Higini abandons his wife and children and temple the morning his spells don't arrive.
When he realizes it's virtually everybody and it's not that Asmodeus found fault with him specifically, he considers going back, but then he realizes that this would be a pretty stupid plan: if he's learned this fact other people may have as well, and will complete the inversion of the local pyramid with whatever implements are to had once they know he is without his own. He spends another two weeks on the road, growing out his beard and giving a false name. He's got a travel permit, but the toll stations are in somewhat worse repair than they were before. Desertions everywhere. Everyone knew before he did that Asmodeus captained the losing team, it seems. When he's outside the duchy he ditches the permit, no good to him any more anyway, dropping it in a river. He camps out in an abandoned farmhouse for a while, eats corn and fruit that's managed to self-seed for a generation or two, and then discovers why the place has been deserted when a small black dragon boils up out of the swamp to chase him off. It's confident enough to confront him but not enough to follow him. Off he bolts.
He has just about set up as a fisherman - he used to fish as a hobby, and likes it much less well as an occupation, but at least he has any experience with it. The other people in the fishing village don't really care where he came from, don't recognize his real name nor (with or without the beard, though he's keeping it anyway) his face, and are willing to take his money for a boat. He's being ripped off by face value, but the dollar is falling like a rock. He boards with an old woman who needs water brought in from the cistern and laundry hauled to the wizard and can't shift for herself so easily any longer. (Used to be he didn't need to haul water from anywhere to anywhere, but he can still do it, it's not complicated.)
Then a FUCKING ARCHMAGE shows up to kidnap him. He barely has time to get the boat in and let Old Vivas know he's going to be gone. And an archmage certainly knows what he used to be if they want to - but do they want to? He just has to make sure nobody cares about him at all until he can go back to fishing.
