Seelah is easy to flag down. She's not exactly clear on what it's about but this seems serious enough that it's obviously more important than just being some extra muscle on heavy lifting duty.

Anevia doesn't have any issues with cutting the line to get to Irabeth, so it's less than three minutes later that they're the only ones in her office and the door very thoroughly closed.

"Nevy, what's this about?"

Anevia looks up from where she's stuffing cloth into the area under the door to muffle sound. There are guards keeping people back anyway but you can't skimp on security just because it's probably fine.

"Luzai has something she needs to talk about, but she could do with a little paladin courage to help."

"Alright."

She trusts Anevia implicitly, and it's not like it's a hard task. Irabeth smiles slightly, and then the fear retreats for all the non paladins in the room. It's still there, underneath it, but suddenly it feels like the kind of thing you can overcome and work through.

Luzai takes a deep breath. 

It really is much easier like this. 

"So, the thing that prompted all this was that I found a couple of severed heads in with my stuff. This was, obviously, alarming; I decided to go to Anevia about it instead of barging into the common room waving them around and asking if anyone knew the deceased, because, uh, that could cause a panic. Anyway. It's possible this is related to my--contact on the other side--and Anevia was like 'is there anything you can tell me that would help me investigate this' and, also, I--I basically endorse not saying anything when we first met, or in public, because it actually would be really bad if this got out. But. At this point my main reason for holding back with all of you is the consequences to me, and...if none of you like or trust me anymore once I've explained, then you shouldn't like or trust me, and if you did it would be based on a lie. And that's--worse, actually, even if it doesn't feel that way. 

Um. I don't think I did anything wrong, except maybe one thing sorta. It's...who my contact is, that's the big secret." 

"It's someone pretty highly placed, isn't it. I figured as much; almost none of the cultists we've interrogated since seemed to have known about the attack in more than vague terms before it happened, and you had a day's warning. From a sending, too, and that's not exactly a low level spell. I can't promise I won't think any differently from putting a name to them, but I'm not going to forget what you've done either. The warning saved a lot of lives, not to mention helping Anevia or what you've done since."

"It's Areelu Vorlesh herself." 

Anevia chokes in surprise.

Seelah looks poleaxed, like her world just flipped on its axis, but no words come out. 

"I- you-"

"Once upon a time in Old Sarkoris, there were two witches living in the woods together, a mother and daughter pair. One day the Sarkorian witchhunters found them. The mother they brougt in alive, but the daughter died. They used hasten judgment. By the time the mother was in a position to do anything about it, all that there was, was a dead Abyssal larva."

It won't end like this. I promise.

"The mother's name was Areelu Vorlesh, and while I don't like or approve of Geb in any way, he does have one positive trait, which is that whatever he did to reanimate Arazni didn't open a hole to the Abyss. I don't know why that was an integral part of her research, or what the intermediate stages looked like, besides probably also something I would disapprove of, but the final procedure that she ended up with was using the purified essence of a demon lord to stitch the remnants of her child's soul to a living host." 

"The host she chose was named Luzai, and her daughter's name was Seshka." 

Horrible visions dance through Anevia's mind at that. If it is true, and Areelu Vorlesh would go that far for her child... could they take Luzai hostage? Use her to get Areelu Vorlesh to fight for them? She'd feel awful, doing that to a friend, but when she weighs her awfulness against the number of people who would be saved by the worldwound getting closed, or even just contained at a smaller radius... she can't help but feel grateful for the fact that it obviously wouldn't work. They're not sure they can hold off a normal demon attack here, much less the archtraitor, and that kind of threat would most likely be hollow anyway. Even if Luzai really is the woman's daughter, even if she really does care that much, if she could resurrect them from a slain outsider then their ability to use her as a hostage is just about nil - like the fact that Luzai is here with them in the first place implies anyway. 

...The talk about a theoretical undead Terendelev was probably not very theoretical, was it. Great.

It feels like a rather trite response to the revelation, but that doesn't mean it's not the right one.

"Are you sure? I'm not saying I see the plan, because I don't, but it seems to me like there are probably a lot more people who can fake being Areelu Vorlesh than there are actual Areelu Vorleshes. I'm pretty sure that still holds even if you just count the ones that would also know about the attack. And it does seem wildly out of character for everything we know about the woman in question, including how reluctant she is to reveal any information about herself."

"I remember being Seshka. Not very much, yet, but the memories have been trickling in ever since the splice. And when I briefly had the Aeon's vision, I looked at my own soul with it. It matched what I expected to see. Plus, the Storyteller more or less confirmed it." 

If you'd asked Seelah five minutes ago, she would have said she was absolutely certain that Luzai was a good person. They had worked together for days, in ways that was pretty much impossible to fake, and the angel's sword had chosen her, and even the Prelate had been convinced of her bonafides! Not to mention all the people they'd helped!

Learning that the prelate had been right about his suspicion, and that Luzai's complicated situation was that she was the daughter of the person who caused the worldwound in the first place, the witch practically synonymous with Chaotic Evil, and that she'd been hiding it? That hurt, especially when an archmage was exactly the kind of person who would be capable of faking all the evidence Seelah had seen. Part of her wants to trust the girl anyway, to rely on the fact that she hadn't been forced to tell them now, but was that just the part of her that wanted to keep her friend, or was that the rational approach? Should she overlook that bombshell? Could she overlook it?

"I-. I need to think."

"I understand. Like I said. If you can't trust me anymore, that's fair." Sigh. "The reason it would be a catastrophe if it got out is that if Deskari and Baphomet found out I existed, it would be a clusterfuck. --Actually, when Deskari himself showed up to the assault, I thought he had and was there to abduct me. But." Shrug. "He didn't."  

She needs to make a decision here, and she needs to make it quickly, and she needs to not screw it up, because if she makes the wrong call here she might never get the chance to make the right one instead. 'Iomedae, grant me your wisdom. Help me to see the world as you see it, that good and justice be done, that I may act with your grace in this solemn hour.' As usual, there's no response to her prayer, but the mental motion still helps to center her, to remind her of what's actually important here and what's at stake. It's not right, to say the answer is obvious, but that doesn't mean she doesn't know what she's going to do.

"Alright. I'm not going to arrest you, because that's not a crime unless you're sheltering or helping her. There are plenty of tieflings in Mendev, the law isn't actually ambiguous about this, and your parent being Areelu Vorlesh instead of some babau doesn't change matters. I'm also not going to assign someone to follow you around and keep an eye on you anyway, even though that one is legal, because I don't think it would do any good and it's an indefensible use of resources in our current situation. I won't say this hasn't changed the way I think about you, because I am sworn not to tell knowing lies, but the implications of are a matter for a later date. If in light of this revelation you have more information on the cultists you can share, please do so."

Irabeth smiles tightly.

"And now, all that's left is praying to heaven that this isn't the biggest mistake I've made in my life."

"No. I could ask, though. Um. When I said I did something wrong, at the beginning." Deep breath. "When I said to run, at the Grey Garrison? I asked her for help. Because we couldn't beat Minagho. She--isn't willing, at this time, to break ties entirely to Deskari, because right now he's giving her spells, but. She doesn't really care about them. So--Minagho being distracted. That was her. If you need to arrest me for that, that--makes sense." 

"That's a lot more questionable, yes, though I wouldn't want to argue the position that encouraging demonic infighting is a bad thing."

"Normally I'd say this wasn't any of my business, but under the circumstances I think it's relevant; what do you think your relationship cashes out to there in practice? Because I'd dearly like more intelligence, but if you think it's the kind of situation where you might get three interventions ever or something it's almost certainly not worth using here. Especially since, well, even if she does want to keep you alive that sounds like a lot more work than just giving you a teleport or something."

"--She's my mother! I don't--I don't want to betray anybody Good by, by asking her for help that wouldn't be accepted from her hand, but--I don't know that she'll do everything I ask her to, but I don't expect to spend down resources by asking." 

"Then I think we'd all appreciate it. And, uh, I guess I should take the heads and see what I can find."

A cultist who is looking to openly fuck with Areelu Vorlesh is probably way out of her league, but they won't stop being able to infiltrate the defender's heart because she decided to ignore them.

"Er, right, you weren't here for that. This was brought on because someone decided to leave a couple of severed heads in Luzai's things. That's what triggered this whole conversation, though it did kind of get overshadowed by, uh, everything."

Luzai hands over the grotesque bundle. "It could still be about my evil dad, not my evil mom." 

"Yeah. I never thought I'd be saying this, but here's hoping these gruesome murders are related to a blood lord!"

"The murders might not be related to me at all, those heads aren't super fresh. And the fact that I know that is definitely the Blood Lord's fault!"

With the meeting finished. Seelah goes off to pray. She's probably not going to finish working through all her emotions on the topic before the fight, but even getting partially re-centered would be a win at this point. It's not that she disagrees with Irabeth's decision, but there's a difference between something not being technically a crime or tactically unsound to deal with and deciding whether you still have a friend. Hopefully nobody else is hiding a secret on this level, because she really doesn't want to go through this again.