Eefina is concerned! She's curious about how he was acting weird where, exactly, he was last seen before he vanished? They should definitely come get her again should he turn up. She is currently living at the Academy, here is her dorm address.

He's usually a gregarious and cheerful guy, but he was serious and quiet as the grave. He couldn't even be plied with alcohol, he was refusing to drink! Very uncharacteristic.

He was twitchy, jumping suddenly at things like a dropped plate or sudden motion in his peripheral vision. This friend has heard of that happening after really bad runs.

There was a sullen anger inside him, that only crossed his face when he thought nobody was looking. A deep fury that makes that friend think he's going to do something violent.

He was last seen right here, in this park, smashing a particular plot of flowers. Night Sky Lilies. (The area has ever-so-faint traces of dhar. But places can accumulate the foul magic even without being exposed to a particularly strong source of it, bits of dhar float in from the north...)

Eefina is too late to make her second class anyway, so she will stop by this park, look around, and notice the traces of dhar. They might be nothing, but given the givens... is there a trail? Anything she can follow? If not she can go look up Night Sky Lilies in the academy library?

There doesn't seem to be a trail. Just sort of a concentration of it in his house, and here in the park. Wait... Trailing over to this... Statue... With a small marking carved into it around the greatest piece of corruption. Sort of a circle with three arrows pointing into it.

She can tell it means 'traitor'.

The statue is of a knight named Dame Kellan. She's one of the knights who died on the ill-fated expedition.

Night sky lilies are a rare breed of flower that grows almost perfectly black petals, speckled with tiny dots of white, like the night sky. Some people associate them with pure, deep silence, and peace. They were brought back to Rotula from the "sea of spires" by Dame Kellan almost thirty years ago, after an expedition to the many and varied islands to the east.

So, the missing Sir Greenfield, while suffering from dhar-poisoning, went to the effort of defacing the memorial of one of his party members, and doing violence by proxy to one of her accomplishments.

What else can she learn about the late Dame Kellan? Who might have reason to fear for her legacy?

Dame Kellan's family is a noble family that owns a lush coastal farmland fifty miles south of the city. They have a long-standing rivalry with... Basically all of their noble neighbors, over food and tolls and court intrigue. For example, about a hundred fifty years ago, they invested a lot of money to try to build a port town but the neighbors all raised the tolls exiting their lands in protest until there was a series of honor duels, which the Kellans mostly lost. That's when they started sending out expeditions, hunting for glory and riches.

Sir Greenfield was sworn to the service of one of those neighbors - the Whitgars.

That makes it slightly more like that the blame Sir Greenfield seems to place on Dame Kellan is misplaced, but it's clear she needs more information.

What can she find on the Whitgars?

They seem kind of boring as noble families go, at least from what she can find in the library. Usually following what the broader coalition of the general area (except the Kellans) does and not getting involved into high-profile disputes unless basically everyone else is, too. Trying to get themselves into important positions, but not actually doing anything exciting with their position... Mostly due to the fact that they're all staunch Cancellists, trying to stymie the city in rules so that the wealth keeps flowing to the top. They're apparently very devout to something called the Church of the Grail Lady, too.

This is starting to paint an ugly picture, but Eefina didn't know why she ever expected a pretty one.

So... her tentative hypothesis is that the Kellans were at odds with the Cancellists, and by bad luck or scheming found themselves with all Cancellist neighbors. The Cancellists colluded to make life difficult for the Kellans, which spurred the Kellans to undermine their neighbors. Possibly even to the point of overt sabotage and assassination?

Eefina will need to think this over, and search for more evidence. Tomorrow. After her shopping trip with Tret, and her classes.

Eefina heads back to her dorm to sleep.

In the morning she has mail! It says they have assigned her a roommate by the name of Mimi Sokan. If she wants to switch to a single room for a reasonable fee those are still available.

She also has a note saying that they noticed she skipped a class and while she has a buffet pass and can do this, it's highly recommended she not skip classes, as it can hurt her leveling and therefore mess with her class schedule. She can go to the registrar's office and have her schedule adjusted but doing this frequently may leave her progressing slowly.

It doesn't actually occur to Eefina that she might be expected to want to immediately trade up to more expensive accommodations now that she has a lot of money. There's nothing wrong with her current dorm room.

Yes, the cleansing was definitely more important but she should definitely not make a habit of skipping. She heads out for breakfast and to definitely make it to today's classes.

She has a Wizardry class this morning and the next Sorcery class in the afternoon, with a three hour break in between.

In Wizardry you need to have a very precise understanding of the exact meaning and relationship of a series of words, and then you say them, and you can do things. The most common form is casting with viric drawn from the mana that everyone has within themselves. It's important to be careful with your phrasing. There is a word that means 'cancel', and if you stumble on your phrasing it will probably be invalid and do nothing, but it's good practice to say 'cancel' anyway.

Here is the anatomy of a very simple flash of light: "I offer one tenth of mana from my core in the form of viric to the spirits of light so that they might create a flash of radiance in front of me."

Once everyone has that down, they can start learning vocabulary like "behind me" or a coordinate system to exactly place the light, or a phrasing that makes it last a few seconds instead of flashing out in an instant.

This is just like programming an analytical engine! Well. Not just like. But wow!

Eefina, being able to understand the incantation words with her Summoned Hero language power, and with a pre-existing knowledge of programming, and a mind that likes to build towers of recursion for fun, completes the follow-up exercises within seconds of the instructor informing them what said exercises are, and switches to scribbling excitedly in her note-book.

The instructor looks at the notebook and says, "...It seems like you would benefit from an accelerated class. Did you already gain a level in light magic?"

Eefina wasn't paying attention to that in particular, but, "I think so!"

She glances at her notebook and reads off one of her scribbled incantations. Six balls of light, in red, green, yellow, purple, blue, and silver, appear in a ring around Eefina. They're supposed to orbit around her slowly, but instead the whole ring tumbles end over end very quickly. She pouts at it.

"-I must advise you to be cautious. There are safety mechanisms you could learn. I'd be happy to assist you personally instead of dividing my attention if you come to office hours. Or better yet, sign up for gold office hours."

She nods agreeably.

"I'll consider it," Eefina promises.

Back to the lesson then. The other students are slower but he has statistics to make, and 100% class leveling success is a good one to have on your record.

Tret arranged a particular cafe near campus to meet her at, the other day.

Eefina remembers where to find it!

After class lets out she drops her school stuff back at her dorm room and heads on to the cafe.

Tret is talking with another wolf-type demihuman! They might be related to him? They look similar, but it's a bit hard to tell. He walks over to her. "Yo! How's things, 'Fina?"

"Hi Tret. I can wizard now! Who's this?"

"You're really getting your money's worth out of the academy, huh. Oh, this is my aunt. Lenora."

"Tret has a lot of interesting things to say about you!"

"Hello, Lenora! It's been an interesting few days!"

"I tried to look up this 'silver shrine in the sky' but couldn't find any credible references..."

"OKAY we were going to go shopping, right, you don't need to let her bother you with her curiosity."

Eefina giggles sheepishly.

"Curiosity is a virtue, I think, but we do have shopping to do. I can tell you this: we didn't have shops in the Silver Shrine, so I'm excited."