"Deekin," Deekin says helpfully. "Scalesinger. ...surname self-assigned, hence pun."

"Well, it is a pleasure to make your acquaintance, Sir Deekin Scalesinger," says the silver dragon, who bows deeply to the little kobold. "What all's been happe... why is there a giant rift in my city."

Deekin bows back, and does not at all do a little happy dance about the actual real silver dragon liking him.

"Deekin not sure -"

"I made him mad," announces Veron. "Sorry. He did call that thing of his 'Riftcarver,' so..."

Was Veron already here? It's hard to tell. He just does this.

She will not turn into her true form and attempt to squish him. That would not help anything, and might not even work, and for good measure is probably 'evil' or something. She will not do it.

".... Right. Of course," she says primly, attempting to regain something vaguely resembling composure. "And he's gone?"

"You know better than I how difficult it would be for him to incarnate again so soon," Hulrun calls over his shoulder. "But his army is still here, and he threw the bloody Wardstone like a sling bullet. We're far from being out of the woods."

"Yes," agrees Terendelev, nodding firmly. "Very well then."

She bows to Deekin (and also Veron, she guesses) again, and then steps back to return to her true form to maybe make a better entrance this time.

With a volume that would make any dragon proud, she takes to the sky and attempts to rally the city.

"TO ARMS, CRUSADERS. KENABRES WILL NEVER FALL TO THE DEMONS WHILE WE STILL BREATHE!"

Also, she is totally going to work out her frustration by turning so many demons into popsicles.

Deekin hums. "Impressive."

Then he turns into a slightly smaller silver dragon, and joins her in this project.

Veron beams, delighted. Deekin's so happy when he gets to be dragon shaped!!

Anyway yes, ahem, business.

He turns to Hulrun, definitely a serious professional adventurer or something, yes.

"Right, you mentioned a Wardstone. That sounds, uh, important. Which way was it thrown? I'll go check on it."

Hulrun points in a direction. "It seems to have hit the Grey Garrison. Based on the fact that the Grey Garrison is broken."

Then he turns back to the demons, which he finds himself enjoying substantially more than the rest of his day.

"Okay. Thanks." .... This guy seems to be having one Hells of a day. Veron sympathizes, and attempts to use words of encouragement. "Keep up the good work!"

Anyway, Veron has a quest! Onwards, to, er, that kind of broken and definitely grey building that in context is probably the Gray Garrison! He will be quick and stealthy and quiet, and while he is absolutely going to get distracted saving people on the way there, it will barely slow him down at all. Mostly demons that are menacing people can just mysteriously die with him barely slowing down or revealing himself at all! ... Admittedly this might freak out some of the civilians he's saving from death, but, well. He's not perfect, okay, he just does his best.

(Hulrun's combat abilities do improve once he is no longer making a Will save each round to not cast Order's Wrath on that man's location. So, in a sense, he is indeed keeping up the good work.)

One of the civilians he's saving from death, instead of being confused, looks straight at him as he undetectably kills the schirs that had her very thoroughly surrounded.

"What is that illusion?" she asks as his blades do their work, as if asking where someone at a party got a very fine hat. "I've never seen anything quite like it."

... why is that her question in this situation????

Oh. Oh, this is a wizard-or-something. And unfortunately for him, probably one of the good ones. The 'unfortunately' is not because he thinks she's going to turn hostile or anything, but because he's about to be studied like some kind of fascinating insect. Right then, let's get this over with. (He finishes killing the schirs.)

"Arguably it's not quite an illusion." He has had this explained to him before, ask how he knows. (He has partied with at least one wizard in his life. That's how he knows.) "I'm calling a bit of the Plane of Shadow to be closer in this part of the material than usual, and briefly borrowing," the technical word is conjuring, but he feels borrowing gets across his impression of how it feels better, "a bit of ash from there to extinguish any lights in the area, among other things." It also tends to cause fatigue to most things, demons included.

(Read: He has used the shadowdancer ability Shadow Call to mimic the spell known as Dust of Twilight. The place he was saving her in was a bit too literally on fire and therefore well-lit for his taste, at least when he doesn't have paladins to hide behind. He gets DR 10 in areas of dim light, this is important to keep up when one is doing solo rescue attempts over long periods of time, regenerative ring or no.)

"Ah!" she says happily. "Like -"

She extends her hand, and conjures some balls of ash with oversized eyes. They scurry over her arm before falling off; this pulls her sleeve up, leaves soot all over her arm, and reveals a deep and blood-crusted gash which was clearly not received in the past few minutes.

She frowns. "That wasn't what I wanted at all. You don't have a scroll of it, presumably..."

Oh no. She's definitely one of the good ones. And he's about to go poking around something magically complicated, that being a Wardstone. Probably he should recruit the wizard now, so he doesn't have to circle back around to grab her later if it turns out he needs someone that can do more than just pretend to know what magic is going on very competently. Also this is definitely the type of wizard that needs to managed.

"I don't, sorry. It's a," oh, how did Nathyrra put it...? His voice takes on a somewhat dead sounding tone as he rattles off what answer she came to, after making him do this very shadow thingy in different ways for days. "'localized effect tied to my own status as debatably-an-outsider.'" Less debatably lately, with his whole complicated relationship with Hell, but still. "It does not go onto scrolls as it is. ... Do you need a healing potion."

She doesn't even glance at the wound. "The marginal utility of a healing potion is likely higher for me than for you," she acknowledges. "I'm not about to fall over. I've been struck five times, one quite badly; holistically speaking I could probably be wounded three more times by the average schir, unless of course it got me in the neck, but it's not as if a potion would help with that unless it was a potion of Stoneskin."

Why is his life like this.

He could give her the potion and leave. It'd be easier. Maybe he can sort it out himself! Maybe the great big magic thing is fine after being thrown across the city, and all he needs to do is kiss it better or something, yeah no that sounds stupid even to his desperate attempts at self deception. Sigh. Fine. Fine. She is not the worst wizard he's ever met. He will take what small comfort in this that he can.

"Let's go with 'yes,'" he passes the potion towards her, "and then I'll ask if you would like to come with me as I do more weird outsidery shadow magic on my way to the Wardstone. It just got thrown and is probably, uh, also weird or something right now."

Her gaze sharpens immediately. She forgets about the potion entirely. "The Wardstone! Yes, please. Do you have a Portable Hole, or shall I accompany you in person? I expect the demonic resistance to outclass my offensive capabilities, but I would certainly not object to watching you do more weird outsidery shadow magic."

"Portable Hole got stolen, sorry." Also, he would not want to put her there because he thinks he still hadn't cleared out all of the creepy Netherese books. Creepy Netherese books should not be exposed to wizards of this kind, ever, not even in complete darkness and surrounded by all of his miscellaneous adventuring junk that would probably also distract her. He has at least a basic understanding of how to not cause a new lich to rise and begin doing lichy things.

"Drink the potion, then, uh. Head directly towards the Gray Garrison," it is fortunately visible, and he points, "at your top speed. I will likely be doing all of my weird outsidery shadow magic around you, when things inevitably attempt to ambush you. ... I will also be doing the magic when we get there, making a detour will not ultimately get you more time to look at outsidery shadow magic."

Can you tell that he's partied with a wizard before? It's very subtle, his flinch response and knowledge of the obvious wizard pitfalls.

She remembers the potion, takes it, and drinks it.

Then she clicks her heels together in the somatic component for Expeditious Retreat and starts sprinting towards the Garrison at slightly over 27 miles per hour.

... Oh no. He has made an error. This is one of those obvious pitfalls of wizards; he did not specify well enough. Now he must live with the consequences. This is maybe a bit too fast for the comfort of his escort quest, but you know what, it's fine. It would go wrong in other ways if he tried to slow her down, he's certain. Besides, he likes a challenge, and her going this fast means less things will ambush her.

He ends up needing to Haste himself (with a scroll that was stuffed into the Bag of Holding in advance, because Haste is the most mandatory rogue buff in all of existence) (he misses his boots so much), but he does succeed at keeping Nenio from getting savaged by too many things. She gets to witness a decent amount of weird outsidery shadow magic, too! Look, he can teleport between bits of shadow, and make things that could more arguably be called illusions, and the shadow magic conjuration he did earlier is very flexible!

Also, by the time they get there he is panting and out of breath. Can he go back to stabbing the locust guy? He liked that better.

When she arrives, her face is almost purple, her legs are trembling, and her breathing is painful to hear - let alone to imagine what it might feel like. That said, she's standing, and her expression is vaguely amused as ever.

"I will - be better - able - to function - with - a potion - of - Lesser Restoration," she wheezes.