Ariel closed her eyes for a moment and nodded to Ahnasha. For Meesei's request, she had to sit and think for a moment. "The witches would indeed carry around such potions, if a few between them. As for a position... well... the first consideration would be the ruined tower. There are still some walls to hide behind for cover and... no, they will be able to attack you from the walls either side." She tilted her head to one side and itched at her ear, most places in the fort were either too far away from the ruined tower itself to escape or weren't suitable for defending from. "Your best bet may be the hagraven nest in this tower. There is a door out to the wall from there where you can get back to the ruined tower to escape, and you would only have to defend the staircase of the upper level and the door to the other wall, but..." Ariel curled her brow in concern, "... if the hagravens had not been disturbed by that point, you would have to drive them out. That might be difficult."

"What exactly is a hagraven?" Janius asked slowly.

Ariel took a breath. "They are our spiritual leaders. Old witches. Old and powerful. They would likely not be so devoted to Clavicus Vile for they are wiser than that, but if we encroach upon them, they will react violently. You'll recognise them easily, they are hunched, and have some feathers growing from their arms. They are powerful mages as well, our most powerful."

"So how do we deal with them?" Janius followed up.

Pursing her lips again, Ariel became concerned that her old mentors might come to harm, but there may not be another way around it. "When we went scouting, I brought along this." Ariel got up, retrieved her spell reflection potion from her bag and showed it to everyone, "This is a valuable and powerful potion I made some time ago. It alters the magical state of your body for a time to reflect the effects of spells back to their caster for about twenty minutes. If you drink it, the hagravens wouldn't risk bringing their magic to bear on you. It would just be a matter of incapacitating them by some means. I think the distracting group can make more use out of it," She looked around to each of their faces, "Who should carry it around?"