Tencednil is seated at the desk in her room. Her hammock, bookshelf, and dresser are as they were weeks ago. The black curtains are closed.

The notes on her desk are older than she remembers and in different places.

She suddenly feels... a little better. Not great. But... that was the loop.

First step: writing things down. Lots of things. Every instruction she got from Morgethai, the Commune response, the dwarf newspaper numbers... all written down.

Next... she has a message to send to Morgethai and one to send to Ulon. The second should be her priority.

She closes her eyes and prays.

Ulon, who knows, know now more. I offer my knowledge to you.

Useless diminish moot quaver indisputable.

▲╫╳Θ░≡⟟⟠⍊⌖⦙⩺⧴╳⧖⟜░⟟⫯⩚⫎⟒⧠⧖╳⫟⧮

augh why

she can't think

▒▓▚█▉▙▀▞▒░█▙╫▉▓▓█▄╳▟⫟▓▛⧠█▞▀⫯▒⫟▓█▄▀▙▓░█▒█

She collapses on her chair, spent.

Eventually she drags herself up onto the hammock.

She does not send any letters to Felandriel Morgethai, nor does she meet Anton, Julio, and Mika at the Rusted Anchor. She spends the next eight hours using as few senses as possible, crawling out only to eat dinner before collapsing to sleep.

KORVOSAN CARRIER
STARDAY, DESNUS 30th, 4708

SCANDAL AT HOUSE GREY, SECRET HEIR REVEALED

The weather worsens. Rain pours in loud sheets. The sky crackles with lightning. Three ships delay setting off until the storm passes. Gemshare Jewelers is robbed by an expert. The value of the stolen goods exceeds ten thousand silver shields. Archbanker Darb Tuttle sells a regenerate.

She's better this morning. Mostly.

When she staggers down and picks up the newspaper, the text isn't a surprise. The important thing here is that it's the 30th. In particular, it is not the 29th. She missed her chance to talk to Anton and Julio. They will have gone down on their own, and without her there...

Mika is dead. The wizards are both dead. They — or, well, the versions of them that she remembers (are her memories false? No, Ulon would not have been so interested if they were false) — trusted her, worked with her, and did not betray her, and she took them into her circle. They were not to be betrayed. And now, unintentional or not, she has failed them. She let them die.

And she can't do anything about it. Even if she had all the money from the last time around, that money is too suspicious to be usable. A minor thing here or there, sure, but spending thousands of gold sails to Raise three specific people? Resurrect, even, if their corpses have been eaten by zombies or something? Hopeless. Even without connecting it to her, it leaves them obviously at the center of whatever is happening. They would not welcome the trade.

So she has failed.

She does have one more person she accurately trusted. She can still not fail Morgethai. She walks to the Bank, copies out the message under the 'Void' heading (still perfectly clear in her memories), and asks them to send it to the relevant account. She... can pay, yes. She's not wealthy, not by the standards she remembers, but it's a single letter.

The Bank will send her letter later today. It should arrive at its destination within a day or two.

Good. With that done... she needs the ring. She really does. A quarter was enough, but she needs that starting money. 

She leaves a note for Mother, purchases some focuses and other utilities, and sets off into the sewers, doing her best to retrace the path Anton took them on.

Tencednil makes her way down into the sewers from the entrance off Stone's End in Midland. It takes her a while to travel through the sewers near the surface. They're filthy and the further in she goes the more difficult to navigate they become. 

After what must be thirty minutes feet of sloping tunnels she finds the cylindrical chute. Water and sewage flow off the edge and down into the darkness below. The metal ladder is as rusted as she remembers.

Not being a human, she can do just fine here with no light. In the sewers, as she has seen, the best defenses are being obviously a threat or being not obviously anything at all. Today she will have to take the second approach.

Down she climbs, turning off at the top hole. She just needs to follow Anton's path. No need to check what's actually at the bottom of the ladder. (It's probably an otyugh. This is the right shape for them.)

Tencednil travels deeper. She's no longer adjacent to the sewage, and the terrible smell slowly fades away. The stone brick walls become old and cracked. The tunnels grow longer and stranger, winding back on each other. The maze is long. Her memory is good... but even so it's hard to tell precisely where she's going at all times.

She thinks she's close to the trapdoor when...

A gang of goblins is camping in the tunnel ahead of her.

There... are a lot of them. And she has no good weapons with her. On the other hand, goblins may well die to a single sickle cut to the throat...

She has no way around them. But there are no humans here, and she doesn't need a light. They might not see her, and even if they do they might not attack immediately. She does her best to sneak around them and get where she needs to go. Can she make it?

One of the goblins spots her when she's within ten feet of them. They leap up and draw their weapons. "Human!"

Three goblins draw from their quivers and loose arrows at her. Two of them pierce her skin.

Ow ow ow alright they are hostile. ('Human'? Really? Her ears aren't subtle!)

Seven of them, not in a cone but still in a group. No way to Color Spray, but she does have a new spell for this purpose. Hopefully she can get by them while they're blinded.

Burst of Radiance, hitting everyone in the room but her and Lhín.

When the brilliant light clears, four goblins are unconscious and smoking on the floor. Three goblins are unharmed. They look mostly blinded.

Blinded means not vulnerable to Color Spray, but hopefully they will be more focused on their fallen comrades than on her. (Does not being evil make that more likely? Maybe. She isn't sure. Is that even the relevant question?)

She dashes off in the direction she needs to go, clearly leaving them behind. Can she communicate "you don't start anything and I won't" with her posture while fleeing? Probably not, but she does as much as she can.

The goblins, being blinded, can't observe her posture. They loose arrows at where she was before she ran away. None of them come close to hitting her current position.