She retrieves her tools from a hidden pocket and sets to work on the lock. At a couple points she pauses to request an additional Guidance before taking a look from a slightly different angle. After a couple of false starts, the lock pops open.

(Blai's intuitive sense of the land no longer thinks there's something like a collapsed tunnel in the area.)

Yes, he is getting the sense that the spell is not fully cognizant of doors. "Thank you." Detect back up. Marching order. Onward.

Behind the door is a long staircase, curving up and to the right, with an open doorway at the very top. (His intuitive sense of direction thinks that a little ways past the doorway, he could descend something like a hill, or jump off something like a small cliff, in order to make his way into a large cavern.)

When he's a couple paces from the doorway, he feels a fiendish presence of overwhelming power, the sort that could be a sixth-circle cleric or could be a gibrileth or could be a balor, and his Detect Fiendish Presence cuts out. The sheer force of the aura is enough to leave him momentarily stunned.

Blink. "You okay?"

"Praise Iomedae!" shouts someone in the room in front of them.

There's a crunching sound, barely loud enough to hear at this distance.

"Here you are," says another voice, low and guttural and definitely not human. "Huddled together like a herd of animals. Pitiful monsters, all of you. Even tieflings are less defective than you."

"The kids — they're still alive!" 

As Blai shakes himself free of the stun, Lann starts to rush towards the doorway.

Camellia follows behind him, licking her lips.

Blai makes a valiant attempt to grab each by the collar. "Shhh. We are badly undercircled for this," he hisses. "Buffs first."

Okay, fine, it's probably worth waiting a few moments if it means they're more likely to actually save the kids.

Nod. "Who would you like me to cast my Enlarge Person on?"

"Either me or Ser Seelah." Bless is a minute buff; if nobody looks like they're chewing on a complaint about going into this room at all he'll cast that now. Everybody gets a Guidance.

Wenduag looks like she's expecting them all to die, but not like she wants to complain on that basis.

Camellia casts the Enlarge Person on Blai, then assists with her own castings of Guidance.

Seelah tries to Detect Evil on the room in front of them and has to spend a moment shaking off the stun. (Blai and Camellia are still casting Guidance, so this doesn't actually slow them down.)

As they're buffing, more conversation is audible:

"But I, your master Savamalekh, can make you better, stronger," says the inhuman voice from before. "I can satisfy your hunger, starvelings of the dark. Submit to me!"

 "No!" shouts a voice with the same accent as Wenduag. "We are the d-descendants of the first crusaders, asshole, and we're not going to listen to a fucking demon!"

There's another crunching sound.

"Well?" says a woman's voice in a Mendevian accent, dripping with sarcasm. "Any other brave and heroic descendants of crusaders feel like putting those old stories above their lives?"

 "Beasts, monsters in human guise, reveal your true nature!" shouts the inhuman voice. "This is the sweet, wholesome flesh of a righteous aasimar! Devour the crusader from above, and you will find your true strength!"

Prayer he wants to drop when they're in the thick of it. He summons a celestial boar, and then he goes for the door.

Through the door is a balcony, with stairs to his left and right leading down into a large room. A vrolikai is pacing on the lower floor, with knives of solid coal-black fire in each of its four hands. The corpse of an aasimar is lying at its feet, with the corpse of a young mongrel nearby. Three young mongrels are tearing at the aasimar's flesh, supervised by a woman with a glaive and a stylized-bull's-head unholy symbol. She pokes her glaive at a fourth mongrel, who leans in, trembling, and takes a nibble; the moment he does, his breathing becomes more rapid, and he starts tearing ferociously at its flesh, all trace of fear gone.

A nabasu would be a challenging fight for Blai's party; they might be able to defeat it, if they were careful enough and lucky enough, but there's a good chance they wouldn't all survive. A nabasu that devoured an entire fort of warriors and bound their souls to its service, gaining a spark of each of their power as it did so, could gain the power to transform itself into a vrolikai. A completely unexceptional vrolikai can strike at a foe nine times in a single moment. If the blood loss isn't enough to kill, every strike it makes with its knives can drain its victim's life-force, and the lash of its tail can drive its victim temporarily mad, nigh-incapable of distinguishing friend from foe. Staring directly at a vrolikai's eyes can likewise rob someone of their life-force, and those who perish of it are reborn as a vrolikai's undead slaves. Vrolikai are rare at the Worldwound — the rare nabasu that manages to transform into one generally prefers to rule over territory in the Abyss — but when they are spotted, standard operating procedure is to send a strike team by Teleport with every member under a Death Ward.

Then he guesses this is how he dies: fighting.

The boar charges. Blai runs into place for a Prayer.

As he races down the staircase, he can feel something twisting inside of him, pressing against the back of his head, longing to be free. Just as earlier he felt Lariel's emotions at the moment of his death, now he feels burning rage and gnawing hunger coiling together, their source unclear, crying that if only he would let it take control, it would rip the vrolikai's stupid ugly wings off its back, could tear it apart piece by piece until it wished it were dead. Every step is more difficult, as the rage and hunger grow more and more insistent that he listen. It would be so easy, it says.

But at the same time, he can feel the place where Lariel's sword settled inside of him. The sword remembers Lariel's last moments, and it wants him to know that it isn't too late. That a drop of Lariel's power has lingered within it all these decades, and it wants to help, wants to protect as many people from Savamelekh as it can. That there is still hope for him, still hope for his companions, still hope for the mongrel children. He could call on its power, too, as easily as drawing a sword.

WHY ARE TWO ENCHANTMENTS HAVING A FIGHT INSIDE OF HIM

HE AGREES WITH THE ANGEL ONE HE GUESSES

A sword of light manifests in his hand for an instant, driving back the other enchantment's influence, and light washes through the room. The young mongrels stop tearing apart the aasimar's corpse and look around at each other, blinking in confusion. One of them starts crying, burying her head in her knees.

A bolt of light flies from the sword, straight towards Savamelekh, sweeping him off his feet and surrounding him with golden light. Savamalekh lets out a deep, guttural howl, and when the light recedes, he's badly wounded.

The wound on Blai's chest has opened again, but rather than blood, light radiates out of it.

What the fuck??? Mortals aren't supposed to be able to do that???

Savamalekh looks around the room, his gaze momentarily rendered harmless, before settling on the woman accompanying him. "Destroy this vermin!"

And then he disappears, leaving Blai and his companions alone with the woman and the mongrels.

........back to the previously scheduled fight but now more survivably he guesses? Why does his chest feel like that, he can't see it, he's got looted armor on now -

- his plan was to drop a Prayer. He drops a Prayer.

Wow, Hosilla does not want to fight someone who can do whatever that was. Fucking Savamalekh, what's even the point of working for a powerful demon if they bail the moment things start looking tough?

"He's already wounded! Wenduag — kill!"