...Seelah nods reluctantly. 

"It's a bad idea," Lann says flatly. "Even a cave spider feels loyalty to their mother--she's lower than a beast." 

"...If Hosilla had succeeded in killing all of us, she could also have done...whatever she wanted...to the children." 

"I know, but still!"

Lusilla nods, and thinks.

"Okay. Wenduag. I am going to give you a chance." She holds up a hand. "Not with me. At least not to start with. You want to serve me? Then here's my first order. Go to the surface, find a group of crusaders or something to work with. Kill as many demons as you can. At some point I'm going to check up on you, and if you've done that, you can come work with me; and if you haven't, or you've done that but you've also killed people who weren't demons or demon cultists or whatever, I will kill you. Is that understood?" 

Wenduag meets her gaze levelly for a round, and then nods, and vanishes into the shadows. 

"You're gonna regret that." 

Sigh. "I might. But--I really, really did not want to put her in a situation, even retroactively, where helping us means she dies and not helping us means she lives, no matter what else she's done. And it's probably not worse than just plain cutting her loose." 

"Well...it's a good sentiment, even if it doesn't work out this time." 

"And if I do have to kill her, I can do it at full health, with all my spells, and everyone at my side also fresh." 

Seelah grimaces in acknowledgement. "Amen." 

Lann nods, reluctantly, then turns to the children. 

"I'm glad to see you kids are okay." 

Oh nooooooo, one of them has beautiful shining wings like a cicada! They're all so cute! 

"Your wings are so pretty," she tells the boy earnestly. 

The boy nods and shuffles, still looking mostly awkward and scared. 

"C'mon," Lann sighs. "Let's get you back home." 

The trip back through the Shield Maze is a lot shorter than the way out had been. They do, actually, run into a couple of cultists, but Lusilla has scooped up Hosilla's corpse, for this purpose; waving it at the cultists reliably makes them run away instead of fighting her, if being a big and unidentified monster-thing with too many eyes left them in any doubt as to whether that was a good idea. 

Chief Sull and the other Neathers still haven't ventured inside; there are still a few tribes who haven't shown up yet. They're overjoyed by the return of the missing children, especially the children's parents, who are among the crowd, emerging from it with excited exclamations to embrace their missing progeny. 

Lusilla allows Lann to explain what happened to Sull; he knows what context the old chieftain is going to need, and what he already has. Plus she feels really bad about Hovlan. And Wenduag, in a very different way. 

Once Lann has finished speaking with Chief Sull, it's time to return to the surface. 

Lusilla isn't actually sure what to do, after re-emerging from the crack in the earth. Sure, there are demons around, but not being murderweasels like Wenduag probably the three of them can find something better to do than just kill random demons. 

--Wait. 

"Maybe we should see if we can catch up with Anevia. I mean--it's been hours and hours by now--but she must be somewhere, and she'll probably have any idea what would actually help to do." 

"...Do you think you can track her?" Seelah asks dubiously. Normally, a city has a lot of people in it; right now, a city has a lot of demons in it; and either way, that's a lot of smells for Anevia's to compete with. 

"Well, I can try!" 

For the most part, so far most things that can't fly have been avoiding the edge of the hole, and most things that can't fly haven't been leaving their scent on it, so early on Anevia and Camellia's scents start out easy to track. 

They get more difficult as the trail goes on; more than once, Lusilla has to double back, circling around to see where the scent picks up again after losing it. They encounter several demons while en route, and spilling demon blood over the trail doesn't improve it either. 

But eventually Lusilla tracks Anevia and Camellia's scents to a large grey building and can't find any sign of their leaving it again. 

Lusilla shrinks down into human form before going inside. 

It's not that she couldn't fit into the building otherwise--it's designed for Medium creatures, sure, but it's not designed to be cramped for Medium creatures, and it's not like her Large form has bones or anything--but if there are any people there besides Anevia and Camellia, who aren't demons or demon cultists or something, she would rather they not see an unidentified creature with too many eyes until they have the context to know they shouldn't shoot it. 

At first the building seems quiet, as the three of them enter. But unlike her nose, Lusilla's ears aren't any worse in human shape, and after a moment she can pick up the distant sound of metal-on-metal, the noise of a particular kind of violence involving people who are wearing metal armor. 

Lusilla glances over to see if Seelah hears it too. 

Seelah's grip tightens on Radiance's hilt. "Somebody's fighting in there." 

Yeah. No time to waste. 

When the enormous--thing--with too many arms and too many eyes bursts into the room, almost everyone engaged in combat is taken by surprise. Is it a demon? A demon-aligned or cultist-summoned non-demon thing? Is it completely unrelated and liable to kill and eat people indiscriminately? 

Almost everyone. Anevia recognizes Lusilla immediately, of course--she finishes off the cultist she had been fighting while he's distracted, and moves on to the next one. 

Irabeth does not recognize what she's looking at immediately, but Anevia did tell her about the strange ?Aberration? in human form that she met in the caves and who helped her return to the surface, so--when she doesn't detect any evil coming off it, and she sees how Anevia reacts, the pieces click together. 

"For Kenabres!" she roars, and the rest of the Eagle Knights conclude that whatever is happening is Probably Fine and go back to fighting cultists.