"The wand! —Oh good you have it."

She grabs the wand and... it snaps into place, no need to carefully handle it like Mother's training scrolls. Infernal Healing. One of the guards is dead, but the other can still survive the night.

Over the next minute, the unconscious guard's wounds close and he wakes up. He's still very injured, but no longer so close to death.

The captain catches his breath. "Well... at least we know what's down here. Damn it. A cult of Achaekek too! Was Urgathoa not enough? We can't keep taking losses like this."

She tried to cast a Healing on Juan, the other fallen guard. It bounced off like it would with a rock, and she caught it before the charge was actually lost. He's dead.

"I... can't help dead. Augh." She clutches at her wounds. "And I need at least one channel, probably more, unless we want to spend more charges to press on." She passes the wand back to Captain Paras.

"If three assassins had caught us like that, we would not have survived. Those two could have been lethal if they had been a little more lucky. If whoever we were out here to find was caught like that, they're dead." She reaches out to the corpse, and twitches and hisses as she stretches one of the enormous, nearly-fatal slices gouged symmetrically in both her sides. 

"And with Juan dead... How many guards is that in the past week? We need to go back and warn anyone else who's coming out here to be careful. And either warn the Arkonas they may have assassins out for their blood or look more closely at them, or both. The Mantis God's followers don't sell their loyalty on the cheap. That much money being spent would have left trails. —Ah! Don't shift like that."

She pauses, shifting her head and moving her hand up— ow, no, she halts that motion as soon as it pulls at her wounds. They can gather she's thinking on their own. "...Any monetary traces will have been lost in whatever the Jeggare are doing with their loans. There goes that plan."

"You are correct. Citadel Volshyenek must learn of this immediately. We retreat now. I will carry Juan's body. Guardsmen, search the assassins. Then we leave."

The guardsmen remove the assassin's masks and armor and cloaks and other gear.

The captain picks up Juan's corpse and begins to move back the way they came.

She follows. Painfully. In the future, she should endeavor to avoid getting stabbed.

Captain Paras takes them up and out of the crumbling tunnels. Their blessing of the watch reactivates as they approach the surface. They leave Fort Korvosa and pass through Garrison Hill without issue. After crossing a bridge into North Point, they make the long trek down to the south of Midland where Citadel Volshyenek rests.

The squad enters the Citadel and clambers up to the Office of Spells. Word of the cult of Achaekek spreads quickly among the Guard. The masks of the Red Mantis are very distinctive.

Ow, clambering through the Citadel is really not easy when she has just barely non-lethal sword gashes.

"When's the next—" hiss— "channel. Sorry." She is not presenting any body language besides 'in pain' at the moment.

One of the guards checks the time. "Fifteen minutes."

"I'll wait." She winces her way over to the channeling area and plops down exhaustedly. Walking multiple miles really does not go well with having holes torn in your body.

As promised, the next channel at Citadel Volshyenek is ready in fifteen minutes. Tencednil is moved into a wide circular room.

A cleric of Abadar conjures a wave of positive energy. Tencednil's worst wounds heal. She's still somewhat injured.

That definitely helped. She can think much more clearly through the pain. It wasn't enough — she doesn't have any actively bleeding wounds when she removes the bandages, but she can feel how deeply she's still torn up — but it helped.

She'll be here for the next channel as well, but in the meantime she might now be able to contribute to whatever discussions they're having about the other Achaekek cultists who must be around somewhere. Or if not, at least she'll be able to listen without losing the thread of the conversation every minute.

At this point, the Guard is so very done with cults. They don't know where the Red Mantis compound is. They don't even know if one exists. Their current plan to cover the city in castings of locate object searching for the mantis masks. It's not like the assassins can keep them in lead boxes while they're wearing them. They may be individually powerful, but the assassins can't match dozens of guardsmen and squads of marines put together. They've sent a request to the Church of Sarenrae for additional cleric support.

That sounds reasonable to her. And she can help by setting up blinding weapons in advance, which means not having to be in stabbing range of assassins, which is good. Not that she won't help in more direct ways if they want, but having a way to be useful which minimizes the risk of being stabbed is nice. (Also this way she might be able to pull some shadow into her spells, which will make them more effective. Not needing to be in comfortable human vision while casting is useful.)

An hour passes. The Guard continues their planning and preparations. Guardsmen and marines and wizards come and go throughout the Citadel.

The Field Marshal makes an appearance in the Office of Spells. She holds private meetings with various captains and wizards.

The same Abadaran from earlier does a second channel. Tencednil is doing much better now.

She's still scratched, but it's not particularly severe. At this point... Before this all happened, this is about how she would feel if she accidentally let one of the spiders bite her when feeding them. They weren't trying to eat her, not really, and Mother could always handle the poison promptly, but the bites she left as a reminder. They would fade within a day or three. The channels aren't going to stop happening, so if she's still around for the next one she will happily sit in on it, but if something happens within the next hour she's also willing to go out on the streets again in this condition.

Wizards because Locate Object needs to be prepared, of course. Clerics might come cheaper, but for picking up new spells in her middle of the day you want wizards. Are the recovered masks being stored in a lead room? In fact, what can she see of the assassins' belongings? The guard probably has already done its identification, but she'd like to get her own look at things under a Detect Magic even if she's not going to be as good at it as the trained wizards are.

The Guard has identified the assassins magic items and placed them in a sealed room whose walls are lined with lead. Each assassin possessed magic leather armor, a cloak of resistance, and a mask of the mantis. There were also carrying some potions. They are willing to let Tencednil inspect them with detect magic under supervision.

No, if they already know what the items are she's not going to be useful here.

"What does a Mask of the Mantis do? They all had it, and it must do something, but I've never seen one before. Is it a normal enchantment which they just... put on a mantis-shaped helmet?" She makes some gestures in the air, as if trying to figure out how the mantis shape would differ from a normal mask, then gazes confusedly at her air-model.

One of the wizards answers her question. "These masks are very strange. They're wondrous items with charges—three per day. A charge can be spent on one of darkvision, see invisibility, deathwatch, or something similar to keen senses. Each use lasts for thirty minutes."