"I apologize for not noticing you earlier. --For what it's worth, that incident occurred during the Third crusade, which--nobody was at their best, back then."

"He said today that if she'd been burned then she must have been guilty," Lusilla hisses. 

Sigh. "I'm sorry to hear it." Sorry, but not surprised. 

"Why didn't you think to seek refuge with me? I would have helped...out of solidarity for a fellow aasimar, and to relive that one summer's eve."

WAIT, HANG ON, LUSILLA MAY BE NAIVE AND PROVINCIAL BUT SHE DID HAPPEN TO GET THAT ONE. 

RAMIEN AND DAERAN ARE BOTH VERY PRETTY AND THAT'S A VERY APPEALING MENTAL IMAGE. 

What if she also throws Lann in with--NOT NOW ESPECIALLY IN FRONT OF THE ADORABLE ELF CHILD. 

"Perhaps I would have considered it if I had been trying to save myself...but the people of this city need my help. I couldn't abandon them just to save my own hide. Not even for the sake of that one summer's eve." 

Really, the risqué ballad writes itself!!!

"Yes, that is a common affliction among clerics, it seems." 

Speak for yourself!!!

"Now is no time for self-indulgence, with the city overrun with demons and Hulrun currently worse than usual."

"I've never once in my life let Hulrun deter me from self-indulgence, and I don't intend to begin now." 

He'll just sort of quietly not contest the demons part, though. 

"So--you knew about the attack before it happened--the other attempted warning I heard of so far was from a guy called the Storyteller; he has weird visions when he touches things, and he touched the Wardstone and had a weird vision about it. And so--you Desnans had dreams about it, I think someone said?"

"Yes. We have a secret informant among the ranks of the enemy. We don't know anything about her identity, but this isn't the first piece of information she's given us, through the most reliable of sources--the dreams of a priest of Desna aren't a channel that can be spoofed or intercepted. Admittedly, it can be possible to confuse them with regular dreams, but not with any deliberate action on the demons' part." 

"And when you have two separate warnings from completely independent sources that something is wrong, you'd better listen."

"Indeed." Sigh. He rubs his forehead, not that any of them can see it. "You may have been right, about some demon placing a Suggestion on him; usually, his problem is that he's so eager to fight demons and demon cultists that he doesn't slow down to make sure everyone he apprehends is guilty, first. He shouldn't have been so hard to pry away from the chasm when there are definitely demons elsewhere and no identifiable demons there." 

"If that's so, is there a way to fix it?"

"Protection from Evil should do it, if you can convince him to accept one." 

"And it would in fact require permission?" Not that Lusilla isn't generally a big fan of consent, but these are clearly special circumstances. 

"Leaving aside the difficulty--not to mention danger--of touching him without his cooperation, it is possible to throw off if for some reason one decides to."

"Inconvenient." Not to mention the fact that, even without any kind of demonic interference, he's still the kind of person who thinks burning children alive is a good idea.

"So--the ritual that your people tried--was that, like, just a normal thing, or...? Because the Storyteller says it's going to be difficult to purify the Wardstone, at this point." 

"I don't know it to have any particularly superlative power. But even so, it might help, along with something else." 

Slow nod. "The Storyteller tasked me with finding...something...near where Terendelev died. I think I found it--actually I'm not sure which of the things I found he meant. Or it could be more than one of them, I don't know. But I certainly wouldn't turn down more help. Do you know where they are?"

"No," he says firmly, "anything I don't know, Hulrun definitely can't get out of me. I haven't heard anything from any of them since I stopped Hulrun from seizing them. ...But I have been worrying about them; that was well before the actual invasion started."

"If you can tell me anything about them, I can keep an eye out, at least." 

"Their names are Ilkes, Aranka, and Thall. They--"