Damien glanced at him then back down. For a beat he was silent, and staring hard at the tiles, then he rose. He hefted his warhammer back into his hands and turned to stare hard at the adventurers. As Lilika started to worry he had chosen the cult’s side he turned back around to Layvma and yelled out,

“Lightway! We have a duty to protect the good, bright people of these and every land, if that means it’s against this corrupted light then so be it!”

“Once a fool, always a fool, I suppose I should have expected as much from a Lightway imbecile,” Layvma sighed.

She raised her hand lifting a metal staff with a bulb attached to the end, it started to glow as the hooded figures seemed to pour out of hidden alcoves with similar wands in their hands.

“Kill them! Let the light cleanse their souls!” Layvma spat out viciously.

Lilika felt a chill as she realized she was fighting for the first time, actual human beings, her same species. The fight was chaos, if the order had fought against them instead of with them they would most likely be dead.

Soldiers and cultists fought all around her as her friends released spells and swung weapons, she clutched her axe not ready to hurt someone. Then she saw Navien get blasted by a sharp beam of light emitted by one of the wands. He yelped out as another hit him from behind.

Lilika remembered what Navien had told her last night about how it was never about wanting to kill, but instead wanting to protect. She tensed herself and then ran after him dodging beams of light on her way.

Once she reached him she swung at a cultist about to finish him off. He coughed blood as his torso was cut deeply and he was sent flying. She then whirled around and cut down on another cultist coming up behind her.

She’d likely killed some of them but that was fine, Navien wasn’t dead and she had protected him, she was stable.

There was a blast behind her as Navien released a black ball of shade at a cultist about to sneak up on Lilika. They had their backs to one another and smiled, they protected one another. More cultists rushed in on them surrounding them.

Meanwhile Damien had tried to approach Layvma but she fired a beam at him, hitting his face and sending him tumbling down the aisle. Layvma laughed wickedly as she started to fire bolts of light from her staff into the crowd killing some soldiers and wounding everyone, even her own allies.

Annoyed by this Lilika grabbed a small handaxe she kept for breaking small branches in the forest and hurled it at Layvma. The blade struck true and lodged itself deep into her shoulder.

Layvma shrieked as she ran and disappeared behind the altar. Lilika went back to hefting her axe blocking a strike of a dagger form a cultist she’d unarmed. As she twisted her weapon, eventually getting another hit in, she heard Navien slash with his own dagger at one of the last cultists.

They panted, covered in nicks and slashes with Navien burned severely in places. The battle had been hard fought, several soldiers were dead, a few were limping, some were chasing cultists that had run off when they realized they had lost. Makith was running between the party members casting his healing magic. Drinail sat down and started to hum a soft toon, as a soft lime light enveloped them and some of their smaller scratches closed themselves.

Damien huffed as one of his soldiers used their healing magic on his scarred face. Eventually, Lilika got up, once she was healed enough, and walked to go check for Layvma behind the altar. Instead, she found a tile unslotted from the floor revealing a tunnel heading down, and her bloodied handaxe resting on the ground next to it. Storing her ax she yelled back to her companions,

“It’s not over, Layvma had a secret passage!”

The others, once at least semi-healed, including Damien walked over. Drinial began to light his torch preparing to head down into the dungeon when one of Damien’s men called out,

“Hey wait, Sir! These boxes have light bulbs in them! the ones the cultists were transporting earlier.”

The group walked over to the crate the soldier had opened. Inside hundreds of thick glass bulbs were stacked. Yorna grabbed one and whammed it harshly against the side of the crate, lightly breaking the wood, but not the bulb.

“Tough little turd,” Yorna grunted.

“Tough enough to handle high energies?” Navien asked.

Lilika pulled up one of the wands from the dead hands of a cultist and compared the bulbs, they were the same.

“Shit!” Damien suddenly yelled.

“What?” Makith asked.

“The new bulbs that were said to take the burnout, they were developed by the Church,” He said

They immediately sent Damien and his soldiers to endangered places in the city to stop the light bulbs being installed. While Lilika and the party went down the ladder in the floor behind the altar, into the unknown following a trail of blood.