"What happened?" Lann asks, as the rest of the group catches up to her. 

"...I had another vision." 

...Lann peers at the knife she's holding. "That doesn't look like another angel sword."

"It's not, it--I guess it and the vision aren't totally separate, but--they're not the same--the vision was from an Aeon that showed up when Deskari did, to send him back to the Abyss. He killed it instead. The knife...must have been put here later...I didn't see that part, but--the piece of Aeon wasn't like the vision I had of Lariel, the Aeon-fragment was still--capable of perceiving things--it didn't like the knife."

"...Maybe you should put it down, then." 

Lusilla waves this off. "No, I don't think so--it's an Aeon, not an Angel--I, uh, didn't actually know that Aeons existed, ten minutes ago, but--this one, at least, and any others that are like it--are Neutral, not Good. They like--things being in their planes of origin. I don't think it would have liked Lariel's sword either. Actually--" 

She manifests Lariel's sword, and lays it and the stone dagger beside each other on the ground. Then she calls the Aeon's spirit up to her eyes again. What does it think?

The stone knife is STILL DEEPLY OFFENSIVE AND HORRIBLE. The angel's sword is also bad, but less bad than the stone knife. 

The less-badness isn't actually a feature of the fact that it's celestial instead of fiendish, though--the Aeon can tell the difference between the two, sure, but it's not important. It's just that the stone knife is more extraplanar than the sword that was an actual part of an angel. 

Weird and confusing, but okay. Lusilla scoops the two blades up again. "Aeon doesn't like Lariel's sword," she reports. 

"Oh. Okay. So...do you know what is up with the knife, then?"

"Nope, sorry." 

There is a quiet sound of clapping. 

"Impressive, young ones," calls the slightly creaky voice of an old woman. 

...Her things started wiggling, she looked for a rat, and found a dragon. She came here hoping to find a dragon('s corpse), and now here is a rat!

"Hello, who are you and why didn't we notice you before." 

"Hmph. Should I have to explain what you don't notice?"

"If you're going to claim that you walked up openly and we were all just distracted by me having weird visions, you can do that, but if you snuck up on us, I think you ought to explain that." 

"Heh. Fair enough. But it wasn't your gaze I was evading; it was that of the demons," she gestures around them, "that currently infest this city, worse than any rat."

"Well, okay, that still leaves who you are. I'm Lusilla." 

"Dànpiàn. Emissary of Old Grandmother Rat." 

"For context, I hadn't heard of Iomedae a week ago, so I definitely don't know who 'Old Grandmother Rat' is." 

She buffets the ground lightly with her cane. "What interesting times you seem to be having. Grandmother is the goddess of rats; once a mortal rat herself, who found that a piece of a god's corpse was the finest scrap any of her kind had ever chanced to feast upon." 

"And you're here...why?" 

Shrug. "Grandmother has never liked Deskari. Too much competition; she'd rather the rats get what the locusts would have had instead. So I come here. Interesting sights, interesting people. Then Deskari himself shows up! Against that, I can do nothing, of course, but my kind are always good at hiding." 

"You've been very afraid...I'm so sorry." 

What. 

"I get by, I get by," she says, brushing off the girl's unsolicited accuracy. Not that it's inappropriate, for a child to be concerned for her elders, but that is a fucking elf. "But I get by a bit better, perhaps, not totally on my own. I have a few tricks to make myself useful with." 

"...Are we really that obvious, for it to be a good idea to approach us?"

Emphatically: "Yes. If you haven't been swarmed with refugees by now, their either too dead or have their noses tucked in too tightly to see anything."