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. 

"You can feel free to explain that to the next paladin we meet."

He is not quite entirely dead weight, but uh. Yeah he will need much help, he is extremely not okay.

Right up ahead, there is: a paladin. 

Also a woman trapped by the leg under a bunch of rock. "Holy mother of..." she hisses, and then a number of very locally colorful words. 

"Hey! Hey! Stay with me," the paladin says. "You actually got pretty lucky, you fell down into a black hole, but at least you're not on your own, you've got a great companion...everything's going to be just fine...tell me something: can you feel your legs?"

The other woman grunts in pain. "I feel 'em all right, wouldn't say no to a little less feelin' in 'em...my ankle's killing me. But my back seems to still be in one piece. My head, too." 

"That's all that matters. Now, we're going to--hey!" she calls, as she spots the approaching pair in the dim light coming through the crack in the cavern ceiling. 

"Hi. Need some help?"

Ha.

He doesn't actually laugh, because this is not a laughing matter, but damn if someone doesn't have a sense of humor.

"Looks like that's probably leverage-able, from, uh...." he waves vaguely with his shortsword towards a part of the rock. "thereish."

She squints at the rock. "Thanks. How badly are you hurt?" 

"Is it okay if I put you down for a minute?" 

"Absolutely. Next to the rock, please, bet I can set up something clever with my oversized toothpick." This directed, he gets to answering the paladin's question: "Ehhn. Moving hasn't been happening, but nothing's broken and I'm stable, so. Not the worst one here."

She sets him down and attempts to help him lever rocks out of the way, since the two of them are the ones who can reliably see. 

"You're the one Terendelev healed, right?" the paladin asks, after examining her face a little longer. 

Lucea nods grimly. "Yeah. I'm grateful, but--" she shakes her head. "It just seems so small, considering." 

"That's no way of looking at it. You're here getting rocks out of the way! You couldn't do that if you were still bleeding out while the square was being attacked." 

"...Yeah." Lucea smiles a little. "I'm Lucea." 

"Seelah," the paladin says. "I'd offer to shake your hand, but..." 

"Please do not drop rocks on me to be polite," the trapped woman grouses. 

"Veron," says the apparent human who nonetheless clearly has darkvision. His shortsword gets itself a little bit bent in the process, but rocks are in fact leveraged off of the trapped woman.

He then immediately starts assessing the injury. "Mm. Broken. Not the worst, not the best. Lucea, you any good at setting bones?"

"I have the ability to tie knots and am aware that bones ought to be straight. I have never actually had to do it. If anyone needs a baby delivered I'll be first in line to help!" 

Seelah snorts so hard she has to stop and steady the rock she's lifting lest she accidentally drop it. "I don't think we're going to run into that problem any time soon." 

"I certainly hope not," says the trapped woman, weak amusement breaking through the pain. "...I'm Anevia." 

"'Kay. Don't worry, I'll get it. But we should save healing magic for after someone better at it checks my work. Don't want it to heal wrong, that makes it worse for everyone." He reaches for something at his hip which is... definitely not there, and sighs. "... Right, uh. Straight solid things and something to tie knots with? If there are any of those around?"

Is he going to have to take his shirt off? To tear for fabric for a splint? He feels naked enough already, he doesn't want to also take his shirt off.

"Gimme your shitty sword." Her clothes are sufficiently layered that she can lose a few inches off the outermost garment without any real decrease in modesty, and in shitty enough condition that she feels no great loss in damaging them further. 

Shitty sword is handed over! Hooray, he gets to keep what little clothes he has on.

She finds some places where her clothes aren't so tattered as to be useless for bandages and slices them off, Prestidigitating them clean before handing them over. 

There's a bit of rubble of a food stall that also fell from above; it can be taken apart without too much trouble to get straight bits of wood to make a splint.

"Sorry about this," he says to Anevia, and then he gets to the grim and painful work of setting her ankle. He's efficient and clearly some degree of practiced at this sort of thing; it's neatly splinted in almost record time. "Don't think I got it perfect, ankles are fiddly, so avoid healing magic if you can, 'til someone better looks at it."

"Great," she grimaces. "Well, I'll hobble my way out of here somehow...the city is only thirty paces away, after all." Sigh. "Straight up. We're going to have to take the long way." 

"Well," Seelah says, "there's four of us, with five working legs, four sets of good hands, three clear heads, and one made of wood--that's mine," she winks, "Underground monsters beware! I'll take point." 

“I can be your eyes, if you don’t mind half carrying me. Right’s your sword arm?”

"I should probably keep carrying you, it's been working so far and I only need one hand to cast." 

"I don't mind being unceremoniously dropped," he says with a shrug. "And we're the two that can see, yeah? So we should have two perspectives for falling rocks and ambushes and the like."

"Alrighty then." 

Since Seelah, with Veron half on her shoulder, is in front, he'll see the half-broken chest amongst fallen rocks first. 

He points it out, of course. Ordinarily he'd also offer to get it open, but it doesn't look like it needs that kind of thing, being half-broken, and besides. He doesn't even have thieves' tools on him. A travesty, truly.

The thing is not only half-broken, it wasn't even originally locked. The lock is not one of the broken parts and the lid opens smoothly. 

The chest contains: 

(1) crossbow

(1) dagger

(2) everburning torches

(1) spear

(1) longsword

(1) flail

and (1) cloak of resistance. 

"Jackpot," Lucea breathes, then looks around the group assessingly and gives the cloak to Seelah. 

It is only comparatively a jackpot, and a much smaller jackpot than would be available if Veron were able to message home and ask for his backup-backup gear. But he cannot, so: yep, jackpot. Wish there were some thieves' tools, though.

... Oh, Lucea uses a scythe and he had a perfectly good opportunity to maybe steal one for her up above, didn't he. And he didn't even try for it. Granted, he had other things on his mind at the time and is hardly running at 100%, and didn't know he'd be grouping up with someone with proficiency, but still. Damn. Silly rogue, for not at least trying to steal everything not nailed down. In his defense, he stole the very important bits.

"I'll have the dagger, please," he says, regardless of these thoughts.

"Sure." 

She'll take the crossbow, then, and the spear--she's not great with a spear, but it's pretty simple, pointy end goes in enemy, and you aren't going to maybe hurt yourself with it like you are a sword. The torches can also stay out, for Anevia and Seelah's benefit, and then she takes off her outermost layer to wrap the remaining weapons in as a makeshift pack. 

Veron misses his bag of holding. Also having stuff in general. That was nice.

Anyway, onwards!

A little farther down the tunnel there is something on the ground that catches what little light there is and reflects it brilliantly. 

"I think this is one of Terendelev's scales," Lucea murmurs, turning it over and wiping blood off the other side. 

That causes Veron to brighten.

"Looks like. Keep a hold of it, a wizard or something can use it to track down her body, see about raising her."

...Lucea carefully cuts off the bit of fabric she wiped the blood on and pockets that too. 

"Track down her body?" Anevia asks. 

"Oh. Uh." Wince. "The Demon Lord got her. He didn't get her corpse, though."

"I knew Deskari killed her," Anevia says grimly, "it was kind of hard to miss. It just seems like a full-sized dragon's body would be hard to misplace." 

"Eh. Not exactly misplaced? But a locating spell or whatever would make it much easier."

"Is it not just where it fell?" Seelah asks. 

"Nope."

"But you're sure Deskari doesn't have it?"

"He seemed pretty pissed when I last saw him, and it was gone by then."

"That," Anevia says grimly, "doesn't mean he doesn't have it." She really hopes this does not result in the Worldwound forces having to fight horrifying undead Terendelev but she is NOT OPTIMISTIC. 

"Guess not, but I like to be an optimist." And also he was the one to shove it unceremoniously to the Plane of Shadow, where Deskari can't get it. "I'll take that bet, if you want consolation money if the demons bring her back on the wrong side."

Anevia snorts. "Haven't got any on me, don't know that my house hasn't been burned to the ground and looted by now. Pass."

"I'm similarly separated from my coin. Oh well. Winner gets to say 'I told you so'?"

"Sure, I'll take that bet." 

"If Deskari has her body we should try to see if there's anyone in the city who can cast Resurrection--or Teleport--right away, in case he dawdles on reanimating her." 

"Agreed. But we've got to get out of here first."

"Yeah." 

Is that another person up ahead? Or...two people, maybe?

.... One person, and one body who once contained a person. Ah... huh.

"Careful," murmurs Veron to Seelah. "Might not be friendly."

Seelah squints against the darkness. "She doesn't look like a demon," she says, quietly. 

"That's not why." He raises his voice. "Hey uh, did he try to rob you or something?"

"No," the young--half?--elven woman says, after startling and turning to see the group. "I found him like this. I tried to stabilize him, but he was already too far gone." 

"Nope. Try again. Less lying this time."

"--What?"

"You heard me. Why'd you kill him?"

"I didn't."

"Ma'am I said less lying, not 'pretty please double down.' There are legitimate reasons why a young lady might need to kill someone to defend herself, but you're making them less an' less likely."

"Uh," says Seelah, "why are you so sure she killed him?" 

"The injuries he's got match with the rapier she's got. And her injuries look like someone realized they were being stabbed and made an attempt to defend themselves. And she was... staring. At him. Not in a 'I just watched someone die and am traumatized' kind of way, like, like a cat that was sad its mouse stopped squeaking."

"She doesn't read Evil," Seelah says slowly. 

"That's not nothing, but there are ways around Detect Evil. You'll notice I'm not advocating for her execution or something. I'm asking her to please stop lying to us."

Camellia's expression flickers through "uncertain" for a moment--briefly enough that those without darkvision probably missed it--and clasps her hands and begins, serenely, telling a story of a spirit of old Sarkoris, corrupted by the Worldwound and the violence it brings, and how she has decided to name it Mireya and interpret its rancid vibes as "kill enough people and I'll tell you how to close the Worldwound." 

“…. Ah huh. Well. Bit of advice: don’t do that. Is this spirit attached to you, just hanging around, bound to an object, or….?”

"The ways of the spirits are often mysterious." 

“They sure are. Don’t know, then?”

She shrugs. 

"Is it...possible to not read as Evil on account of being so disconnected to reality that you're not considered responsible for your actions???" Lucea mutters, loud enough that her three companions can hear it but soft enough that Camellia--wait, shit, possibly can too, half-elf. 

Veron gives a subtle headshake.

Then, to the half-elf:

“Well, can I look you over for signs of possession? If it’s in you it might cause problems, later. Or I could maybe figure out which way it went, so we can avoid it.”

"No thank you," she says, stepping backwards. 

"Ma'am, if there's a spirit in you, then the faster we get it out, the less damage it'll cause to you."

"Fine." 

Veron has, by this point in time, regained enough of his strength to manage to get to her to inspect her for signs of possession without too much assistance.

Okay but what if, instead of that, stab. 

Huh? How would she do that without a rapier?

What. What the fuck. 

At this point however it is VERY CLEAR to the paladin that this is NOT a misunderstanding. So, uh, yeah, stab. 

Ahuh.

Well, he's still a bit shaky, but this is in fact the perfect setup for a sneak attack. He's not at his best, but his not-best is still good enough to slip around and give this very distracted woman an ever so gentle knock upside the skull. Nonlethal, because there's a paladin, you know, right there, being his distraction. This sort of thing is just respectful.

Lucea, who is not a paladin, decides that this is an excellent moment to begin relieving the other woman of her stuff. 

When the necklace comes off Seelah flinches. 

"Evil," she says grimly. 

"Thought so," sighs Veron, sounding terribly disappointed. The threat handled, he'll just have himself a nice little sit, how about, wow was that knockout weirdly tiring. The looting's being handled. He'll step in if it looks like Lucea misses anything, but she's doing fine.

"We don't have the resources to drag her off to prison or turn her to stone or something, do we."

"I'd be shocked if anyone has the resources to drag her off to prison, with the city filled with demons," Lucea says gloomily. 

"Yeah." If he still had Ex-Enserric, he'd see about absorbing her soul with it, since being a sword is likely to be better than whatever afterlife this person is going to get, but. He sure doesn't have that anymore, does he.

"I can get her if we're all agreed, just, uh, give me a minute. I'm really not at my best today."

He does in fact seem pretty winded, for all that he did hit her once.

"No, I've got it," Seelah says, stepping forward to deliver the coup de grace. 

She sighs sadly. "Damn shame. How people can run around murdering each other when there's demons around I can't imagine." 

"Yeah. But she can't do it anymore, so. That's... not nothing." And he does look, at the man she killed before they got there, and. Well. That's also a damn shame, isn't it.

At least Murder Victim Guy probably gets an okay afterlife. Not that Lucea doesn't understand how incentives work, but you know how they don't work? How sad she personally feels. So. 

"--I think I recognize him," Anevia says, hobbling closer and holding one of the torches. "Aravashnial. He hung out at the library a lot. Kind of stuck up, but he didn't deserve this." 

"May his next life be kinder than this one." And with that cheering thought, Veron will get back to standing up, thank you. He can.... mostly do it on his own this time, though he does almost tip over and fall on his face.

Anevia checks Aravashnial's body for useful objects too and turns up a better dagger than was in the chest. 

Eh. He's good. He'll stick with his shiny new rapier and shortsword combo for now. And Anevia should have something to defend herself if she gets jumped.

Sure. No complaints from her about that. 

A short while later those with darkvision will spot a fuckoff-huge centipede. 

"Centipede. Watch its bite, it’s venomous."

But they can probably take it just fine without him needing to do much. He'll hang by Seelah and be prepared to sneak attack.

Lucea...is a song-sorceress. 

She doesn't do much in the way of direct damage, but even leaving aside the fact that Seelah hits 5% more often, she is, actually, just good at singing. 

Yeah, they're fine. It occurred to him to do the standard rogue thing and sneak ahead and stab and whatnot, but uh, he probably should hold back and try to recover from... whatever's going on with him.

The (giant) centipede dies without him needing to touch it at all.

"Well done," he says, immediately doing the sensible thing and poisoning his weapons via the centipede's mandibles.

Lucea does not do that because she only mostly trusts herself not to accidentally poke any friendlies with her spear. 

Continuing through the caves, they encounter:

Several more examples of large, aggressive cave fauna

A couple more lootable corpses, none of them recently murdered like Aravashnial

And, finally, what seems to be an actual constructed room of some kind--albeit damaged and rubble-strewn--from which voices can be heard. 

"No I can't just walk away, it's got to be here somewhere!" a young man's voice says, frustrated. 

"What're you looking for?" asks the man who hadn't been there before, and who takes joy in the little things in life.

A man who looks like someone splashed Oil Of Turn Into Lizard all over his left side and a woman covered in fur with spider legs growing from her back jump and now he has two nocked arrows pointed at him. 

This is to be expected, really. Also, tactically speaking, the arrows being pointed at him means that the rest of his party is free to get the drop on them. They are unlikely to do that, but he can pretend that's the reason why he made the choices he did regardless.

He gives a wave, far more at ease being threatened than most people would be.

"Hey. Fell down from above, looking for the way back up that doesn't involve climbing. Maybe we can help each other out?"

...The man lowers his bow. The woman emphatically does not. 

"What's been happening on the surface?" the man asks. 

"Demons. Lots of 'em. It's, uh, it's bad."

"Deskari himself showed up and killed Terendelev." 

The man draws in a hissing breath. "If things are as bad as you say, we've got to hurry." 

The woman starts muttering to herself about something called the Shield Maze. 

If Deekin were here, the two of them would share a look of understanding about how, yes, this Shield Maze probably is the only way out of here, and that, yes, it’s very dumb. Alas, Deekin is not here. (And will probably be pissed that Veron tripped into an adventure without him. Oops.)

“Hurry finding your thing?” clarifies Veron, who wants to keep the plot hooks separate for now.

"Sure," says the man. "We're looking for a holy sword. Some of our kids ran off into the Shield Maze, and our Chief is dragging his heels on going after them--like usual. If we find the angel's sword, we can use it to rally the tribe and save the kids. Except it's supposed to be in a rock in the center of the room, and it's not." 

"This is a fool's errand," the woman hisses. "That sword is made of holy flame! Nobody has been able to touch it, and you won't either." 

"Ah. Sword of holy flame, to rally your people to work together. Gotcha." Of course, the clear thing to do when kids have stupidly run off into the deadly dungeon thing, is to send in a professional adventurer of some kind to go get them. Dungeons don't really yield to numbers like many other problems, they just get more people dead. So while he's not against the whole 'rally the tribe in times of strife' thing, he is definitely against sending the tribe in first. Clearly, he's going to need to be the one to do that.

(Damn it, this is how he always gets into these messes.)

This decided, he gets to looking. The room's partially collapsed, and 'middle' is relative. Middle of the room now is not necessarily middle of the room before things started getting crumbly. So... looking at the construction of this place, which part would kind of seem like it would be the center of the room, if the room hadn't been earthquaked? What rubble is the most recent, and is it easily amenable to searching?

The rubble is highly amenable to searching and contains an appealing selection of objects that would be valuable on the surface but pretty much worthless when you're barely-subsistence-level hunter-gatherer tribes with approximately zero trade with anyone else. 

The center of the room is...probably over there-ish, aaaand the most recent rubble is...probably one of those piles?

He doesn't have a bag anymore, but he does have pockets, so. Sure, why not, he'll also pick up the shiny gemstones and whatnot while he's looking. And he will be looking in one of those piles, over there.

While he's seen angelic weapons before, usually in use for their intended purpose, he's never actually gone and directly touched one. Still, there's a bit of an... aura... to this pile of rubble right here, of warmth and sunlight and certainty and of a good deed done. It's subtle and tricky to pick out, but in the gloom of this broken and forgotten reliquary of the past, it's enough to work from. Once he's on the right track, it's pretty easy to follow, and soon enough, one of his fingers brushes against something that feels like... hope. Hidden from the world, waiting for its time to shine, because the last wielder of it couldn't manage to bear the torch any longer. This being strange magic bullshit, he's not clear on the particulars, but... he thinks the last one to hold this weapon was in a lot of trouble. Up against something terrible, and losing. And instead of letting this little light darken forever, it was hidden, so that one day, someone else could pick it up. In context, that someone is him. The sword comes smoothly out of the rubble and into his hand like a pet that's been kept waiting for far too long, and in a way, it kind of is. How long has this poor, beautiful sword been stuck down here, irrelevant, just waiting for someone that understands what it's about? He doesn't know.

What he does know is that there is now a bit of a light show. A literal one. Golden glow of Heaven upon him or, uh, something. A celebration of at last, someone who gets it, someone who can go on with my mission. It is the first time this place has seen sunlight in a long, long time.