The reveal of information was relatively rapid from then on out–Sir Yanin’s diligent caution did not escape Deo’Irah’s attention, focused even on the most minute of details even now. He had certainly proven his keen intellect in her mind, though she suspected the scope of his piercing gaze might be its downfall–the price of his powerful grasp of the minutiae was a far more nebulous grasp of the wider abstract concepts at play. She made a mental note of it, and her mind turned to Jordan for the briefest of moments–that was likely his role in their partnership. He seemed… astute and unpretentious, able to avoid the common pitfall of more cerebral thinkers like his master (and indeed herself and Lhirin) thinking themselves into traps most people simply would never conceive of. Even in their movements, the flow of information and commands from the knight to his squire, there was something that naturally drew Irah’s attention. She shelved that observation for later too, focusing intently on the door that was about to be opened and the situation revealed.

She could already feel the divine energy too, offering a very quiet explanation of what precisely exposure to divine energy felt like–she was very curious as to why he was not able to feel it in the same way that they did: “You will only feel it; a prickling itch, then painful exhaustion until death. Do you not?”

Irah watched the scene around them unfold, her eyes narrowing in intensity as she attempted to emulate some of the granular attention to detail that Lhirin normally displayed, somewhat inspired by Sir Yanin, and focused on the details that mattered. In her periphery she could see Freagon’s movements, reaching into his coinpurse for… ah. Rodlin were pure silver. It was easy for her to forget, with her native currency of Kyrin being more crystalline and thus not interacting with energies in the same way that Rodlin did. Another display of aptitude from the mysterious Freagon. She continued her examinations while she awaited the inevitable result, listening out for the sound while her eyes were trained elsewhere.

The Archangel’s likeness seemed mostly to conflate with her understanding–snippets gleaned from stories, from books, from speaking with divines such as Kinder. She focused intently for a moment on the sword itself–she’d heard it described that the telekinetic ability of the Archangels functioned like an invisible hand, observable only through keen attention to the displacement of air currents about it. She attempted to discern any details regarding this that she could, and also observed the peculiar circle of fire and coursing bolts of lightning that it had chosen to display. The abilities, together, did not answer her earlier pondering over which deity this divine owed allegiance to. She then simply spoke to Kinder, keenly aware from earlier that while the senses she offered had detected the divines present it had also alerted them to hers. Indeed, Kinder had told her earlier that the divine they stood before now was attempting to hide--this flamboyant display smacked too much of a ruse, she thought, and then the ping of the Rodlin against the wall behind them chimed in too. She proceeded to commune with Kinder directly:

“Illusory, I am certain–what is your read? I am entirely uncertain to which deity it belongs, also..?” Irah began, wanting another form of confirmation before she gave Yanin the go-ahead to simply slay it where it stood. She could just imagine Lhirin reading a passage from the Deo’iel’s text reiterating that it is always safest to simply slay a divine where they stand for the sake of all living things around them. They would not perish, only return to the divine realms–it was now likely too late to save any who remained here, but even that could only truly be assessed once the threat was dealt with.

“I do not -” Kinder began, only for the archangel’s eyes to instantly shift their focus from Freagon to Irah. Though the being inside the room had appeared composed before, albeit defensive and indignant, that composure seemed to vanish as soon as it laid eyes on her, and its face twisted into a grimace of rage and hatred to match what Kinder had reported earlier.
“No!” Kinder exclaimed in a panicked tone. “Deo’irah, it is not -”
A strange sensation came over Irah at that moment; a wave of cold, like stepping through a curtain of water. It lasted only an instant before it abated… but when the chill vanished, the familiar stinging heat of Kinder had disappeared along with it.
“Hypocrites!” the archangel boomed furiously, clenching its fists and sending fingers of lightning out to caress the floor, walls and ceiling. “You hound summoners and divines mercilessly, come here to destroy me, and you bring your own angel slaves? Disgusting creatures!”

The sensation of Kinder being ripped from within her gripped her like a freezing curtain of ice, and shudders of distant recollections of a similar cold flooded her and steeled her focus. Something about the kindly nature with which she had generally held herself and presented dropped, and a spark of genuine and indignant fury sparked within her that she failed to contain.

“You dare accuse me of hypocrisy after ripping my friend and ally from me?! I have never enslaved another being!” she seethed, voice frigid with icy fury. “We act in concert to bring Reina’s mercy to this world, something her soul fundamentally longs for, and you have the gall to strip her of the means to achieve her desires after having had lives sacrificed to grant you yours?!” she continued to rant, having slipped immediately into her native Fermian without the composure to restructure her thoughts into Rodorian. She took a shaky breath in to steel herself, body feeling not… better, for Kinder’s absence, but no longer accumulating something making it worse from within as well.

The archangel scoffed at her, but gestured at Freagon. “You expect me to believe anything you say? This one comes here bearing a silver sword and declared that he would kill me, and even you said you would see me banished or slain. You mundanes are all the same. A conversation? What would that solve? You said it yourself: I do not belong here, and someone had to…” It paused for just a second, wincing. “To die for me to be here. Because of you!”

Deo’Irah took a moment to observe the divine’s reply, her world shrunk down to this interaction in an ironic twist of her earlier observations about the knight, noticing the wince and seeing it as the chink in its proverbial armour she needed to capitalise upon immediately. She allowed herself a moment of frenzied focus, allowing enough time to pass for her to consider the options available but not so much she might lose her opportunity–contingent upon the others, who’d surely made actions of their own during her outburst.

He hadn't had much time to mull over Deo'Irah's note that divine energy was invisible, odorless, silent, intangible in the direct sense, but ... itchy, painful, exhausting. A bit like a sunburn, or lye, perhaps ... those, too, felt like nothing at first, but then started burning, itching, and finally, your skin started peeling off. Except, for excess contamination with divine energy, in the end, you also died.
That did not seem to be like a pleasant way to go, if there even was such a thing. So, how soon would I know if too much was too much? went unasked.
"It moves fast," Sir Yanin had noted, almost inaudible. He always seemed to listen, and have unusually good hearing at that.

Once opening the second door, odd warmth and numbness taking over his body - was it the fire he heard, the hopefully minuscule amounts of divine energy seeping through the door he and the dark-skinned woman had just passed, just him responding to a new threat before even fully winding down from the last? - he was confronted with ... nothing? Carefully peering through the crack between the door and its frame, and glancing at the rear corner behind him, he came face to-face with little more than a quite nice, if a bit sparse bedroom. No fireplaces, no additional doors, just a bed that on any other day, would have looked quite inviting, a table, some chairs and candleholders...
Neglecting the idea that this, too, might be a trick, he turned his attention to the minor commotion ensuing in the corridor, which seemed to involve his master preparing to open his door and Sir Freagon simply opting to stand in front of it to -
Jordan's eyes widened as Sir Yanin quickly motioned him to back down with his sword-hand, even as the rest of the human knight's body remained motionless.
He trusted his master's judgement in matters of combat, so he didn't even think, let alone question it, he just grabbed the foreigner by her shoulder, half-showing her in, and slamming the door after himself, just as another crash indicated that the nightwalker-knight had probably just opted to kick the first door open.
"Sorry-that--" he began to apologize to the dark-skinned woman, slightly out of breath and not really having a pause between the words.
“Stop!” a voice boomed, and the squire flinched.
"--meant... get... back," he finished, much quieter, and now leaving too much of a pause between words.
The corridor was probably flooded with divine energy now, was it not? Maybe diluted compared to what it had been in the more enclosed space, but flooded regardless. The door here would probably slow it down again, maybe for even longer than the first one had... He could...
Would it - at least some of it get out if he were to open a window or something, like you could with smoke? Half dazed, he meandered several steps closer to the window ... no, he didn't think it could be opened, not unless he decided to whack it with the truncheon until it simply shattered. Which ... he might do if he felt his skin starting to crawl and burn, he guessed. Doing so now probably wouldn't help the ones in the corridor, but maybe it would be worth the further disrespect of Lady Vela Bor's property if it meant not having all of everyone's skin peel off. And then death.
"I said stop," the voice of what Jordan could only presume was the divine thundered again, even louder, “Not one more step, villain!”
"Talk," another voice said ... that was Sir Freagon, he thought.

"I don't think the window can be opened, but we might have to break it if there is too much divine energy ... I think," he muttered to the foreigner, resigned, as he moved back to the door. It's not like he had anything more useful to do here, but listen.
It was the divine who spoke again. It? He? He sounded wrathful. “You hound summoners and divines mercilessly, come here to destroy me, and you bring your own angel slaves? Disgusting creatures!”
The what now!? In spite the circumstances, the notion was enough to give him a pause. Well, it couldn't have been aimed at him or Sir Yanin, because neither of them was proficient enough with the right kind of magic to even try to summon anyone, and at least Sir Freagon seemed to think the Melenian was dead, so who--
It was Deo'Irah who answered, in Fermian, which Jordan couldn't comprehend past simple greetings and farewells and thank yous. He thought he heard Reina's name, though, and the deigan's voice was uncharacteristically (what he knew of her character, anyway) irate, icy, enraged even. He would probably finish digesting her hidden skills afterwards, once he can stop wondering if his skin would slough off or if everyone in the corridor would, without warning, just be reduced into charred smears on the opposing wall.
“You expect me to believe anything you say? This one comes here bearing a silver sword and declared that he would kill me, and even you said you would see me banished or slain. You mundanes are all the same. A conversation? What would that solve? You said it yourself: I do not belong here, and someone had to…" Pause. "To die for me to be here. Because of you!”
Well, standing here was probably utterly useless ... talking, though, was usually ... often, his job, though. Sir Yanin was more of a 'what do you want' and then either agreeing with it or not agreeing with it kind of person.

"Uh, my lord, if I may..." he began, staring at the door. What was the correct way to address divines, anyway? "We are not with the one summoning you, nor the ones hunting her. The swords aren't ours, either, we picked those up after coming in because the ... the frentits I guess already had them." What was he even doing? "We all were just nearby and were told there were guests still inside..." Fighting ... divines. "See if there was anyone left to help."
The divine certainly had much better hearing than could be expected, though it probably had little to knowledge what had ensued before it had been summoned, nor what had been said outside. Should he try to convince the divine to go home? Distract it? Would be impolite to just ask if it wouldn't prefer to leave without a fight?

He ... honestly had no idea. He felt vaguely faint.



The half-palanter had tailed the group, remaining stood by the entry to the hallway as the combatants took in their places, and Freagon, without further ado, promptly kicked the door in. She had felt the odd itch and heat crawling upon her skin, not pleasant, but stinging, scraping, like caustic sap. Were there really anyone mundane left in that room, it certainly didn't bode well to their sustained wellbeing.
Once to flood of divine energy unleashed by the opening door hit her, she actually jolted backwards as if dodging an invisible punch, teeth baring in a primordial callback to an ancestral inhuman beast, one reminiscent to the winged palanteran form. This expression of a cornered animal, brought upon her visage by expected, but still abrupt pain, disappeared quickly, replaced by a stern expression as she straightened her back, drew close to a wall, and listened to the exchange.
Deo'Irah had brought an angel of her own? Huh. Pity she could not speak Fermian; the deigan seemed quite displeased indeed, whether it was with the reveal of her secrets or something else was anyone non-Fermian-speaking's guess. Jordan tried to, a bit haltingly, explain the situation once the angel claimed they wanted naught but violence.

"Indeed; we are strangers to this house, to one another, and to whoever used to be in here before us. I, for one, am simply a healer and a seamstress - as a rule, I don't fight at all." Well, not unless she was absolutely cornered and there was no way for her to simply remove herself and, if possible, whoever was her patient at the time. "It was implied there would be injured here, was it not?" A deception in one count, and a lost cause in the case of all others, but an implication regardless. "Whom would you expect to draw in with such a call?"
A person bent on murder alone would be indifferent, would they not? Luring healers in just to mercilessly murder them was a strategy befitting of the true evil, lowest of the low, so if the angel's pause before admitting people had to die for him to be summoned wasn't but another feint and cruel deception, then surely he'd agree with this much?
"We were not welcomed most kindly, however." That much was true; the combat-ready lot might have been ready to fight, but the lesser divines were the ones to give one of them a good tossing around first. None of them were so kind as to have a nice little chat over a cup of tea and discuss what exactly went wrong. "I would hope that you might excuse those who, as a consequence, might a bit predisposed towards more violent solutions." Was it her duty to excuse the old nightwalker's bluntness? Perhaps not, but she had already left patients waiting to be here, and she had absolutely no interest in adding to the dead and injured.
And your mere presence, it burns,, as yourself and our new knight acquaintance certainly are aware of. That didn't particularly help matters, either.
"If it is not suffering and death you yearn for, what is it that you seek in staying here?"



Impatient, the human knight noted at Freagon's behavior, almost reflexively motioning Jordan (and indirectly, the dark one) to remove themselves from the scene.
These doors weren't particularly soundproof. If they were needed and could be useful, they could be called. Until then, it was more reasonable to spare them from being cooked alive while they waited for the need to engage. Anything that could take the four of them here out before they could even call out? Nothing they could do, anyway. If they were wise, they'd just jump from the window, evacuate the town, and find whatever Deo'iel they could to sort the divine out, if it didn't feel like leaving Reniam on its own. The same went for the two waiting by the end of the corridor, besides the differing exit route.
And if they were somehow, against all odds, severely injured, but not killed? Better to have someone with enough strength left to drag them out, if the place really teemed with divine energy.
The effect from Freagon kicking the door open was not quite as immediate as he had anticipated. Perhaps it had not been long enough, was less immediately obvious than he'd thought, the divine was sinking so much of it into its deception that it accumulated only gradually, or Deo'Irah had misjudged. Fire - warm, bright, but not burning the floor. Not natural. Hostages? Archangel? He'd read about them, but meeting one had, until now, remained vastly unlikely.

Everything could be a lie.

The six wings were unmistakable, but much like the fire, and the hostages, it could be naught but a glamourous feat of magic. Freagon had tossed a silver coin at one of the hostages to confirm the last item. Clever, but aside of confirming that there was no one in that spot to save, maybe not overly conductive for making a plan of action.
It was, indubitably, much more probable that it was a thalk pretending to be an archangel, hostages, and a wall of fire than a Melenian, only having one sacrifice to give - two, if surrendering herself to the ritual was plausible, three or more only if there was someone entirely accounted for -, wounded, half-mad with piaan, managing to successfully summon one of the most powerful divines short of a full god.
The fire, if it wasn't vastly more potent than that of a furnace, could be passed without harm; the lightning, if more than a vision, could be fatal if not interrupted. Care to throw a handful of coins at the angel to see if his wings are real? That was unfortunately wont to be interpreted as beginning of an assault. He could figure as much.
The angel was yelling. "Your own angel slaves?" Based on Deo'Irah's response, that was her, and she referred to the entity she had evidently been hosting as a friend. Necromancer and a summoner?
Unlike the Melenian, the only one - if what the deigan claimed about her and the divine's relationship was accurate - Deo'Irah had been harming with her choice to bring angels to this place was herself. Even with the Melenian, the whole shitshow could have been averted simply by the other guests not immediately acting upon the information. If there was ever a case to demonstrate why both summoning and vigilantism were illegal, that was probably it...
For the sake of everyone, he hoped Deo'Irah would be far more careful with her arts than that.

"You expect me to believe anything you say?" That was, ultimately, mutual. It had brought them there with a lie, and persisted the deception even now. Even its very kind remained suspect. Ironically, it would probably just as easy for an archangel to pretend to be a thalk, so even if it claimed to drop its disguise, it could to the opposite. Lies upon lies upon lies.
Curiously, either it wasn't able to tell him and Freagon apart by voice, or it failed to differentiate silver from sartal in spite of their vastly different magical properties.
Even as Jordan and the half-palanter took turns in trying to explain the situation, perhaps to placate the divine and find amicable solution, time was ticking - now truly ticking, ever since Freagon had made the move. If it was a thalk in disguise, ten seconds of coordinated combat, even up close, was hardly comparable to the accumulated exposure standing around for, by now, closing in for a minute and a half. Opening the door, aware of the apparent wall of flames right behind it, and then proceeding to talk was the worst combination of both options possible.
Yanin himself didn't feel the more obvious effects of the divine energy - yet. But he was also not magically exhausted before entering the room, and mages were usually a bit more attuned to picking things up like that. He was, for all intents and purposes, more or less average for humans.
It didn't escape his attention that Lhirinthyl covertly downed something. Piaan? Too much to endure without? Expecting a fight?
If they decided to fight, about two seconds of the opposing magic being disrupted and the glamours dropped would be enough. It was unfortunate that they had no meaningful, mutually agreed for way to coordinate.

For all their repeated insistences that they needed to hurry, the others always seemed to talk too much. He hadn't had the time to interject - it was at this moment that Madara finished speaking. He'd give it another half a minute - enough for the angel to reply. After that - presuming the divine didn't take offense to the others and attack -, he only really had one question of his own. Would probably initiate the fight immediately if it didn't comply ... but time would run out either way, and if they had to fight, it was better to do so before their ability to do so degraded too much.

Freagon looked and listened. He examined the archangel posturing at him and Irah. He scanned the room visually back and forth, even peeked behind the open door into the corner that would otherwise be hidden when standing in the doorway through the crack between it and the door frame. He looked as much and as hard as he could without moving from the spot or otherwise making what he was doing too obvious.
Much to his annoyance he did not see anything that might suggest where their quarry actually was, or he would have simply thrown a dagger at it and been done with it. He still had three rodlin remaining in his left hand that he could throw to check, but doing so would be overt enough to potentially prompt the divine to act. It had not exactly reacted well to him throwing the first coin, after all – at least he assumed that was why it had reiterated its command for them to stop – , so he would much prefer to spend an action with a potentially hostile response confirming where the divine was, rather than where it was not. The obvious thing to do would be to throw a coin at the archangel, which was obviously an illusion; Freagon had enough experience with archangels to know that this was not one. He was confident that throwing the coin would not end well, and a strong suspicion that wherever the real divine was, it was not there, but likely as far from that spot as possible. All it would accomplish was ensure that they knew that the divine was not there, and that the divine knew that they knew, which would escalate things.
With how dangerous the divine energy in the air was, it was easy to forget that divine taint was not the only threat of thalks. All of the dense energy filling the air here was a weapon for the creature to wield, fuel for its magic and nourishment for its strength.

Instead of throwing coins, Freagon busied himself with – as casually, idly and accidentally as he could manage to make it look – hold his sword so that its blade rested within the wall of fire meant to stop them from entering. He immediately noticed that the flames were not reacting to the obstruction, but seemed to flow exactly as they had before, seemingly passing through the metal rather than flowing around it. More importantly, the blood that still stained the blade did not react to the fire; there was no smoke, no sizzling, no signs of the blood being cooked. The flames were just for show, it seemed, and could be walked through safely.
He clenched his jaw inside the helmet and refocused his attention on the archangel. He knew he could advance and attack; now he just needed to know where to advance toward, and where to strike.

During all of his looking, Freagon also listened to the conversation taking place, taking in every word spoken and putting it aside for later consideration. He did not even flinch when the divine accused them of having an angel among them, nor did he react in the least when Irah – in Fermian, though that did not stop him from understanding – more-or-less confessed that she was the one who had brought it. From what she was saying, and the fact that there was no one among them that resembled an angel, a wraith or a ghoul, he guessed that Irah had let the angel possess her. He also guessed that the hostile divine had just banished that angel.
Indiscernible behind the visor of his helmet, this did make him furrow his brow a little. The first thing he wondered was how long Irah had been possessed by this angel of hers, as he was fairly confident that she had not summoned it in his presence, at least, so it must have been before they all met here. Then he wondered what kind of angel it had been, only for his thoughts to turn to how she had seemed to call upon Reina's favor to heal Jaelnec earlier. What were the chances that she was an elementalist, a summoner and a Favored One of Reina? Not high, he would wager. It was much more likely that the prayer had been for show, and it was actually her angel doing the healing. If that was true, there were only several kinds of angel capable of that kind of magic, all of which were greater divines. The thalk – which he still suspected this of being – was only a lesser divine. It must have taken a significant chunk of its power to get rid of Irah's angel, which meant that doing so had been very important to it. Why? Because it was afraid of another angel being present and able to see through its illusions?
It was possible. Likely, even. But its reaction to seeing Irah and its choice of words made him hesitant to assume that was the only reason. “Angel slaves,” it had said, and it had gotten furious. It had also called them “villains,” whatever that meant.
Was all of that part of its deception? It could be.

In the next room over, Jordan and Nabi would find that hiding there and closing the door behind them did indeed mean that they were not enveloped in divine energy. They were spared the accumulation of divine taint in there and were, at least relatively speaking, quite safe in there.
The archangel seemed entirely taken aback by suddenly hearing Jordan's voice from over there, and for just an instant panic flashed across its face before it regained its composure. Freagon saw, and pondered what that meant. His first thought was that the real body of the divine might be over there, with them... but he quickly dismissed that idea just from the fact that the archangel was reacting to things that could only be seen, and all the divine energy was definitely coming from this room, not the other one. The divine was here, no doubt about it. Why then?
It was not too hard to guess, he figured: its entire strategy seemed to be based on simply distracting and delaying them with its theatrics and illusions for as long as it could while the divine taint did its cruel work on them. Someone speaking from a place not exposed to that energy meant that no amount of stalling was going to secure its victory, at least not completely. It meant that it had to change its plans... which he figured might mean that it would go on the offensive.
But curiously it did not. It simply listened, seeming surprised and confused. He also noticed that while the visual of the fire in front of him and the woman and child by the bed were still there, the woman's sobbing had gone silent, the fire was no longer crackling and he did not feel any heat coming off it anymore. It's distracted. Good. That means it'll make mistakes and its illusion will crack.

Out by the entry to the hallway, Jaelnec flinched at the feeling of divine taint starting to seep into him, though he did not react with the surprise or evasive action Madara had, though he could easily sympathize as to why she would react that way. It was far from the first time he had felt divine taint, however – in fact he had felt it as recently as just moments ago, when Irah had healed him – , but one never quite got used to how it felt, let alone the grim awareness of what would happen if you accumulated too much. If anything, he was quite impressed with how swiftly Madara had reacted and how quickly she had regained her composure.
Back in the room, the archangel seemed less surprised to hear Madara speak – she was within its domain, after all – but attentive nevertheless. It actually seemed to physically shrink a little when it was asked who it expected to draw in with the sound of a sobbing woman, only for the image of the woman and child by the bed to instantly wink out of existence.
Freagon frowned. Too bad. Less illusions means it can concentrate better on what is left.
He also noticed, quite concerningly, that the golden sword that had been hanging threateningly over the child did not vanish along with them. It remained suspended in mid-air where it was, though it slowly seemed to change its alignment until its tip was pointed straight at him. He resisted the impulse to throw a coin at the sword to check whether it was real. Things were happening, it seemed.

What really seemed to coax a reaction out of the creature was Madara's final question: “If it is not suffering and death you yearn for, what is it that you seek in staying here?”
The archangel blinked several times rapidly, its mouth opening and closing without sound for for a second, before its shoulders slumped. “I... I...”
Freagon blinked and tightened the grip on his sword as he instantly noticed that something was odd. He – as well as Irah, Lhirin, Madara and Jaelnec – felt the sensation of divine taint accumulation suddenly diminish to a mere fraction of what it had been before; still present, but no longer an immediate threat. The wall of fire and the hovering sword both also faded away, and a faint shimmer, like a haze, seemed to hang over the entirety of the bedroom with the divine in it.
“I am supposed to do something,” the archangel said emphatically, a hint of desperation in its voice. “I am here for a reason. I must be. But she is gone, so she cannot tell me what to do. I wanted to...” It faltered. “I do not know why I am here.”