The fade transition did bother me on that last comic and I really only kept it there for consistency. It might be worth my time to go back and add a clear break between panels on all the pages to make them look cleaner. It usually looks fine, but this was the first time I had more then three panels on a page.
As for the random demon thing. Minor Spoilers. It was intentionally out of the blue. There's a lot of crazy stuff happening beyond the kobolds they are investigating and demon sighing are going to become more frequent in the future. I may have to explain their reaction a bit more on a later page. They don't necessarily don't care about babies it's just they know taking on a demon, even a small one, is way beyond their skill set and they would prefer to look tough instead of admitting their inadequacy.