extra people in it, but there's still enough room for everyone in one go, and when they disembark at Neatholm they are at first greeted with shocked disbelief and then cheers. Plans are thrown around for some a celebration, and not even the short notice is enough to dissuade anyone.

That's very reasonable and also amazingly sweet of them.

Brenda would rather get stabbed by a vrolikai's energy-draining knife again than go to a party full of 99% strangers, even with the Friends In Places powers taking the edge off the fear.

She wondered, when she picked the Friends In Places powers, whether having the option to avoid offending people would simply demonstrate that she was the sort of person who preferred to do the sort of things that give offense.

If they want her at the party she will go to the party.

They would be incredibly flattered to have her at the party but they don't really have a solid model of "things expected from storybook heroes from the surface with the sword of an angel," so she's free to do what she wants and have it considered not particularly more remarkable than anything else about her. It might be a little inconvenient to get food if she avoids the party entirely but there are absolutely possible solutions like asking someone to bring her something.