Two hundred feet away in one of the aforementioned glades, there is an invisible rope (beneath the invisibility, painted camouflage colors) behind a tree, and in the Rope Trick above (but looking down), the King-In-Irons speaks a spell.

And, beneath him, the equally invisible Pedra Casal Lachanessa releases her first Phantom Human Bane arrow from her Anarchic bow, breaking invisibility, which would mean much more if she hadn’t spent most of an hour selecting her hiding place for maximum concealment.

The arrow is, of course, invisible. It is also coated in poison. Since it severs Feliu Mas’s spinal cord when it goes through his throat, the poison is totally unnecessary, as are arrows #2 and #3. When his body hits the ground, the wound closes and the arrows disappear, leaving the “thump” as the only evidence that anything ever occurred.

There are, of course, still a concentric ring of guardposts, each of them staffed with three guards including a wizard, all of them aware that any failure to perform according to custom will get them tortured. And the wizards do have See Invisibility spells.

Have, yes; reliably use, no, not when there are three eight-hour shifts, the spell has a duration of forty minutes to an hour, and they need to save some second-circle spells for Detect Thoughts and combat spells. Even silenced and invisible it takes some stealth for Pedra to recover Mas’s body to feed into her bag of holding, but once that’s complete and the minute-duration spells are cast, the King-In-Irons can use Detect Thoughts to check which guards have which spells active, and then it is not all that difficult for him to find a pair of guardposts guarding an entrance in which coincidentally neither wizard has See Invisibility or Detect Thoughts active.

Every entrance has a regularly-recast Alarm spell that will alert whichever wizard cast it today.

Authorization is given by a passphrase; passphrases of the sort that are known to everyone who works there, including the house slaves with no reason to care for their mistress and the guards who sometimes think the wrong thing while drinking in the village tavern. The passphrase does need to be spoken, true, but no volume that might alert the guards can be specified in the spell.

And what, pray tell, is the lowest Stealth in the group now entering?

Sufficient, since everyone there is invisible and the three people present in the heaviest armor are also carrying rocks with Silence cast on them whenever they don't need to speak.

Someone is going to notice eventually. 

Oh yes, certainly. The problem would be that the first person to notice is a halfling with a mop who notices dirty footprints appearing on her nice, clean floor. She’s clonked on the head with a rock of Silence and her unconscious body is stuffed in a closet.

The intruders will need to let someone know eventually, and doing so will alert the two imps manning the estate's two busiest torture chambers (at opposite ends of the estate, of course) who are bound by Lesser Planar Ally to serve as teleport-messengers in the event of a crisis.

Who can, yes, collect a devilish hit squad from Egorian with four or five times the military power of the entire Court of Exiles within two rounds, possibly including Gorthoklek if he happens to be free.

Which is why the Court of Exiles pauses when they reach a hiding place, cleans the mud off of the boots of Carlos Bosch and Aspex Oriol, and then splits, still invisible. One force to the western dungeons, one to the eastern.

The door to the western dungeon entrance is usually closed. There’s a guard next to it because it's the sort of thing that people looking for places to post guards on do leave someone on.

(The same is true of the east.)

If the western guard gets three Human Bane arrows to the chest from point-blank range, does he live long enough to think about it?

He does not.

And the eastern?

Jaume Vilaro and his Anarchic rapier are an excellent substitute for Pedra’s Human Bane arrows.

The devils themselves? 

The King-In-Irons can handle one Dimensional Anchor.

And the other is the business of Mira Mayapple, who really doesn’t look at all like a fifth-circle cleric of Norgorber should, which is how you get to be a fifth-circle cleric of Norgorber, really.

And then there are people -

- Who can handle the rest.

If they think they can get both imps before either can manage a telepathic scream...

They do not think that at all, no. Just how fast does Demicardinal Scarpo react?

Demicardinal Scarpo (in bed, formerly asleep) will send a quick Message to her security chief alerting him that there’s a break-in, a second to the imp asking for more information, and it isn’t until the third that she gets in touch with his deputy, who can respond.

The King-In-Irons, on a time limit, now completely visible, is running through the halls with supernatural speed, casting his last buffs as he does.

He’s almost six feet in the boots he wears and broad-shouldered, and has a Disguise Self under the invisibility to create the image of an even larger man in imposing steel plate. Under the disguise he’s wearing deep red robes with black and golden trim, and his face and headband are completely covered by a steel mask with an flaming red eye on the forehead and a broken shackle engraved on each cheek, worn under the tight-fitting hood of the cape sweeping behind him. The talismans he wears on a string ‘round his neck are tucked under his shirt, and his rings are concealed under his neat black (totally nonmagical) gloves.

He’s got more magic items than most of the members of the team running with him, but not by much.

The estate’s guards - the reliable men-at-arms of a major feudal landholder, to be clear - were drilled for an attack, and don’t need Scarpo to alert them, not the ones who heard that scream.

And, as it happens, some celestials conjured by Mira and the King are now attacking! Their signal was the guards taking notice.

That’s a traditional decoy, and Mas was intelligent; some of the guards will pay attention to the foes now attacking them, but the rest are going to check with each other that there’s no intruder where they are - some of the guards are checking and noticing muddy footprints at the southwest entrance -

That is going to happen, yes.

The main guardhouse - where the half of the guard neither on duty nor on leave lurks, including the highly-trained rapid response team - is an old stone building, built far enough apart from the rest of the estate that no stray sparks from the overly fragile buildings might leap across. It was made to be defensible, and so has a single entrance, metal-faced gates set into the stone - 

Stone Shaped a solid wall across the front five minutes ago, got a teammate to toss a Silent Image over it so nobody would notice.

And a small, easily-blocked trap door that leads well away from the estate, the pathway narrow and defensible, eventually leading to a concealed entrance in one of the groves outside the estate, just in case someone needed to make a run for it.

The pathway leading through the rock the tower is built on?

Yes...

Stone Shape. An hour ago, this time.

This won't hold them forever.

No, but the King-In-Irons is almost to Scarpo’s chambers.

(By this point, Pedra is singing, though completely inaudibly.)

High Priestess Demicardinal Carme Scarpo is not noticeably more foolish than her chief of security, and makes her home at the top of a small tower whose walls are magically fortified, both of whose staircase entrances, public and secret, can be held by one soldier against an army. Presently holding the door to the spiral staircase that is the public entrance (the secret entrance has - as well as rather a lot of traps - a password on the Alarm only she knows, which even the King-In-Irons was not able to obtain) is the Bearded Devil she summoned and cast two spells on. One of them, obviously, was Spell Immunity (Dismissal), and the bearded devil is enjoying a good deal of cover from projectiles thanks to a cleverly-made stone doorframe.

And at this point there are only three people with the King-In-Irons. One of them is singing invisibly, one of them considers himself a trump card, and the third - 

The third slams into the bearded devil, breaking his invisibility as he does; he’s carrying a tremendously large black glaive, he’s covered with every enhancement spell a very creative two-wizards-plus-cleric-plus-bard team could think to lay in advance, there’s a shield hovering around him to deflect attacks, and also he is much too big for someone that fast and much too fast for someone that big and he’s wearing tremendously large black spiky plate.

Was the other spell Protection from Good, or was it Protection from Chaos?

Good.

Well, unfortunately for the devil, being removed from his Hellknight order (and his head removed from his body) did not, in fact, make Carlos Bosch no longer Lawful Evil.

It did give him a significant grudge against his former bosses, though, considering how unpleasant his stay in Hell was. And his glaive is as Heretical as he is. The devil doesn’t last for very long, especially after there are silver arrows raining down on it, too.

There are still more than a dozen disorganized three-man teams of second- and third-circle wizards and warriors of equivalent power running through the corridors, frantically casting spells as they attempt to locate just where the sound of the commando raid is coming from and occasionally being joined by a junior priest of Asmodeus who is very worried about later interrogation discovering a failure to defend a superior in the Faith and still has significant numbers of buffing and healing spells left. They are lead by the deputy head of security, who is only fourth-circle but is an conjurer of considerable talent, and keeps Dimension Door as a prepared spell (with which he got himself past the Stone Shape on the guardhouse doors).

And they catch up to the winding stair the bottom of which is only wide enough for a single man in armor, and the ones within ten feet of the stair feel chill horror and then they learn why, since the first three of them to go through are - in complete silence - chopped fully in half by a formerly-invisible man in golden armor, arrogant, handsome face visibly grinning behind his helmet. His sword is as black as his comrade’s, and seems to drink the life from the enemies he slays.

Does trying to swarm him polearm-wielding soldiers work?

It does not, actually!

Hold Person from the deputy head of security?

He doesn't roll a 1 on his save, no, why do you ask?

Then in that case he is now being bombarded by arrows and low-level spells from a distance.

All of which have this odd tendency to be deflected by either his armor, his shield, his cover, the implausible number of spells making him nigh-indestructible, the fact that his demonic patrons grant him a considerable degree of resistance to magic, or the minor detail that anyone who’s unwise enough to try getting within the reach of his sword is going to lend him their life energy until they can afford a Raise Dead spell.

You’re going to be here a while, folks.

At the top of the stairs (an equally defensible position to the bottom, and with a Wall of Fire occupying the top step on the staircase) is a massively armored knight in Hellknight plate of his own, shield in one hand and flail in the other, defensive spells making his armor glow further to the King-In-Irons’ permanent Detect Magic, who grins when he sees Bosch coming up the stairs, the King-In-Irons and Pedra (presently invisible, though not for much longer) behind him, and from behind the Hellknight they can hear the sounds of chanting - 

The King-In-Irons tosses his rock of silence over the Hellknight’s head and the sound cuts out. The King-In-Irons is abruptly audible as he speaks the words to his when-in-doubt enchantment, Hold Person.

The spell slides off the Hellknight’s armor - or, more accurately, the enchantment layered over the armor - as if it had never been cast.

Well, by this point Pedra’s singing is audible and her Human Bane arrows are deflecting off the knight’s armor, as the knight and Bosch (equipped with a Protection from Fire spell the night before) trade blows - 

 I suggest that you inform your superiors in the Order about this attack.

Slides off the armor.

The Silence'd rock bounces its way down the stairs, its aura overlapping with the one Oriol's toting, and the chanting resumes.

Dispel Magic.

 I Suggest that you go tell the Hellknights the estate is under attack.

And he withdraws down the secret passageway.

Did the Demicardinal tell him about all the traps in the passageway?

She did not, no! Her “You blithering idiot, they blocked the escape -” arrives unfortunately after the sound of his screams when the floor drops out from under him and lands him in a pit of acid.

As happens.

Indeed. Thanks to some very swift scroll-casting, she’s about twice her normal height, wearing armor made of solid ice, also somehow wreathed in flames, and glowing with divine power.

Human Bane arrows, Heretical greatsword, a lot of Dispel Magic.

It’s not a very long fight, no.

Then into the bag of holding goes her corpse (to be separated from its magical items later), the corpse of her Hellknight (once retrieved with a scroll of Telekinesis, that being presumably a worthwhile investment) and the King-In-Irons and a couple of Celestial Eagles can search the room for anything else useful, while - 

Aspex ditches his Silenced rocks, and -

Disguise Self, Glibness, and then a woman wearing the robes of an Asmodean priestess of rather higher rank than Carme Scarpo and an aura of absolute authority walks down the stairs, looks at the bloody mess below, and says - voice projecting over the sound of slaughter - “Carme Scarpo has been judged by Asmodeus’s law and held wanting.”

Wait, what?

Sure looks like there’s a Hellknight standing behind her looking imposing!

“The rest of you will be questioned to determine what role you played in her delinquency,” she says - 

It is the opinion of the King-In-Irons that Pedra can be trusted to handle the bullshit, yes.

By the time he finishes searching the room, the army has surrendered to their rightful superiors, thrown down their weapons (into the bags of holding!), and been ordered to their quarters, and the team can head down to Scarpo’s treasury, where she keeps the taxes collected from her domain -

Which Mira Mayapple, Jaume Vilaro, and Felip Zhen have in fact now finished looting, their bags of holding already loaded up with not just the gold and silver but with Zhen’s hasted zombie servants (which had done most of the hauling). Zhen tosses a flaming sphere up the stairs because screw Cheliax, then he and Vilaro crawl into bags of holding -

- and the King-In-Irons draws a scroll from one of his bags of holding and casts teleport.

The total time elapsed was one minute, forty-eight seconds.

They appear in the teleport room of the King-In-Irons’ Absalom mansion, which is, of course, surrounded by armed guards, and get to work. The people in bags of holding can stop holding their breath and get out, and the bags themselves can be looted - the gold and silver counted, the art and gems appraised, the magic items removed from the bodies, which will be sold to the Church of Abadar if they have resurrection insurance and to a medical school if not, and identified… there’s a great deal of work to do.

Not, however, so much that the King-In-Irons (still wearing his mask, which he does, in fact, eat and sleep in, since the bottom part of it is detachable) does not pause, and go to his shrine, where burns four altars to four great gods.

And there he pauses, and prays, and offers incense - to Norgorber, god of crime and his own patron, to celebrate his successful theft; to Calistria, goddess of vengeance, for his triumph over those who wronged him; to Gorum for the triumph he has won in battle, and to Iomedae, for the victory was over their shared enemy.

He does in fact hope that one of the gods he sacrifices to prays will offer him warning if the time comes that Cheliax returns the favor he has done them, and his security mechanisms are excellent, and his mansion was built as a deathtrap for attackers - he’s planning to have a Forbiddance spell cast over it, if the proceeds of this raid let him afford to pay a cleric for it, and a permanent Teleport Trap as well when he can afford it - and if Cheliax hires a bad assassin, as they have in the past, he expects he will manage quite well.

But the King-In-Irons is frankly not expecting to survive the day that Cheliax takes killing him seriously.

He merely intends to ensure that, when that day comes, it is Aspexia Rugatonn or Abrogail Thrune or Gorthoklek, themselves, who take the time to destroy him. That he will, in the end, have injured them enough, that it is they, themselves, who take the time to risk a war with Absalom to destroy him, and pay the price in blood and spells and shattered diplomacy to put an end to the King-In-Irons.

He does not think he can end Cheliax, after all, and when he dies they will Maledict him, and he will be a paving stone in Hell forever.

But he will demand the highest price for his life that he can.

Because screw you, Abrogail Thrune, and the god you rode in on, if you think a petty death in a prison cell is the best use that can be made of Alexandre Esquerra.