It's got a significant quantity of gold coins, a smaller but not insignificant quantity of platinum coins, and a handful of gemstones of varying quality. Assuming she's got the stones appraised correctly, it's worth about twenty thou all told, mostly based on a walnut-sized black diamond.

"Do you guys like to divvy up front, or at the end of adventures?"

"At the end," Garrus says firmly. "With the exception of immediately useful magic items. If we don't trust one person to carry the loot, something's wrong."

"Cool, who won't be staggering around under all this gold?"

"Bag of Holding," Deekin says, offering his satchel. "Deekin be fine."

"Magic items are so dang cheap on this planet," she mutters, dumping the loot into the bag of holding.

Deekin shakes the bag a couple of times, then closes it up and shoulders it again. "Deekin find bag in ruins of Undrentide. Deekin find like six bags of holding in ruins of Undrentide actually, but most of them go to Boss and Boss die in big mythallar explosion so Deekin not have them anymore."

"Mythallar?"

"Very shiny very magic crystals, held up lost flying cities of Netheril including Undrentide, all destroyed except one, that one destroyed later. Explode very impressively. Detailed in book."

"I will start reading it on my next watch."

Deekin grins toothily. "Huzzah!"

They leave the ogre mage whose name they never got, and head back toward the central chamber.

Before they get there, of course, they reach the Hall of Mirrors again.

"So, we know there's probably a rod in there now - do we go in?"

"Do we need them all?"

"We don't know that we don't. The ogre said there were five, and there were four levers; on the other hand we have no information on the location of any other rods and so it might be a good idea for us to go for the one we're pretty sure is there, in case one of them is behind a particularly cunning secret door or its owner dropped it down a hole or something."

"We could go poke at the puzzle in case two is enough."

"That sounds prudent," Jojo nods. "We have precious little information on this puzzle thus far."

"Alright, alright. I'm just trying to be efficient, here."

They continue on, and reach the central chamber in good time. There it stands, just as they remember it, with the bridge blocked by a sequence of colorful pillars, and four levers with rod-shaped slots. The pillars are in the following sequence:

R G B

W B G

Y R W

G Y R

"We have... a white rod and a blue rod, which probably matters. Every straight path forward would require at least two other colors. Also nothing in the front row is either. We might need four? I don't see us needing five, there's only four slots."

"Sounds about right. Well, we can head south and see if the other two drop into our laps; shall we? Or shall we rest, actually, I know I talked a big game about taking that ogre down without a sweat but his minions were kind of exhausting."

"I have no objection to resting."

"Fine by me. Same watch?"

"I can take first watch, give Deekin a break."

"And I'm still fine with middle watch."

Resting occurs! Garrus wakes Belmarniss again, but doesn't have a pithy comment this time.

She preps spells and starts Deekin's book.

Deekin's book is quite well-written, and bears no trace of its author's linguistic difficulties. The prologue briefly details the birth and childhood of a kobold named Deekin, who is runty and does not get along with his peers but is eventually taken under the wing of the great white dragon Tymofarrar, who teaches him reading, writing, and magic. The book then clarifies that this is not Deekin's story, and switches to talking about a young adventurer-in-training named Alan Tagan, the paladin apprentice of a dwarven mystic theurge by the name of Drogan. Alan is a well-intentioned lad, but slightly off; he has a temper, and there's a darkness to him that he does his best to fight and doesn't always succeed. A few incidents are recorded: fights with residents of nearby Hilltop over philosophical differences, a near-fatal brawl with an adult named Toman Bross based on an insult to one of Alan's co-apprentices, and an ongoing feud with a young woman named Nora Blake, cause unknown.

Disaster strikes one day, as kobolds from the tribe near Hilltop attack the village. The reason for the attack: several artifacts under Drogan's care. The casualties: about a dozen villagers, and Drogan himself is poisoned and lies near death. The result: Alan and two of his fellow apprentices are sent to recover the artifacts. Along the way, Alan acquires the ingredients for an antidote to the kobolds' poison, helps a wandering Red Wizard of Thay, and rescues Nora Blake's child from the kobolds who have already killed her husband. Then, he tells her that he's not giving the child back, and she attacks him, and he kills her. When he does so, he experiences the sickening, vertiginous sensation of a paladin's Fall from Grace.

The murder is described with a clinical eye for detail. Alan receives neither condemnations nor apologia. His actions are not explained, because the narrator readily admits that he does not know why Alan did this. Alan looks at the blood on his hands, looks at the sleeping infant in his arms, and looks at the path ahead of him.

The chapter ends as Belmarniss's companions begin to stir.