In his rage, Joren is ready to smash the cultist atop her head repeatedly until she is unconscious.  Just like Jon Shep.

But something stops him.  What it is, he cannot put to words.  Perhaps because his companions are watching from across the water.

After first checking to make sure the giant gloazworm is not following them, crashing through the opening like a juggernaut, Joren attempts to tie the cultist up with his rope, hoping the threat of the monstrosity behind is enough to convince her not to resist.  His plan is to use the first one third of the rope to bind the cultist's arms, then tie the other end of the rope to a rock which he can throw over the lake where he thinks Ashley or Malachi may be able to catch it with their Mage Hand which he has seen them use before.  He can then echo swap across and then pull the cultist after him.

He growls in a low voice to the cultist as he works.  "So.  Weren't expecting that monstrosity to show up, were you?  I had thought you were rushing purposefully to your death once defeated like these other lunatics you are following.  Unleashing those giant gloazworms and who is knowing what other calamities on the people here.  How many thousands of civilians must be dying and suffering to sate the bloodlust of your sick patron?"

(He then calls out his intentions to his companions, in just loud enough a voice to carry.)

"Oh? Hmm, yes." Samir takes the bolt from Malachi, holding it carefully in his hands as he turns it this way and that in a cursory inspection. These cultists certainly seemed to have a plethora of uses for their strange runes. How long had they been at this, he found himself wondering. How much time had been put into developing and understanding these symbols and setting up this operation. An operation that seemed to stretch far beyond the boundaries of any single place. 

The cultist, bound, hangs her masked head and remains silent for the moment.

Malachi:

Joren tries to execute his plan, tying the other end of the rope to a rock and throwing it across, hoping Ashley or Malachi can catch it with their Mage Hand if it falls short.  He then echo swaps across and drags the bound cultist across the water and up over the ledge.  Once done, he binds her legs as well, searches her, then hefts her in a fireman's carry as he had with Marshal Lanya earlier (Marion having helped him by taking his pack).

"Leaving now, we must.  Seeing a giant adult gloazworm not one hundred feet past the water's far edge.  It may be blocked off, but I am not knowing how long rock walls will be holding it and the others back.  Waking up, they are - perhaps it is getting hotter?  In any case - let us be going!  Now!"

Joren’s shouts from across the waterway shakes Malachi out of his thoughts before he can get lost in them.  He is no longer as interested in exploring the tunnels further, but he has more to think about now.  He steps to the edge of the cliff and deftly catches the rock Joren tosses with his mage hand and pulls the rope, helping Joren pull the cultist across.

“I am all for going now.  But is there some way to destroy the nest? Maybe using mining explosives?”

Ashley goes completely pale at the mention of the gloazworm and how close an adult is.  On her typically reddish skin, it is very apparent.  She watches as Malachi helps Joren back over with his captive, and then leads them up and out of the tunnels, on the way she answers Malachi's question.  "Let's leave exploding mining tunnels up to the professionals.  Lets let Miter know and go from there."

She heads straight to the spot Miter mentioned just minutes before.

In Vilus' absence, Joren asks anyone else who can do so to inspect the captive cultist on his shoulder for potential explosive runes.  "Speaking of explosives, not wanting to be carrying a bomb on my shoulder up into Tensmith!"

To Malachi:  "I am liking your thinking but having just had my memory refreshed on just how big the adult ones are, I am not knowing if a mining charge will kill even one of them, let alone hundreds.  Worrying that instead, it will bring down the rock wall that is the only barrier separating us from them."

To Ashley:  "Yes, we all should be going now.  Sensing something very bad is going to happen here soon.  Even on our way here, were we not hearing of strange occurrences in the town?  Fires and such?  The gloazworms may be waking up with the heat.  In the Dalmodh Plains, there are stories of faraway mountains that are incinerating themselves in titanic explosions of fire and ash.  Can any of you tell - are we seeing the first signs of that?"

Joren suits his actions to his words and begins carrying the bound cultist up the tunnel (unless potentially explosive god-runes are found on her).  He follows Ashley, gathering from her words that she knows where Miter went (not having been present when Miter discussed it).

This cultist, unlike Jon, Andra, and some of the others they had faced, does not appear at first glance to have any God-tongue tattooed on her body. The inside of her mask, however, is filled with lines of the stuff. Presumably, it is what was responsible for the reanimation and rapid decomposition of the other mask-wearing cultist whom Malachi had killed.

As the group returns to the entrance of the tunnel, they see 5 more guardsmen escorting a small team of miners and labourers to the tunnel for the purpose of retrieving the dead miners and sealing everything back up.

On the slow ascension up the main pit, the monotonous creaking of the ropes and pulleys on the lift is punctuated by the occasional scream or crash from the city above. The adventurers reach the guardhouse to find it filled with citizens lining the halls on bedrolls, receiving water and medical treatment for basic injuries. Miter rounds a corner and steps over one of the wounded. 

"Good to see you back with us, Joren. It looks like you were successful. I'd offer to put her up in a cell for you, but we are at capacity right now. A lot of folk don't seem quite right in the head right now, so we've got them shut away for everyone's safety including their own right now. Sorry to put this on you, but do you think you could give us a hand?"

Samir eyes the lines of runic script on the inside of the cultist's mask as they ascend the elevator, not really trying to understand it but simply to keep his focus on something less... traumatic. As they near the top, he slips it inside his bag and follows the others into the guardhouse. 

"Miter? What happened here? And certainly, yes, I think that we could assist, if we can." He looks around to the others at this last, the light glinting off of his spectacles as he turns his head, looking for agreement or negatives.

Joren's voice is low, pitched so only the group and Miter can hear, so as not to cause panic.

"Aye, assisting.  But can we stop ignoring the sixty foot adult gloazworm dragonfly in the room?  Or rather underground very near the cavern where we fought Andra and his lackeys?  Beyond a rock wall it was, and almost reached through a hole and decapitated this one," (he pats the captive cultist's shoulder), "with one of its legs before I was dragging her away.  Those monstrosities break through, most here are having but hours to live."

He pauses for a moment, realizing his words sound like hyperbole.  "Where is Marshal Lanya?"

Ashley nods at Samir's mentioning that they would help if they could, but at Joren's question on the Marshal, she looks intently at Miter.

"I don't know what we are to do about the gloazworms, but I know they give me the creeps just knowing they are down there." and she visibly shudders.

Miter nods solemnly as concerns are voiced. "I agree that the threat the gloazworms pose is too great to ignore. Even if you were lying or wrong about the large ones, the small ones we are used to are threat enough. In Andra's absence from his post..." He gives a meaningful look that says it is perhaps not the time or place for a discussion about Andra's cult involvement, "... I have given the order for protocol to be observed. A team has been escorted down to the tunnel where they will seal the tunnel. Though rather than the typical method, due to the elevated risk, they will initiate a collapse of half a kilometer of the tunnel. As for Lanya, she is resting and recovering down the hall."

Another officer runs up panting and offers a quick salute before saying, "Sir, there are reports of flooding in the market to the east. Do we have any officers to spare?"

Miter looks at the adventurers. "No officers, but I may have someone else..."

Ashley's head is spinning.  Vilus is gone.  Lanya is here, but badly injured and almost died.  Andra is gone, escaped or dead?  The adult gloazworms appear to be coming this way.  Joren has a captive that the town doesn't know where to put them.  All of Tensmith seems to have gone mad or berserk or something.  A flood has apparently broken out in the market.

Ashley looks to her friends to see what their reactions are to everything that has happened, she is sure she looks like she feels at the moment.  "I suppose while we are waiting for Lanya to recover we can check out the issue at the market."

"Aye, we can be helping," Joren grunts in concurrence with Ashley, though he is clearly not at his best.  Having expended most of his energy first diffusing the last of the explosive trap, then during the fight against Andra and his minions, then chasing down and capturing the last cultist.

Which reminds him.  "This one is not safe to be leaving awake with civilians, even bound as she is.  I can be knocking her unconscious now, Miter, or you can find some way of securing her."  He turns to the masked woman, looking her in the eye.  "That is unless you have found your tongue since I was pulling you back from decapitation?  Anything to say for yourself?  Do you know about the strange happenings in Tensmith?"

A voice calls out from behind Miter. "She can stay with me." Lanya stands there, pale and sweaty, leaning hard on a crutch, but with a determined look and a grim smile.

"Sir, you should be resting right now!" Miter protests.

"I can't just do nothing, especially right now. So if you want to keep me out of the way, at least give me a prisoner to look after. Don't worry..." she says, now addressing the cultist on Joren's back. "I promise I'll be at least as kind a captor to you as Andra was to me." The smile is gone now, and the threat is apparent.

"It is good to be seeing you on your feet, Marshal."

Joren's relief at seeing Lanya and being free of his captive masks his disquiet at his own furious urge to smash the cultist's head repeatedly as he had with Jon Shep.  He helps carry the bound woman to the Marshal's quarters, depositing her unceremoniously on the floor, face down.

"Careful - the mask.  If she dies, it may be turning her into some crazy undead freak, as it did with the other."

He salutes and briefly stretches the ache from his muscles, before coming back.  "Sorry, just taking out the trash.  Ready to be going now."  He thanks Marion and accepts his pack back from her, and if available from a supply room, replaces the rope he used to bind the cultist with a new one.

Malachi flips a copper coin along his fingers, eyes narrowed at the cultist turned prisoner.  He is tempted to reach inside their thoughts, trying to see what they know and how they are reacting to their captor’s words.  Are they more likely to talk now?  Still, he hesitate to reach out, remembering what happened in the tunnel and that nagging feeling in the back of his mind.  Instead, he cleans the dirt and mud off of his clothes with a wave of his hand, and straightens his jacket. “Yes, to the market then, let’s see if we can find out what is causing all of this madness.”

"Lanya!!"  Ashley exclaims as she sees her, her entire face lights up seeing her up and moving around. "I thought we almost lost you down there.  You should trust your instincts more often, I mean you were right on about Andra."  

Ashley raises an eyebrow as she watches Malachi with his coin.  Usually meant something was going on in that brain of his.  As he mentions heading to the market, she is ready to go with him.

Samir remains quiet, keeping himself in the background and watching the others. In all honesty, his thoughts are scattered, flapping about inside his brain like a swarm of disturbed butterflies. He manages a small sigh of relief as the marshall shows herself, however, before nodding his agreement with Malachi. 

Free of their burdensome prisoner, the group steps out into the darkening evening. That industrial glow still casts an umber haze against the night sky. The lady who had been sitting outside clutching her head earlier still sits there rocking, but seems a bit settled. She looks up at each person in turn before returning her gaze the the cobbles beneath her.

The trickle from the ceramics shop has mostly stopped. There is the sudden sound of a foot splashing through a puddle and then slapping against the street as someone runs by, but whoever it was is nowhere to be seen.