Those sidereals in the front, who wanted to go to creation to speak with the Empress herself, I guess they were actually elders, and only 3 of the 5 went into that infernal stance. They quickly and brutally dispatched their non-infernal cohorts, decapitating one and caving in the chest of the other. Anyways, just as learning those infernal martial arts techniques allowed those sidereals to be taken over by the yozis, just seeing and recognizing them put Volt in a daze for the battle, nay, the slaughter. And no help was coming, as we learned there was a spell around the location, a dome that prevented anyone from trying to send word on what was happening here.
Those elder sidereals moved impossibly fast, quickly jumping into the crowd of confused sidereals and killing them with their bare hands. An easy task since most of the people here had come unarmed and unarmored, not expecting such an attack in their own meeting place in the middle of heaven. I picked out several other sleeper Sidereals in the crowd, but had no time to warn anyone, as Infernals and demons appeared at 3 of the 5 exits, slaughtering anyone trying to flee through those gates. I quickly fired at one group, saying the demons, but the infernal perfectly avoided my attack. At this point the infernals, just pulled out and started sealing the gates to trap everyone, leaving the killing to the infected sidereals. When people tried fleeing through one of the other unguarded gates, Venus' gate, they were caught in some sort of blast- at first I thought they set up another bomb, but I think we would later learn that it was caused by that maiden dying when all her sidereals were slain.
Anyways, through the chaos, I heard someone say the attacking sidereals could eventually be freed from the negative influence and to try to take them alive. They were killing enough sidereals already, we don't need to add to the body count. So, I switched my solar bolts to stun and started shooting at the elders. Isha managed to get the attention of one of them, and she and Rath eventually took him down. They split off to take one the remaining two, whom I had been peppering with arrows. Eventually we took those two down too, and the sidereals managed to overcome the other sleepers. In the end 78 sidereals were dead, including all of Venus'. As I said, this caused her to die, which is what eventually caused the maidens to realize something was going on and show up. Maryann was among the dead.
They thanked us for our help, as they could have been wiped out had we not intervened. Isha was upset at the wonton death, wishing she could have saved more. Indeed, if I knew those infernals were just gonna run and close the exits, I wouldn't have wasted my arrows on them. Precious seconds counted, and if I had concentrated on the sidereals first, we could've prevented more deaths, maybe even stopped Venus from dying. Of course, at the time I was shooting the infernals, I had no idea those evil sidereals could be saved, so I prolly would've fired my first volley with lethal force. Then again, even if I managed to kill one of those sidereals, what's one compared to the several they got to kill while they were still standing?
There was no time to dwell on it- now that the Maidens knew what was going on, they were going to try and warn Luna and the Unconquered Sun. Apparently, the wedding has taken place, and the Yozis were already starting to invade. All those on the imperial island who could trace their blood to the empress and had not severed their ties to join the Righteous Orphan rebellion would be considered lost, her blood influence would sway them to her side. But it would take them a while to totally take over the world. The Maidens said the remaining sidereals would advise us on this latest campaign to stop the Yozis, but meanwhile we were going to gather as many allies as we could. I knew who I was looking for, and it sounded like the others had people they knew too, a remnant from our past selves. Plus, we also needed to find the rest of those manses we were looking for, so we could unattune from the ones on the Imperial Island.
With Maryann dead, we were given a new liason, a green haired effeminate dude named Hani. Anytime we need to talk to heaven, we'd go through him. The maidens took their leave and we headed back down to the airship. We eventually managed to read the maps on the airship well enough to find a suitable manse for Isha. So we hopped on Rath's cloud and went in. We were attacked by hungry ghosts and a bone golem, which we made short work of.
They were under the control of Alabaster Twilight, an abyssal who had been hiding in the manse from his lord. He knew he could not defeat us, and he had no interest in the manse, so he asked if he could continue to hide here if he didn't give us any trouble. Sure, we weren't going to hurt him if he didn't want to fight, but we also knew he might be useful in the coming fight. The yozis are his enemy too, so we pleaded with him to join our cause. He agreed to help if we called on him.