"Well, I do have a taste for win-win situations." And if it all goes to hell, well, she has a better chance of escape than most of them. She won't abandon the crusaders while there's still a good chance of anyone else getting out alive--what a waste it would be, to come all this way only to find her efforts to tweak Deskari's nose thwarted by a reputation as a deserter--but she won't throw her life away on foolishness, either. 

That settles it, then. 

Lusilla turns in early. Getting enough sleep is important for spell recovery, and she's jittery and nervous enough that she expects it to take a while to get to sleep. 

(The idea of asking Ember or Dànpiàn for a Slumber occurs to her only after she's already situated and more than a little ways towards sleep and getting up seems like way too much of a hassle.)

They emerge from the secret tunnel into some kind of basement storage area. Not the same one they emerged into from the Shield Maze. When this is all over they should probably audit the Grey Garrison's basement real hard for any additional secret passages. 

Once they emerge into the relatively open basement space, the members of the Order of the Flaming Lance present arrange themselves into a triangle surrounding everyone else. 

"I hope the ritual works..." one of them mutters. 

"It has to," Klaem says grimly. "There's no room for error." 

They perform the ritual. It seems to take no time and hours at once; not because it has any innate time-warping effect, but just because of the anxiety of listening intently in case some demon or cultist chooses an inopportune moment to stumble into the room and raise the alarm. 

But it finishes, and everyone inside the area circumscribed by the ritualist gets the effects of Haste. 

"It worked! Praise Iomedae!" the nervous ritualist from earlier exclaims. 

"Now it's the demons' turn to suffer," the third one says with dark satisfaction. 

Personally Lusilla would much rather the demons die quietly and quickly without any suffering at all, or better yet, go back into the Abyss where they don't have to die. 

But she's not going to say that out loud. She will however throw Ember a resigned look about it. 

They head up out of their basement section and to the first floor of the Garrison. 

And directly into a clump of cultists. 

"The crusaders are here! Kill them all!" one of them exclaims dramatically. 

Ooh boy. She really hopes that wasn't really widely heard. 

Well. Tragically, "kill them all" is in fact pretty sensible advice. 

Pfft. Like they were gonna leave any of them alive if that guy hadn't said anything. 

Counterpoint: Slumber. 

Slumbered enemies are pretty easy to finish off, though, and then they don't have additional enemies at their backs when they inevitably wake up. 

:(

Okay. Not that Lusilla isn't more sympathetic to Ember than Woljif here, but instead of arguing about it they should head up to the next floor. The Wardstone was higher up in the building. 

And there it is. 

Just the tip of it--the part that would be the very top, if it were standing upright the way it was supposed to, the spearpoint that penetrated deepest into the building--but it presumably doesn't matter where on the Wardstone you access it. It would matter that it's separated from their current position by some broken walls and a chasm of broken floors, but Lusilla, specifically, renders that rather moot. 

It's not an ideal setup for the Desnans' ritual, but it probably isn't worth fighting their way through more of the Gray Garrison to find a place with more immediately Wardstone-adjacent floor space. The Desnans start setting up.

Okay. 

Should she try to do something with the knife before or after the Desnans have got ritual stuff working...? The Storyteller had a hunch it could help but, ideally, would have had more detailed instructions. 

Oh well. 

She reaches out--

Oh.

Oh, this is so much. 

Obviously she's not going to listen to the corrupted angels. The difference between the two groups of angels is that they're being affected by a specific thing the demons did, their change in opinion isn't an emergent property of their circumstances. Even if she kills the corrupted angels, as even the uncorrupted angels are exhorting her, there is no reason to kill their untainted brethren along with them. None at all.

But she wants to see if maybe she doesn't have to kill any of them. 

The first thing she tries is seeing if, instead of cutting [the corrupted angels] out of [the Wardstone], she can cut [the corruption] out of [an angel]--but no. Her knife hasn't even reached the first one before she can see it's not going to work; the influence isn't localized enough. She could probably get it if she were more skilled, but even if she was willing to practice on every corrupted angel in the Wardstone, she thinks she wouldn't be able to save even the last one she tried it on.

But...

maybe...

Ah.

There. 

And her mind explodes. 

Visions flash past, too quickly to see yet burning their contents into her mind. Not like the Storyteller's visions; these are all fragments of reality, perceptions of things that are or were or could be, perceived through ordinary senses. Lusilla being carried into Kenabres--her fall into the chasm--the halfling who gave her the crossbow--a familiar dark-haired woman--

Herself, lying on a slab in a dark room, eyes closed, chest wound fresh and bleeding, as a hand brushes the hair away from her forehead for a pair of lips to gently kiss.

"I promise."