A closer look at the alignment with the circle reveals the pentagram to actually be an inverted pentagram, and while the abyssal along the sides is unreadable she's seen similar constructions enough times in conjuration books to identify it. The inner ring is a magic circle, of the kind used in planar bindings, and the outer is a ritual focus to combine the efforts of wizards not individually capable of casting such a spell to produce the desired effect anyway. Such a design probably would not have worked in Mechitar, but it's well known among conjurers that the worldwound being opened brought the abyss closer into alignment with the areas near the wound.

There's just one problem, though; while there's enough powdered silver to fill the circle and the line work is sufficiently precise, this design is for a magic circle against good, not evil. Any demon summoned would be almost entirely free to leave the moment they felt like it, including to attack the casters.

"--Oh, wow, this is a really bad summoning setup," Luzai breathes, distracted for a moment by how fucked those cultists were even if they hadn't come along. 

"Bad in the sense that we're going to have to fight a bunch more demons in a minute?"

"No, no, bad enough that if they had been allowed to finish then whatever they summoned would've killed them for us. I mean, and might well have stuck around to be a bigger problem than they would've been, but that'd be cold comfort to the dead cultists." Luzai will attempt to salvage some powdered silver from the circle. Aaaand probably someone else is on looting the actual bodies, but Luzai might recognize something useful that a non-wizard wouldn't as trivially identify. Do any of these fellows happen to have their spellbooks handy. 

They do! Judging by the contents of their books, none of them were especially impressive wizards, but she can find a decent spread of cantrips and first circle spells to copy. The silver is harder to remove, but if she has somewhere to store it and is willing to put in the time mid mission she can probably make a tidy profit selling it. 

Luzai should prooooobably not take the time to scrape up the silver right now, but she is very happy about the spellbooks. 

Still, waste not, want not. 

"Hey, Lann, Wenduag, if we manage to clear out this place enough for it to be safe, you should tell Dyra about this," she says, pointing to the circle. "There's powdered silver worked into it--we don't have time for me to scrape any of it up right now, but it's pretty valuable." 

"Sure," Lann shrugs. Dyra's kind of weird but one, she's tribe, and two, it's really useful for the tribe to have a cleric. Telling her about a resource in the Shield Maze is a cheap favor. 

"Anyway, before we came in here, Anevia and I were pretty sure we'd found a hidden door in the last room. We were still looking for how to open it, but something the cultists don't want us to be able to find is definitely promising."

"Oh, agreed, though I am glad we nipped this," she looks derisively at the summoning circle, "in the bud. Where'd you find the hidden door?"

"Right on the far wall, there's a patch by the fountain where the stone has a seam."

"Ah." Not only is Luzai not trained in finding secret doors she also was trying not to look too close to the fountain. "Any idea how to open it, yet?" 

"Presumably there's a lever or button for it, since the cultists need to be able to get through. We just need to figure out what we need to pull or push or wiggle to get it to move - it's not something on the door itself, but it's probably not too far away either."

"Okay." Probably Camellia or Anevia is going to find it first, but Luzai will totally follow them out and wiggle things helpfully until something happens. 

Camellia is indeed the one to find it first, despite Luzai and Anevia's efforts; pulling down on a nearby torch causes the wall to slide out of the way, revealing a passageway behind. The initial area looks much the same as the rest of the maze, but past that the tunnel looks significantly less polished.

Luzai has the absolutely ridiculous urge to acid splash some of the more obvious protrusions. Probably the result of the tunnel-crawling from yesterday. Obviously she is not going to act on this urge in any way; instead she will go down the corridor with everyone else from her Objectively Correct position of Behind Seelah. 

She keeps Detect Magic up while there isn't obviously about to be combat in the next few rounds. 

The maze continues to be largely nonmagical outside of the lighting. Pretty soon, their hallway leads to a fork - or would, if the left direction extended more than a few feet of partially excavated stone.The passage heading right is significantly more complete, though, and has a few more doors and branching hallways leading off of it in turn. Fortunately, the second Hand is not especially difficult to locate once they start looking - there's not really any reasonable way to subtly move large amounts of stone by hand, and the cultists frankly aren't even bothering to try. 

Sneak sneak peeeeer what is up with the nearest group of cultists. 

There's another large man, armed with a glaive, who has occupied himself with berating a group of ambulatory rocks in the process of expanding the cave. Since she doesn't speak Terran she's not going to pick up much more than tone there, but that's hardly unique to her; neither of the man's two subordinates seem to be following what he's saying either.

Hhhhhhh those earth elementals are probably approximately innocent bystanders. 

"I assume nobody speaks Terran," she says very quietly. Unless she's wrong about that, they don't have any way to tell the elementals that they're not enemies, and if the elementals are called and not summoned then they'll die if killed. Luzai--knows better than to take stupid risks about that--but she is more upset about it than about killing people who are actively holding children prisoner. 

Nobody in her group knows Terran.

"There's some elementals. I imagine we'd rather not fight them if we can avoid it," after all, fighting elementals doesn't just risk the elementals getting hurt, "but I don't know that we can avoid it when the guy with the pointy stick can talk to them and we can't." SOMEDAY she is going to be a third-circle wizard who can cast Tongues. 

"And they're not like, evil either."

Seelah is kind of miserable about this idea, actually, she doesn't want to go around killing people who aren't evil just because they were forced to fight her. 

"So what? If they try and stop us, should we just roll over and let them?"

"No," Luzai doesn't roll her eyes but she had to pass a Will save about it, "but since nobody's noticed us yet, we have a little time to try to come up with a better idea." Seelah is deeply, deeply valid. 

Camellia doesn't have a problem with planning but she's not really clear how she could solve this problem with a rapier, first circle shaman spells, or cursing people.