"Not many do. It takes a great deal of effort to get a significant return on the investment - but I specialized early."

They approach the open gates of the city. "The Veil Theater, where Lienna resides, is close to the gates, or so I'm told," Safiya says.

"In which direction? - also about your specialization, did you bar three schools?"

"South. Yes, my compatriots all do - we focus very deeply on a single school of magic, and gain proportionate benefits from that focus. When I cast disintegrate, it can penetrate spell resistance almost twice as powerful. Admittedly, I focus even more sharply than many of my compatriots on mastery of that particular spell. It's just very useful."

"It's a solid spell." South south south.

The Veil Theater contains a prominent stage, upon which stands a Red Wizard with a nasty sneer, and an audience, which contains half a dozen gnolls holding axes.

     "Safiya!" the Red Wizard says. "The daughter of Nefris, here? I should have recognized those homunculi as your handiwork..."

"What are you doing here?" she asks sharply. "And what did you do to Ipsit and Sefi?"

     "We caught them nosing around the theater. My minions toyed with them for a while, before dismembering them... your primitive little creations are no more."

"This one of your schoolmates?" wonders Belmarniss in an undertone.

"Yes, he's one of the necromancy students at the Academy. A fledgling graverobber. No doubt he's another pawn in that ridiculous coup my mother was dealing with when I left."

     "A shame I can't let you walk free, stranger," he says, ignoring Safiya's hurtful words. "But you're as likely to warn the Witches as to flee. As for you, Safiya - Araman would have us strangled if we let the headmistress's daughter slip away..."

He starts casting something, which Safiya promptly counterspells. "Moron," she says coldly as the gnolls approach.

Belmarniss turns into a copper dragon, flaps a bit to get to a good vantage point, and tries out the slowing breath weapon.

It works quite effectively! The gnolls are so slow!

The necromancer tries some other spell; in lieu of counterspelling, Safiya just disintegrates him. 

Chomp chomp chomp gnolls.

They don't last long.

Safiya grimaces. "This is hardly ideal. Let's head backstage and see if we can find Lienna."

Lienna isn't backstage, but there's four captives being held by two gnolls in the dressing room. They're made short work of, and one captive who appears to be the director of the group, a dwarven woman, claps her hands. "A more timely entrance I have never seen in forty years of theater. I'm Magda, the director of this theater. Lienna told us you'd be coming, though she said nothing of slaying Red Wizards, nor of saving our lives! That Red Wizard wasn't alone... there's more of them, and they've followed Lienna into the back rooms."

If it looks like it's going to be at all difficult to find them Belmarniss can turn into something that smells really well! Shapechange is her new favorite spell.

Before they go into the back rooms, Magda hands Safiya an intricately carved onyx orb. "Lienna is no simple theater matron," the dwarf says. "She has a secret - a shadow door that leads to some kind of reflection of the Veil. She fled through the shadow door, I'm sure of it. Still, such tricks won't stop the Red Wizards for long. The portal will open for you if you have this stone, and you'll be able to follow her."

"Thank you," Safiya says, and goes into the back with Belmarniss, where there is indeed a shadowy portal.

When they enter the room containing the shadowy portal, Safiya's face twists in pain again. "Something's - not right - I told them not now! Why didn't I - aaah!"
 

"Do you want a Delay Pain?" She prepped it intending to see if it'd give her some hungerless moments but had been plainning to wait and see if she got used to it first and she can always get another out of a pearl.

"Burning - I'm burning! Don't, please don't -"

She slumps with sudden relief. "I - I thought - oh, dear. I suppose I won't get away with the barrow excuse again."

"...that's a no on Delay Pain?"

"I'm not in pain anymore," she says ruefully. "It - I suppose I should start from the beginning. As long as I can remember, I've heard... voices, that are not quite my own. This is only the second time the voices have been accompanied by pain, like the time in the barrow. I keep hoping to find some logic to the whispers, but they just come and go without reason. They sound human... familiar, almost. Usually, the voices are more of a distant haze. But sometimes, whole words come across. When I was young, I read from the wrong scroll and, not knowing what I was doing, nearly incinerated myself. Before I could finish the chant, a voice in my head cried out and broke my concentration. It saved my life."

"...what do they say?"

"When I can hear the words... it varies, quite a bit. I've heard arcane musings, soliloquies from classic plays, distant weeping. When they interrupted me with the scroll, it was just a shout of 'No!'"

"...and now they're hurting you..."

"It's - it's not that they're hurting me - I think it's that they're hurting. Typically I'll hear the voices as if they were across the room, but this time I almost got lost in it... I thought, for a moment, that the voice was my own."

"...want a Mind Blank?"

She smiles wanly. "I cast it every morning. It's not... like that, I don't think." She shakes her head. "That's enough talk of my troubles - let's save Lienna."

"Okay." Into the breach.

There's a Red Wizard and an erinyes immediately through the portal, in the Shadow Plane reflection of the back room, but they don't put up too much of a fight.

In the next room, the backstage's reflection, there's a table. It's got straps on it, to hold down someone's arms and legs, and it's soaked with still-tacky blood.

It looks... sickeningly familiar.