"Okay!" 

Lusilla is entirely in favor of not having to explore more of this blasted maze. Of course, it's possible the Hand of Hosilla will, on being called to talk to a weird creature of unidentified provenance and loyalty, hide his key, but that just means that if Lusilla has to beat him up for it she should try really hard not to kill him until and unless she finds it, so that if he doesn't have it on him she can make him tell her where he put it. 

Of course, if she does that, she should be really careful of traps, because if someone beats you up and wants the location of a valuable shiny, giving them instead the location of a vicious trap is the obvious trick to pull. Even if the person who beat you up drags you along with them to wherever you give them directions to, if you don't trust them not to kill you anyways, which the Hand of Hosilla definitely shouldn't in her case, because she will probably have to kill him anyways. 

The senior cultist who is going off for the Hand of Hosilla drags the junior cultist along with him, at least partway, because no matter how this turns out leaving the kid alone with the weird starfish thing has nothing but downside potential, and the kid doesn't deserve that crap. 

He returns with the Hand of Hosilla and also sans kid. He is trailing behind the Hand, partly to perform deference and partly so that if the starfish creature attacks the Hand he can run away while it's busy. 

Lusilla spends the interval while the senior cultist is gone explicitly confirming and discussing with Seelah and Lann that she was hiding them from the cultists, that she thinks that's why her Diplomacy check overtures worked, and that she's just trying to get the key faster. 

"Hello!" she says brightly when the Hand of Hosilla arrives. 

The Hand regards her warily. Unlike the cultist who went and fetched him here, he can't take the relatively conservative tactic of buck-passing the problem this being represents; Hosilla is as likely as not to murder him just for bothering her with it regardless of whether the presumable-Aberration is sympathetic to Baphomet's cause or not. 

"What do you want?" 

"Someone said there's a shrine upstairs past the door in the room with all the blood! Well. Some of the blood. I guess most of the blood is in the other room. Anyway. I wanna see it! But I can't get past the door." This is a minor fib. She could, in fact, get past the door just fine; it's just that she can't bring anyone else that's the problem. But lying isn't actually as bad as breaking a promise, and this guy has been murdering people horribly, so he does not need to know that she can bop around. 

Yeah, no. 

"The shrine is off-limits to unauthorized persons," he says coolly. This...could still end up going well...if whatever this is doesn't mind being denied, or doesn't care enough about this specific thing that they won't just immediately demand something else instead...but he is definitely preparing to have to fight them. 

Lusilla manages a recognizable shrugging gesture with all five of her arms. "Oh well. I tried." 

One of her arms lashes out, swiping at him. 

FORTUNATELY, despite the fact that she may or may not have beaten him on raw initiative, he was prepared for this, i.e. he was holding his action to stab her with his glaive if negotiations seemed to have broken down at all! 

Okay so the thing is. 

He can hit her. Her armor class isn't actually that great; she has four points of natural armor, yes, but her dexterity in this shape isn't awesome and she gets a penalty to AC for being large. 

But. He rolled pretty poorly for damage on that attack, actually! So it doesn't get past her damage resistance at all. 

Aw, fuck. Maybe he should have tried passing the buck after all. 

Well, he will, ultimately, have time to contemplate his regrets at length. Probably. There's s'posed to be a big line you have to wait in before Pharasma judges you, after all. 

The other cultist ran away when she started beating the Hand to death; probably this is because he has no idea she isn't just a big weird thing that will decide to attack people sometimes, and is instead the kind of existential threat to his little cultist cell that hangs out with paladins and pissed-off non-mind-controlled Neathers. 

Lusilla does get out of the doorway to let the others help before the fight is over, so the Hand does go to his death having learned this, but whatever, so have a lot of other cultists, if Baphomet cares to interrogate anyone about it he'll already have plenty, it doesn't matter. 

The key is, in fact, on the body, which is the most important thing. 

So NOW they can go back to the door with the two keyholes, and hope that all this wasted time hasn't rendered them too late to save the Neather kids. 

The two keys slot easily into the two key-holes, and the door swings open smoothly. Lusilla picks up Seelah and Lann as she CHARGES up the spiral staircase, because that is, actually, faster than keeping herself down to their speed and safer than leaving them behind. 

The spiral stairs open out onto a balcony, where--

"Praise Iomedae!" a golden-haired man in chains cries defiantly towards the giant, four-armed, bat-like demon in front of him. 

--Lusilla can VERY CLEARLY see what's about to happen there. Not through any kind of supernatural prescience, it's just really fucking obvious. 

So she bops in front of the giant demon just as its arm swings forwards, burying itself in copious pink starfish flesh instead of aasimar. 

Ow. 

That hurts. Kind of a lot, actually. Lusilla is pretty sure it still isn't as bad as the chest wound Terendelev healed-ish, but it comes a lot closer than most things. 

As if in response to the comparison, the wound reopens, present despite the fact that she doesn't have a humanoid chest for it to be present on--the gash opens beside her mouth, at the join between two of her arms. Blood gushes out of her body, and reason with it, as the ancient fight-or-flight response present in every being join together in her to unanimously choose fight. 

She lunges upwards, her teeth digging deep into the demon's flesh, her arms pummeling him mercilessly, as a paradoxical black light wraps itself around her limbs to burn into his flesh. 

"Kkh!" the demon exclaims in surprise. "What is this?"

He manages to pry himself free from the grasping arms of the abominable thing, then snarls, "Slaves--deal with this pest!" as he flees from WHATEVER THE FUCK THAT WAS. 

With the target of her rage gone, it slowly bleeds out of her, along with her consciousness. 

Okay so this situation is REALLY BAD OBVIOUSLY. 

Lusilla getting stabbed by a Vrolikai is not good, but at least she appears to be not dead, and--fighting back? Somehow? Whereas the aasimar definitely would have died, so--right choice, probably. 

The glaive-wielding figure who raises their weapon when the demon orders his "slaves" to finish off Lusilla is probably Hosilla. Seelah charges down the stairs towards her. 

And Lann has two arrows fired off towards Hosilla before Seelah can reach her and give him a penalty for firing into melee. 

Hosilla was not thrilled when Savamelekh ordered her to kill a giant starfish monstrosity that shook off one of his blows and then left him running bloody, but what was she going to do? Disobey? At least the starfish-thing probably wasn't going to do worse than kill her. 

A paladin running towards her is an extra, bonus, unpleasant surprise on top of that. Why would a paladin be working with a starfish monster? (Hosilla, though an inquisitor with at-will Detects for arbitrary alignments, has not bothered to point any of it at the starfish at this time, and thus continues in blissful ignorance of the aura of chaotic good surrounding the creature.) 

On the other hand, the paladin may have just been waiting for an opportune moment before charging in--it's smarter than Hosilla thought paladins were allowed to be, not to have jumped out when Savamelekh was about to kill the aasimar, but maybe the fact that there was nothing they could have done was enough of a mitigating factor that it could have worked. 

The arrows from the new and unexpected Neather, when they arrive at velocity, are really more of an annoyance. 

The thing you have to understand, here, is that Seelah knew there was going to be a final boss named Hosilla who was stronger than either of her "hands," which means she saved a Smite Evil just for her. 

Uuuuuuuugh, this is why paladins are ANNOYING. Still, it's not going to save her--

Thwock thwock. 

"WENDUAG," Hosilla yells. If this paladin is going to bring in a pet Neather archer--well, no, Hosilla would also have brought in hers, she'd have just been slightly less annoyed about it. 

And then the aasimar cleric finally manages to wriggle his hands out of their bindings, and complete the somatic components for Cure Serious Wounds. 

Not gonna cut it, still out of it.