A paladin jumps in front of Irabeth's blade to protect the demon. Another one tries to seize Gord's arm from behind.

Gord never learned the ancestral arts of the berserker. His rage doesn't make him literally stronger, but it doesn't make him any stupider, either. 

Letting the paladin pull his hand back for the moment, he takes out a scroll with his free hand. He didn't have the presence of mind to try it on Savamelekh, but he won't make the same mistake again.

Piercing banishment.

The corridor is full of paladins of Iomedae; they ought to count as something Minagho hates and fears and opposes, right?

Fuck, that was too close for comfort! It went right through her spell resistance and she had to actually throw it off!

She can't, actually, risk being banished and leaving the Wardstone undefended. She'd rather have half her minions die stopping the crusaders - that's what minions are for. Even if it means she can't conquer the rest of the city nearly as quickly.

Greater teleport. 

"That actually worked?!"

"She teleported!" Merciful gods, why is he the only one here who can recognize spells?!

With Minagho gone, he is free to cast protection from evil until the two enchanted paladins are free again. (This takes a while, and as many as several scrolls; dominate monster is no joke.)

Do they push through to the Wardstone? The strategic calculus for another fight with Minagho hasn't changed, and she is presumably here to defend it from them.

Several vrocks fly down from the floor above them and begin to dance at the far end of the corridor. A pair of brimoraks emerge next to them.

"Fighting retreat!"

With Minagho staying out of the fighting and only occasionally harrying them with enchantments, they descend to rejoin the rear guard without further casualties. The vrocks aren't eager to follow them into enclosed quarters, and the brimoraks aren't going anywhere without backup.

What a disaster. How did she fail? Why did she fail? It's hard to remember the last few rounds before she died, but Seelah is certain she tried to smite Minagho with the Light of Heaven, and then - 

As far as anyone else can tell her, nothing happened. At least the brand went away when she died, or she'd be an active liability right now.

Regardless, the mission failed because of her and now the whole city or - if the Wardstone isn't working right, the whole world is in danger and she could have fixed it and she failed.

Light of Heaven, she prays. Please talk to me. Teach me how to wield you. Tell me what I should do. Tell me how we can stop the demons, together.

There's a sense of approval, so faint she's not sure she's not imagining it. The light approves of what she's doing. She should keep doing it.

Shiiiiine.

How can it approve of Seelah failing - she stamps down on her frustration, it's not helping anything.

"Seelah? Anything new?" Irabeth doesn't know Seelah well and can't blindly trust her to do the right thing without being reminded, like she does her own people. She also can't order her around, and needs to word everything she says as clearly a suggestion-not-a-requirement. Junior paladins who haven't joined an order yet are sometimes bad at being explicit (to themselves and others) about whether they're committing to follow a senior paladin's orders or are just agreeing with every suggestion they make as it comes.

"...not really. Nothing happened" - they know that already - "I mean I didn't feel anything. It's not an act of will like a regular smite, and I tried sort of praying to the Light but it didn't say anything, not like last time. I don't know if that's because I'm doing something wrong or it only works once per day or some other reason."

She looks away. "I'm sorry I let you down." She means Irabeth but also the Light and everyone and - 

Irabeth plants herself firmly in front of Seelah and holds her reluctant gaze. "You didn't let anyone down," she says levelly. "It sounds like you didn't do anything wrong, or badly. Don't blame yourself, or assign fault at all; we don't know what happened yet." She hopes that will help because it's all she has time for right now.

"We need to retreat back to our base of operations," and she'd rather not say out loud in a demon-infested building where that is, even though it's probably a lost cause keeping that secret. "We also have shelter for civilians fleeing the rest of the city. Who is coming with us, all the way or into the city, and who is going back underground? I'm going to send one of my people down to liaise with the mongrelfolk; even if the Maze is safe, coming out into a demon-controlled fortress isn't, so they should move carefully and keep in touch. Seelah, Gord, I would appreciate your presence there and future help although of course you bear no obligation."

"You failed to defeat a strong enemy," Gord tells Seelah, ignoring Irabeth for the moment, "but you survived to grow stronger and try again. That is a loss, but it is not failure, unless you let it be."

She manages a weak smile. "Yeah. We're still alive, to fight another day!" Actually it's pretty miraculous how none of the rest of them died, and she admires Irabeth's leadership.

Gord doesn't particularly want to go with a bunch of paladins. Also, Horgus Gwerm offered him a thousand gold coins, and he promised to try to help Rovaldo, and - 

"We left a bunch of cultists disarmed and tied up in a locked room. Their friends have probably broken them out by now but if they're still there we need to do something about them."

Oh right. "What can we do with them?" Seelah asks Irabeth.

"In wartime proven cultists are summarily executed. We don't have the men to guard them and it would only postpone the problem. Since they're prisoners already, if they can plead a change of heart under a truthspell and there's no evidence that they personally committed a capital crime apart from worshipping demons, they can be sentenced to hard labour instead, or a penal battalion. All of those require some minimal measure of trust; I don't have any good options to offer you if you think someone is going to go back to the demons the moment you turn around."

And that is why the paladin notion of "surrender" is fundamentally different from the Gorumite. It is dishonourable to accept surrender and then execute someone anyway. That's not what surrender should mean.

As far as he remembers none of them actually surrendered (other than Rovaldo), he just beat them into unconsciousness, but since he chose not to kill them then he doesn't want do it now.

Maybe if the mongrelfolk move to the city, the ex-cultists can live underground - no that's pretty clearly a terrible idea, but maybe it's a start.

Anyway. "I'm going back down. I might be back soon, depending on what the mongrelfolk decide to do."

Oh good, that means the kids will be well guarded on the way down and she can go with Irabeth.

And so they part. A paladin named Brun accompanies Gord, Lann, Wenduag and the rescued kids back down into the Maze; the aasimar goes with Irabeth and her people.

Hosilla's dead body lies where they left it (after stripping it of valuables).

Gord carefully cuts off her head and grips it by the hair. "It'll help scare away the other cultists if they try to pick a fight," he explains.

Very sensible! Gord might not be as strong as Seelah's light-god, but he's still good leader material.