There is a sharp intake of breath. "Miss Wex?" 

Oh come on, isn't her situation already annoying enough!?

"Somebody get Terendelev!" Hulrun barks, before laying a hand on her collarbone near the wound in her chest and casting a Cure. 

(Obviously he did a cursory check for her identity first. Faint aura of Good, no aura of Law or Chaos, it matches what he would expect if this is, in fact, Lucette Wex. He's immediately moving on to more rigorous means of verification, of course, not assuming that's good enough--)

Terendelev does not take long to show up. 

The first thing she does is cast Heal, in what seems like the longest standard action of her life. It...doesn't erase all of the damage, she can see that, but it stops the bleeding and closes the wound, which is--enough to be going on with, for the moment, even if the lack of complete eradication does not sit well with her. 

The next thing she does is drop to her knees and take her daughter's hands. "Lucette. What happened?" 

Lucette pushes herself half-upright, her other hand coming to cover the place on her chest that doesn't hurt anymore. "I don't know. I don't remember. I...the last thing I recall...I think I was walking home from the temple of Shelyn..." The Shelynites run a soup kitchen for Kenabres's poor, and Lucette had been helping. 

Terendelev frowns. "Whoever it was that took you, they made sure to do it while your Mama and I were out of town. We came back as soon as we heard, but nobody was quick to decide it was worth a Sending--we hadn't begun searching for you in earnest yet, and you've been missing several days."

"Well, that's not good, but I don't know what it means..." 

"Neither do I. Nor do I know what caused that wound...I have not healed it entirely. For the moment, it is closed, yet...I can sense that it remains, beneath the surface, waiting to re-emerge." 

Well. That's ominous. Lucette would like a hug about it, please. 

Of course. Hug. 

Terendelev looks up and frowns. "Does anybody see what happened to the men who brought her in?" 

Hulrun frowns and looks around. When he doesn't see anything, he barks orders for some of his junior inquisitors to try to find them. 

"I don't necessarily suspect them of anything, but I want them to show me where they found her, so I can look for evidence there." 

Hulrun nods grimly. Not that he's as optimistic as Terendelev about the innocence of the men in question, but either way they ought to be found, and it probably won't hurt anything to give Terendelev first crack at them. 

"Lucette." 

Lavinia took longer than Terendelev to show up, for reasons including but not limited to "she wasn't the one being yelled for" and "is not, in fact, a Fucking Dragon," but she's here now. 

More hug. 

"Hi, Mama, I'm," she can't say fine, she can't assume the incompletely healed wound won't come up, "not sure what happened to me, but at least now we know where I am." 

Knowing where Lucette is is so important after she was mysteriously kidnapped!!! Soooo much hug. 

Hug hug...hug?

...Is it just Lucette or is that more bugs than usual. 

A colossal figure appears in the air just above them.

It is wreathed in bugs, obscured by them, surrounded by satellite swarms that look briefly like wings or arms or extra heads or nothing that makes sense. Perhaps it is made out of bugs all the way through. They make a horrible droning noise, loud enough to drown all conversation.

The only thing clearly visible is an enormous bone-white scythe, poised over their heads -

Oh fuck no.

Oh absolutely the hell not. 

"DESKARI! LEAVE MY CITY."

The implacable scythe flashes down, almost faster than the eye can see, again and again and again and again -

And Terendelev's severed head rolls on the flagstones, away from her body and into the swarms of hungry locusts.

"BEHOLD, IOMEDAE. BEHOLD, MY DESTRUCTION OF THE LAST VESTIGES OF YOUR INHERITANCE."

Everything seems to happen at once.

People start frantically running away in every direction, towards the Cathedral or the church or the lower city. Several dozen demons take this as their cue to drop their disguises and attack the closest mortals who don't look too dangerous.

The inquisitors, paladins, clerics, soldiers, and assorted adventurers present for the festival attack the closest demons. Other humans are fighting on the demons' side; it's unclear whether they are also demons in disguise.

Pandemonium reigns.

No--

Nonononononono--

"Mum!" Lucette screams, anguished, lunging forwards--

Lavinia grabs her and shoves her in the other direction. 

"Get to safety," she hisses, and then runs forwards. Not to fight Deskari, she's not an idiot, but if she can get to Terendelev's body--

She reaches it, managing to stay out of Deskari's notice until she gets there. 

She lays a hand on the side of her wife's dead body and they both disappear in a flash of light. 

The only upside to the presence of many lesser demons is that very few people commit suicide-by-Deskari in order to test the possibility that it's all very intricate illusion. Nevertheless, someone in the crowd takes a potshot at him with a crossbow.

Impossibly, it hits.

There is a horrible rasping sound, which overwhelms and disorients anyone standing too close, and then Deskari turns and growls - A GNAT SNAPS ITS JAWS AT THE LORD OF LOCUSTS -

He strikes down at the ground with his scythe and it splits open, a chasm that runs through half the city, toppling walls and houses.

It passes under the crowd, sending many plunging to their death. It passes under St Clyde's Cathedral and brings it down on those who sought refuge inside. 

And it passes under Lucette.

Ordinarily falling is much less of a problem for Lucette than for most people. 

And it still is less of a problem. But not none; she fails a reflex save to take to the air before the crack opens under her, and once in the chasm, her ability to actually maneuver her wings is sufficient to ensure her survival but not enough to properly ascend. 

Tight spaces: the bane of everyone who flies with wings instead of magic. 

Ow. 

She picks herself up off the ground. It's dark, the way lit by sparse beams of light trickling down through the gap in the earth, and also by bioluminescent fungi! Hoo...ray. Lucette picks herself up VERY CRANKILY and stalks down the cavern, looking for...anything helpful. 

The crevice doesn't run in a straight line down here. The mostly-even floor and the fungi make it likely this was a preexisting cave of some kind before Deskari broke through, but the path keeps turning so it's impossible to see very far ahead. The bodies of people who had no wings to arrest their fall lie dead along the way.

After a few hundred feet, she'll find two who are are still alive. One woman is pinned under a rockfall, and another is trying to lever the rocks off her without making matters even worse. Lucette will probably recognize at least one of them.

"Miss Wex! I'm glad to see you survived the fall; my legs were not so fortunate. Could you give us a hand?"

"Of course!" 

Half-dragons have a racial strength bonus of +8. Between Lucette and the other woman, it isn't hard to shift the heavy rocks. 

Really, the problem she was afraid of was more to do with balancing things! But all's well that ends well.

"Thank you! I'm Seelah, paladin of Iomedae. You know Anevia?" Seelah doesn't know Anevia very well herself, but one can't work with Irabeth without getting to know both.

...Lucette flexes her wings a bit. 

"I'm Terendelev's daughter. I know everyone important in Kenabres. And Anevia is pretty important, she's--" she's not going to say spymaster to this woman that is not how opsec "--part of the Eagle Watch, and married to the head of the Eagle Watch, and they and my parents are why Iomedaeans and/or Crusaders who want to marry other women keep coming to Kenabres for the purpose." 

She saw the wings, but didn't realize what they meant! Terendelev's daughter, that's incredible - she stops herself from saying just in time, given what she saw of Terendelev before falling down.

"I know, I've met her before! Uh, not because I want to marry another woman, I'm... not sure how that works?" Put this down firmly under 'things too complex for Seelah to understand while the city is burning'. "I'm a paladin and I haven't joined any order yet, so I've been staying with the Eagle Watch and helping Irabeth with her work." 

Anevia drags herself up, helped by Seelah and the wall. "I probably have a broken leg," she announces, "but I can limp along with someone's help and shoot at things while standing still." Ouch. Why didn't her bow break instead of her leg, that's not fair.

"Well, in my parents' case, it works by...dragon." She gestures to herself. Nobody has ever made the claim that her parents were doing some silly not-marriage thing, not when...the marriage had in fact produced a child. "Other people do other things, but like, I understand Alter Self is sometimes involved. I don't know exactly what happened while I was kidnapped but right now I have all my spells, I can heal your leg." 

She totally understands how her parents had a child ("by dragon" can answer pretty much any question starting with 'how'), just not the marriage bit! But she's a foreigner unused to local customs and more importantly there's still a demon invasion, so Seelah tries her best to forget about the whole subject for now.

"Thanks! I'll make sure to pay it forward." Anevia sits back down and carefully makes sure her broken bones are set straight enough to be healed.

Is one Cure Light Wounds going to do it or does she need another. 

One's enough to walk on but she'll have to be careful not to run or trip or jump in a way that stresses her leg too much. "Better conserve the rest of your spells, until we know what we're in for."

Seelah eyes the crevasse overhead. "I don't think I could climb that even without my armor. If the city ends up safe someone will probably lower a rope eventually, I just wish I could help them up there!"

"I can't fly in that," Lucette agrees grimly, "I could spread my wings enough to slow my fall, but not enough to actually get any lift. It might be wider at other points, if this tunnel system is extensive enough to go under more of the crack."

After a few more bends of the tunnel, they come upon two more people. A young woman, dressed in an expensive-looking coat that seems to double as light armor, is crouching over a man's body with a rapier in her hand.

"Miss Camellia?" Anevia makes it her business to know about everyone in this city, especially the people it's none of her business to know anything about. "I'm Anevia Tirabade; these are Miss Lucette Wex and the paladin Seelah."

The woman rises smoothly and puts away her rapier. "I am glad to meet you! I tried to help this poor man, but his wounds were too grievous."

The body at her feet is savaged and torn, perhaps by demons before he fell down.

Anevia looks at his face closely. "I... think this was Aravashnial. A local wizard."

Lucette vaguely recognizes Camellia, but wouldn't have been able to put a name to the face. 

Aravashnial she recognizes more clearly. She had spoken to him at length about her mama's treatises on Hell and the Abyss...

She crouches beside him and gently slides his eyes closed. It's all she can do, right now. 

"You should come with us! We're looking for a way out, and there's safety in numbers."

"I would be honoured to join such distinguished company." Camellia has a somewhat cold affect, but it's hard to tell whether she's being cold or sarcastic or, conversely, taking refuge behind a veneer of politeness to avoid dwelling on the situation.

The cave-system with the weirdly even-floored tunnels leads further underground; the fissure is no longer overhead. There is still a little light, coming from glowing crystals and mushrooms, but it's barely enough to see by and mostly serves to set the mood.

Lucette draws her sword and Lights it. 

They can see a pair of giant (*) centipedes in the distance! And the centipedes see them, and rush towards them with a patter of tiny feet and an eager clacking of mandibles.

(*) Technically these are merely large centipedes, but 'large centipedes' don't sound nearly scary enough to describe horse-sized venomous arthropods.

Yeah, no, she and Seelah together are not going to have any trouble swording the centipedes. 

Camellia can help sword things!

"I wonder what else lives down here? What do these things eat when people don't fall down from the sky?"

"Mushrooms? Things that eat mushrooms?"

"They ought to stick to mushrooms and not attack people!" This is maybe not a very reasonable complaint. "They don't seem very dangerous, as long as we don't get ambushed."

The caverns go on for a long time, twisting and turning and branching; they might not be strictly underneath the city anymore. There are more centipedes, as well as giant spiders and lizards, but nothing that presents a real danger to a prepared party.

Eventually they can see torchlight ahead, and hear faint voices.

("You could say the same of wolves and bears," she points out to Seelah.)

Voices! More people who fell through the crack?

(Wolves don't eat mushrooms all year and then attack the first people they've seen in their lives! Maybe bears do that?)

"...leave until we find it! It has to be here somewhere!"

"Even if you find it you can't wield it!" Both voices sound frustrated.

"I don't need to wield it, just get it back to the tribe! I'll carry it in my teeth if I have to!"

"Yes, that is fitting for your mad adventure! To rally people who can't fight, bring them a sword they can't use!" 

What the--

Lucette steps forward. "Hello?"

It's relatively rare to meet people from other tribes in the tunnels, because each tribe keeps to their own territory, but the hall of relics is owned in common by all of of them. 

And - are those wings? If this mongrel can actually fly Lann will be so jealous. She has a glowing sword instead of a torch, too; he hadn't heard of anything like that going around.

"Hello! We're Lann and Wenduag, of Sull's tribe. The hall partly collapsed; we're looking for the angel Lariel's sword." Taking anything away from the hall of relics to one tribe is normally forbidden, and only justified in this case because it'll be used to rally and unite all mongrels. Lann hoped not to have to defend this decision before getting Sull's backing but it would, in fact, be completely fair for the stranger to disagree at first... ugh.

"I'm Lucette Wex, of...Kenabres. Do you live down here?"

"You're a surfacer? How'd you get down here - what's happening in the city? There was an earthquake..." 

"Yes, we live here," the other person says, stepping more fully into the light. She looks like a blue cat-woman with spider legs growing out of her back, and possibly even more cool and exciting body parts hidden by her hooded cloak. "For many generations, since our ancestors in the first crusade were driven down here. Surfacers don't like to remember us 'neathers, but we remember you."

"- Lann, there's more of them." She grips her bow warily.

"There have always been stories about weird-looking people who live under Kenabres... but every time we investigated we found demons, or tieflings, or someone else who came from above. Not an actual underground city!"

"An underground city? You do us too much credit; I saw Kenabres as a child, and we have only tiny villages to compare. But yes, that's us" - he bows - "the underground crusaders, at your service. The people up above call us mongrels."

"We call ourselves neathers. Have some self-respect, Lann!" This has the sound of an old argument.

"...I'm half-dragon," she says, since, okay, she can see how these people would categorize her with them and not, uh, the people she's with. "And," flinch, "what's happened to the city was Deskari." To the city and also to Terendelev. 

"You mean Deskari himself? That means we have to hurry, to rally the tribes to go up!"

"You idiot! Deskari himself means we have to hurry to find a deeper hole to hide in! If you want to be personally killed by a demon lord, leave the tribe out of it!" 

"I mean, one, yes, please do not attempt to fight Deskari," deep breath, "my mother, Terendelev, tried to fight him and died in one round. But on the other hand I don't know how long Deskari can stay on this plane but it can't be too long. by the time we," she gestures to the group of surfacers in general, "get back to the surface I expect him to be gone." 

"Terendelev is... the dragon of Kenabres, right? Or was - I'm sorry for your loss."

Wenduag is more concerned with practicalities. "You really had a dragon mother? I don't have a spider mother. Does that mean your siblings all look the same?" And does it mean Lucette will live and grow stronger forever, like dragons in the stories?

"I don't have any siblings but if I did they would look like me. Technically you could say she was my father--both of my parents are women, but it was my human mother who carried me, dragons being able to take on any shape they want." 

"Dragons must be very strong, if they can choose any shape and what they choose to be is dragons." She is approving, and respectful.

"Sorry to interrupt, but we're actually in a hurry here! Some stupid kids went into the Shield Maze, because they thought the earthquake is some kind of sign for them to go crusade up on the surface. The Maze is - supposed to lead to the city, but it's very dangerous and no-one has actually made it through in living memory; there are other ways up but they take days of walking, both ways. Wenduag and I are the two best hunters in the tribe but Chief Sull forbade us from going after them, because it's too risky."

"But we could make it if everyone went. So I want to rally the whole tribe, all the tribes, to finally return to the surface. If the demons are attacking Kenabres, that's even more important! The Chief says we're 'underground crusaders', but he also says the time isn't right and we should wait and wait forever until there's a sign. Deskari attacking Kenabres has to be that sign; if we're not going to help now, then what are we waiting for?"

"What Lann isn't telling you is that he was raised on the surface as a child. He always wanted to go back and he's looking for a way to convince the rest of us to abandon everything we know."

"Most people in the tribe are fishers, craftsmen, the young and the old who can't even defend themselves in the tunnels. The weak and deformed, because being born with these bodies makes us strong hunters by comparison with the rest. They'd be massacred in the Maze. And for what? The people of Kenabres drove our ancestors underground. They drove Lann and his father back underground -"

"They did not! My father chose to go back!"

"Because there was no future for you among humans!"

"And that's why the whole tribe needs to go up this time!" Lann looks deeply frustrated.

"...I feel like where you guys live is sort of up to you but rescuing children is good?"

"When I was young and foolish, I went into the Maze with my friends. I'm the only one who made it back out alive. There were traps and monsters, and we thought we could handle those, but then there was - a darkness. Something took us, one by one in the darkness and the silence, and left only screams and blood. We couldn't fight it and we couldn't flee and -" She looks away.

"I went back a few times since. Trying to explore, to map it. It changes over time. Once or twice I saw humans, so it must lead to the surface... but I never made it that far."

"I can sneak when I'm alone." She flexes her spider-legs in demonstration. "A large group would have to fight, and the noise would attract more enemies. I'd lead a fighting party to find the kids, but Chief Sull forbade it. But I will not be part of Lann's mad idea to bring the whole tribe."

"You will if the Chief agrees to do it."

"This hall is where we keep the remaining relics of our ancestors, the first crusaders. The earthquake broke all the plinths and plaques... it's normally very well organized." Why is he apologising to the surfacers about the state of his culture's heirlooms. "One of them is an angel's sword, and - if I could find it and bring it back, it would be a symbol to rally around. And a sign, because no mongrel can grasp it. It burns us." Realistically, if it didn't, it'd be killing lizards somewhere in the tunnels, not sitting unused on display. "But I want to try - I have to try, because if I, if one of us can grasp it now, that would be an obvious sign from Heaven."

"But I can't find it, in all the rubble." He is so deeply frustrated about this.

"Uh, not that I don't think angel swords sound cool, but whether Wenduag will do the thing seems kind of secondary to whether it's a good idea?"

"If the Maze leads to the city then we need to go through it, we can't afford days of going around. Unless we don't expect to make it. And then we can rescue your kids on the way. An angel sword sounds incredible, maybe you can - loan it to one of us while we're rescuing the kids?" They're both armed with bows, while Seelah's party has at least two proficient sword-users.

"Maybe Chief Sull will let us go after the kids if we're with you. But bringing the sword would still help convince him."

"That makes sense."

It would be really neat if she had Detect Magic but oh well. She can move rubble around, that's still helpful. 

That's pretty much what he's been doing! But many hands make light work, and they can cover the whole room fairly quickly.

It is in fact Lucette who stumbles on it first: a swordhilt sticking out from under a rock, and when she moves it out of the way she will see the blade itself is embedded inside another stone.

Now that she has seen it, even if she turns around or closes her eyes she'll feel it faintly, like a presence hovering just behind her shoulder. Not saying or asking for anything, only making itself known, and impossible to mistake for an ordinary sword.

She more-or-less automatically grabs the hilt. 

As soon as she touches the hilt, she is pulled into a vision. She could resist and it will not be forced on her against her will, but the vision pulses with desperation and a yearning, a plea to be heard, to have its existence acknowledged.

There was an angel once, called Lariel, who stood in this cave or another like it and held this sword. Except it's not really a sword, it's a part of him, the Light of Heaven an essential piece of the being and meaning that is 'angel' and 'Lariel' and 'of Heaven', all intertwined and impossible to separate without leaving parts whose sum is much lesser than the whole.

He is wounded, in the vision, and tired, and more than that he is hurting, because he was betrayed. Betrayed and left to die, by some of the allies for whose sake he left Heaven. And now the last of them to remain loyal lies wounded at his feet, perhaps dying, while the others lurk in the shadows beyond his sight.

A shadow moves forward out of the darkness and resolves into swarms of locusts that outline a shape. Deskari, but not; not quite the same as she saw this morning, not as big or as menacing. Not a full demon lord, to the angel's apprehension, but more than enough to kill him.

He cannot flee. He can spend his last strength attacking, and it will hold no meaning; or spend it healing his last and faithful ally, and have the demon kill her again.

What should he do? What can he do? The vision demands an asnwer. The angel seems to suffer from the pain of indecision as much as from his wounds. 

There is no indecision in Lucette's heart. Healherhealherhealher

Run, the angel pleads as he heals her. Live, as he stands between her and the approaching monster, but he knows he cannot stop it from killing her as well.

The monster speaks, mocking and threatening. Lariel hears its words, and forgets them. It is ugly, and Evil, and nothing it says is decision-relevant; and he does not wish to remember these details of his final moments or to prolong them.

He strikes at the monster and his sword flares for a moment; but there is no strength left in him, and the demon grasps him by the throat and lifts him bodily off the ground.

You will kill me, Lariel says / thinks / remembers. This I know. But another will come. They will come and lift up my sword. And he plunges the sword into the stone below him, shapes his own dying essence into a tiny fragment of miracle, a sword (a light, a spell, a spirit) that only the worthy can pick up, and he gives it all that he can of the remainder of his power but he cannot give it his self or his purpose, for those must die with him -

Take me, the sword pleads with her. Use me, shape me, become me.

What will you do? Some angels work to prevent suffering while others heal it; some do battle while others nurture or teach; there are as many ways to be an angel as there are souls in Heaven, and all are valid and necessary and Good. But the sword-shaped torn essence of an angel is too small and has been alone for too long, and so above all it wants a clear purpose, and to be used again.

What will you do?

Tears stream down Lucette's face. 

Heal heal heal heal--there are so many dead--she wants to fix it all--

You will heal, the Light of Heaven promises her. We will heal them together. Everyone we reach, everyone we can. 

It does not say, thank you. It simply gives of itself, gives itself, in thanks for being there and wielding the Light and for being and wanting and planning what she is.

And for a moment it shines brightly outside her own mind, for everyone in the room to see. It touches their eyes and their hearts - lightly, not in a vision, not in words, just enough to help dispel doubts and fears. Just enough to let them know they are seen and they are loved and they will be healed if they need it, they will be healed and helped and loved until all strength fails.

Shiiiine.

Yeah she hasn't stopped crying, at this point. 

"Lariel..." she whispers. 

"That light, it felt like - like the Inheritor does in the mornings..." Seelah feels a desire to - laugh, or cry, or pray, or maybe take off her armor so she can hug someone and then do all of those at the same time.

She settles for hugging herself, and praying.

"Lariel! That was the angel's name on the plaque! The ancestors had it right... but what just happened? The sword never did anything before. Besides, uh, slightly zap any of us who tried to take it, and stay stuck in the stone." It's not stuck in the stone anymore.

"It...showed me his last moments. He was killed by...something that looked like Deskari, but it wasn't quite right..."

"And now you wield his sword?" Wenduag has no idea how to react to someone who apparently gained great power and promptly started crying.

"Yeah. It...promised to help me help people, sort of. I just...wish I hadn't been too late to help him." 

"It sounds like he died near a century ago," Anevia says gently. "We grieve all the dead of the past, and we move on, to rescue the future."

That sounds like a quote, but not one she's familiar with. Another god's scripture?

"When I said I wanted to show Chief Sull a sign, I didn't even hope for something so, well, literal. This is incredible! Will you come with us and show it to the tribe?"

"Sure." 

To Anevia: "I know, I know, just--you don't usually see someone's last moments like that. I'm not gonna let it impair me, just."

Anevia meant it as comfort or encouragement, not admonishment. A misstep. Maybe it's because she's still tiptoeing around Terendelev's death; she saw Lavinia Wex disappear with her body - and she's sure Lucette saw it too - but Lavinia can't herself teleport (as far as Anevia knows), and they were standing right below Deskari, and so - she can't be sure what actually happened, or imply she's reassuring Lucette about that. Whether they landed somewhere safe, and Terendelev is already back in the city and only slightly impaired at killing demons, or something much worse than that.

She can't imagine how it feels, to fear for both her parents and at the same time to find room in her heart to grieve for a stranger a century dead. Lucette is the kind of natively good person that Anevia, with all her baggage, struggles to approximate in her best moments. (And who's being maudlin now?)

"I know you won't," she smiles a little. "An angel's sword suits you. Let's go, then."

She smiles back and then turns to follow the Neathers. 

Wenduag is annoyed that Lann got his sign. She's doubly annoyed that outsiders just took over the neathers' most sacred relic, and that she wasn't deemed worthy to wield it, not even... before. She's silent and gloomy all the way back to the neather camp.

"Spirits have great power to help or harm," Camellia remarks. "Even a remnant of one is something to cherish, to nourish and take for a guiding star. In Sarkoris-that-Was, when that angel yet walked the land, shamans learned to talk to the spirits and ask for their help. The tradition is all but forgotten now, lost to the Wound like so much else." She sounds regretful for the loss - and hungry to redeem it.

"Is that what you do?"

"Yes! Or, I try... I had a tutor as a child, but she's long gone. But I learned enough to cast first-circle divine spells, without any gods." She smiles, and pats her amulet.

There are so many cool and amazing things out there in the world! And many of them are right here in her temporary party! Seelah doesn't feel happy, given the givens, but she does feel inspired.

After some walking and swording a few more suicidal giant centipedes and spiders, they reach a little underground lake, with a half-natural bridge of stepping-stones bridged with planks leading to an island. It's dotted with lit torches, which can't illuminate it at this distance but at least provide a sense of scale: a few dozen buildings (shacks? tents? lean-tos?) and probably fewer than a hundred people.

Lann bows. "Welcome to Neathholm! It can't quite compete with the wonders of Kenabres, but at least it's demon-free, or it was an hour ago."

Looking at the frankly miserable hovels - these people don't seem to have any building materials, let alone laundry wizards - Camellia thinks she'd rather have Kenabres with demons! Hopefully they can get back there quickly, because she does not want to spend a night in this place.

The people stop their work to stare at the visitors.

No two of them are alike. There are bits of animals and vermin and occasional plants, replacing or growing out of bodies in random-seeming locations. Most don't seem functional, or beneficial, or occasionally healthy. Everything is a crazy mix of parts that somehow end up working together (or sometimes at cross-purposes). Maybe it's just that unexpected assymetry looks ugly.

It's clear now why Lann said surfacers call these people 'mongrels'. No-one would think Lann and Wenduag belonged to the same race, until they saw the sheer variation on display and realised the only rule was that nothing ever repeated ittself.

Lann leads them up to the hill's summit, where a man sits. He has a rat-like face, with prominent front teeth, and one of his eyes is milky white; his hair is sparse and white, indicating old age - or at least it would if he was human.

"Chief Sull! The earthquake was caused by a demon attack on Kenabres. It opened a hole into the tunnels, and these uplanders fell down" - he introduces them. "And we found Lariel's sword! Lucette has it, and it glows now! She said it gave her a vision of Lariel! This is a sign for us, to finally return to the surface to help defend against the demons!"

"Uplandersh... The end timesh are upon ush, indeed. But we musht make the right choishe, and not be hashty. Demonsh attacked Kenabresh before today. We will have only one chanshe, to go back and to do it right."

He looks at Lucette. "Show me the shword, uplander. Show me the shign from Heaven. We have held it in trusht, alwaysh. For ush, it did not glow."

Lucette bows and holds out the sword. 

"Hello, Chief Sull. I'm Lucette Wex." 

And then the sword lights up. 

The Light of Heaven is so, so sorry about not shining for the Neathers before!! It wasn't smart, until Lucette picked it up, and it couldn't see anything, and - it thought it sensed a demonic tinge to them, and was terrified to respond in case it fell into enemy hands.

But now with Lucette's help it can see better, and it trusts her completely (because it's really not equipped to judge anything and will delegate all that to her), and so it will tell everyone in the cavern - in feelings, not in words, because the Light doesn't natively think in words anymore -

I'm sorry I didn't answer you. I wasn't there for you. But I / we are here now, and you don't have to fear the dark anymore.

A wave of golden light washes out and over the island. It doesn't care about barriers of earth and wood and flesh, because the important part isn't what your eyes see; the important part speaks to the heart.

Shiiiine.

Sull stares transfixed at the glowing sword.

"Sho Heaven did not abandon ush, after all... The light came back... Back, back from the dead, to shave ush and our children." He's crying openly now.

Ugh, why does everyone cry about this? Admittedly the light irritates the eyes but nowhere near that badly!

"I will shend messhengersh to all the tribesh. We will make the journey. To live and die as crushadersh onshe more."

"But it will take time to organize. Even the firsht partiesh, the huntersh and fightersh, will take several gongs to gather."

"You are welcome here, uplandersh. Resht, and wait. Our homesh are yoursh. Anything you need, we will provide if we can."

"And - shank you."

"If the tribe is killed in the Maze, it will be on your head," Wenduag hisses furiously at Lann, and at the rest of the party by proxy. "Look around you! Look at the old and frail, those born too twisted to run, these hungry husks of men and women! You think they can make it through the Maze? That the surfacers won't drive us back down?!"

"We'll take those who can fight first! We'll clear the way, and help fight off the demons -"

"The tribes can't protect themselves down here if we all leave! They can't hunt for food! They'll have to follow us, or die trying! And after half of us have died in your war, the people won't survive here or there!"

"Wenduag! Enough." Sull has a different tone when speaking to one of his own in his capacity as Chief, and everyone respects it, even hotheads like "half-surfacer" Lann and "strongest hunter" Wenduag. Down in the Neath, survival requires unity, and having each other's back at all times.

"We will shtay one people. The tribesh will agree. Move, live, and if we fail, die ash one."

"If Kenabresh fightsh, we musht help. If they fall, how long will we lasht, hiding from the demonsh in our tunnelsh? No, even if we can hide, shome shings are worsh rishking our livesh for. We are crushadersh. In our bonesh and our blood, our ansheshtral legashy."

"You will clear our way, we will not shend the old and young into battle. But we will follow after, becaushe we are a people, with one purposhe."

"I am sorry we didn't know about you. I am proud to know you now." 

"Yes! We welcome everyone who wants to join the crusades. Or rejoin them! It's something to be proud of, and to honour. I'm very glad I got to meet you."

Wenduag makes a noise like a spitting cat. She won't challenge Sull, which leaves picking on Lann.

"We started with three younglings lost to the Maze, and now we're all going after them. By the time the tribes are assembled it will be too late for the kids. Have you given up on saving them?"

"Chief? Could we send a party right now to look for the kids - a sort of vanguard for the vanguard?"

Sull considers this. "I agreed with Wenduag, it would be too dangeroush to shend jusht the two of you. And I won't shend everyone elshe away until the other tribesh arrive."

"What shay you, uplandersh? Would you brave the Maze with Lann and Wenduag before the tribesh can asshemble? Do you need to resht?"

"I have no right to require thish of you. You are already our friendsh and welcome gueshtsh, and we are in your debt for awakening the Light. I would not ashk you to rishk yourshelvesh for our shake, but I do not know your shtrengsh. You can follow the vanguard with the resht of the tribe, if you wish."

"I just woke up." For weird kidnapping reasons, but still. "And I've only expended the one spell. I'm good." She looks at the others. 

"I used my only smite when the demons attacked. And half my lay on hands to heal myself after I fell down into the caves, but I still have a few. I'm good to keep going."

"I prepared all healing, because I wasn't expecting a fight, and then I used up most of that after falling down. I'd rather rest first, but if you're all going, I don't want to stay behind."

"My leg's not perfect, it'd be better with another cure lights, but I can shoot things and if I have to run away I don't think it will give out, as long as it's only for a few rounds."

"Oh - we can ask Dyra to channel early if we're going. And she might have a healing potion or two for emergencies. Dyra's our cleric of Abadar, which means she's our trader too, even though she gets to do a lot less of the latter. What with the lack of trade routes passing through."

Firmly: "Up 'till now." 

Dyra is possibly the most excited person in the whole village to see them, because she's as just happy as the other neathers about going crusading but also, she gets to trade with surfacers!!!

They are welcome to peruse her (sadly meager) stock, which includes two potions of cure light wounds, simple weapons and ammunition (non-magical), clothes, various tools and materials, and she can also cast these zeroth and first-circle spells for them. 

(And gather everyone for an earlier-than-usual channel to heal Anevia's leg; channels are already traded to the community and it doesn't cost anything to move one forward with Chief Sull's permission.)

She apologizes in advance for having pricing that is almost certainly much less accurate than the above-ground standard for Abadar's priests! She does her best but it's hard when there's no-one to learn from.

She was going to ask them if they had any surface things they were willing to sell, or stories they could tell her, but they're in a hurry so she just wishes them safe travels and hopes she'll get to see the surface for herself soon.

Lucette has a couple of expensive silver daggers on her person as holdout weapons and would be happy to trade them for a couple of potions. The thing about pricing is that it does, actually, matter, in a way that Abadar cares about, that they don't have access to other sources of potions right now!

That's completely right, but it's not exactly proof that the daggers should be valued exactly the same as the potions! In fact it would be odd for them to match one dagger to one potion without any change left over! 

Dyra has no real idea how to evaluate the quality of a silver dagger. If Lucette doesn't expect to need them soon (for fighting devils or werewolves) then the resale value is what matters. Does Lucette know what they'd sell for in Kenabres? (They wouldn't sell for very much in the Neath, because no-one's wealthy enough to afford them without a pressing need.)

If Lucette doesn't know, Dyra will still offer a price - people don't have to completely stop trading when they don't know what the market's doing - but it might be a really unfair inaccurate one. Or if Lucette could pay in gold or coin or gems or other such fungibles, that would obviously solve the problem.

An older (human) man, dressed in clothes that were very fine until recently, limps up to them. "Mrs Tirabade, Miss Wex! Finally, some familiar faces! I am fortunate to find you here. Is there a liquidity problem? Horgus Gwerm can solve those."

Yes! Please solve our liquidity problem, surfacer with Abadar's Scales sewn into his coat in gold thread!!!

"Hello, Horgus Gwerm." 

"I surmise you fell down like I did? One of these 'neathers' found me and helped me here. I was terrified when I first saw him, but they're decent fellows!"

"And hello to you, Banker Dyra." She almost certainly doesn't serve the actual function of a banker, but Horgus Gwerm does not disrespect clerics of Abadar. "I believe I have enough gold coins on me to buy whatever these ladies needed of you at a fair price." (The only non-lady present is Lann, and Horgus Gwerm can be excused for not realizing he is a party member.)

"For which, I propose that you recompense me by safely leading me back to the city. I will pay you a thousand gold crowns for that, including the cost of whatever you need to buy from Dyra that would help that goal."

"...Okay, sure. That sounds fine." This is kind of a weird interaction to be having but she's not going to argue. 

Then she can sell the potions for a much fairer price, excellent, thank you so much! Horgus Gwerm is now Dyra's favorite surfacer!

"We don't have a secure way to the surface yet," Seelah warns him. "We're going to try this 'maze' dungeon, but if we fail it might take until tomorrow, when a bigger party of the neathers will go up to the surface. And then it wouldn't really be us who helped you, or not just us."

"I'm paying for someone to guard me, personally, on my way up to the surface. If it takes until tomorrow for it to be safe, so be it. And I'd rather trust my life to you than to strangers."

That is...sort of fair...even if she's pretty sure Seelah is a stranger to him too. Anyhow. 

"I think Camellia was the only one who'd rather wait, and those kids could get in more trouble with a delay..." 

Camellia spends several seconds considering the option of staying in safety with the neathers and Horgus Gwerm while the others fight monsters in the dark.

It's the smart, obvious, boring option. She hates it. Too much of her life so far has been staying 'somewhere safe' with Horgus Gwerm. Maybe this maze has something fun to kill.

"I'll come with you, against my better judgement."

Grateful smile. "I really appreciate it." 

That's a very nice smile! Unfortunately, going by all she's heard about Lucette Wex, she probably combines "fun" and "killing" in entirely the wrong way.

...she smiles back, of course.

Okay, cool. Everyone who's going in is present and accounted for...can they have a couple of Neathers who can handle themselves in a fight waiting by the doors, to slam the doors closed behind the group if the group comes out fleeing from something. 

That's coming perilously close to risking that those two extra Neathers will get involved in a fight with whatever's chasing them, which seems counter to the spirit of Chief Sull's orders. 

On the other hand, anything that comes out of the maze and after them is a risk to the tribe. Lann can probably convince Sull to send one or two helpers who'll stay outside the Maze.

Unfortunately, when they get to the door into the Maze (a short boat-trip away from the village), it turns out the earthquake warped the doorframe; the door is now stuck half-open and will neither close easily nor open all the way.

"Well, I don't love that. I wonder if there are boulders that could be piled up to block the entrance..."

Yes, but not quickly enough if they're fleeing from something in close pursuit! Unless they want the door to be blocked behind them when they enter, they can totally do that.

Probably safer for the tribe. They can arrange a coded knock to let the rearguard know it's them and to take the boulders off. 

Then they will do that! The door can probably be forced close with enough effort, but it's anyone's guess whether it will open again afterwards, so they'll just make a big pile of rocks. A strong enough monster can probably push the door open against the rocks, but it's not as if they had a key to lock it even when it did close properly, so.

(Who built the door and why is a mystery. As far as they know, it was here when their ancestors first settled the Neath.)

Anything in the first room of the Maze will have heard them by now (what with the half-open door); they won't be able to sneak until, hopefully, the second room. 

Who wants to walk first into the maybe-ambush of the antechamber?

"I'm the best armored. The door's a tight fit but I can stick my head in for a quick look." Does anyone have a better idea?

Is she actually the best armored, Lucette is only wearing chain but she also has natural armor. 

That's really hard to call! Maybe they should butt heads to compare their hardness Lucette can, uh, put on Seelah's helmet for a bit if it would help?

Anevia is tempted to have a quick peek while the ambushers are distracted by this fascinating argument, but ultimately rules in favor of safety helmets.

Sure, Lucette will borrow Seelah's helmet. 

"Nope, we're clear." For the moment.

The first room is approximately square, about forty feet on a side. It's well built and fairly richly appointed; the walls and even the ceiling are made of worked stone, and the floor is polished and covered in geometric designs. There's a chandelier, and candle-holders around the wall; they're unlit, but contain stubs of candles.

There's a closed door in the far wall, flanked by two stone reliefs of Baphomet's goat-head.

"Damnation. Of course a 'maze' under the city would be infested with Baphomet cultists." Anevia sighs. "At least this makes it likely there's a way into the city; they wouldn't invest in a big maze if the only way in or out was by dimension door. If this is their base for the invasion, we might get a chance to hit them in the back - but that also means their force here could be too strong for us to take on."

"We've been living on top of a cultist base all this time?!" Lann looks at Wenduag in shock.

"How should I know? I've seen humans here before, but we didn't talk. Things changed every time I went in - sometimes there would be vermin instead of humans, sometimes a whole new room would appear. And I haven't been inside for two hundred gongs."

"What about the goat head, does that change?"

"No, those were here when we... I first went in. Over four thousand gongs ago, now."

"How long is a gong...?" She has no idea how long these people live. 

"There were supposed to be two gongs a day-cycle, but it drifted over the years because we didn't always have a cleric to tell time. Now we have Dyra so we fixed it so it's two gongs for every time she gets spells, but the ones we counted right before then were too short by as much as... one part in six?"

"But it's supposed to be two a day, got it. --Is Dyra the first--sorry, not urgent. Anyway, if the goat heads aren't new, that's what matters." 

The next door is closed, but proves to be unlocked. There are lit candles in sconces on the other side, suggesting recent occupation, but their light doesn't cover most of the room.

"That hall is several times longer than the part we can see," Wenduag warns.

"Now that probably really is an ambush."

"There's a crusader saying I've heard," Lucette murmurs, "that an ambushed ambush isn't very nice." 

"Say more? You have Light as a spell, right - do you want to do the old trick with throwing a lit pebble and then seeing which side can out-shoot the other?" That's not exactly a counter ambush, just forcing the fight on equal terms.

They could also try to lure them out with illusions if Lucette has those, or just by talking to them. If there really are human cultists of Baphomet they might be susceptible to lies, bribes and slander.

"Or I suppose one of us could step out and pretend to be unaware, so they come over here and into our counter-ambush, but that rather assumes they won't just shoot us on sight."

"Lann, Wenduag, do you expect to be able to shoot through a relatively narrow door-opening?"

"If we can see the target and have a clear line of sight, sure, but if there's only one place we can stand to hit a target we'd get in each other's way, so we might not both get a shot off. And we can't hit the near corners of the room from here, but those are practically in melee range anyway."

"Well, this door isn't stuck, so we can close it after they've coherently reacted to the first shot or shots. It's a chokepoint for us as well as them, so if we control the door..."

"We can try it. It might not work if they take more than a couple of arrows to kill and move out of range or something. But it'd be an easier shot for us than for them."

Lucette grabs a pebble, Lights it, and hurls it through the doorway. 

This reveals two men with crossbows kneeling outside the circle of candlelight (to present a smaller profile).

They fire as soon as they have a clear target, but the opening is small and they're not great at aiming; one bolt thwacks into the door and the other flies by Lann's ear. 

Lann's response arrow doesn't miss.

(Wenduag tries to figure out some kind of smooth shoot-and-move, but it's actually really hard, they haven't practiced for this!)

How about a magic missile from each of them, those don't miss.

Thaaat is maybe a great reason to switch out with Wenduag actually!

Now the first enemy has a second arrow sticking out of him.

Shooting from behind a half-open door? That's a great strategy actually, how about we try it.

The two men flee through a side-door in long hall, leaving it half-open.

By the pebble's Light, they can see a big pile of rubble blocking the long hall, just past where the two men tried to ambush them.

"That rubble wasn't there... it must be from the earthquake." Indeed, the ceiling above it has a big rent in it. "The hall is about as long again on the other side. There are several doors; the one I think leads to the city is on the far end, there are stairs."

"They could get reinforcements, prepare a bigger ambush or try to rush us. What do we do?"

"Well, I should be able to fly over the rubble just fine...I bet we could move enough of it that everyone else could get through." 

"They could hit us from behind if we do that. Wenduag, what's past that door?"

"Many rooms" - she can sketch them a rough (and partial) map. "It eventually connects to another door at the far end of this hall."

"Probably chasing the cultists through those rooms is safer, then." Even if she doesn't get to show off by flying about it. 

Then they can carefully approach the next half-open door!

Ha ha, did you think we'd wait for you on the other side of that door? We're not that stupid!

Obviously we ran away as fast as we could to get help. By which we mean, to get someone else to fight you. We've been honourably wounded in the line of duty, and deserve a raise a rest.

The next room is fairly large and has three other doors; Wenduag doesn't know where they all lead, but the one on the left is the one that would let them eventually double back to the long hall.

"The wounded one was dripping blood, look..." The trail of blood drops leads to the door at the far right corner.

That door it is, then. 

That door has stairs leading down into a partially-flooded room; the water level is shin high. Throwing Lighted pebbles in various directions reveals a set of barred cells (empty), two doors (one of them after a few stairs up, so it probably leads to a non-flooded room), and a short corridor ending in rubble that looks like it connects to bare rock in the process of being excavated.

The two doors are fairly close together. "Left door, right door, or open both at once so we're not ambushed?"

"I'd rather bar one door while opening the other, but if we can't do that, open both doors." 

"Bar them how? I can hold one shut by force, if I'm not fighting."

Lucette throws another Lighted pebble, looking for a rock big enough that it would take both her and Seelah together to lift it. 

There are rocks of all sizes over at the unfinished end of the room! They can carry one or two over.

Unfortunately, while they're trying to do that, the leftmost doors bursts open, and three men with glaives run out at them! 

At least they weren't by the door when it happened, which means they're not attacked right away. (The wizards with crossbows are prudently staying far back of the fighting this time.)

The first thing Lucette does, obviously, is start singing. Have plus one to hit and damage, allies! 

The last thing the man in the lead did before opening the door was cast bless, so now he'll obviously cast bane.

The other two charge ahead, but the water makes running hard and with the three archers backing away, Seelah can intercept at least one of them.

Camellia has her own magic bonuses and is happy to run forward to stab people when her party has two healers in it!

Some of her battle-cries might be a bit disconcerting, but really battle cries are meant to frighten the enemy, right?

As long as Camellia sticks to stabbing cultists and demons, Lucette basically does not care how much she enjoys spilling their blood. 

She's also pretty good at swording cultists herself. 

With three melee combatants to hold the enemy back the three archers are free to focus their fire on one of them, until pretty soon Lucette's opponent is trying to fall back behind the other two.

On the other hand, the enemy cleric is giving Seelah enough trouble that she's rapidly running down her uses of lay on hands!

"Wizard maggots! Get your asses in here or I'll kill you myself when I'm done!"

Thus encouraged, the two wizards from before start taking turns at peeking out of the door and firing more poorly-aimed crossbow bolts and one last magic missile at Lucette. They don't have good enough aim to try to reach the archers in the back, and she doesn't look heavily armoured, right?

The chainmail doesn't obstruct either crossbow bolt quite enough, but her scales do! 

The magic missile goes but she doesn't go down, and now Lucette has the opportunity to sword at the cleric. 

He won't go down that easily! But he does have to stop fighting to cure himself.

...this isn't working, his glaive is great for reach but once people with rapiers and swords get inside his guard it's pretty much over. Glaives, like longspears, are best used in a fighting line, or better yet several lines, but for servants of Baphomet this has the obvious downside that the rear line is liable to backstab you and/or run away. Normally he'd rush the enemy archers, but the water makes that hard.

He retreats back toward the doorway, where there isn't enough room to surround him. His other subordinate (the one who hasn't yet earned himself a punishment by fleeing) can be the front line / meat shield, while he glaives at people from behind. And the wizards had better have some extra scrolls.

Who's going to be the enemy's point man in this hopefully one-on-two melee?

We don't have to follow you into melee, you know, we can just keep shooting at you all day. Because we have three real archers, not a bunch of wizards with crossbows.

Damn it, the melee was fun!

The two wizards do each have an emergency backup scroll!!

...one of them is grease. (Are they going to die because they didn't deal with the water elemental like Hosilla told them to?! Out of everything they've done, is that going to be what kills them?!)

The other scroll is -

Hold Portal.

"You backstabbing sons of AAARGH!"

He can't rush the enemy because his subordinate is in the way (the other one made it into the room with the wizards). He'd order his subordinate to rush the enemy, but something tells him this wouldn't work, on more than one level.

...

"Maybe you can kill me, but I'm taking one of you with me. You wanna risk that? Do you?!"

Lucette sings something deeply unflattering! Who would have thought that the half-silver-dragon song-sorceress would use tavern songs about cultists being stupid for her magic?

A stupid song won't kill him... but the arrows will, eventually. Also, who the abyss thought it was a good idea to give magic to the mongrels?!

"I'm not dying to a bunch of mutts! Charge! For Baphomet!" He does his best impression of a minotaur rush at Lucette (with his glaive, not his head), but the water doesn't let him get up to a really impressive speed.

In that case a very well-bred woman of impeccable pedigree can be the one to fatally stab him in the back!

The second cultist is dispatched soon afterwards.

The sounds coming through the door, of heavy objects dragged or dropped (in one case on someone's finger), hint at hasty barricading.

"...Wanna just prop some boulders on our side and leave them there for the moment?"

That's a bit hard, because there are a few steps leading up to the door and the upper step is as narrow as the rest! They'd need a really big pile to stop the men inside from shifting enough rocks to be able to climb out over the top in a few minutes.

"How long do we need it to stay blocked? Do we want to check the door we blocked already?"

"Well, right now it's blocked from their side; I mostly just want neither of 'they come at us from behind later,' or 'we wait here for ages for them to remove their blockade.'"

"I think anything we can build in minutes, they can dismantle in minutes after we're gone. And we don't want to spend hours building a barricade, even if there's something we could do that would take hours."

Anevia motions the others away from the door. "I can trap the door," she whispers. "It won't kill them - maybe one of them, if we're lucky - but it might frighten the rest into staying put. I suspect they're already scared enough not to follow us, but if they think we're going to come back they're likely to run for safety, if there's more of them somewhere in this maze."

Lucette gives her a silent thumbs-up. 

Anevia glues a flask of alchemist's fire to the top of doorframe. There's a bit of string attached that makes it so opening the door a little bit will do nothing, but opening it all the way will pull the cork out of the bottle, which is shaped so as to make this at least a mostly-directional blast.

Then she puts down caltrops in strategic locations under the water just past the door, where someone struck by the clingy fire might desperately try to extinguish it.

"Not worth our time blocking the door," she says out loud. "Do we still want to check the other one, or do we go back?"

"Let's check the other one." 

Then Seelah will work with her to unblock it again! (She almost moves the stones over to the door with the cultists behind it before she remembers about the caltrops.)

Wenduag presses her ear to the door for a minute. "Nothing but the splashing of water," she reports.

"Why is the water splashing?"

"Probably the same reason this place is half-drowned. The earthquake must have broken open a way to our lake, or one of the streams that feed it."

"There could be someone in there standing very still, let's proceed." 

Anevia picks the lock, and carefully nudges the door open.

The room beyond is large enough that the far edges are swallowed in darkness, and the water is even deeper than outside.

There is also a large water elemental about thirty feet past the door. It looks like a dark, angry octopus that's somehow swimming on top of the water. It doesn't seem to have noticed them yet, but it's hard to tell which way it's even looking.

...she very carefully and quietly nudges the door back closed!

"Large water elemental," she whispers to the others. "Not a good match for us in all this water."

"...Yikes. Well. That's somewhere for this water to be coming from." 

"But why's it here?"

"If the cultists could control it they would have tried to set it loose when they fought us. Instead they locked it in. Maybe the best way to stop them coming after us is to leave the elemental's door open before leaving."

"That really doesn't explain why it's here!"

"Cultists are stupid," Camellia says patiently. "They probably called it up and then found out they couldn't control it."

"I'm not sure there isn't another door at the far end of that room," Anevia cautions, "it was too dark to see clearly..."

"And throwing a Lighted pebble would be a bad plan. I'm not sure I want to inflict the cultists on them again, it's probably not a Baphomet cultist itself..."

"Yeah. We can just leave and hope we didn't miss anything."

"We can come back later if we found out we missed something important."

How would they find out they missed something if they don't... check?? Never mind, Seelah is probably missing something obvious again.

"Let's go, then."

The party leaves the half-flooded basement and returns to the previous, quite large room. It contains two still-unopened doors, but only one of them can lead to the far end of the hall that was blocked by rubble, unless there are more stairs.

Or they can go all the way back to the long hall, and Lucette can fly them over the rubble, taking the shortest way towards what Wenduag thinks (but can't guarantee) is the exit to the city above.

Door that can't lead to the far end of the hall, they're looking for the kids and also people who might come at them from behind later. 

This door leads to a cozy little library full of bookshelves. There might be hundreds of books in here!

There's also a man reclining in a comfy reading chair, an open book draped over his face, snoring gently. A glaive leans against the bookshelf by his side. It's a very cozy scene, despite the ominous blood-red pentagram marking the book's cover.

...Lucette leans back out of the room. 

"Anevia can you steal the glaive without waking him," she whispers. 

"Worst case he'll still have to fight me for it. Do you want to restrain him or knock him out or kill him?" Which is to say, should Lann and Wenduag start shooting him the moment he moves or Anevia takes away his glaive?

Anevia doesn't enjoy killing people, and he's arguably defenceless (or will be once she steals his weapon) but she's long since made her peace with killing obvious cultists and is more wondering whether they want to interrogate him. Some people think - or feel, even if they don't endorse - that interrogation is worse than 'clean' killing, and she isn't sure about Lucette in that regard, or the others for that matter.

"Restrain or knock out would be best, he might be better-informed than average for one of these goons."

Anevia agrees! It makes this trickier since they can't shoot him, but they have a five-to-one advantage and total surprise, there's no real way for this to fail unless he's secretly very powerful or rigged to explode.

"I'll get his glaive. Everyone else be ready with melee weapons." She moves stealthily to pick up his glaive and, without disturbing anything else, carries it out of the room.

Then she tiptoes back in, slides behind his chair, and puts a knife to his throat. Does one of the others want to try creeping in and holding his arms or something?

Seelah tries to signal with the least possible amount of gestures that she's great at holding people's arms but not so great at creeping! She hopes shaking her head in her helmet didn't get just give them away!

Lann looks uncertainly at Lucette.

Lucette has some rope, it isn't necessarily the case that anybody needs to hold him with their bare hands?

Lann can't tie him up without waking him up! He tries to communicate this very very quietly.

Okay fair. Lann can hold him, then. 

Lucette is very Splendid, and also visually impressive. 

She steps in front of the man, levels her sword directly in his face, and then, once everyone else is in place, spreads her wings with a very deliberately audible snap. 

Snore snore snoaaaah what was that?!

His first instinct is to grab for his glaive, and when that fails his second instinct is to lunge forward. Luckily, Lann can restrain him enough that he only ends up half out of his chair and not impaled in Lucette's sword or Anevia's dagger.

...he can at least grab the book before it falls to the ground! 

"Mongrels? Didn't anyone teach you to knock?! Hosilla will have your hides for this!"

This is suddenly becoming a potential problem! She doesn't recall his face but she can't be sure he never saw her.

Wenduag takes up her accustomed place in the rearguard of the party, watching out for danger and ready to fade into the shadows.

"If you think I'm a Neather, you haven't spent enough time in the city above," Lucette says pleasantly. 

Well obviously not! He's been down here, reading!

"...whatever you are, what do you want that you couldn't get by asking politely?"

She gives him a flat look. 

"I'm Terendelev's daughter," she says coldly, "and I want you to spill on your cultist friends." 

"Ah, a fellow quester on the road to knowledge!" He settles back in the chair. "What do you want to know? I've learned a great deal from the cult, so it's only fair that I repay the favor forward!"

This man is either very impressive at bluffing or stark raving mad. Being a cultist does tend to indicate the latter, but Anevia's going to keep an open mind.

Camellia is torn between a desire to impress his situation on him and a desire to keep inwardly snickering as the man appears to completely ignore Lucette's attempts at intimidation.

This is honestly kind of embarrassing but Lucette's ego is not actually the priority here. 

"Where did they take the children?" 

"Huh? They had new children here? I don't know, I didn't see any." On account of being busy reading, which they're so rudely interrupting. "If they're not in the holding cells, then they might be in the ritual chamber already. Far end of the hall, right door, upstairs but the door might be locked if the ritual's starting."

"New children? This has happened before?"

"I think so? It's not really my area of study..."

Probably this guy is not literally a wizard because of the glaive, but man, wizard stereotypes. 

"Tell us about the ritual chamber." 

"Uh. It's round, fifty-five feet in diameter, eighty feet tall. There's a pentagram painted on the floor but it's not actually part of the ritual. Really, when these people say 'ritual' you shouldn't expect too much, it's not an actual magic ritual channeling through a spell-structure, it's more of a - magic poison infused with planar essence that acts on the imbiber's soul, but once the poison's been made anyone could administer it, right. In theory. The chamber's probably not actually important except for, like, symbolic resonance from repeated use."

"Magic poison?"

"This is all hearsay, you understand, I didn't even read about it and I definitely didn't get my hands on any of the poison that I could run through a proper alchemy workshop. I suppose it could be a magical disease instead, or a weird curse or something, but the other guys were calling it a poison and it seems to fit. It has to be magic because it affects the body, mind and soul, and it's like a poison and not a disease because they eat or drink it, and it can't spread to infect others... Well, not that I heard of, but if it could they wouldn't need Savamelekh to keep running the ritual himself. And it's not visible with detect magic like a curse would be."

"Oh! And there's a fascinating book over there, Pearce's Compendium of Demonic Flesh, about people who ate demons and what happened to them. Even if you make the demons nonpoisonous and nonacidic and so on, consuming them still has an effect because their bodies are partly made of Abyssal quintenssence, and when you take it in it affects your soul and through that your mind. And there's some similarity there, except that apparently the ritual actually uses Good-aligned outsider flesh, to make eating it metaphysically Evil and to open the way for the poison. That's the other interesting part besides the poison, even though it's still not really a ritual. And then the poison makes the Good quintessence act more like Evil, Abyssal quintessence on those who ate it."

Okay Lucette is going to start with one salient, useful point, and work through them methodically, instead of shaking this guy and demanding to know what's wrong with him. 

"How are the Good outsiders sourced?" 

"That's a great question! I'm not strong enough to call them. And no-one else here is either, I'd know."

"Who or what is Savamelekh?"

"A demon. I think he's the kind called a vrolikai but I've never seen another to compare, only read descriptions in Baur's Guide to Denizens of the Abyss second volume. And I think like half of that was a copyist's error, these Baphometans are disgustingly cavalier with the Truth."

A vrolikai?! That's one very small step beneath a balor in terms of fighting ability! She'll... walk around and whisper this in Lucette's ear, her dagger seems to be rather surplus to proceedings here.

Of course, there's no telling if he's wrong, or lying, or both. His completely indifference in the face of pointy death is really throwing off Anevia's people-reading skills!

Lucette is already aware of this actually but deeply valid of Anevia to want to make sure she knows! 

"When does Savamelekh show up?"

"What, like on a schedule? How should I know? You should ask Hosilla."

"I was thinking more under what circumstances." 

"...he teleports in? I don't think he needs, like, any particular circumstances to be able to do it." He's deeply confused by this line of questioning.

"To be able to, no. You said he's necessary for the rituals?"

He makes a so-so wiggle with his (still restrained) hand. "Like I said, hearsay. In this case hearsay of Savamelekh saying it, but that's no proof! Maybe he just enjoys doing it himself, and could be easily replaced with a proper ritual circle and seven alchemical mice. Maybe he's a control freak and doesn't want to share the knowledge, demons can be such bastards."

“…Okay, so, whether he has to or not, he does show up for this ritual, right? Do you know, or have hearsay, of him showing up for other reasons?”

"Oh, he's been around a lot lately, I don't think he conducts a ritual every time he comes here. I don't know what else he's doing. I've avoided talking to him, I'm not crazy! Like I said, you should ask Hosilla."

"...maybe he's doing followup observations and experiments on the ritual subjects," he adds after a bit of thought.

"Who are..." 

"The subjects? You mean, what's common to them? That's a fascinating question. It's hard to generalize about mongrels at the best of times -"

"Who. Are. These. Mongrels", Lann spits into his ear from behind.

"Stop squeezing me so hard! I'm talking already! Squeezing restricts breathing which makes me talk less -"

"Describe the mongrels you saw," Lann orders.

Finally, a straightforward question! "A woman, owl-like purple feathers on her head and torso, little scar on her left cheek. A man, one curled horn in the middle of his forehead, very dark skin. Another man, left hand like a dog's paw, lizard tail, pale green. A kid, red skin with black spots, bad left eye. Indeterminate gender, foot-long squid tentacles growing from their chin and armpits, unclear function. Probably some others I didn't see up close enough to tell apart."

"I might know the horned man," Lann says tightly. "Hovlan. A hunter from another tribe. We'd cross paths sometimes in the tunnels, leave each other messages... He used to talk about wanting to try the Maze one day. I thought it was just - idle talk. Then he disappeared, a few months ago. We thought some monster got him."

Oh good, he didn't describe Wenduag and so she doesn't have to run to warn Savamelekh, she can get there in comfort with the rest of them.

"Well, it looks like that was correct. Just a different kind of monster and a different kind of got."

"As fascinating as this ritual might be to some of you, we still haven't learned anything useful for killing the rest of the cultists. Except that there's a scary demon at the top that we might not want to disturb." Seriously, when are they going to get to the fun part already?

"This is important, Camellia, we're here to save the children, not just burn out a den of cultists." 

"And you haven't learned where the children are. Unless they're with the vrolikai, do you want to go stab a vrolikai with me?"

"If they're already with the vrolikai then we can't rescue them until the vrolikai leaves, which means finding out what will have happened to them at that point." 

Camellia throws up her hand (the one with the rapier stays pointing at the prisoner). "Fine, fine, go on, ask him more about the ritual."

"Thank you. What does the ritual actually do to the victims."

"I told you already! It infuses them with Abyssal quintessence, empowered by a symbolic Evil act, and stays behind as a magic poison to enforce that!"

"On a more mundane level it seems to make them stupid and angry all the time. And reddish, for some reason. But I didn't interview any of them before the ritual so maybe they were already like that. And anyway, you really, really shouldn't trust me about this, because as I keep telling you it's not my area of expertise! Why don't you ask me about something I actually care about, like esoteric effects of blood on summoning circles - will you bloody stop squeezing!"

"Esoteric effects of blood on summoning circles are not, presently, relevant," she says coolly. "There are Neather children we intend to rescue, ideally before the ritual, so we are asking questions relevant to that."

"Then maybe you should hurry up and go stop the ritual instead of asking me stuff I don't know about! Have you people never heard of specialization?! Also, how would knowing the outcome of the ritual help you prevent it? You might be Terendelev's daughter but your research program is dumb."

"This isn't a research program, you wisdom-lacking twit, we're crusaders who are interrogating a cultist!"

"Oooh, yeah, now I see where you went wrong. I'm not a cultist, I'm an honest Nethysian. I just hang out with these guys because they let me into their library!"

...Lucette turns to look at Anevia. 

Obviously that wouldn't hold any water with the Prelate, but Lucette has never encountered anything like it before and would like. Advice. 

Does she mean advice on interrogating him, because Anevia is coming to think he's being honest and will just answer any question they ask if they word it right!

Or does she mean advice on what to do with him afterwards? On a moral basis of 'likely to hurt other people if set free' he does seem pretty likely, if only as an enabler, because the actual cultists presumably got something out of him in exchange, even if it was just research and spells cast.

On the other hand, maybe they can get him somewhere his knowledge would be useful while keeping him relatively harmless? If he's even a first-circle wizard he can pay for his own upkeep, and he might be happy to just sit and read all day, at least as long as they don't run out of new books. Normally she'd - damn it, normally she'd ask someone like Aravashnial and now she can't - but there are probably people who'd take charge of this guy without mistreating him. If, you know, the city and everyone in it weren't busy fighting for their lives. 

She'd offer him something like that in exchange for his cooperation, except he started cooperating before they got around to threatening him, but she's hardly going to leave him worse off for having done that.

"Well, we're clearing out the cultists, so it's our library now. If you want to keep your library privileges, you need to keep answering our questions, even if they seem irrelevant. Or suggest better questions to help us, like a proper research librarian."

That gets an alarmed look out of him for the first time. "I - yes, yes, ask me anything! My knowledge is at your disposal!"

Really it's just like what the Baphometans wanted; he was right to think demon cultists and Iomedaean cultists were equally valid paths to knowledge. And he's not about to lose his library privileges if he can possibly help it! He straightens his posture and gives a determined nod.

Oh good they probably don't have to kill him. 

"Are any of the books in here about the ritual?"

"No! Baphometans are terrible about documenting their work!!! In fact, out of all the books here, the ones written by Baphometans tend to be the mostly badly researched and argued, but they have a lot of other stuff that you couldn't find up above" - he deflates at Lucette's look. "There may be some that mention it. I haven't read everything here yet," which is in fact why he still is here, "but I've read the first page or two of every book to get an overview. There's an alchemist's almanac of Abyssal poisons, supposedly by Zacharius but I don't trust that so who knows if the contents are any more truthful. There's Baur et al on vrolikai, but I've read that and it doesn't have any rituals. 'The Self', supposedly a mongrel's investigation into his own nature, claims to be over seventy years old. Two different tomes of Baphometan religious musings, written by people who worked here in the maze so maybe they mention something. An anonymous treatise on the nature of souls and the magics that can lastingly affect them, I'm actually looking forward to reading that one. Brooke's tractate on quintessence and Bulhman on alchemical substitutes for Detect Evil, I assume you've read those already, might be a useful reference if you're trying to analyse someone who went through the ritual..."

"I have read those, yeah. Thank you, that was very helpful. I think at this point it is time to move on and hope to get to the kids before the vrolikai turns up, could you pull out those books while we're gone? I don't know how this library is filed yet." 

He's so very glad she asked!!

"This library is filed on the principle of a Baphometan maze! To find a book, you need to follow a chain of clues to find the hidden index at the library's center, which then tells you where the book is that you want to find. Not all of them are on the shelves that you can see."

"Or you can just remember where everything is, like I do, because I'm not a Baphometan." And if she doesn't have a great memory like he does, she needs him.

He will pull out all the books mentioned and set them out on one of the tables. ...As soon as the half-lizard mongrel stops squeezing him, please?

"Let's go, Lann. It's very unfortunate how insensitive he is to the plight of the children but, uh, Nethysians are like that sometimes." 

Lann lets him go with a disgusted look. ...and takes the not-cultist's glaive, to be discarded somewhere hopefully out of reach.

Oh good, he hates that bloody thing.

Back in the large room, there remains one closed door! Like the last one, it's unlocked. Who wants to go first?

Seelah and/or Lucette. Probably and. 

Choosing Seelah means they're not using stealth! They're using shock and awe instead!

The ten or so cultists standing around, dicing, or in some cases napping in this barracks are definitely shocked!

Enough of them are armed (if not always armored) with standard-issue mandatory glaives to present a front, but it takes some scurrying around and over each other, and likely a few sword-wounds on the way.

They can't shoot very well through the door and past Seelah and Lucette! Why does this keep on happening?!

She can't stab very well past Seelah and Lucette either! ...wait, what's this side door for?

It was for hiding an extra angry cultist cleric who charges out at her!!!

Yay!!! Stabby time! (Glaives: continue to be really bad at close range.)

A couple of the unarmed cultists at the far end of the room will flee through the other door! 

"They're going to the long hall!" Wenduag calls.

There is, just barely, enough room to spread her wings, flap over the mass of cultists, and pursue the ones going into the hall. 

Aaaah flappy dragon mongrel woman!!

They run right across the hall and into a different door and down wide stairs, while shouting for help.

...Lucette is not stupid enough to follow them down those stairs. 

Instead she swords at the cultists from the other door from the rest of her party, and sings loud enough that they can hear it. 

The only good news here is that they all have an enemy within reach of their glaives!

...The bad news is that they're completely disorganized and in some cases unarmed and in a couple of cases dying or dead.

Most of the cultists make the simultaneous executive decision that one angry woman is less scary than four (plus Lann), and furthermore that someone who's singing and swording is hopefully less specialized in the swording bit, and anyway it's very tempting to follow the two lucky fellows who made a clean getaway!

Which is to say that five cultists all rush Lucette, aiming to push her back into the hall. They can't all hit her at once, even with the long glaives reaching past each other, but they have mass on their side and enemies at their back spurring them to greater efforts!