"Or you could stay in the temple or a nearby, better-defensible structure, and we could pick you up later when we swing by." 

A thought seems to occur to Aranka. "You know...that might not be a bad idea. Meet back up with us at the temple later, then." 

"Will do!"

And NOW they can go back to the Defender's Heart, right???

They're going to have to deal with some looters who have Alchemist's Fire, first, but then sure. 

That's fine. Well. Not fine. It's within expected parameters. 

FINALLY they GET BACK and WOW do they have a lot to report. 

"Lusilla!" Seelah hadn't been worried that the others were, like, dead, but yeah it was starting to get concerning how long they were out. "...Why do you have an Evil rat on your head?"

Lusilla glances upwards reflexively, even though in this shape she super does not have the range of vision to look at the top of her own head. 

She's confident that "it seemed rude to make an elderly person walk" is not an adequate answer, lacking context as it is. But also:

"She's evil?" 

"Lao Shu Po is an evil goddess," the dragon around her neck pipes up, "so she'd read Evil even if she isn't."

"...What?" 

The rat is--a cleric--of an evil goddess Seelah has never heard of? She's fully capable of piecing that much together from the relevant context clues but also that does not leave her unconfused. 

Dànpiàn scampers down from Lusilla's head, onto her shoulder, down her arm, and then she's close enough to the floor to turn back. She bows. 

"Dànpiàn of Diguo-Dashu, here to aid the crusades. My patron is the Goddess of Rats; she's counted among the Evil gods, but she isn't Evil like the gods of humans can be Evil; she has rat concerns and rat priorities. And she doesn't like Deskari at all."

Oh a WERErat, that makes so much more sense. 

...She's not sure how she feels about Evil Rat God, but--crusading means putting up with Asmodeans, sometimes; this...probably isn't worse.

"Because he's competition?" 

"Precisely." Shrug. "As I said. She has rat priorities." 

"Huh. Okay." 

"And this is Ember! She's great. And not evil at all."

"Hello! It's nice to meet you. This is Soot."

Fortunately, neither Ember nor Soot in fact ping Evil!

"Hi! What's a kid like you doing here?"

"The demons don't care how old you are." 

"Well, that's certainly true." 

Meanwhile, Lusilla goes off to find Anevia and report to her. 

"Hey. Why is the Count's hair black?"

"Long story. So, I have our notes from the Tower of Estrod here--" she hands them over, "--and, um, you should probably know, the Prelate is dead." And no need to comment on the fact that she wouldn't have known to use the definite article the last time they saw each other.

Anevia hisses. "Bad time for it. What happened?"

"Well I'm not a hundred percent clear on the whole story, but the short version is, he killed a Nabasu but it got him but good first, and I think maybe some other demon got him with a Suggestion, and he was really adamant about guarding this one section of one of the chasms, and then he attacked us."

Groan. 

"And you didn't manage to get him with Protection From Evil or Unbreakable Heart or anything?"

"I tried, but--he made himself real hard to get close to. The nabasu brought him down enough that we could kill him, it didn't bring him down enough that we could safely deal with him nonlethally."