Eventually, it's Staunton's turn on the front lines. He's not splendid enough to have many channels or a devastating smite, but he's still an experienced paladin in heavy armor. Unfortunately what he doesn't have is ironclad self control, because when Minagho takes the front lines herself to fight him personally something she says sets him off and he charges after her as she laughingly retreats.

Staunton!!!

There is absolutely no way this isn't exactly what Minagho wanted. The absolute best case scenario is that this takes Minagho out of the main action long enough to make up for the loss of Staunton and Minagho did this because personal cruelty is more important to her than actual effectiveness. 

This is why you don't pick on a guy for seventy years! Not that you need a reason to not do that! You can and should just not do that. 

It's probably to their benefit, on net? Minagho might be less deadly now than she was when she had her pick of ammunition, but she's still the most deadly person here by a significant margin and Staunton really isn't. The bigger concern on that score is that her leaving coincided with an alchemist joining the fight, and everyone with energy resistance has had it stripped away via dispels by now; their bombs are if anything a little weaker than the ones she most recently had the displeasure of experiencing, but in a confined space like this that only helps so much.

Yeah. The plausible tactical detriment to their side in the long run is if Minagho comes back and Staunton doesn't. Also what's that over there?

There's a door in the wall right there, though she has no memory of it existing when they arrived in this hallway.

...Aaaaaand if she opens the door? 

There's a passageway that slopes upwards and onward. 

...Luzai will grab any of her people who aren't actively on the front lines and Git. Odds that this is a Mom shenanigan: High.

Seelah and Ulbrig are currently busy, but everyone else can be fetched without much difficulty. Nobody outside their group seems to notice the doorway, even when she opens it.

Luzai would love it if she had at least one melee guy available besides Camellia but oh well. 

Luzai really, really hopes this doesn't end badly. It would be such a stupid trap to fall for. 

Where does the passageway open out to?

Invisibility. Dimension Door.

The passageway opens up onto the third floor, in sight of the base of the wardstone. The light coming off it is noticably dimmer than it was last time she was here. There's a skeleton guard of a few cultists, but they're watching the passageway towards the fighting and don't seem to have noticed her yet.

Lann does not require instructions to figure out that he should begin sniping them. 

It would be very convenient if he did require instructions, since Nenio is absolutely not in position yet to hit them before they turn around - and then there's a fog cloud, thanks Villibor, that lets her get close enough to drop everyone with a color spray before they realize what's going on.

The fog does make it slightly difficult for them to find the cultists as well, but none of them are moving and the color spray lasts long enough that nobody is able to raise an alarm with the specifics that would get people's attention from away the fight. There's nobody else visibly on guard around, leaving their way to the wardstone unobstructed.

Which is good, because Luzai sprints over to it as soon as this is tactically reasonable, drawing the nahyndrian crystal dagger and pressing it and her forehead both to the Wardstone. 

How does she do this. 

Just like that, apparently. The moment the blade makes contact with the wardstone, there's a feeling like a static shock that sets her arm to tingling, and then the world around her vanishes.

For a moment she might be forgiven for assuming that she was back in the hall watching the crusaders clash with the demons, but a second glance puts lie to that idea. Instead of the dark stone walls lit by everburning torches, her field of vision is ringed by blue and gold, and those fighting are not merely paladins. No, here the ones doing battle are angels - on both sides of the conflict.

--Is it obvious which side of the angels' conflict is which? Like one side is mostly overlaying cultists and one crusaders?

The correspondence to the fight outside isn't really close enough for that to work, but that doesn't mean they're difficult to tell apart. One side looks as she would have expected, while the other is stained in purples and reds. Not all is static, though; if she looks at some of the angels in white and gold long enough, she'll see their halo and aura slowly tick darker and darker as they clash.

Oh no. 

Please, stop! she tries to call out to the darkened angels. Please! 

What comes back as a response is a cacophony, yet it cannot rightly be called noise. It is a storm of agony, hatred, and betrayal, but at its heart one message carries through.

This is the truth of the wardstones, they seem to say. A great cage without even the promise of gilding, to restrain the demons by first restraining them. And just like the demons in the wound, to be an angel in the wardstones is to suffer. Every injury inflicted upon the artifacts, every demonic incursion that must be repelled, is dealt upon the angels that stand in vigil - day after day, week after week, year after year, in suffering unending. And for what? A war that cannot be won? This latest torment is the worst one yet, but it is not different in kind, and they cannot bear to endure it. They will bring an end to their torturous existence by whatever means are required.

Oh NO. 

The Wound will be closed soon. Please, wait just a little longer!

The politest responses to this declaration are skepticism. They have been here for seven long decades now, and if the war were to be won, it would have happened by now. They have had a front-row seat to every demonic incursion, and they show no signs of abating. Not everyone, however, is polite or lucid enough to argue their points; some rant and rave, while others continue begging for death or mock her declarations.

Yeah she. Expected that. 

...The medium they're all communicating in isn't exactly words. Can...she...just, wrap her entire context, soul-splice and sincere allegiance to the side of good and evil science mother and all, and lob it at these people?

Either that's not exactly how it works, or she's just unpracticed at it; even as she pushes it she can feel the ideas getting garbled up. Unsurprisingly, it's less effective than she might hope; even in the best of times, trusting Areelu Vorlesh to close the worldwound would be a hard sell, and this is not that. What's worse, even her promises don't have a schedule - for some of the angels, even enduring another year in these conditions is unimaginable.