There are two doors out of the far end of the hall: the one with stairs downwards that the cultist reinforcements came from, and another, smaller side-door.

"Through that one is a big room and then a long staircase up. That's as far as I ever got, but stairs up must lead to the city - or another floor of this maze."

"It's also where the... librarian said the ritual was," Lann reminds them. "And the scary demon."

"If we're clearing the place, we should probably head down first; everyone who wanted to fight would have come out, but we don't want to leave any stragglers in our rear."

Lucette and Seelah can jointly lead the way down the stairs, why don't they. 

At the bottom of the stairs is an open door that leads to another small room, which looks unfinished; the ceiling is braced by wood beams, and there's a small earth elemental diligently excavating it from the living rock, which pays them no mind as long as they don't come too close. The little room has another door, which is closed.

And there is also a corridor leading to a bigger set of open doors, through which they can see a large room. There is deep rectangular pit in its middle, containing a mess of dead bodies in various stages of decay, and despite this bodies and body parts are strewn all over the rest of the room as well. Two barred cells are set into the far wall, and various torture-implements stand all around as if on display. A terrible stench permeates the place.

Mercifully, there is nothing living here, except a cloud of flies. Probably they were there even before Deskari's visit.

Also, four of the stones in one of the walls glow in different colors: red, blue, green, yellow. 

"The cambions' playground," Anevia says quietly. "I'll check if anyone's still alive. You don't have to come." She's used to being the most desensitized party member in this kind of situation, and doesn't want to inflict it on anyone else.

Are some of those things for real? She was so sure that one was just a stupid story, there's no way it could actually work -

On the other hand, ew ew ew, this place is gross, she is not going in. She is in fact going to take out her handkerchief and retreat as far as she safely can.

"Inheritor. We didn't come in time. We failed so many. Forgive me..."

"I - should go in. To check for mongrel bodies I can recognize." This place doesn't feel horrible yet; it just feels - incomprehensible. He expects this will change if he finds a face he knows in there.

"Do it later. Focus on the living." 

"Wenduag is right, but I'm going to help Anevia look for survivors." She has prestidigitation, this isn't something she's going to regret in an hour when she still smells horrible. 

And right now she's too angry to be grossed out. 

It takes a couple of minutes to be really sure, but there are no survivors. A couple of the corpses look like they might have died a day or two ago, but none are fresh enough to be plausibly from today's attack.

Most of the corpses are humans - one halfling, one half-elf - but there are also at least two mongrels (it's hard to tell with the older, half-decayed and dismembered bodies). Not ones Lann or Wenduag recognize, though.

Anevia looks at the glowing wall-stones, careful not to touch them. "I think they're touch-panels that activate something. Can you check with detect magic? There might be another, secret cell... Yeah, here's the slit in the wall. I don't think I can bypass the mechanism entirely to open it, there's no keyhole so any moving bits are probably behind those panels."

Lucette detects magic. 

"Magic," she reports. "The librarian might know how to open it." 

Well, yes, the fact that it's magic was obvious from the glowing lights! Anevia was rather hoping to learn what the magic does, or what else is magic besides the glowy bits. Ah well.

"We can go back and ask him... Assuming we don't find anything - or at least not the missing neather kids - what's our next step?"

"We can't fight a vrolikai. Are we going to try stealth and spying? It might be worth the risk just to learn a powerful demon's plans, even if we can't rescue the kids that way. But the risk is hard to quantify; if the vrolikai captures our scout and learns we killed its cultists, it could teleport all over the Maze looking for the rest of our party. Or outside to the neather camp, for that matter."

"It will find out we killed them eventually," Camellia points out. "Like the next time it calls for a cup of blood tea, or whatever it is demons want cultists for. Staying around here at all is risky; if we're not going forward, we might as well go back."

"Evocation," she reports when the spell gets to that point. "I think spying would be worth the risk."

A doubtful proposition, when the risk is shared but she cares nothing for the reward.

"Should the rest of us leave the Maze, then? We'd only be of help if the spy finds more cultists and not a vrolikai. I signed up for winnable fights."

"...Lann, Wenduag, what do you think? You know more about the situation than I do." 

"I... don't know anything you don't? I'll risk myself to save the kids. I'd risk myself to help the city - within limits - but I'm probably no good at sneaking, Wenduag is better actually. And I don't know any other languages or anything like that."

"I don't know what's up ahead. I'd risk myself to find out but none of you have a duty to help me do that."

"I'm good at sneaking in the dark. Sneaking up on vermin. Lann's the one with delusions of crusading."

"We could send the librarian up. Except we don't trust him and he'd tell them all about us. We don't have a way to coerce him..."

"Well, I can do the sneaking if nobody else is both willing and able. The chainmail could interfere but it could also come off, it's not like it's going to be the difference between victory and failure against a vrolikai. I would rather have at least one confederate on the stairs, though, so that if I am discovered I can possibly shout some pertinent piece of information and make enough noise while dying that the other guy can get away undetected with some intel." 

"I'm willing and able," Anevia clarifies, "and frankly I expect to be better than you at sneaking, armor or no. You can be my second... but you'd still be at risk, even if the vrolikai doesn't see or hear you, because once it knows enemies are coming up from the maze it will investigate. In that case our best hope is that it sends someone to look instead of risking teleporting blindly, and you can outfly them. Although you'd be left without a way up into the city, or to pass the message."

"I think that, most likely, it will only have been worth it in retrospect if the scout doesn't die. I'm willing to make that gamble; I'm not sure if it's worth it for you to stay behind as well."

"I can be your second!" Seelah really, really doesn't want to leave her friends party members in mortal danger while she flees for safety! This kind of thing is what paladins are for!