A ripple passes through the world.

Every illusion on the front half of the Hall of Wards ceases to exist. The first eight doors are instantly rendered nonmagical. The seventh door, made of vines, withers to dust. The shadows wink out.

The Doors of Scouring still glow.

"—Professor Javier Vargas of the Hall of Shaping, everyone!"

The crowd roars with applause.

That... she's heard legends of a ninth-circle spell that shatters all magic in the area but the direct workings of the divine, the incomparable art of artifacts, and Antimagic Fields. She never expected to see it in action. And that means this gate is entirely in an Antimagic Field? The thief really was almost to the point where she would get to show off, between the Dispel Magic and that. Oh well. Still seems like a waste of a ninth-circle scroll, though. There's so much he could have done with that! Probably. She doesn't actually know what, but surely there are things.

The Headmaster speaks in his booming voice. "The magic of the doors shall return within twenty minutes at most. Until then, we will take a short break."

Wizards continue to be incredibly impressive, and a little ridiculous in what they spend that on. The Academae certainly did get to show that off this year.

For now, it is getting late and there are many delicious things around to nibble on. She wanders, listens in on conversations, and grabs a few snacks as she goes. Does she hear anything interesting in the next twenty minutes? If not, back up to watch the next attempted breaching!

At this point, there's not particularly much interesting going on except the Breaching. People are getting snacks and chatting about the contestants and collecting bets.

Almost exactly twenty minutes later, the doors regain their magic. The seventh door seems to regrow from nothing. One-by-one, they swing shut.

The announcer speaks. He seems nervous. "Well, unfortunately I do bring bad news. Our other two candidates have decided to... drop out. It seems they believe themselves incapable of outshining our first three incredible candidates. Cowards."

The crowd boos loudly. "Cowards, cowards!" some chant, but eventually everyone begins to disperse.

Cowardly, perhaps, but expected. If they weren't expecting to be the best in a decade at the start of the day, nobody's going to remember them if they go now. If nobody's going to care and they're definitely not going to win, why take the risk?

She too heads off. The festival starts to wind down after the Breaching, but there are still some events. Does anything stand out?

Everyone seems to be packing up. Most of what's left is people selling food, because it's about the time most people eat dinner now. The static illusions are still up, and very pretty.

She spends some time looking at the illusions, trying to get them to snap out into the half-there haze which is always so pretty. After that, though, she heads home. It was a good way to spend her day.

The next truly important thing she has to do is get to that meeting with Julio and Anton, where they can work out what the books are worth and how they're splitting the money. She did only say she wouldn't take a share of anything she couldn't use, after all, and money is very usable. In the meantime, it would be foolish to dive into another dangerous adventure before spending that. There are surely things she could do to improve her chance of survival if she goes out again, and dying because she couldn't wait a week would just be dumb. In the meantime, then, she should try to figure out this thing with Acid Splash.

On Moonday, she finds herself some odd jobs here and there, things which might be a bit dangerous without the ability to knock most muggers unconscious but which she can handle. That brings in enough for her to get a few pinches of brimstone. When she uses them in an Acid Splash, they definitely do something! The spellform collapses around them like a normal component, and while they vanish with the spell's release, she can feel that the acid was a bit hungrier. That's the effect she wants to replicate. She tries casting it a few times, holding that feeling in her mind, but gets nowhere.

Toilday and Wealday she spends tutoring showing off her Color Spray to an Academae student who apparently kind of sucks at studenting, and couldn't figure out how to match the form of a circled spell to the diagrams even with his Detect up. Ten castings later, he's figured out how all the various bits and pieces work out, and has paid her shown his gratitude with a few shields and, more importantly, quite a bit of brimstone. She didn't ask how he got access to it. If it matters, it's better that she doesn't know.

With the brimstone in hand, her Oathday is a time to cast repeatedly, shifting by just a bit each time. She can replicate that part of the effect if she feeds the spell a bit of breath and pushes it off her hand slightly differently. If she tugs on the knot just as it's coming out, she can get that part to stabilize. If she pulls in a smidgen of the shadows from within her mouth, she can shape it into some of the fuzzy grabbiness the acid needs to replicate... As she goes on, she can use less and less brimstone for the same effect. By the end of the day, she thinks she pretty much has it, but she's out of brimstone. And she can't do it without spending a while concentrating, which is less than useful in combat.

On Fireday—

KORVOSAN CARRIER
FIREDAY, SARENITH 5th, 4708

HIS MAJESTY, KING EODRED ARABASTI II, SLAIN BY GLARATAXUS THE RED

The fog is deep and Castle Korvosa burns. The newspapers say the King and his seneschal were on a balcony when the flames poured from the sky, but each tale told on the streets grows more fantastic than the last—the dragon teleported through the castle wards, the dragon called the fog and bent the weather, the dragon was in league with the King and turned on him at the last moment, the dragon was disguised as an underage girl and the King succumbed to lust, burning alive in his own bed! By mid-morning riots have broken out at the Midland docks, and both city gates have shut.

By the time she wakes up and accepts that today she will once more have to go out into the horrible unnecessary brightness, dragged on her cloak and her shadows, and peeked out the door, it has become very obvious this is not a normal day. The extra newspaper left outside their door confirms that something important enough to pay for an extra copy happened. When she pulls them back inside to read in an environment which isn't constantly slightly irritating her eyes and opens the second, she knows this is important enough to wake Mother.

So. The king is dead, burnt from out of the sky. What does that mean?

Most immediately, it means going out will be dangerous today. Any excuse to be angry gets some humans going around looking for a person to take their helplessness out on, and a red dragon killing the king is definitely an excuse. She's too obvious a target, too easily blamed if she tries to fight back. She can handle one assault, but the second and third when they say she attacked them unprovoked? Five is a lot of Color Sprays for a first circle wizard, it is not a lot compared to the number of humans she would have to knock out.

On the other hand, it also means more hurt people, so more people looking for healing, probably some of them needing stranger things. Mother will grumble about serving at the pleasure of idiots but she'll take the extra money, and that means sending messages to the Temple. Her Deeper Darkness badges and Faerie Fire letters are distinctive, and most people who would try to jump someone with a recognized protector are dumb enough to be off at least the streets between here and the Bank. And she'll use Tencednil as a messenger before paying a human for it even if she is a disappointment.

Mother has apparently come to the same realization, and presses her into service ferrying letters before she could come to ask for it. Off to the Bank she goes, part 1 of her first round trip of the day...

Chaos fills the streets. Almost everyone avoids her, what with the sixty-foot line of darkness shining from her badge. She has to take a longer route on the way to the Bank, as some of the streets have been cordoned off by the Guard.

A filthy man in grey rags screams from an alleyway when he sees her pass. "The Eye of Groetus has turned from the Boneyard to look upon Korvosa! The end is nigh! Repent, fools, repent!"

Groetus, is it? Groetus's attention is well known to come in the form of a red dragon, then? The king doing something stupid and angering a dragon is so unfathomable that it must be a god's direct attention? He's dead! And given the reactions, it seems like he's not about to get a Resurrection from the Archbanker, for one reason or another! There's no need to say things just to make him sound good!

Not that she's going to say any of that out loud, of course. The king might be actually dead, but maybe the Archbanker just didn't have a Resurrection prepared today or something like that. Even if he does stay dead, there's no guarantee blatant disloyalty will go beneath the notice of whoever sits on the throne next. (She didn't see any children in the royal box yesterday, so she probably didn't miss one of them being born... Who has enough loyalists up on the hills to take the throne, then? The Queen surely has some, but she's fighting the sun as it rises if she wants to claim the throne and actually usefully rule, with the general opinion of her. Unless she has a lot more magic backing her than Tencednil knew about.)

What does the crowd around the Bank look like? With this much unrest, surely there is one, for one reason or another. What are they talking about?

A small crowd has indeed formed at the bank! While they don't have pitchforks, they've every tool imaginable other than pitchforks, and torches to complete the look. They're mad about... the Queen and also the economy and also one of them has a debt they'd really like to not have to pay. Some bankers and guardsmen have formed a small shield wall on the steps. It hasn't turned violent yet, but the mood is turning.

How would the crowd feel about—

Wait. That would be a bad choice, actually. Humans are bad at darkness, but in unpredictable and confusing ways. The bank probably knows what it is doing, and if a quick spell was going to solve their problem they would have done that already.

She still needs these people out of the way, though. Mobs like to stick together, so if half of them run off the rest will probably follow. She sets her badge aside, pulls her hood up over her ears, tucks in her hair, and runs up to them, gasping for breath more than she really needs to be.

"I — heard somethin' about the Queen —she's having her guards go out marchin' — up in the Heights by the castle — if she stops she'll have to stop — m' brother in the guard says she only has some of 'em — need real Korvosans over there — you go, I'll find so'more people after I catch m'breath."

As long as she moves quickly enough and covers her obvious drow features, nobody should be able to pick her out again to blame when this isn't true. And the Queen surely is doing something up by the castle, so maybe it will just look like a misinterpretation.

"Oi! Guys! The Queen's got some traitor guards up by the Castle! Let's move up that way!" He starts running down the street.

Some of the crowd follows him. The rest slowly disperse... even the debtor, who's still mad, but knows a losing fight when he sees one.

Victory! Back to fetch her badge again, blending in with the stragglers from the crowd, and then up to the bank. "Message from Dilnictan, requesting an updated list of cleric spell demands and offering a slate of preparations for tomorrow for future sale. Here's the message, authenticated as standard from her, and you can see the badge is right." She "shines" it at the wall, and indeed, that certainly is a circle of pure darkness wherever it falls. "I can wait for a reply or be back in twenty minutes, as you prefer."

Back she goes! Hopefully it hasn't been long enough for her to need to get through another mob, but if she does there's always the option of fully pulling out the token and dumping them all into darkness.

There aren't any mobs on her way home, but there are all sorts of scoundrels and cultists and other unruly types about. Some of the Sable Company fly overhead on their hippogriffs, searching for something. Tencednil makes it home unaccosted, but the mood in the streets grows worse by the minute.