Meanwhile Lann is holding a sobbing girl who is extremely sorry she went into the Maze and can't wait to be out of it and also desperately hopes they'll rescue her friends too?

They will totally rescue her friends, also they should hurry. Hosilla can’t have gotten far but they don’t know what’s on the other end of the ritual room and having to find her in more maze would be bad.

Once Anevia has the door open they can hurry! ...Lann should stay a bit behind to watch over the child, they don't want her in the line of fire.

The problem with hurrying into the unknown, however, is that it might be an ambush.

Hosilla's thoughts, as she runs up the stairs while carrying one mongrel child and still being faster than the bloody other one, are roughly as follows:

- Can't set an ambush, don't trust the mongrels to keep quiet

- Can't leave them and come back to set an ambush, she has no rope and might not have much time either

- Can't go into the city, it's bloody chaos up there, she'd be lucky to escape with her glaive, never mind two little mongrels in tow

- Could run into farthest part of the sewers and hope they lose her trail, but her men won't find her there and so what, exactly, would she be waiting for?

- Could make a stand right here, because standing at the top of a stairwell is actually a pretty good position to be in, even if it's not an ambush, but then what the Abyss did she start running for?

- Oh for fuck's sake!

So it is, when the party rushes up the stairs, that they find Hosilla hasn't run far after all, and instead has spent the time drinking all her healing potions and casting first-circle cure spells and, when she hears them run up the stairs, also casting flames of the faithful and weapon of awe.

It's a pretty obvious ambush. She stands at the top of the stairs and, when the first person comes into view, she throws the mongrel with the broken leg at them. Who's the lucky recipient?

Me! We were just discussing how it should be me in front - oof!

She has her sword in hand but instinctively fumbles for the kid with the other one, and the kid is flailing and making her footing uncertain and before she can do anything about this -

My glaive has range. And guess what else it has? Profane flames and two more rounds of bane.

Gah! She can get past the child but her chances in melee with Hosilla aren't great when the stairwell strongly encourages them to go at it one on one. Or she can fall back (with the child) and expose someone else to the same treatment.

Important facts about the situation:

1) Lucette doesn't count as human for many purposes, including banes.
2) It is hard to have the high ground against a flying opponent. 

Lucette takes a hit tackling Hosilla to the ground, but, uh, Hosilla isn't actually strong enough for Lusilla to have a hard time tackling her to the ground. 

Hosilla was ready for them to try to tackle her and push her back, but this move takes her by surprise - for just a second she doesn't react, doesn't set her glaive vertically against the flying creature, because her instincts are to defend in front - 

And then she goes down in a tangled heap with Lucette on top, rather like she'd hoped Seelah would with the mongrel kid, except Lucette weighs a lot more than the kid did, and ow she can bite! Hosilla's plan did not include wrestling on the ground with a mongrel!

You know what, letting the armored paladin go in front actually worked out pretty well! Camellia claps Seelah on her (armored) shoulder as she moves past her.

Her rapier might not be very magical at the moment, but do you know what it is? Fast enough to stab stab stab you where it will fucking hurt while you're down and disarmed.

The honorary mongrel can bite, claw, and, critically, prevent Hosilla from preventing the rest of the group from piling out of the stairs and onto the balcony. 

Hosilla doesn't, actually, see any way of getting out of this. She can't even bite back!

At times like this, tradition calls for some famous last words, but she's already done 'I'll go down fighting', 'you'll never take me alive' invites a certain unfortunate response, and 'you may have stopped me, but you'll never stop my cunning plan' is just begging to be tortured.

"Savamelekh will feast on your entrails!" she screams, but it comes out broken and undignified in the scuffle, and also OW, that bloody rapier! 

She finally gets her hand free and pulls out her backup dagger for one last baneful stabbing. Time to find out if she can target mongrels after all.

She can!

However, it has no more effect on the woman holding her down than a baneless dagger would. 

...she'll absolutely fight to the death, because what else is she going to do, just lie there and take it?

How does she feel about, "get tied up." 

Not while she's conscious. At least, if she has anything to say about it.

(She holds out a faint hope Savamelekh will notice her being unconscious and bother to do something about it. If he kills them all and her along with them, it will still be a strict improvement.)

Yeah okay fair. It'll be easier to remove her stuff while she's unconscious than while she's tied up and awake, anyway. 

Then they can get her unconscious!

The other two neather kids have a tearful reunion with Lann and the girl. The one with the broken leg is pretty badly hurt but he's still alive (and even conscious) and in a world with healing potions that's what really counts.

On (and around) Hosilla's body they will find, besides the usual gold coins and sundries, a magical amulet (faint transmutation), a magical ring (moderate divination), and her magical glaive (faint evocation).

The ring doesn't come off her finger when they try to pull it off.

"The glaive has a minor enhancement and an effect I can't identify. The amulet is natural armor. Theeee ring doesn't come off and has a divination aura stronger than any of the other ones, I think it might be a prisoner's ring." 

They will also divest Hosilla of, like, her non-magical armor and dagger and any other backup weapons she may have, obviously. 

Camellia fingers her own dagger. "She's our prisoner now. I seriously doubt it categorically 'doesn't come off.'"

Sigh. "A prisoner's ring lets the wearer of a matching 'jailer's ring' know the prisoner's status," she explains patiently. "If they're injured, poisoned, unconscious... or dead. And it lets them scry them, and for a demon I guess it might help targeting a teleport. If you cut the ring off her finger, I expect that would be detectable too."

"So... she's not actually a prisoner, right? I mean, of whoever has the matching ring. It means someone cares about her." Seelah is aware this may sound stupid, but. Even cultists have people who care about them!

"If it's Savamelekh, he only cares about her as a tool. It still means he might come back at any moment to check why she's bleeding and unconscious, so we shouldn't linger."

(Mortals are weird. They sleep, like, all the time, it's practically recreational unconsciousness for them! And Baphomet's guys are possibly weirder than usual, who knows what they get up to when he's not around, they've put in a literal blood fountain like they're playing at vampires.

Savamelekh's finally having fun; going back to check on Hosilla wouldn't be fun at all.)