"I don't suppose we could just take some trophy off of Hosilla to prove we killed her that would make all the cultists decide we're too much to handle and just surrender." 

"If it was that easy, we wouldn't have a demon cultist problem."

Anevia shakes her head wryly.

"Even if they did surrender, they don't have much to look forward to. Besides, convincing them that we drove off Savamalekh would be a harder ask - I'd guess Hosilla did most of the interacting with him, but they wouldn't have missed the fact that their boss worked for an incredibly powerful demon."

Sigh. 

Part of her wants to vote against clearing the maze, to give the cultists a chance to run instead of surrendering, to get away and go do non-cultist things that wouldn't end on a gallows--

But even if they did run, there wouldn't really be anywhere to run to besides Kenabres, and a city overrun by demons is not a place that makes cultists stop being cultists. 

Come to think of it, they had the orders from Hosilla to the first key guy, probably nobody but a key guy would have those, and that didn't exactly stop anyone--okay, they didn't exactly wave them at any cultists to see if it would work--whatever, Anevia's right anyways, it doesn't really matter. 

Although. 

"Wasn't there something about a paladin sword? If Hosilla felt the need to hide it, finding it might be a good idea." 

As the relevant paladin, this is her job to know about, but she hasn't heard of some special paladin sword going missing. "Most of the really impressive things about a paladin's sword comes from the celestial spirit a paladin bonds with, so it's not going to be nearly as powerful in someone else's hands, but I definitely wouldn't mind being wrong."

At the very least it's probably a masterwork, so she could get some use out of it until she returns it to whoever it actually belongs to.

"It could just be Hosilla being a petty bitch towards some paladin she couldn't strike at openly before the attack...but if that was the case, wouldn't stealing it be enough, why the need to hide it..? Going on a treasure hunt isn't exactly a defensible use of our time but it might be a point in favor of clearing out the place." 

"I'd prefer to return to the surface as soon as possible, but I'm not that opposed to dealing with the other cultists here."

With the conversation on safer ground, Anevia has been splitting her attention between it and looting Hosilla. When she looks up to respond, however, her face looks grim.

"Whichever we pick, we should do it soon and hurry. Cultist messages are half lies even when they're all talking to each other, but according to this dispatch Hosilla had on them there's supposed to be a big cultist mustering at the tower of Estrod so they can wipe out the city's defenders. Even in the worst case we should have some time, since Hosilla wouldn't have been able to get there yet, but whoever is in charge of the city's defenses at the moment will definitely want to know."

“—Let’s clear the maze, then, and hurry about it.”

Luzai is…not really equipped to carry an entire person back to Neathholm…but she can carry the dead kid’s head, if that would be helpful.

“It would probably be better to leave it with his body for now,” Lann says. He’s still a little unnerved but he’s pretty much accepted by this point that Luzai doesn’t really understand how to interact with dead people.

Camellia will keep her hands free. If they do run into any cultists, Seelah won't be in any position to help out without dropping the kid.

And Anevia will bring up the rear, both to ward off any cultists coming up behind them with her shortsword and to provide fire support for Camellia if the need arises.

Thankfully their trip back is significantly shorter than their trip in, thanks to knowing exactly where they're going and not needing to take detours to fetch keys. The stairs do prove a larger issue with their passengers, but even taking it slowly only effects the relative time so much. Somewhere between half and three quarters of an hour after finishing off Hosilla, they'll find themselves back at the crack they had to squeeze through to arrive.

It’s not any less tight a squeeze this time, but their passengers, being significantly smaller than adults, are less of a problem than they could be.

The village is relatively surprised to see them back so soon, grateful for the return of the three living children, and dismayed by the fourth’s death, albeit mostly in a resigned sort of way. Even the dead child’s parents, while clearly not taking their loss well, have the social cohesion to not make it obvious that they would have preferred one of the other children had failed to make it back instead.

Lann asks Luzai to show everyone the angel sword, even though they don’t need to mobilize everyone to clear the maze. It’ll be good for morale.

Luzai can do that; it’s not exactly time-consuming. She isn’t going to stick around to discuss Lariel’s story with anyone, though, even though she kind of wants to. They are pretty emphatically in a hurry.

The reaction is pretty enthusiastic, as might be expected by people being shown their childhood stories come to life, and the bit where they 'defeated the evil demons lurking in the shield maze' adds to the effect. Some of the neathers speculate that this must be what the sun looks like, and as the person with the sword Luzai is something of a minor celebrity.

Horgus Gwerm is also very pleased about this.

"Wonderful, simply wonderful. Is the way to the surface safe?"

"For now I would say safe-ish. We're going to do a more comprehensive sweep to make sure there aren't cutists lingering in the corners we didn't get before." 

"Good riddance. You'd think our city's brave defenders could have spent some of their efforts on this sort of thing instead of wasting their time on witch hunts, but at least they're dealt with now."

"I've never heard anything bad about the Eagle Watch." Let the negative space do her condemning for her. 

Anyway. Back through the maze. Are they just doing cultists or should they clear out that one dead end with all the cobwebs, too. 

Better not. They're unlikely to be very difficult to kill, but getting through the webs will take time and they're even less likely to work with the cultists on an ambush.

Now that she's willing to admit to knowing about all the cultists being here, Wenduag can lead the way to their living quarters. There will almost certainly be more out and about, but anyone sleeping or eating or relaxing is probably there, and it's best to hit them first since if any of them get alerted they probably all will.

It turns out Luzai is even more uncomfortable about ambushing people in their sleeping quarters than she is about killing them elsewise, but, uh, she can suck it up. 

Eventually they come across...a...set of four jewels in the wall? 

"...Okaaaay, these are...definitely magical, in some way..." she says, blinking at them in bemusement. 

"If they're not a trap, I'll eat my scarf. Either an alarm to alert whoever is nearby, or just to directly injure whoever touches it and makes a mistake. There's probably some trick to it that we could figure out, since Baphomet cultists tend to prefer the feeling of superiority of their opponents not being able to figure it out to actual security and it needs to be simple enough for whoever handles this area to remember, but screwing up could be an easy way to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory here."

"...Hey, remember those paintings back in that big room? Weren't they all overwhelmingly one color?" 

"So they were. None of them were green, though, so either it or they are a red herring. Hmm, I want to say it was yellow blue red yellow? But I might be misremembering, and they might have thought it was funnier to have it backwards."

She sighs.

"I'm not really the biggest fan of doing guessing games with cultist psychologies."