The banker casts the spell on her. For a moment, the imperfections of her form seem to disappear and a shimmering key appears above her forehead.

Her certainty that Ulon's shape is the proper way from the world to be, that he does not wish her controlled, clashes with the spell—

—but resistance isn't the point here. She lets it wash over her and settle in.

"I attest under oath..." She reads the contract wording she wrote. She can do that under Truthtelling. If she couldn't, she would have written it differently. Obviously. But this is the standard for human deals like this, and she doesn't want this one to stand out to anyone involved, so she does it.

The banker places a small sheaf of papers on the desk. "Your account number is 32824. The money has already been transferred. Withdrawals cannot be made without all four of you present. We may accept a signed permission notice in place of physical presence, testified as authentic under truthtelling, depending on the circumstances. We have a room available tomorrow at noon for the remove deafness. Good day."

She pushes the sheaf across the table. It contains details about their account.

"Good day."

She writes down the room instructions for Mika to read, because he probably can't hear them. They don't have the room for much longer, so she glances through the papers quickly to make sure there's nothing strange there and prepares to leave.

"Do we want to try to go back and see if there was anything in that ritual room? It will be risky, but the newly available funds could make it less so. Or we could go our separate ways hereafter, if you would prefer, except for determining Mika's share of the books."

The papers seem perfectly normal and boring.

"I don't particularly want to go back. With our luck a fungus will melt my skin off before we even get there."

"I wasn't necessarily planning on selling the books, depending on what's in them. We still need to sell the black onyx and the crystal. We can go through the Acadamae for gems, although they'll take a cut. Mika might want the silver dagger, but if not we'll have to find a buyer for that too."

—Mika saw her take the jar, there's no point hiding it. This is a good time to bring it up.

"I also have the preservative. It's magic, but not in a way I had an easy buyer for. It looked like it only works on things that used to be living, but the books look impressively unharmed, so at least it's effective. Add it to your sales list."

He smiles. "Oh, good. Well, ignoring the books, the soonest we can get everything appraised and sold is probably Moonday. Everyone at the Acadamae is always busy on festival day."

"Only to be expected. Aught else? And do either of you have a way to improve cantrip effectiveness on undead? After Fireday I was thinking about getting a crossbow, but a more effective Splash would be better."

"Actually being able to aim disrupt undead might improve the effectiv—"

"Oh, come off it! It's not like you weren't tripping over yourself when that zombie turned 'round on you."

Julio sighs and thinks for a bit. "Well, the Hall of Summoning historically recommended using brimstone as a material component with acid splash to increase the potency... but you'd be just burning money instead of spells, that stuff isn't cheap."

"It's still worth a try. And books say all sorts of things are necessary that actually aren't, I've never needed sand to cast my Color Spray. It might be something I can learn to do if I see how it works."

She's still undecided whether that's humans being bad at things again or something else, so she'll leave open the possibility they could figure it out themselves, even if she doesn't have much hope.

"Well, you're not a wizard, are you? Sorcerer magic is often a little strange. Supposedly."

"Perhaps it's that, then. Still worth a try to see if I can get the hang of it on my own. If you're going to look into the book spells, would you mind checking to see if there are any records of things like that? The Academae's library is impressive."

"I'll take a look through the Hall of Summoning's library. It'll probably be hidden away in there somewhere."

She nods, waves, and off she goes to let them do their research. She... still doesn't have anything to do today, and it's more obvious now after her recent adventures. She might be able to find something on Acid Splash, but relying on publicly available sources and using her own research ability rather than a wizard's is never going to find anything the others won't.

So. She has a few days free, and it's becoming increasingly obvious she needs to understand more about how her magic actually works if she wants to do foolhardy things like this. She'll start by planning some experiments for tomorrow when her weird shadow-thing is back. It seems increasingly like a familiar...

KORVOSAN CARRIER
SUNDAY, DESNUS 31st, 4708

SHINGLES GANG BRAWL TURNS BLOODY, NINE DEAD

A perfect circle is carved into the sky, two miles wide. The storm seems to bend around it. It's a bright, sunny day. The Acadamae opens it's doors to outsiders for the festival. The guard struggles to handle a crowd. A small ship wrecks against the Varisian coastline, far in the distance. A devil has breakfast with his great grandson.

The morning bell rings.

Her first urgent business today is getting Mika his Remove Deafness without him grievously offending Mother. How does he feel about having his spell cast in a completely dark room? He goes in, something happens, he comes out, he can hear again. If he can't see anything he can't say anything too offensively human about it.

Mika seems unhappy but willing to go through with this. He wants his hearing back.

Perfect. This should be easy then.

She walks him to his room and walks out herself.

Her daughter was working with this... offensively human... human? Perhaps she can't judge on party members, given her own misadventures, but still. Oh well, as long as she doesn't need to deal with him without being paid well.

Remove Deafness.

She returns to the room to walk him out.