Ask what they're doing here

“Lia? What are you doing here?” you say, lowering your weapon. Blythe doesn’t follow your lead.

Lia looks up at you briefly before turning her head and refusing to make eye contact. The man in the white robes looks to you with arms outstretched. “Hail, Demon Lord,” says the man. You make the decision to watch Lia instead of him as he continues to speak. “I am the Goddess’s chosen disciple, come here to strike thee down in her name.” Lia’s cat-like ears twitch. “Beg for my mercy all you like, but you shall receive none.” She shoots him a stare from behind, and you believe you can see her eyes widen for a split second before she turns away again.

“And what if I just don’t?” you say, looking back to the man and pointing the end of your {if@ sword = true}sword{elseif mace = true}mace{elseif spear = true}spear{endif} towards him. He stops in his tracks, momentarily allowing fear to break his confident sneer before quickly returning to form.

“I am a great practitioner of Her holy magics!” he says. “Brace yourself to be smote by Her brilliance, oh evil demon!”

Lia finally speaks up. “I thought you said you were going to help him.”

The man turns to Lia and cups her chin in his hand. “Oh lost lamb, you have been led astray by this demon. The Goddess’s world must be cleansed of filth like him, and all those he touches.” The man’s free hand comes up and thrusts itself into Lia’s stomach, and as he pulls away you notice the hidden blade he just used to stab the woman who had trusted him. “Let the pain teach you to repent for the sin of being seduced by evil.” Lia presses her hands to the wound and falls to the ground. Meanwhile, the man has turned back around to face you and is quietly chanting some kind of incantation. Blythe jumps into action, forcing the man to dodge her strikes as he continues his chant at the same time.

You hurry over to Lia and crouch down to help her, but she swats you away with tears welling in her eyes. “Stay away!” she yells at you. “Don’t touch me!” Despite the anger of her words, the ferocity you’ve known before is nowhere to be seen in her face. She’s afraid, and in a lot of pain right now. You ignore her protests and move her to sit up against a tree. Then, you pull your red tunic out of your rucksack and tear a long strip of it off. Using the torn cloth, you wrap it tightly around her wound and tie it off. She stops protesting once she realizes what you’re doing, and once you’re done she mutters a “Thanks…” and places her hands over your wrap to apply more pressure.

“...By the grace of the Goddess, smite thine enemy!”

You turn to see a beam of white light burst from the outstretched palm of the robed man, heading right in your direction. Your buckler rises up to block the blast, but this is holy magic you’re dealing with, not some baby griffin bounding towards you. The white beam blasts into you, curving around the buckler and filling your vision with white light. You feel a warmth wash over you, but it fades as quickly as the light does as the beam passes through you and disappears. Lowering your shield, you see a dumbfounded holy man staring at you, Blythe pressing her sword to his neck from behind.

“I don’t understand,” he says. “The Goddess’s Holy Smite is supposed to destroy all demons. Why didn’t it work on you!?”

“I’m just a human, dude,” you say. You tap the veins on the underside of your arm. “Not one ounce of demon blood in here.”

“B-but, you match the description of the demon lord! A-and you led this homeless urchin astray!” You don’t need to turn around to know Lia’s staring daggers at him from behind you for that one. Homeless urchin, wow. Doesn't get more scummy classist than that.

“Whoever said I had to be a demon to lord over them?” you say. “Blythe, it’s over, you can let him go.” Blythe removes her blade from his neck at your command, and then kicks him to his knees. Her grip on her weapon doesn’t loosen, though, even as she holds it at her side.

“You’re letting me go?” he says. “I’ll tell the Adventurer’s Guild where to find you! You’ll have hell to pay for this!” He gets up and runs away in a completely different direction than where he and Lia originally came from. You and Blythe exchange glances as you both realize that he’s headed straight for the monster village.