The building is absolutely collapsing on her. Everyone else inside is very dead. Also, she's probably going to get shot a lot if she lives.

Yes, yes, everyone around her dying of something from which she steps aside unscathed happens to Iomedae a lot. Usually it's Wail of the Banshee. Time to get out of here, however much bludgeoning her way through the rubble this requires. The sword can take it. She should not swap out the ring of evasion for the one of invisibility, the ring of evasion just saved her life and will probably have to do it again in not much time. Giving up the ring of protection's also risky, though, especially if there are things on this battlefield that can trivially see through invisibility - she isn't Mind Blanked - that would've been a good question to ask -

- she makes the sword Defending, and puts on the ring of invisibility, and starts lifting very heavy things to get herself out.

She is really extraordinarily strong and her sword is approximately indestructible, though, so she can accomplish this! It'll take her a bit, though.

Yep. She can think while she digs, though.

Ilderia didn't know what a paladin was, but the enemy really seemed to. That's - the way you approach negotiating with a paladin, and not the way you approach most other things. That's interesting. She doesn't think Ilderia was lying about it; forget that she'd have had to beat the truth spell, it's not a productive lie. "Yes, I know what a paladin is, and I want you on our side" is a useful thing to say, if it's true. 

Was Ilderia trying to get her killed? It's an obvious explanation, in the sense that most people would've died of that attack and that attack was presumably predictable to Ilderia. It doesn't quite fit, though. They spent a while answering her questions. They didn't object to her talking to their enemy. (She gets the sense that Century did object, but Ilderia was overriding him.) It fit with people who - expect to lose, but think they nonetheless have to fight, which makes sense given how their enemy's stated policy is "I don't want peace, I want to kill them all". 

Probably ten minutes before she arrived this revolt was unwinnable. The question is whether it still is. 

...no. The question is whether it's worth winning at the expense to Aroden which winning it would entail for Him. She's here, it's in His hands, the question is at what price what good would be bought, and whether it's worth paying. She cuts and lifts and shoves and prays, trying to make her paths plain and clear in her mind so she can be easily steered down one - should I try to win this war? Should I try to escape it?

(Given genuine uncertainty about whether she should try to escape, why didn't she seriously consider accepting the offered escape? Well, because she still considers it quite likely she can, and wants to, help Ilderia win, or that Arazni will show up and want to, and she couldn't accept escape that's premised on her neutrality, and there clearly wasn't quite enough shared Law - or ability to make sure that the things said were the things heard - to lay out the problem and arrive at something she and the New Tyrant both preferred to 'he tries to kill her right now', which has in any event had the satisfactory result that she's not dead and he cannot feel that her continued aliveness is the product of his mercy.)

Aroden doesn't know what she should do, or doesn't think it's worth telling her. So once she's cut her way out of here she'll run. In a direction without lots of people, if there are any of those on offer.

It's a city. In every direction, it is a city. If she looks far enough, she sees the Novapest Shield, not non-city stuff.

The line of battle seems to have moved past her while she dug herself out, and so there's lots of directions she can go that are not obviously towards the shooting and where any civilians are probably hiding in bomb shelters?

No, she doesn't want to go anywhere near civilians, it has been established already that the Tyrant will whatever-that-was them to get to her. She also doesn't really want to wander right back onto the battlefield without a plan, she's getting low on healing. She would like to find a place to rest, but that enormous force bubble is not encouraging. 

Fine. Battlefield. She'll keep the invisibility up and look for another copy of the man who makes copies of himself. 

This area of the battlefield looks pretty robot-dominated! There's people with the robots, but they're wearing the Tyrant's badge, a snake (gold) around a crown (gold) on a purple field, or else a red gauntlet on black that manages to make the Tyrant's badge look slightly less obviously evil. There's some more walking-tank types, but they're currently blasting away at possibly-uninhabited buildings -

- Oh, hey, there's Century, firing from cover near a very visible duel between two Extremely Powerful people. They're both really implausible strong and tough, charging each other, punching and grappling and throwing with inhuman strength. One is wearing red and black and has the gauntlet-symbol on his chest, and the other wears Ilderia's colors. Most of the robots and soldiers near them are letting the two of them fight - they're mostly gauntlet-symbol's people, and he's winning; blue-and-silver dude is tough, but not on the same scale as gauntlet-symbol.

(A broken sword that is plausibly too heavy for Iomedae to lift is near where they were fighting.)

None of them is paying much attention to an invisible patch that is Iomedae.

Then she'll get quite close. Evil? Apparent capabilities other than 'legendary warrior'?

The legendary warrior is Evil. He is, in fact, Evil with a sheer density that she has probably never seen before, depending on just how old the biggest dragon she's ever seen before is, overwhelmingly Evil in a way that practically nobody she's ever seen before is, and she's going to lose a few seconds to blinking the afterimage of just how much Evil is contained within that little space out of her eyes.

Once the sparks leave her vision, she can see that he's an old man in spite of his toughness, and wearing armor with a helm that covers his face, but the armor has been largely wrecked during the battle - he's tougher than it is - and so it's hanging off his body, showing someone intensely muscular, clean-shaven, what remaining hair he has shaved almost to his head, of vaguely Chelish-ish ethnicity. The stone streets are creaking under his weight, and he is in the process of breaking the arm of the younger and slightly less legendary warrior with professional skill.

Thhhaaat's the 'literally Tar-Baphon' or 'demon lord' tier of Evil. Iomedae can't win a fight with that.

Iomedae can't usually win a fight with that because she doesn't usually have a gun.

The thing to do about demon lords or Tar-Baphon is smite and fire at range, if you can. Not one third-circle paladin, that'd be ridiculous, but a dozen of them, Mind Blanked and mounted and greater invisible and properly enspelled? Arazni'd have nothing to do. Even arrows, let alone guns, exceed the range of a demon lord's most deadly powers and their supernatural senses.  And smiting ignores the resistances and protections of an enemy, and makes them easy to hit besides. Tar-Baphon goes around with Winds of Vengeance up, so arrows are useless, and usually you can't see him to aim anyway, but a gun would do fine.

...if they're dueling, though, in the honorable sense where they're harming no one else and no one else is intervening - is that what it looks like -

Provided the collateral damage from throwing each other and dodging in a manner destructive to the environment counts as 'harming no one else'? The gauntlet people and robots aren't messing with their champion winning the fight, and there aren't a lot of Ilderia's people to interfere, and the extremely Evil warrior looks pretty well proof against everything the world can throw at him, based on just how Winning he is.

At home she'd do it without hesitation, but at home she knew what people understand Law to be, and here she doesn't, and this is a candidate for the sort of thing you might understand Law to be -

- think about it like a god does, Iomedae, even though that's dipping into a well that she can feel is not all that deep and is starting to run dry. 

What is Law. Shortest answer, the principles that let people do better than shatter their cities where they disagree, that lets them live side by side and build things together. Of course they have such principles here, even if they betray them and believe their enemies to betray them; you wouldn't need the gods, to have the impulse towards honor, towards honesty. There is a fantastic Lawful definition of why soldiers should not break and run in battle but the Law is written on the human heart in simpler terms: I'm no coward. There is a possible conceptual framework for an institution where instead of destroying their cities in an Abyssal rage of horrors, the leaders stand man to man and see who's stronger, but it'd take - a lot of surrounding conditions, to have that institution, and she's abruptly sure they don't have it here in its stronger form, though they may have it here in the written-on-human-hearts form, the voice that screams 'he's mine, leave him to me' -

- given the lack of such an institution in a crisp and formal form, Iomedae observes that trying to capture in one's actions all the ways honor is written on the human heart is 1) a losing strategy and 2) an unArodenite strategy; Aroden is predictable not because He's doing your thing but because He's doing His thing and keeps telling you precisely what that is. She is someone who can stand in weapon's reach and watch a man she wants to win a fight instead lose and die because she thinks that principle requires this, but principle has to actually require this, instead of just gesturing vaguely in that direction. If she followed her impulses that far they'd tell her to march right into Hell and challenge Asmodeus to a duel, and the fact of the matter is that it is immoral to walk into Hell and challenge Asmodeus to a duel.

It doesn't take long, to think like a god. By the time she's reached cover she's settled it. 

Boots of Speed. Divine Favor. Smite. Fire. She obviously cannot kill a demon lord like this but she can probably make his opponent's life abruptly a lot easier. 

Three shots to center of mass before he can blink, and then the gun clicks empty.

- Let us spend a moment discussing weapons technology, which has advanced somewhat since Iomedae's time. A longbow, drawn back by a strong man, delivers perhaps a hundred and thirty joules of energy, if the arrow strikes swiftly. Armor that can usually stop arrows dates back six hundred years; if Count Heavyhand was hit by an arrow, he would plausibly not notice.

A rifle is more powerful; standard U.S. Army service rifles deliver one thousand seven hundred joules per bullet. Heavyhand occasionally notices them specifically because bullets tear his shirt.

But Iomedae is not carrying a standard service rifle, she is carrying an anti-material rifle, which can deliver thirteen thousand joules of energy with each .50 bullet.

Heavyhand would still not notice. He got his powers from a direct hit with Chinese field artillery. He sneers at a mere thirteen thousand joules of energy; it might crack his armor (he doesn't wear powered armor - it's really just to protect him against gas attacks, one of his known weaknesses), it might make him lose his footing, if he was currently light, but it is unlikely to leave a bruise on his indestructible hide. Heavyhand is tough.

Now is, perhaps, the time to mention that Iomedae has superhuman aim and that the blessed weapons of a paladin pierce through all superhuman resistance to harm, from a werewolf's vulnerability only to silver -

- to a golem's adamantine skin.

The first bullet goes through his heart.

This would still not be enough to kill him and then he is shot twice more in short succession.

(He fell as falls a battle-tower

On smashed and struggling spears

Cast down from some unconquered town

That, rushing earthward, carries down

Loads of live men of all renown—

Archers and engineers.)

(The Tyrant is no longer interested in negotiation.)

... There's a lot of robots and troops very near Iomedae and she is no longer invisible and they are not happy.

She was really, really not expecting that. You need ten third circle paladins, to kill a demon lord, or three and a very very lucky shot - this is going to be discarded as not worth thinking about right now as she has more urgent problems. Luckily she also has the Boots of Speed. She would like to 1) be invisible again and 2) be clear of the position she just gave up and 3) - be in the air, ideally, now that they know she can be invisible she's not going to escape on the ground - she didn't prepare Angelic Aspect, she usually doesn't, she only has two third circle spells -

- she can feel, now, that she's scraping the well dry, that she's bent the laws of what she can be given as far as they can be bent, that the Iomedae who asks Aroden to sneak her an Angelic Aspect she didn't prepare, and then flings herself Hasted and invisible into the sky, is not allowed to do any more bending fate in her favor for a while. 

But on the bright side if she ever gets home with the stick she's now carrying, the Shining Crusade is over.

Steelmind is generally not considered one of the absolute strongest supers in Novapest. B-ranked, sure, but that's all. There is no number of robots he could throw at Solaris that would beat him, or probably at Lizzy that would beat her, and he didn't make the robots, anyway - that's Steelstorm, on whose work he is completely dependent. Ilderia can just turn off anything with a battery that gets anywhere near her. And he's nowhere near as smart as his father.

Also, he is the exact person for this specific situation. Iomedae will get shot at while she activates all her magic items, and then she's invisible - 

(the robots can see into the infrared and ultraviolet spectrums, she's still invisible there - the robots don't have any other senses, Minerva's invisibility is what they were designed to counter and she relies on infrared vision to see while invisible)

(a different thing that is now part of Steelmind's mind checks all the computerized RADAR stations for their signals - the robots don't have any way to feed that direct to their systems, but there's systems already in place for painting a dot in their vision and telling them to fire at it, and he can activate that remotely - the dot will stutter from place to place instead of being updated organically, he's devoting his full attention to this but there's still limits - there will be lag, just a little, that makes it much harder to hit her - 

- but the crossfire will still be centered where she was a few moments ago, and the MK. III "Juggernaut"s have very big blasters, designed to shear straight through concrete and steel to get to whatever their target is.

There are very few people who have gotten away with killing one of his father's friends. This idealist isn't going to be one of them.)

Ah hells they do have someone with See Invisibility, evidently calling out orders to everyone else. Some of that hit her - not most of it, but some of it - and hurt quite a lot and Angelic Aspect doesn't actually let you fly very fast or with particularly spectacular maneuverability, even with the Boots of Speed helping. Also Angelic Aspect gives you resistance to cold and acid and she obviously wants fire, here. 

She loves her gun very much but the sword is probably going to serve her better, here, with its spell resistance; she drops the gun for lack of a holster for it and draws the sword again. And then she'll attempt evasive aerial maneuvers, mostly getting as low to the ground as possible.

If the guy whose life she just saved (and kill she just stole) is around, and not the kind of person who'll be sulking for a week that a woman shamed him so, she could really use some backup, over here.

Sunder is not the kind of person who'd be sulking for a week that a woman shamed him so, he works for Ilderia. However, his arm, his sword, and a large fraction of his ribs are broken. He'll attempt to (one-armedly) smash his way through the robots, but while he's doing it in Iomedae's general direction (or, more accurately, in the direction of the rear line and possible medical treatment and a replacement sword), he's not doing it tremendously effectively.

Dodge, zigzag, try to position herself relative to the armies such that the fire that fails to hit her hits its own allies, look for a place to hide when the boots of speed run out. Iomedae misses Arazni. Or not even Arazni, any fifth circle wizard at all would do. If her new life plan is to take out demon lords from 'gun' range - and this seems like a good life plan for as long as there are demon lords fighting - she could really use a Teleport out.

She probably doesn't have enough healing left to do much for Sunder; two Lay on Hands won't even really patch her back up all that well and she's weaker than he is. She could throw him the holy avenger, it'll change size for him, but he's not a paladin so it won't do that much for him and she needs the spell resistance right now.

She's pretty sure the robots have burned off her Protection from Energy by now and she can't get that back either. Dodge more. ...this is one of those situations where one ends up (likely) dead quickly and (possibly) fourth circle, isn't it. They do not run the Shining Crusade that way because they'd run out of men.

She will probably still be alive when she makes it out, assuming she doesn't take too many unlucky hits! Did I mention there were a lot of robots?

She runs through the last of her healing and a Hero’s Defiance and the boots are all out by the time she’s reasonably confident they’ve lost her in the damaged buildings.

All right. Next order of business find a place to hide that isn’t likely to be exploded out from under her. Also another gun, she would prefer to always carry one of those from now on.

It's not actually that hard; the line of battle is advancing slowly, and the buildings behind the line have Ilderia's troops in them, and the buildings behind them are empty. And she is pretty fast.