Her past two decades were dedicated to Ulon.

Mother always said truly understanding the secrets would take a proper drow a century, but they aren't exactly proper drow, and they probably don't have a century. (Of course, if Mother knew how long they did have, she never told Tencednil.) That just meant they had to try harder, though. Learn faster, be better, stay focused like the servants instead of seeing for themselves like a noble can. And Mother said it was working! At only two decades old, she was seeing things in all the right ways!

Two weeks ago, she woke with the dawn, felt for Ulon in her prayers, and found something else there. At first she thought it was her birthright as a noble finally coming in. But when Mother saw her cast a Detect Magic with her hands, her smile collapsed like its guide thread had snapped.

One week ago, Mother finally deigned to inform Tencednil she was a sorcerer, and that Ulon's favor almost never fell on a drow already able to cast. If she ever wanted to cast through the circle and pentagon, she would need to prove herself more than any noble in the last at least three millenia.

Yesterday, she started looking for some way to create that proof.

The morning bell rings.

Korvosa's streets know many things, and she's always had a feel for where to find whispers. Who around here is looking for some newly-released Academae students to get in trouble for them? Who among the students might want aid from a newblooded sorcerer and her blinding, stupefying lights? Where can she go to show that in the hands of a drow (fine, half-drow), even sorcery can be mighty?

Well, most of the students have spread out throughout the city, clustering around the Academae and its affiliate businesses. There's a couple of them trying to buy muscle in a shady dockside bar. Someone goes briefly invisible as they round a corner on a busy street. A small group sends something in the sky scattering away with rays of frost. Take your pick.

She's been in shady dockside bars as a purchaser of muscle. The servants might think providing muscle is a peasant job, but Mother said it's how new drow houses start. Tencednil, as a (half-)drow without a house to back her, might as well follow that path.

As far as she can tell, her one and only spell is debilitating for anyone right nearby, and she cast it five times in a row yesterday before running dry. She may not be a wizard, but she's pretty sure that's impressive. Also, as of a couple days ago, one of her spells went wrong she demonstrated a drow's natural understanding of spellcraft when she cast it into a shadow, which peeled off and has been following her around ever since. It can't talk, but it's buzzed a warning at her a few times when she was about to fall. Maybe it will be useful in other ways, and if it breaks she can probably make a new one tomorrow.

(Also she's not exactly asking for much right now. Surely there's someone who needs a sorcerer.)

There's two students at a corner table in the Rusted Anchor, arguing with a burly Shoanti man. Parchment is spread across the table–at a glace it appears to mostly be maps and blueprints.

She can't lurk in the shadows, but that's not the only way to direct attention away from oneself. She will look around for a place to sit, entirely inconspicuously happening to find herself near enough to the argument to hear what they're discussing.

...mostly inconspicuously. Nudging a chair out of her way wasn't supposed to be quite that loud. Maybe nobody noticed?

"A third. There's one of me and two of you."

"It's our maps and our plans, without us you have no share at all. A quarter."

"Without me you'll be dead, weak boy."

"I'll have you know I passed two tests of Str—"

"Shut it, Anton. We've got a watcher." He looks at Tencednil. "Hey! Elf! You got a problem?"

No point in pretending now. As students at the Academae, they must be worth at least something... She turns to them slowly.

"I couldn't help but overhear, you're so loud. Just how minimal a sum are you squabbling over? I was considering doing some charity work to test my new spell, and you sound like you might be in need. And with such debate over a third or a quarter, a fourth person who plans to give out her own share based on actual contribution might solve your problems."

That's not even a lie! Unless the numbers are impressive. A bit of money really is less important than a reputation for trustworthiness, it's far harder to backstab someone who's already watching you.

"If you don't want a share of the loot, you're welcome to come along."

"We don't even know if there is any—" He sighs. "We've the blueprint to one of Florel Matei's old boltholes. He was assistant professor at the Hall of Whsipers some fifty-odd years back... but he's mostly known now for moonlighting as a murderer and a necrophile. They hanged him in '64 but never found his spellbook, or his headband, or anything else really."

"Well, I wasn't expecting much, so a risk of nothing is a risk I'd take. And a headband for cunning or a spellbook wouldn't do me much good, so you can trust me there." She nods to the silent one. "Call it quarters all around, I distribute anything I can't use from my share among the rest of you depending on how much we actually did need you instead of holding out for an Abadaran price splitting?"

The large man chuckles. "See boys, even the elf knows sense."

"What they're not telling you is that this place is buried sixty feet beneath the earth, and the only way in is down through the sewers and the Vaults. Probably the only reason one can hope it hasn't been robbed already."

"Well, that and the illusory wall covering the entrance. But we have the map."

She snaps, and a floating mass of shadowy spheres peels out of her shadow and floats up to eye level.

"This little one sees through most illusions like they're not there, and I know the Academae teaches summoning enough to get to bats. Surely you're not claiming a strictly visual illusion has kept anything actually valuable hidden for decades."

Well, alright, it seems to see through the few minor illusions she's been able to test with. They don't need to know that, though, now do they.

"The door's made of stone, flush to the wall, and swings it inward. Our friend here claims he can get arcane locks open reliably."

"I've done it before. 'tis not that hard."

"So you two would need to find another good lockbreaker or someone who can cast a good Knock, if you wanted it without his help. He would need someone who remembers Florel's habits well enough to track down his bolthole, now that he knows it's behind an illusion. That might get pricy, but there's two of you and one of him. Sounds like either of you walking away would put the other in a bad place, no? So we go all four of us, we see what actually doesn't work when we try it, and we work out the shares when we know what we needed."

Ulon doesn't teach general goodwill or fairness to anyone you deal with. He does teach that you should never leave someone who can hurt you, wants to hurt you, and doesn't have a reason not to. Apparently some Academae students are not so well taught.

He pauses for a moment, before nodding.

"Alright. I'm Julio, my colleague is Anton, and our lockbreaker is Mika."

"Tencednil."

And if she tries to be subtle here, they'll just miss it, won't they. There's no point risking death to avoid sounding stupid, and if they need to make choices in a few seconds it is risking death to know this little.

"And when someone jumps us on the way, where do you need to be? Am I watching for a Grease or expecting a Sleep, perhaps?"

"I've got mage armor, sleep, and cause fear today. Anton has mage armor, ant haul, and ear-piercing scream."

Nod. "Avoid me with the Sleep, despite the ears." She's mostly accepted that one, it's mostly just Sleep that hurts. "I have quite a number of Color Sprays left for the day, so if I can get close to something it's typically out of the fight. And Acid Splash for distances, of course, I assume you two have options as well." She turns to Mika. "Yourself?"

"Oh, I'm not a wizard."

Anton gestures to the maps.

"Our entry point is the sewer tunnel off 44 Stone's End in Midland. We need to head a couple thousand feet southwest and sixty feet down. I've got a route down lined up. The main things we need to watch out for on the way are animals and goblins. If we're unlucky one of the fungi will think us a snack. Don't waste your color sprays on them, they're immune. Same with the undead, if any of Matei's old servants are still around."

"But surely you survive somehow out on the streets. Anything we should watch for, try to set you up for?"

And a nod to Anton. "The flaws of touching minds. My friend here is hard to fool, so if it comes buzzing in all alarmed, there's something dangerous that we're missing." Probably. Now that it's heard that, at least.

"I'm good at slipping away, easy to not notice. Got a good weight behind my sword too. I don't need much else."

He pauses. "Well, we should all wear masks, the sewers are full of bad air."

"Distractions are good, then? Ghost Sound is a handy spell. And masks are most definitely worth the fabric, if we're down there. Stones don't exactly need to breathe, my friend can't help us with that."

She's already offered to take basically no loot here, she's not going to also buy them all masks. ...or buy the students masks, Mika probably has one already.

"Good point, let's pick some up on the way to Stone's End. We should probably get going soon anyway... after we review the route one more time. Just to be sure."

The party makes their way across the city. Anton and Julio pick up masks at a dingy clothing shop. Mika grabs some gear from his apartment. It's a little later in the day when they find the entrance, all the way down near the bottom of Midland.

"Alright, this is the place." Anton gestures at a tunnel entrance down the alley. "Mika, you first."

He draws his sword. "Could I get a light?"

Julio mutters and touches Mika's sword. It glows like a torch.

Sun-blinded fools. It's not even that dark, there should be no need to broadcast their presence everywhere.

Oh well. What does she see down the tunnel? Even with a Light, she can see farther in the dark than a human can with a torch. Even half-nobility is enough for that.

The tunnel slopes downward at an incline for about twenty feet. The end is visible; it opens up to a ledge near flowing water. The air in the tunnel does not smell nice.

"Down a bit over your Ray of Frost's reach to a ledge. Watch your step there, you don't want to fall in the water. You might want more than one light source for the three of you."

Mika will have to discover the scent himself. She's not going in first.

As expected, the tunnel leads into a sewer. It's filthy and the further they go the more difficult to navigate it becomes. Anton thinks he hears some rats but it's hard to tell over the noise of the water. This is a lot of flowing water, for a sewer.

After what must be thirty minutes feet of sloping tunnels (and of doubling back constantly to check their route) they enter a large cylindrical room. Water and sewage flows down into a large hole in the ground. There's a rusted metal ladder.

Mika grabs the rungs and waves his glowing sword, trying to get a better look. "I can't tell if there's a floor down there. Just looks like water!"

"There should be a square room about twenty-five feet down—"

"Can you stop waving that around? I can't see down with that between me and the floor, you're just making sure anything down there knows we're coming. Back off and let me look."

Grumble grumble. He sheaths the sword.

Now that she can actually look down without a blinding light cutting through her vision twice a second, what does she see?

Water pours down the side of the stone cylinder. She can just barely see the bottom, at the edge of her vision. It looks like a roiling pool of darkness. There are small cracks in the walls at regular intervals, next to the ladder.

"There's not a square room twenty-five feet down. I see something more like sixty feet off. Hold a moment."

She snaps for her shadow-blob. "Down thirty feet, back up, then down fifty and back up. If you see something, buzz and come back."

Her shadow-familiar floats down thirty feet and comes back up silent. At thirty-five feet it tinkles like a small bell and zooms back up.

"There's something down there, just out of my sight. My friend here can't tell us what, though."

...ugh. Fine, maybe Light will come in handy here.

"Stick your Light on the dead firefly you power it with and drop it in there, I'm not climbing down and trying to describe things while hanging from the ladder."

He'll cast light on a small rock and drop it down the hole.

It falls, illuminating the walls as it goes. At thirty-five feet down Tencednil can make out a square hole in the wall, about four feet on each side. It quickly widens into a room, but she can't make out the interior from this angle.

At forty-five feet she can see another hole, shaped identically to the last one. At sixty feet the rock impacts the water. Strange things are shadowed on the wall, and the light goes out.

"No platform, but we might be able to do the necessary acrobatics. Do you know which of the holes we need to take?"

To the familiar: "You could see into that top hole, it's not an illusion? Was there anything moving inside?"

The familiar rings a light tone, then a dark one. Yes, No.

"Top hole is real, at least, and maybe safe. Do I need to check the bottom one or the water?"

"No. If we're in the right place it's the top one we want."

In that case, she will wait and follow behind Mika. No reason she should be the first tasty meat bag anything lurking here jumps on.

They climb down the ladder, one-by-one, with Mika leading. The square hole is about a foot away from the ladder. Everyone makes it across fine. It leads into a small square room with three exits. Anton consults the map and they continue onward.

They're no longer adjacent to the sewage, and the terrible smell slowly fades away. As they move deeper, the stone brick walls become old and cracked. The tunnels grow longer and stranger, winding back on each other. The maze is long.

Twenty more minutes deep, at a four-way crossroads, Tencednil feels her familiar become alarmed.

Oh dear. Is there anything visible in the nearest 30 feet?

"Ware! Something is off here." ("Nudge me towards the closest.")

Her familiar nudges left. With it's help, she can make out—

Two goblins, sneaking towards them. A moment passes. "They zees us!"

Getting the first strike in in combat is really no different from getting ahead of whoever you're talking to in a conversation, when you know what you're doing. If you know what the idiots are about to look for, it's not hard to get there first. By the time they've realized she's talking about them, Tencednil is already in motion.

A shift of her weight, a minor twist, and they're in range. Color Spray.

The goblins have just started to charge, and then they're stunned! and blinded! and unconscious!

The others can hear two thuds as both bodies hit the ground.

Mika had started to run, but he skids to a stop to avoid the blinding light. "Looks like that got 'em."

He walks over and slits their throats. "Ehh, they've nothing good, just shoddy gear and a few pinch."

Perfect. A good introduction, and getting both of them is at least a bit impressive. Probably.

"Alas. If these things are coming from behind, we may want earlier warning next time — do either of you have familiars with functioning senses that can be looking behind as we walk ahead? My friend here can, but it's best up close."

"I've got a bonded item. Anton's familiar is back in our dorm doing... other things." He looks relieved, probably because the goblins are dead.

"Well, my friend here might provide us some earlier warning if it's looking back as well." The light does technically reach farther than its object sense. Slightly. Ten extra feet will not be relevant, and even that is asking a bit much of it, but they make do with the tools they have. 

('Other things', hmm? As long as it's not going to be her problem.)

The maze continues. Anton guides them through another ten minutes of winding passages, then through a trapdoor and down a twenty-foot ladder. The stone cobbles and bricks have faded almost completely, replaced with tunneled cave walls. This place is less of a classic maze but no less strange for it, with tunnels of every shape, many going nowhere at all.

Eventually, they hear a soft rumbling in the distance.

"We're getting close. That's got to be the river, and in the caves past it is our illusory wall."

The tunnels widen into a cavern, with a river splitting it into thirds. The water is murky, but it doesn't smell like the sewage from before. There's a few plants on the dirt at the edges of the river. The sound of insects can be heard faintly.

Mika looks around as they cross the cavern. "Seems like we're about ta be getting wet."

"Don't remind me."

"I don't suppose you thought to bring Prestidigitation? This really should be only momentary."

"Yes, I have it, it's just unpleasant to think about."

And this is why you want silk. Clothing which catches all the water that falls on it and hugs it close rather than letting it slide to where it's wanted is foolish.

Still, they do have to go through one way or another if they want to get there. She can handle being a bit wet.

They cross the river, twice. Julio and Anton throw their packs across first, presumably to avoid damaging their spellbooks. The water reaches to Tencednil's chest at it's highest. Julio cleans everyone off.

The cavern splits into caves and crevices. At this point, nothing looks artificial. It's only five minutes in when Anton stops by an unremarkable wall in the middle of a long cave.

"I think this is it." He moves his hand across the wall, leaning against it. "Should be around here somewh—" His fingers pass through, six feet above them.

"Ah. Mika, help me up?"

Mika grabs Anton by the waist and lifts him. His body slowly vanishes into the wall without so much as a ripple.

"Alright, there's tunnels here! This must be it." His hands appear through the wall. "Julio, grab on, I'll lift you up."

Julio climbs up, looking uncomfortable the whole time.

"Want me to help you up?" He asks Tencednil.

She could use the help, and it doesn't sound like there's anything ambushing them up there.

"Please."

She'll still send the shadow ahead just in case, of course.

Her familiar flies ahead. Nothing comes through their empathic link.

Mika lifts her up and through the illusory wall. He climbs up after her.

The other side is a crossroads. The stone appears to be unworked, but Tencednil knows it wouldn't naturally form such a shape.

"The door supposedly looks indistinguishable from the rest of the walls. Julio, Tencednil, fan out and look with detect magic. We're looking for abjuration, but I doubt there's anything else here."

She's... not great... at identifying spell schools, but she can Detect just fine, and if she doesn't wait the ten seconds nobody will know.

Cantrip time it is!

About sixteen feet down the left hallway, part of the stone is magical! It is indeed otherwise indistinguishable from the rest of the stone, which flows like the walls of a natural cave.

The magic aura is around six feet high and three feet wide.

As soon as she gets an aura located, she ceases her focus on the cantrip. "Aura over here. This would be the Arcane Lock you were looking for?"

The others run over. "Indeed," Julio says, "this is abjuration. Mika, you're up."

Mika grunts, and pulls out a dagger and a small hammer. "This'll take a few minutes."

He holds his ear up to the door and starts tapping the stone in regular intervals with the tip of the dagger.

She lurks ominously over Julio's shoulder. The shadow will float in closer, to hopefully provide a quick warning if something goes wrong.

Over the next minute, Mika's tapping accelerates. If Tencednil listens very closely, she can hear the sound of the stone start to change subtly with each tap, before he suddenly pauses.

"Got 'er figured out, just a little bit longer." He goes slower this time, but very precise. After a couple more minutes, there's a sound of fire crackling and the wall shifts suddenly.

He puts away his tools and starts to push on the door. "Ughh... she's heavy."

The door opens into a small stone room, with a hide carpet on the floor. An old wooden desk and chair are in the corner to the party's left. Two open doorways are in the far corners of the room.

The stench of rotting flesh fills the air.

Julio covers his face and groans. "That's nasty. What—"

A zombie shambles out of the right corner door.

Groan...

Well, zombies aren't a great target for Color Spray. She signs <Up> to the shadow and takes aim for an Acid Splash, once things are clear enough for that to not be entirely hopeless.

...It doesn't know sign, does it. Hopefully it figured out not to be in front of the zombies in its own.

Her familiar flies up, of its own accord.

A second zombie comes out the same door. They lurch towards the party.

A beam of grey light emanates from Anton's finger and strikes the wall, missing the first zombie.

Julio flings a glob of acid, which hits the first zombie in the chest and sizzles.

Ooh, Disrupt Undead. Clever wizard. She would rather have her more general-use cantrips, but the appeal of preparation is shiny.

Speaking of those more general cantrips, can her Acid Splash get anywhere? Deep breath, calm down, and... launch!

...wow that is an unhappy zombie. Acid to the cranium is as effective on the undead as on the living! And stumbling into the blob with its eye is not going to help it with that.

Mika cuts the first zombie's broken head clean off. The body collapses to the ground with a thud.

The remaining zombie cracks its fist into the side of Mika's head. He stumbles backwards.

Anton casts disrupt undead, again. It misses, again.

Julio's acid splash burns the zombie's shoulder. It turns to face him.

Zombies, unfortunately, aren't smart enough to be distracted from attacking the nearby living with a cleverly chosen sound. She's stuck aiming around the human who got himself in arm's reach of a zombie, because apparently nobody here has heard of basic competence. 

Oh well. Acid Splash if she can, then she'll edge backwards to make sure it couldn't get to her even if it charged straight towards her.

...apparently she cannot successfully Splash this one. Hopefully the humans have better luck next time around.

Mika stabs the zombie's midsection. The sword seems to slide through its skin without particularly injuring it.

The zombie takes a wide shot at Julio, who dodges backward, arms flailing!

Anton casts disrupt undead, and cannot aim to save his life. It fizzles against the wall.

Julio's acid splash also goes wide this time.

Well, her aim is better than Anton's, for as much as that's worth. 

Not much better, though. That will be another whiff. "Try getting back from it this time! They're bad at chasing!"

Mika misses his swing, and doubles back a few paces.

The zombie slams Julio square in the face. His body crumples to the ground.

"Damn it, Julio!" He steps back and trips on Julio's cloak. Disrupt undead goes wide.

Idiot humans who can't avoid something that moves slower than they do while they attack and cannot run! Is not being near it really that difficult! 

Augh, now they're going to have a real issue soon. Unless she can get this finished quickly? Acid Splash...

Hit this time! It's easier when she doesn't have to aim around a person. Of course, when they don't hit anywhere important, cantrips are not known for being destructive, and hers is no exception. It's singed a bit.

Mika steps back another few paces, pulls a dagger off his belt, and flings it at the zombie. The dagger embeds at the base of its skull.

The zombie stumbles, for a moment.

Roar! It spins around and lunges, slamming itself into Mika's chest. They both go tumbling to the ground. Mika does not get up.

Anton's disrupt undead is aimed well, for a zombie that isn't on the floor. Miss.

At least he used a weapon that affects rotten flesh this time. Have another Acid Splash, because unlike Anton, she has decent aim. And then she will edge back down the corridor they came in through, because at the rate this is going she would rather be prepared to run away if it turns out to be needed.

The zombie, now upright, leaps at Anton and slams his head into the wall. He slumps to the ground.

Every! Single! Time! Another Splash, which only hits because the idiot thing ran into it, and even then it's just a graze, then retreat farther into the passage. And she'll call the shadow blob over to the entrance to the passage. Hopefully the zombie will grab for it instead of finishing the wizards off.

And apparently it can throw itself at the zombie while doing so? Neat, she's never seen it that aggressive. It didn't do anything useful, but maybe it drew attention better.

The zombie slams the annoying flying black thing into the wall! Tencednil's empathic link with her familiar ceases to exist.

Shadows: not known for durability. It got the zombie where she wanted it, though. Acid Splash! And this time, a clean hit, right in the rotting muscle fiber it was using to attack.

The zombie stumbles and falls to the ground with a thud.

The lair is eerily silent.

...A victory! That was... closer than she hoped... but she won!

...she gains nothing by killing her allies here, she needs the students alive to read the map and she needs Mika alive if she wants to survive next time something like this happens. And no necromancy professor is going to have two zombies as his only defense. She rushes in and looks around. Who's going to die within the next minute without treatment? She doesn't really know what she's doing, but she can try to staunch bleeding.

Anton sounds the worst out of everyone, his breathing is very erratic. Mika has bad looking bruises on his face and chest.

She will attempt to get Anton a little more stable, then. And if this involves tearing open his upper body clothing and getting a look at anything he might have on him, she's not going to object, but him not dying is urgent right now.

Anton has a backpack with some fancy-looking books, a sealed vial of ink, a pen, soap, a half-empty waterskin, two meals worth of trail rations, and twelve silver shields.

Those books look interesting...

Wait. No. She was stabilizing him. Books are not important right now! ...and that's about five seconds wasted. Oops.

She spends another ten or fifteen seconds trying to make sure he's at least not actively choking on blood or anything. At that point, he looks pretty stable, though that may not be due to anything she did.

With that finished, she has some time, and she can't wake the others with any of the spells she has available. May as well satisfy her curiosity! Does a Detect Magic spot any auras on any of the three of them?

A wand on the floor next to Julio and a stoppered vial in Mika's belt pouch have magical auras. She can't discern the school of magic for either.

He was using that wand to cast his spells, so it's probably his bonded item. Assuming he wasn't lying about that.

...she'll leave it. 

The vial might be important, but if it's a healing potion she would rather not know until she's finished her investigations here. She drops the Detect and takes a look at the books. Are any of them recognizably Common or Elvish?

The books are all in Common. Anton's backpack has:

Elemental Fundamentals V: Sound

Second-Order Evocative Interactions

Principals of Elementary Thaumaturgy, Second Edition

The Book of Magic, Fourteenth Edition

and two untitled books, one of which is probably his spellbook.

If the stamps on the inner covers of Elemental Fundamentals V: Sound and Second-Order Evocative Interactions are to be believed, they were checked out from the Acadamae library.

Disappointingly normal, for someone whose familiar is off doing unspecified suspicious things! And he worships an ascended human, but at least one of the respectable ones. Nethys may be mad but at least he's interesting.

Oh well. Maybe it actually isn't doing anything suspicious, or they haven't taken the evidence of it with them into the sewers.

What does Julio have on him? She'll look closely and then a give him brief pat-down, but she's not going to tear any clothing that isn't already torn.

Julio has a similar kit to Anton: books, writing utensils, ink, some food and water, a compass, and thirty one silver shields.

Less books than Anton: two unlabeled, Recognizing Charms and Compulsions, and Dungeoneering For The Busy Wizard.

Boring boring boring. Maybe they really are just what they said they were. That's kind of disappointing. For the best.

Over to Mika! He's the one who might have a potion, so she can even justify this one. That's a lot of money if she's right, though. What does he have?

Mika's backpack is quite full! She finds four cylinders of chalk, a flint and steel, two unlit torches, a grappling hook, a spool of rope, six pitons, soap, an iron pot, a hammer, four meals worth of rations, two waterskins (one full, one around half empty), a set of thieves’ tools, a pouch with one hundred and twelve silver shields, and some other assorted junk.

In his belt pouch is the magic vial (red), two more vials (one black and one clear), three daggers, and four pinch.

At least someone here was actually prepared. The nonmagic vials are interesting, but she has no particular way to identify them. Instead... she casts her Detect Magic again, points it at the vials (and the wand while she's at it), and... concentrates. And focuses. And focuses some more.

It takes her about twenty seconds to identify the wand's school (faint universal) and another twenty for the vial's school (faint conjuration).

Universal is exactly what she would expect from a bonded item without further enchantment. The potion is probably a healing potion? Right school, at least. Does she need to use it now? 

...no, they seem pretty safe for the moment. They'll take a while to recover, but there's no need to steal the choice from Mika when he'll probably be able to express an opinion soon enough. She puts everyone's gear back together, closes up the pouches, and repositions people until they should be able to breathe clearly and won't hurt themselves when they get up, as long as they do it without straining anything.

And then she sits and gets back to her slow experimentation with understanding Detect Magic's feedback. She's been at this for most of the past week, she can do it for another few hours here.

After an hour, Anton slowly wakes up with a long groan.

"Ughhh, my head, what..." He opens his eyes and looks around. "Ah, fuck. They got us good. Did anyone die?"

"Not yet. Stay down, you'll go right back to bleeding out internally if you do anything too forceful. We might be able to get out if nothing jumps us, but I wouldn't want to bet on it. 

"I don't suppose you had any plans for what to do if one of you was wounded? Is your familiar anywhere useful where you might be able to signal someone to pay for a channel, maybe?"

Also, while she's looking around again, she may as well check the zombie corpses. She would have picked up any magic on them, but maybe they have something less interesting?

"We've got money to pay for a channel, but not nearly enough to get someone all the way down here. Not that they could even find this place, without the map."

He pauses and concentrates for a moment. "I can't reach my familiar, we're too far away."

The zombie corpses have nothing but the moldering clothes they were wearing.

Unsurprising.

"I expected no less. Do either of you have Infernal Healing in your spellbooks? None of you are likely to die in the next few days, and you should all recover within the week with good care, but I can't exactly provide that down here."

"We've both got it but neither of us have it prepared. Julio can cast it from his wand, if he wakes up. He usually keeps the devil blood is in his coat's inner pocket."

"I'll check that the vial is still whole. If it is, we can wait a few hours and hope he wakes up. If not..."

She sighs.

"I'll try to get out myself, buy some, and find my way back. Hopefully it doesn't come to that, I wouldn't bet on you three all making it out alive if it does."

"That's... fine with me..." He shuts his eyes and rests.

Does Julio have an unbroken vial in his pocket, if she goes over and checks?

That he does. It contains a red liquid, darker than human blood.

Oh good. Time to wait! And if Mika wakes up first, she can ask him if he wants to use the potion on Julio to get this all done quickly, but potions are expensive enough that he probably won't. Still, this is much better than waiting for them to heal naturally.

A little over an hour later, Mika awakens and looks around.

"Owwwwww. This might be the worst I've ever taken it. We all still kickin?"

"None of you are dead yet. When Julio finds his way back to this side of Desna's domain, he has an Infernal Healing for one of you. And then we can wait for one if the wizards to prepare, because neither of them even left an open space this morning. Unless you have something in your pocket, of course."

"O-Okay... wait for the wizard..." His eyes drift shut.

Either he missed the reference or he doesn't want the potion used. She wasn't exactly subtle there, but he's not at his best either. Waiting for the wizard it is. 

Another hour sitting here! She should bring a book of her own next time she does something like this, it didn't seem worth the weight when she thought this was going to be quick.

An hour passes. Julio does not wake up. The others are still alive, but don't seem to be getting any better. They might have fallen asleep.

Well it's not like she has anything to be doing. If he doesn't wake up for another few hours, she'll ask Mika again, but until then, she continues her cantrip refining.

Two hours later, Julio finally stirs awake.

"O-Oh." He sits up slowly. "What happened?"

"You suffered the expected result of preparing absolutely no spells that could harm the undead while venturing into a necromancer's hideout. And apparently you're the only one here with any ability to heal today. If you would get one of yourself and Anton back up, perhaps we can finish this quest of yours after sleeping."

Julio grabs his wand off the ground and stands up shakily.

"You look fine. I'll get Mika up, I don't think we're getting out of here without him."

Julio limps over and casts what is presumably infernal healing on Mika. By the time the spell wears off he looks much better, if not perfectly healthy.

He stands up. "Ah. Shit. That went poorly."

"You can say that again."

"Alright. We should find what we came here for and get out. I wouldn't touch anything in a wizard's lair without knowing it ain't magic first, and I don't got the magic sight."

Julio walks over to Anton and shakes him awake.

He takes a moment to get his bearings, and then stands up and leans against a wall. "We're looking for books, spell components, coins, and wondrous items if we're lucky."

"How sure are you there are no other zombies in there? If anything at all is in there, hasn't come out yet, and does when we investigate, you two will both die."

"If there were other zombies in here they'd have attacked us by now. It's been hours." He pauses. "–and Matei was fourth circle, earliest you can make intelligent undead as a wizard is sixth."

"Unless these two got loose, and most of them are still stuck in with the rest of his things. Or he set an audible Alarm and anything nearby hears it. Or he left a Glyph of Warding with a summon behind as well. If there are magic items in there, I can't tell them and traps apart with a Detect unless we get very lucky. If you want to take the risk, it's you two who can't run."

"There's only two other rooms in this place, and the zombies came from one of them. It's not a whole crypt... look if you don't want to explore, his desk's in here. We can at least see what it has."

Matei's desk and chair are in the bottom left corner of the room. A dried-up inkwell, a pen, and some papers sit atop it.

"Fine, it's your heads."

Detect Magic! Again! (...sigh.) Anything magical in the desk?

The desk has two compartments. She can detect eight magical auras.

The first has a red book titled in an unknown language written in a script she doesn't recognize, a book titled Serving Your Hunger in Common, eight black gemstones of varying shape, a clear crystal cut as a dodecahedron, and a few dozen old mint gold sails. The books are magical.

The second has a green book and a grey book (both titled in a different unknown language), a silver dagger, and a ring. The books and ring are magical.

"Definitely some magic here, but this looks complicated. It'll take me time to even have a guess what they do. If there are spells, though, they're only on the items or the books. Maybe he wasn't that trap-prone. I'll sweep the other rooms for magic as well. 

"What languages do you all know? I don't recognize some of these books, and one of them might be a spellbook but there are three here."

While they're processing that, she swings her Detect cone around, letting it play over the contents of the other two rooms for long enough to see the individual auras resolve into place.

"I know Common, Draconic, Infernal, and a little Thassilonian."

"Common, Infernal, and Ignan for me."

The left room has a bed, a nightstand, and a dresser. She detects one magical aura in this room, emanating from within the dresser.

The right room has a ritual circle drawn in fading blood, three meat hooks chained to the ceiling, and the bones of two human skeletons spread across the circle. She doesn't detect any magical auras in this room.

She retreats back to the others and speaks quietly.

"The only aura in that room is inside the drawers, probably an item." She indicates the room to the left. "I also haven't spotted any in the other room, but animated skeletons don't detect as magical. I don't know if the bones were disassembled skeletons but they might have been, and I don't want to risk it. No magic there also means no wondrous items. We'll be here all night anyway, because you two need to be able to move before we can get out. We can try it then, when everyone's able to move quickly and throw a few cantrips if we need it. Mika, do you have a blunt weapon somewhere? Daggers and swords don't handle bones very well, we should prepare just in case when we're ready."

"I've got my hammer, but I don't usually fight with it."

Julio walks over to the desk once Tencednil returns. "Let's see here... black onyx! That's good. We're making a tidy profit even if we can't get anything else out."

"We won't be getting anything out until you two are able to cast without killing yourself, unless you want us leaving you here alone. It's a good point though. Let me see what I can figure out about the items. They're probably worth something, and one of them might even be helpful."

Detect Magic again, but this time she's not focusing on schools. What do these items look like they could do? Anything she recognizes?

The ring is a typical ring of protection. The books are all coated with some sort of magical preservative. There are three more magical auras on the red book—they're spells, but she can't identify them.

"The ring is a Protection ring, the standard buckler style. Definitely worth something, but not going to help us here and now. Unless we get into a fight. The other auras are coming from that book there. I'm not sure what they do, and I'd rather not touch them, given how much I know some wizards do to protect their spellbooks. The other books are preserved with something minor, probably how they lasted this long. I don't know why he bothered, though, and my guesses are all worrying.

"The room without the ritual circle looked safe. Magically, at least. Mika, you should sense for more physical traps. It would be strange to have those in a hidden storage space, but the books indicate he might have been planning to return after a long departure, and we have the time."

"So, we're officially rich. Rings of protection are, what, 2,250 gold sails?"

"Closer to 2,200. When sold by a reputable vendor."

Mika creeps over and peers into the bedroom. "Doesn't look like it's trapped, 's far as I can tell."

"We're not exactly reputable, but I can find someone who will want it at a reasonable price." Mother works for the Abadarans enough, she should be able to get something useful for it.

She follows Mika into the bedroom and heads over towards the dresser the aura came from. "If he had a headband, it should be in here."

She rifles through the drawers. What can she see?

The drawers in the dresser are locked!

Well that won't do. "I'd rather avoid breaking things when there's an aura in that drawer. Open the locks, if you would."

"Sure." Mika walks over and starts working on the lock. A little under a minute later, the lock on the top drawer clicks open.

Mika looks uncomfortable after he opens the drawer. "So. There is a trap. Spring-loaded. Got lucky with that one."

He steps sideways, away from the front of the dresser, and carefully pulls a thin blade out of the drawer. "Bet the other drawers have 'em too."

"He probably didn't have permanent Magic Aura, but a lead box works just as well. If he trapped this, it's probably because there is something that matters in here. There also might be something cleverer than this in the next drawer, and if you start bleeding out, things get worse. Leave it, we come back to it tomorrow when the two idiots in the other room have useful spells hung."

"Okay. Top drawer's open, bunch of bottles and jars and things, if you want a look."

She glances over the contents, and puts up her Detect Magic again in case the drawer was lead-lined. Or this might have been where the aura was, she was too far away to be sure.

The drawer contains an eclectic collection of vials, bottles, and jars. Components of a strange, half-disassembled metal and glass contraption sit in the back.

One cylindrical brown glass jug, filled with a clear liquid and labeled in some arcane notation, is magical. She recognizes it as the preservative used on the books.

That's the aura here accounted for. She takes that, and a few other things which look interesting, pretty much at random. The traps are strange if that's all there is, though, they should check for lead. Tomorrow.

The rest of the day passes without incident. It's quite boring and everyone (except Tencednil) is injured, so nobody's having a great time. Anton and Julio are using Mika's caltrops as dice for some game they're playing on the floor. Nobody brought a bedroll, so the party sleeps on the rug.

Some time later, the party wakes up.

Julio yawns. "Anton, what spells do you think I should prepare? We need two infernal healings between us."

Anton pages through his spellbook. "Maybe one mage armor and infernal healing each, then sleep for you and... uhh... magic missile for me?"

"Leave a slot open over the Sleep, we might need another Healing and Spray handles most of the same things."

While they prepare, she pulls at her shadow with the shadow cantrip she picked up. She's still not sure what it's called. There, there, and... aha!

The blob thing rises from her shadow once more, and bounces happily.

"Okay, that's probably not a bad idea." Julio will sit down and take an hour to prepare his spells.

So will Anton.

Mika cleans his weapons off and snacks on some rations. He looks a little better than he did last night.

After they've finished preparing their spells, Julio and Anton cast infernal healing on themselves.

A minute later, they look perfectly healthy.

"Ahh, that's much better." Julio moves over to the desk, giving the items a closer inspection.

"The dresser was trapped, and the Unguent was the only aura I detected in it. There may be a lead box which hid something in there. If your Mage Hand triggers the traps for us, we should be able to check. We might need a few locks dissolved, but anything important should be behind lead, and a Splash won't break that. Come.

"Also remember you're paying Mika back for those rations. And add it to the tally of ways you were dead without him here."

Into the bedroom she goes.

"Yeah, yeah. We'll have well enough money for rations when we get back. Anton, get the rest of the stuff in the desk!" Julio follows her.

"Okay!" Anton starts emptying the desk drawers into his bag.

The bedroom looks the same as it did last night.

How does the wood of the drawers, specifically the part around the locks, like an Acid Splash? Or two? Or three?

The wood does not seem particularly affected by acid splash.

"Good hardwood, it can handle the cantrips. Mika, was the trap something you could have tripped by picking the lock, or only by opening the drawer?"

Acid Splash can't get through furniture-quality wood? Maybe hers is just weak. Well, no need to let them realize she was dumb.

"The last one triggered if you picked the lock wrong, or used the wrong key, or opened the drawer without the right key."

"The Mage Hand can do the opening for us, but not the lockpicking. Seems you're the one at risk, then. Up to you whether we try to pick these or just smash it and maybe break whatever's in there."

"I'd rather not risk a knife in my gut. Too many near misses recently, 'tis a bad omen."

"Smashing it is, then. Rocks from a distance, in case something snaps and the blades come flying out?"

Mika pulls a stone out of his pack and hands it to Tencednil. "You want to throw?"

She snorts. "I can throw acid, I can't throw a rock which will hit harder than the acid. All yours."

Mika steps back a few paces and flings the rock. It cracks the corner of the dresser, bounces, and crashes into the wall. "Ahh, I was just warming up..."

He throws again, and misses completely this time. The stone breaks in half against the floor.

Right. Humans. Mika may have been competent but he is still human. Why did she work with these people anyway? 

She walks out of the room, sits in a corner where she doesn't have to watch this catastrophe, closes her eyes, and tries to remember why she needs to be here.

She must have had a reason.

Surely she had a reason.

She'll be a minute or two. Or five. Or ten.

A stone crashes against the wall. "Oh, fuck you too!". A stone bounces off the ceiling and out of the room. "Come on!" A stone skids across the floor.

"Now listen here, dresser, face me and know you have met yo—"

A stone slams straight through the center of the dresser, pulverizing it instantly. The glass breaks.

For one moment, there is a brilliant light, shining like the sun. The stone walls crack slightly from the shockwave.

As the light fades, a baleful orange glow emanates from the doorway. Fire roars. Smoke, black and red and flickering unnaturally, begins to fill the bedroom.

Mika stumbles backward, clutching his head and screaming. Soot covers his face.

"Healing! Now! And cast your Armors, we don't want to bet nothing heard that!"

('Do you see anything in the smoke? Is the smoke just normal smoke? One hop if it's clear, two for something there, three if the smoke is doing something.')

And she'll throw up a Detect Magic herself, pointed smoke-wards.

Her familiar rings once. The smoke is not magical, strange as it looks.

Julio casts infernal healing on Mika using his wand. "You okay?"

Mika's wounds begin closing. He doesn't respond to Julio's question.

"Tencednil's right, we need to get moving! I've got all the loot packed up in my bag." He quickly packs his spellbook into his backpack and runs for the door.

Mika looks around, confused. "I CAN'T HEAR YOU!"

"There might have been something in the dresser, but if so it's gone now. Let's go!"

She knows how to handle hearing loss. Sign is a brilliant invention. <Come! You're deaf. We go out now.>

And she nods to the door.

Mika looks at her incomprehensible hand waving and is still confused.

...Humans!

Fine. She... taps her ear, points to Mika, and shakes her head. Then she beckons him towards the door they came in through.

Mika seems to understand and follows her through the door.

Julio and Anton finish casting mage armor on themselves.

That gives them an hour to get out, this time with valuables. Time to get moving.

Wait, they're better off following the person with the map. Time to wait for the idiots students to get going and then follow them.

Anton leads them through the caves at a brisk pace. They travel back through the winding caves the way the came, and across the rivers in the large cavern, and into the oddly-shaped tunnels. They reach the first ladder within twenty minutes, a much faster pace then last time.

Time stretches long, but Anton and Julio's mage armor is still up. They're almost through the old stone maze, in a particularly tangled bit, when Tencednil's familiar becomes alarmed.

Quick glance around. "Ware! Point me to it."

Is Mika hearing any better than he was when they set out? Hopefully he'll at least see her raising her hand.

Her familiar vibrates but doesn't point in any particular direction. The ground rumbles softly.

Mika does not hear her.

"Everywhere, then? Creature? Trap? Hazard?"

There is only one, at first.

They come from the cracks in walls. They come from the holes in the ceiling. In seconds, a drizzle become a storm. Rats. Rats.

Swarms, and no field-wide strikes between them. Delightful. Color Spray should at least delay it, and maybe they can escape? They might have to turn off the light to lose them, though. ...Mika can't hear, and rat noses might be good enough to catch them anyway. Just flee.

"I can stun them, but there are too many to hurt! Unless you have something clever, best we run! Rats aren't fast!"

On second thought, she should have focused on getting the Color Spray cast before giving instructions!

The rats pour over the party like a wave. They take chunks of flesh with them.

"RUN! FOLLOW ME!" Anton sprints sixty feet down to the end of the hallway.

Julio follows. "I knew I should've prepared sleep, damn it!"

Mika runs, slower than the others. He looks nauseous.

Tencednil's shadow familiar is swallowed whole by a rat.

She shakes off her disgust and makes it fifteen feet from the horde's general mass, then launches a Color Spray behind her. Rats are probably less instinctual than spiders, right? This should work?

The rats stream fearlessly through the blinding light, but only momentum propels their still bodies to the other side.

The maze falls quiet, for now.

Anton rounds the corner and continues to sprint. "We're close to the ladder! Hurry!"

Julio follows.

As does Mika, once he gets over his nausea.

Yep running sounds like the plan here. The rats will be back soon, and if they're anything like spiders they're not going to be hampered by her stomping on them or anything. To the ladder!

The ladder is a little over half a minute of running ahead of them. They reach the cylindrical room with the sewage waterfall.

The sewers are thirty-five feet above them. Twenty-five feet below them, black water roils unnaturally. Tencednil can hear a distant rumbling.

Anton climbs up and over the ladder like a man possessed.

Julio tries to climb fast, almost slips off, and climbs the rest slower.

Mika's right behind Julio the whole way up.

With the humans in her way and her athletic inabilities making her unwilling to rush this, Tencednil takes a bit longer than Mika, but not too much so. Though she did almost slip for a moment there.

"I don't know how badly they caught the Spray. If they shook it off efficiently, they might already be chasing us. If we're lucky, still best we get out of anywhere they can see."

As Anton leads them through the sloping sewers, the rumbling fades away. He doesn't need to consult the map nearly as much as their first time through.

Around twenty minutes later, they walk up a steep tunnel and exit at 44 Stone's End.

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.

"I know a fourth circle cleric. She should be willing to sell the ring at only a minor surcharge, and I can probably get a Remove Deafness out of her as part of that. We'd end up with maybe 19,000 shields. Have you managed to get anything out of the books?"

"Do I look like I've had time to read boo—"

"Anton."

He sighs. "No, nothing yet. Neither of us can read Necril and I've no idea what the red one's written in."

"I'm not going to open it until we know what the spells bound to it do."

"Tencednil, if your cleric can get us a good rate on the ring, we should probably sell through her. I know a guy who might be able to help, but he's no fourth-circle cleric."

"Definitely not, just hoped you had a lead on the books. I'll tell her the deal is on, then, the Abadarans can handle the details. We'll all go and give them the ring together, a joint account we all have to agree to use is easy. I have the contract written up here. If we sign it and have it sent, she can do the rest, and Mika's hearing should be back by tomorrow. Anything else urgent?"

Julio will read Tencednil's contract. What does it say?

The collective Parties 1 agree to yield unto Party 2 a ring which they attest under oath is a standard Ring of Protection, of the least grade...

Party 2 agrees to furnish unto an account held at the Bank of Abadar by the collective Parties 1 a sum of 19050 silver shields, less the price of one Abadar's Truthtelling used to confirm their oath...

Party 2 furthermore agrees to provide one casting of Remove Deafness to a recipient designated by the collective Parties 1 within a week of this contract's signature...

There are no obvious tricks here. Ulon teaches cooperation as much as trickery, and this isn't a sum to burn her reputation over even if she was confident in slipping it past them. And the Abadarans, who would probably notice and ask if there was a reason for anything strange.

(Tencednil has no issue showing her impatience as he goes over it closely, though. Yes he doesn't trust her, fine, but this is a simple procedure, a close examination is unreasonable enough to show some irritation about.)

"This looks fine. We ought to get going, then?" Only a fool doesn't go over contracts closely.

"No time like five minutes ago. Failing that, now will do." Doesn't mean she's not going to make you feel bad about it.

Off to the bank!

The Bank of Abadar at North Point is a vast and busy building. The low din of trade can be heard throughout. The Korvosan Guard have a strong presence here.

There's a little bit of a line, if they want to meet a banker without an appointment.

Oh good, not much loss from failing to pay for a slot in advance. Into the line.

Time seems to slow down as the line moves. It's a dramatic contrast to their time in the Vaults.

Eventually, they're taken into a side room and seated with a well-groomed man. "Hello, how may we help you today?"

"The four of us will be opening a combined account, no withdrawals without agreement from all of us. We will be sending this contract to account 16927, and depositing the ring to be sent as per the contract in a safebox." She holds up a silver shield. "Anton here will provide the ring, and I will be covering the safebox fee for up to two hours. I will also be immediately available if the procedure takes longer than that. However, I anticipate the counterparty signing quickly, at which point I will accept the required Truthtelling."

Mother knew this was the plan, and that account number means she'll be notified of the offer. No reason this should take longer than an hour, but it's best to have the safety. She passes the contract over, followed promptly by the shield. If whatever's left over ends up deposited in the combined account, that's fine.

The banker pages through the contract. "Everything seems to be in order, give me a moment."

He takes the contract and the silver shield and leaves the room through a side door.

A couple of minutes later he returns with a small metal box, which he unlocks using a key. "The contract will be delivered to the holder of account 16927 shortly."

Anton removes the ring of protection from his bag and places it into the safebox.

The banker locks the safebox and takes it with him as he leaves the room.

"While we're waiting for the Truthtelling, what have you found about the book? My friend can read," as she discovered last night trying to find a better way to communicate with it, "and it's relatively disposable." As she discovered during their time in the sewers. "If the traps are the sorts of thing that just entrap or kill a reader, I could have it go through and trigger them, for a rate more reasonable than hiring Dispels."

"I have not looked at it again yet. I'd really not rather risk messing with the book until I know what it does. Your strange friend may be disposable, but the book itself is not."

He pauses for a moment. "Matei seems fond of explosives, inferring from the dresser."

"That was my worry. You are better positioned to distinguish Glyphs of Warding from Explosive Runes than I am."

Was that Julio taking a shot at her plans? No, not a chance. She'll ignore it.

"The offer stands. I'll be in the place we met next Starday, if you've figured anything out by then."

He looks at Anton. "I believe we're free next Starday around noon. I'll check if the Acadamae library has anything on permanent spells commonly bound to books."

"–and we can easily afford comprehend languages for translation. I've wanted that spell for a while."

It's not great pay, but the run is short enough for him to be back waiting for the next message quickly. He'll take it.

He knows the layout of North Point, of course, but it's too rich for his blood. He doesn't know any of the houses in the area. He can see this one from two blocks away, though. Only one of these has all its windows covered with black curtains. Is that really where he's going?

He double checks the address. It is.

When he knocks, the door slips open just wide enough for him to enter. Through the crack, he can see... darkness, everywhere. The only light comes from the sun falling through the cracked door, and in that light he can see a... giant sheet of cobwebs or something?

Then it moves. He flinches and cringes back, holding out the contract like food to an angry house drake. Something creeps towards him, out of the darkness.

She was expecting a message from her disappointing daughter! Perhaps not quite as disappointing as she thought, if this worked. She comes to the door and takes the contract. No changes? No changes. Perfect. She draws up an approval, indicating she'll be there within an hour. It's elegant, flowing, and almost incomprehensible to anyone who knows only one of Elven and Undercommon. The bank knows enough Elven to figure it out, they've managed.

...The messenger is still there! Good. Doing his inexplicable human nonsense, but that's easy. She shoves the message into his hand before pushing him out. He should be able to figure it out.

He's... not being eaten by a spider? He isn't! He's alive!

And he has the response he was supposed to wait for, even. The bank isn't paying him enough to not gossip, especially not going to that house, and it wasn't even folded. He looks over the paper.

...he can't make heads or tails of it.

Oh well. Still enough to get him paid the extra for the reply. And, at least as importantly, means he can leave without finding out where that web came from.

The banker returns. "Your counterparty has received the contract. We have a truthtelling available in about thirty minutes. You may wait in the lobby."

Thirty minutes? Ugh. Fine. That's not too long, she can handle it. Even if they should be more efficient. Off she goes to sit and wait.

Some time later, a different banker calls Tencednil back into the room. She has a copy of the contract with her.

"Listen carefully. I will cast the truthtelling on you. You will say 'I attest under oath' and read this," she points, "section of your contract. Do you understand?"

"I will accept the spell and read the words I said I would read under Truthtelling, yes. Can we?" She reaches out her hand.

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 its 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.

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.

Mika is cheerful. "Ahahaha! My hearing's back!"

He claps his hands together. "You've any idea what was in that damn dresser? I thought it was clear of magic except for the bottle you took."

"So did I, and a lead box should have stopped you from hitting anything I didn't see that hard. Even if I missed something, though, I don't see why he would set a trap that exploded like that. Destroying whatever he was trying to hide doesn't make any sense."

"I wouldn't bother trying to guess the mind of a mad wizard like that, it's a fool's errand. Still can't believe he slept next to it, though!"

"Quite. ...And my apologies. I did not mean to mislead you, but it seems I did nonetheless."

"Oh, thanks. It's not that big a deal. The whole place was a death trap—"

"'it'll be easy' they said, 'just down through this maze' they said, 'he's been dead for fifty years' they said. Bah! We didn't even run into anything truly terrible, and we were almost dead."

"From the stories I'd heard, zombies didn't sound that dangerous. I guess I never heard what they were like at first circle."

"Yeah, I didn't realize my sword wouldn't work. Got the first one's head off but the second just wasn't having it. Horrible creatures."

"Well, now we know for next time."

And on a better-shaded note, there's a festival to get to. They should start heading that way.

As they travel down from North Point through Midland and then west into Citadel Crest, the streets grow ever more crowded.

The Acadamae is a vast complex, almost a town within a city, located in the Heights. Only on this one day a year is it open to outsiders. Within the imposing stone walls and past the open gate lie twelve buildings, their designs varying dramatically.

What must be dozens of large illusions blanket the area. The sky changes colors depending on the angle you look. Strange lights streak through the air and fantastical creatures watch the crowds atop podiums. House drakes dance across the sky in groups of nine... those might be real. Two wizards are "dueling" in a sectioned off arena, but the spells are almost certainly fake.

Every Hall of magic has its own exhibition, its own impressive showcases, and its own great achievers... but every year without fail the Hall of Lies steals the show.

For all that they're mostly human, the Academae is impressively good at magic. This is so many circled spells. Mother told her stories of their rightful place in the Underdark, and of the resources properly at the fingertips of a house of noble drow, but nothing she remembers is as grand as this. Numbers have a value all their own, and even if it takes a hundred humans to produce one wizard, there are more hundreds of humans who come to Korvosa for this than there are drow nearby down below. Inferior as they are, it doesn't do to underestimate them as a whole.

She's not going to say any of that out loud, though. Just think what the two idiots would say if they heard, to say nothing of Mother.

"Illusions are spectacular. If you look at one for long enough, trace exactly how it's moving, try to see everything about it, sometimes it clicks that it's really not there. With everything they're doing here, that just enhances the effect — you can still see it, but you can also see through it. Sometimes I think they plan the show to be prettier that way. One time it actually was there, it was just a cloud of shadows coated with the image, and that was even better."

Mika nods in agreement. "I don't think I've looked at them like that before. They are very pretty."

The Hall of Summoning is the keystone of the Academae. One of the signatures of its graduates is their ability to prepare a basic Summoning tightly enough on their scaffolds that it snaps off as soon as they call to it, not needing the slow and easily disrupted selection time most wizards have to go through. This famed ability has kept the Academae attracting prospective wizards despite its (admittedly substantial) danger. Well, that and the consistency with which it turns them into second-circle casters, as long as they survive.

It's also the hall which would know the most about Acid Splash, and she has a sudden interest in improving hers. The Breaching Festival is focused on the grand displays a high-circle caster can manage, but students with almost nothing but cantrips are also there. Maybe she can see someone showing off in a way which inspires her?

They push through the crowd to the Hall of Summoning's entrance. Emblazoned on the exterior walls are glowing (possibly illusory) magic circles. Large double doors are held wide open.

The Hall of Summoning's foyer is currently host to a crowd cheering as a strange flying snake strangles a small demon to death. There's a schedule on the wall for demonstrations of bound outsiders.

There are doors leading to many other rooms, with labels like "mount dueling at 3:00" and "speedy construction in adverse conditions at 2:00".

She should go look for wherever they're showing off target practice, though. That's where cantrips will be.

That's a quite impressive display there, though. Maybe she'll go after this duel.

...Or maybe after the next one. Outsiders can do so many things.

Time passes by. For a while, Mika seems equally entranced by the bizarre creatures, but eventually he wanders off.

A staff member of some sort walks into the foyer and announces a side room is doing... mount dueling in five minutes. It's an exhibition by some fifth-year students.