There is more shouting. Lucea barely parses it until the man addresses her personally. 

"Who are you?" he asks grimly. 

"Lucea Westhill," she grits out. "Assigned to Fort Traves, under the command of Marit Heliu." 

His brows knit. "Fort Traves is a long way from here." 

"My unit was ambushed. I don't know," she winces in pain, "how I got here." 

"Hmm." 

He doesn't look especially satisfied, but before he can ask her any more questions, a woman in shining armor approaches. 

"My dear Prelate, please--for the sake of the festivities, stop interrogating this poor woman. She has been through enough already. Go on, I'll take care of her." 

The Prelate accedes with exceedingly bad grace. The woman crouches, and casts--

The pain retreats like a bad dream. 

"Thank you," Lucea says fervently, levering herself cautiously into a sitting position lest careless movement jar loose some remnant of injury. 

"I accept your thanks. But my work is not yet done," the woman says kindly. 

"What do you mean? --What happened to me?" 

"I do not know yet--and that troubles me. I am not entirely sure what the demons did to you. This wound is no ordinary injury, and was inflicted by no ordinary weapon. I have rid you of your pain and restored your strength, but only time will allow you to heal fully." 

That does NOT sound like how healing magic is supposed to work at ALL. What the fuck was done to her, between the site where her patrol was ambushed, and here???

The woman--Terendelev--promises to look at her more thoroughly tommorow, after the festival, and exhorts her to enjoy it in the meanwhile. 

...Well. She can hardly be expected to get back to Fort Traves by herself very quickly after landing, somehow, in Mendev. It would be reasonable to send a letter first, even, asking for instructions. She can afford the time to enjoy a festival. 

Can she now. Can she really. 

Aw, fuck, COME ON.

She just recovered--sort of--from the last thing that was super, super, going to kill her. An actual? Fucking? Demon Lord??? She's going to actually die this time. 

Terendelev assumes her draconic form. It is majestic for the approximately half a round before Deskari beheads her. 

The halfling from before ends up huddled behind the same sturdy festival table as her--fat lot of good it's going to do in the long run, but--for now--

"You gonna fight, or run?" 

"Fight," she snaps. She didn't run away to Lastwall to fight at the Worldwound because it was safe. She doesn't want to die, but she likes where she's going. Probably. She's not really strong enough to get a clear reading, but dying in a futile attempt to sting the hide of a demon lord can't hurt her Good points. And most of those fleeing are civilians. If she buys them a little time--

The halfling gives her a crossbow. She ignores his exhortation that it could pierce even the hide of a demon lord. 

She stands. She fires. 

...She hits?

Deskari turns his gaze towards her. 

That looks like an opening to someone else.

There is a loud and horrific and disonant sound of screeching and grinding. It does not originate from Lucea's tiny bolt, but from somewhere behind the massive Demon Lord.

The sound, or perhaps the strike, does... something... and Deskari himself is momentarily stunned. There is no sign of whatever was responsible.

There is also no sign of Terendelev's corpse.

Deskari is REALLY PISSED OFF BY THIS and, also, not totally sure what happened? To Deskari's superhuman senses that sort of seemed like an ordinary non-magical sword that wasn't even cold iron, and it's ridiculous to think one of those could penetrate his hide unless wielded by Iomedae herself, who is NOT HERE despite his calling her out explicitly. Also he seems to have lost track of the dead dragon, which also shouldn't be possible. 

Deskari is the kind of entity who reacts to confusion by being MORE PISSED OFF. Time to open a chasm under the feet of Irritant #1. 

Gah! 

Ordinarily a giant chasm would not really be a problem for at least one of the combatants involved in this encounter, but...

... look, Lucea isn't the only one here that is not okay. Someone would like to second her 'Gah,' actually.

The chasm opens, and someone stumbles and falls in, and goddamn does it feel like he hits every single bit of cliff face on the way down. That's probably a good thing, even though it hurts. Something something slowed momentum.

She's alive. What the fuck, how is she alive. 

Apparently it was...beneath...Deskari's...dignity? To kill her directly? Or something??? 

Okay. Well. The fact that survival was not going to happen does not mean survival isn't happening. She levers herself to her feet and looks around. 

There is a man nearby, looking like he had a rather worse time of the fall than she did. There are bruises. He's in a nightshirt and some loose breeches, clutching a (stolen) steel shortsword in his right hand.

"Gods damned area of effect bullshit..." he's muttering, breathing heavily and looking at the chasm like he has half a mind to try to climb right back up it immediately.

"Are you okay? I have a little healing." 

"Nnnghhhahhmmmno but save it for someone who needs it more, my actual problem is, weirder," he grunts out, and he begins the attempt to get up.

It fails. Rather pathetically, actually. Just little ability to support himself at all.

"........ okay, maybe," he grumbles, irritated, from his place crumpled on the ground. "Check for, um, anyone dying first?"

"I haven't seen anyone else yet but I haven't looked far." She offers him a hand to help him up. 

He accepts the hand and, yep, he needs the help up. It is in fact mostly on her to get him up, but once he's up he can manage to hold himself up with judicious leaning on the wall. For all that he's clearly in some kind of agony, his injuries don't look like they warrant it.

"Thanks."

"Are you mobile? I'd sooner not split up if we don't have to." 

"Mmnnh. Let's see." Can he, with his very best friend, this wall right here, manage to move forward a bit? ... He can! Amazing!

"Sort'f. Augh." He glances back up towards the hole they fell through, looking like he's considering attempting to scale it. Somehow. ".... But not back up there, I bet."

That last part seems more to himself than to her, like he's talking himself out of an idea he knows is bad.

"Not unless you can fly. Do you need to lean on me?"

"That'd be great, yeah. Thanks. ... I'm Veron, hi."

"Lucea. You any good with that sword?" She offers him an arm-slash-shoulder. 

He seems to find this question amusing; he almost cracks a smile.

"Ehn. Right now? Not really. Could be downed by a damned gust of wind..."

"Well, I'm a song-sorceress with a few spells left today. I can use a scythe but mine was confiscated by the guards." 

"There seems to be a lot of that going around, bet they've got a hoard fit for a dragon by now," he mutters. "... Uh, rogue. For me, I mean."

"I hear that prejudices guards into confiscating your stuff."

"Which ironically forced me into thievery! Broken system, that." He glances and points in a direction. "Thataway looks like it broke into a cavern system, might be worth looking into."

"If you only stole that after Deskari showed up I don't think that counts." She helps him in that general direction.