"Oh, good. Should I get in? Invisible?"

"Yes." He looks about the way he did last time, except more tired. "More ammunition for your rifle inside."

Evil? (She doesn't really expect it, but impersonation isn't hard with the magic she knows.)

If not, she'll get in, and reload her rifle. "Your superpowers seem like they would be very emotionally taxing," she says, though her guess is that he doesn't want to talk about it.

"It's not as bad as you think."

(He's still either not evil or too weak to count.)

And the car will take off, moving with surprising grace and evasiveness through the city streets.

She'll take that as 'doesn't want to talk about it'. "We're losing and my current guess is that I should call in a lot of favors and try to kill Solaris, etcetera, and if that fails it's better for it to fail sooner so the fighting ends sooner and fewer civilians die."

"You can tell Ilderia that, we're going to meet her. I think we've got a chance." As long as Ilderia lives, there's a chance.

"I also think we've got a chance. If the Tyrant didn't think so he wouldn't be sending his strongest people out after I killed one."

He nods. "One more down." (But he doesn't seem to have much to say.)

She's not clear on one more on which side but if he doesn't want to talk he's probably allocating attention elsewhere. She's not sure if his superpower lets him think like a god in a thousand parts or just be in a lot of places as long as most of them don't have to think.

An understandable confusion!

He'll go down into a tunnel, make a few turns, exchange passwords with an unseen guard, and then park between two of several hundred white lines in an enormous cavernous stone basement half-filled with various mostly-armed vehicles, before leading her past a couple guards (who are not him) up to an elevator, which leads up to something leads to what might be an extremely familiar sight to her.

The great hall is lit with glowing panels on the ceiling, like noblemen who somehow managed to conceal continual flame spells inside the roofs of their houses, but a great hall it is, shields on the walls with heraldic arms on them and guns and swords crossed in front of them, with long tables fit for hundreds or possibly thousands takes up the majority of the space, mostly cleared, some of them with people eating at them, mostly still in dirty camouflage uniforms, other half-in the padding under their harness, eating and talking. There's an energy to it, a life - these people have something to fight for - but most of the places at the tables are empty, the bottommost tables cleared and empty. A handful of tired servants in slightly showier uniforms are bringing food out and putting clean dishes away, but nobody looks like they got much sleep in the last week.

At the high table is a woman who Iomedae hasn't seen without her helmet on but who is immediately recognizable, because she's tall* and strong and straight and slender and her eyes almost glow, even here where she has clearly not slept in a long, long time. There's already a Century at the table with her, along with several people Iomedae won't recognize, and she'll wave Iomedae over to her.

(*: Outside her powered armor, she's actually not tall. This is a mental distortion coming from confusing the amount of social space Ilderia takes up with the amount of physical space she does. But she acts tall.)

She's young. Younger than Iomedae. ..younger than the minimum age at which Iomedae would have been a good commander in a war at this scale. 

She approaches the table. She's not sure if these people bow, or salute, or what. 

This person beckons her over and gives her the seat of honor and urges her to sit down and passes her a dish of a meat-and-vegetables-in-delicious-smelling-brown-sauce and the bread for it to go on - 

"Congratulations!" she says loudly enough for everyone to hear. "Heavyhand down and Solaris fled. We owe you a great debt, Iomedae."

(Ilderia is, indeed, if you are not blinded by her charisma, of age to have finished her apprenticeship but not nearly old enough to be a master at her trade.)

(Or, in more modern language, younger than the typical college graduate.)

- cooked food would be nice. Probably before she devours it like a starving person she should do diplomacy, or at least match the mood.

She smiles, shakes her head. "I think you owe me a rundown of who else we need to get."

"Oh, you'll need to finish off Solaris at some point - but it takes him a minute concentrating on making his armor for every minute he wants it to last, so he's not going to want to stick around once you've proved you can down it." Ilderia is very irked by the fact that "- Luke! Bring our new hero a stunner -" 

And then back to Iomedae "- Do eat something. And we'll need Bloody Lizzy, the Tyrant, the Queen, and after that it won't be hard to drag Steelmind out of his bunker but we'll need to. And Whisper won't surrender if Solaris is slain, but she'll be the last before everyone else starts looking for separate peace treaties."

- given permission, she will eat. And nod seriously. "Five. All right. I propose that tomorrow I ask Aroden for a great number of unreasonable favors and if He grants them we try to get this over with and done."

"Sounds good to me. We'll want to talk after dinner about some details -"

And then while they eat she is going to try to explain what her enemies can do. The Tyrant, the Queen, Bloody Lizzy and Steelmind all have armor like Ilderia's that is fantastically good and can deflect fast-moving projectiles and absorb energy; Lizzy is the one who controls momentum, the Tyrant is just very smart, the Queen can control anyone whose eyes she meets, impossible to resist. Whisper has sound control powers (that Solaris copied) and rarely fights in person. Steelmind just controls machines.

"I would expect a Magic Circle Against Evil to prevent the mind control, though better not to rely on it. By very smart do you mean he is..a wizard?"

"No, just a strategist."

Iomedae believes Ilderia that this is scary but is having a bit of trouble imagining what the scariness looks like in a fight. "Do you have an idea of how to kill him?"

"Armor blades, Countess Zero, or your magic. His armor is tough but he's not invincible, just clever." 

"I can try to make a list of all the spells I've ever heard of paladins getting at third circle in case something's unexpectedly useful. 

If he's clever then it seems like in principle we could all do something better than fighting. I do know this almost never actually works."

"There are places where it would. Here isn't one of them. He and I both agree that justice is needed, and the only question is whether that's for his tyranny or my rebellion."

She'll nod. "I may have sources for you on spells - I don't know if they'll help you, but anything we can find might make the difference."

"What - prompted you to rebel?"