Elbolin, upon hearing from Elfo about the underground tunnel, decides to see if he can round up Bilbo and Hooflepoof, who left a few minutes ago to see if they could get up on the roof. He ventures upstairs, where he sees the hole in the ceiling. He calls out to anybody on the roof in sort of a stage-shout, so as not to give away their position to the enemies outside, but gets no response. Nonetheless Elbolin is fairly sure that at least Bilbo is up on the roof, so he goes back down and brings Karat up to boost him up through the hole.

He tells Bilbo about the tunnel, but Bilbo still wants to try to get help from the ravens, calls them over to her. Two ravens respond, fluttering over from nearby rooftops to just outside of her reach, and chattering at her. Raven language isn't quite like the common tongue, but she can tell that they are asking question words, kind of a combination of "who?", "what?", or "how?". Bilbo simplifies it as much as she can, saying "bad people, bird killers" - pointing to the cultists and kobolds below - and "burn nests, burn trees", guessing that the birds would understand "nests" the same as "homes". The ravens fly away to rejoin their crowd, and Elbolin and Bilbo climb down and rejoin their group, still waiting in the dining room.

Bilbo leads the group through the passage, which is musty but otherwise functional. They arrive at the other end of the tunnel, where Elbolin peeks out the hatch. He sees the abandoned workshop just as Elfo had, and through the greasy windows, the flickering torches of the cultists. He climbs out into the room, and everybody takes a look around, staying low and casting no unnecessary light. They find a front door and windows, and a door in the back. They expect it to lead outside, but instead they find a large room with heavy shelves, looking like it was once a storage room, but is now empty. Along the east side of the room is a large loading door, like a garage door, that opens upward. Elbolin opens it just a crack and peers under; he sees the alleyway, and a few curious villagers watching from the shadows, but no enemies. it looks safe.

As the adventurers, along with Leosin and Kaspar the innkeeper, sneak out under the loading door, the villagers even help them out a little bit, crowding up to the alleyway entrance to block the view, should any cultists look in their direction. The adventurers make their way stealthily over to the Keep.

Meanwhile, Hooflepoof is at the Keep, watching the village warriors gather. It's starting to look like they will soon have enough to mount an attack, but it will be still a few minutes, so he decides to sneak invisibly over to the Old Greenest and see what is going on there. He sees the cultists still surrounding the inn, and he can see that Bilbo is no longer up on the roof. He can't see anybody through the windows, though he can't see in very well, so he can't be sure. So he jumps up on the roof (using his Boots of Striding and Springing), and climbs down through the hole. He doesn't find anyone in the dining room, so he starts snooping around, and finds the open hatch in the kitchen. He follows it down into the basement, and through the tunnel. He sees the back door still standing open, so he follows it to the storage room, and sees the loading door still open a crack. It looks like his friends probably came this way, but he isn't sure, so he asks the villagers that are standing around in the alleyway, and they say yes, a group of non-villagers came out the loading door and went "that way". The direction is toward the Keep, so he is fairly sure that is where they have gone.

The rest of the group reaches the Keep and finds that the villagers' army has grown to about 50 men and women; it looks like enough to take on the cultists and kobolds surrounding the Old Greenest Inn, at least they think so. They find Governor Nighthill and ask him if he has seen Hooflepoof. "He was just here..." he says, looking around, "but I haven't seen him in a few minutes."

Nighthill was just preparing the villagers to deploy, getting them organized and handing out weapons. Elbolin asks him what he thinks about fighting the dragon group, and he says "well I'd rather not fight them. I'll almost certainly lose some of my people, and it could be a lot worse than that. If they are just here for you, and there is nobody in the Inn... well even if they burn it down, that's better than losing our lives. Is there anybody in there that needs to be rescued?"

Kaspar has disappeared into the crowd in the Keep, but they find him, and he reports that nobody else was staying at the Old Greenest Inn, so it is probably empty.

Around that time, Hooflepoof returns to the Keep, and reunites with his friends. They discuss what to do. It isn't clear that they really need to fight these guys. They could just let them do whatever they want; they would probably burn down the Inn, but not finding Leosin or the adventurers, go back to their camp. But on the other hand, here they are with an army of villagers and perhaps even a host of ravens on their side, so maybe it's a good time to teach these cultists a lesson. They decide to amass their forces and go on the offensive.