We were still outside Beiydark’s laboratory when Momen put on the ring and looked through the wall.
First thing he reported: a large magic circle directly inside the door, runes clearly readable as an explosive trap. Enough force to take out the entire room. Beiydark did not want visitors. Second: an autopsy table, multiple bodies, all of them silvery with the Minamata Malady, carefully dissected and sorted — the silvery parts separated out. Not someone who’d stumbled across the disease. Someone who’d been studying it.
Then I noticed the combination. If the ring lets Momen see through the wall, he can see a destination for Misty Step. He stepped inside, found the internal mechanism to unlock the door, confirmed there was no obvious way to disarm the trap from that side either, swept the room for anything worth noting — alchemy station, summoning dais of unclear purpose, a blank slab in the center, a hat, an orb, various books — and shoved every piece of writing in the laboratory into the portable hole. One whole book cart. Then he stepped back out.
I hadn’t thought of that combination before. It shouldn’t work as cleanly as it did. I’m glad it does.
Iladrien Lassagaseer looked through the books in Momen’s portable hole while we continued clearing. His Elvish is better than Momen’s, which is to say he actually knows some. He pulled out a letter in Common first — someone Beiydark was planning to meet, a week ago, no name given. Then he found the notes: a chart tracking the spread of the Minamata Malady, and a formula for propagating it further.
When we first told Beiydark about the disease in the refugee camp, she was dismissive. Those bodies on the table had been there for weeks. There is no charitable reading of this that holds together.
The one question I couldn’t shake: what happened to her in the last twelve hours? She was genuinely injured when we found her. Whatever she was involved in, something went badly wrong on her end too. Double-crossed, maybe. Or used and discarded when she became inconvenient. That doesn’t exonerate her, but it might complicate the picture. We didn’t have time to resolve it.
We had rooms to clear.
The door on the southwest corner of the second floor produced Tittlin unconscious on the floor after a necromantic trap discharged through his thieves’ tools when he tried the locked door. He came back around fine after a quick heal from Durlan.
Iladrien decided to try his hand at breaking and entering, instead using dimension door to bypass the lock entirely. Inside after he unlocked the door and let the rest of us in, we found two display cases flanking a stone dais surrounded by an invisible force field — I walked into it before I knew it was there. The cases yielded a Lunar Musket (silvery metal, moon motifs, clearly connected to the order) and a drow-made glaive with spiderweb engraving all over it. Both magical. The glaive had a condition attached to it: prolonged sunlight exposure would permanently strip its enchantment. Not an obvious weapon for aboveground work.
The barrier resisted everything we could reach from outside it. I decided to put the Adamantine Portable Ram to use. One swing. The barrier and the dais both shattered, the floor cratered, and a single tarot card drifted out of the chest and down into Momen’s hands. Just the one card. Momen visibly relaxed when he determined it wasn’t from the Deck of Many Things.
We collected the estate staff, headed back to Elvenset, and found Lathaeril out front of the temple with roughly two dozen decapitated drow heads on spikes — including, he noted, the Drow consort we’d been warned about. The Moonblade was humming quietly to itself, clearly satisfied, barely registering us. Lathaeril gave us a more attentive greeting.
I told him about the laboratory and what Lassagaseer had found. He listened, and then he said: “You suspect she’s a traitor, then.” Momen said it would be very hard to prove otherwise, but to keep his guard up and avoid giving her openings. Lathaeril nodded and went back to his work.
Inside the temple, Drusilia directed everyone into position on the carpets for the ritual. The chant began at the back of the room and moved forward like a current — when it reached us, I found I knew the words without having learned them, and I was chanting with everyone else. I don’t know exactly where we went in that moment, but from somewhere I could see the whole town at once: the estate, the garden, the elder brain, the mind flayers, the mercurial elves still being produced in the vats. Then all the light in Elvenset pulled away from everything else and collapsed into a single concentrated point above Beiydark’s estate.
Then there was nothing left but a circle of empty grass.
When we opened our eyes and returned to the temple, Beiydark was gone.
The guards outside confirmed she hadn’t walked out. She’d apparently vanished mid-ritual — instantaneous, magical, a puff of smoke. Planned, not improvised.
Drusilia received the news with composure. We handed over the books from the laboratory — Momen held onto them a beat longer than was polite, but she acknowledged she’d give them back once she’d reviewed the contents, and called Lathaeril over to stand guard while she did. The books went over.
The artifacts came up separately. Beiydark had asked about them before the ritual began, to which I gave an unconvincing denial that we had retrieved them. Our deflection was transparent enough that Drusilia clearly saw through it, but she played it straight: she asked us to return the musket, which belonged to the order. I made the case that weapons are meant to be used, not locked in display cases. She offered to take the drow glaive instead. I agreed immediately. The tarot card she told us to remove — “many beings would rather get their hands on it,” she said, gesturing at the ash and emptiness outside — and implied Elvenset had seen enough of powerful beings arriving uninvited.
Then we had to think about Aemmin Simserion.
During the ritual’s bird’s-eye view, I caught lights to the southwest — outside the main settlement, coming from what looked like an abandoned building. Momen’s read: exactly Aemmin’s style. Find the first thing that looks plausible and go at it with both hands, consequences considered later.
The estate is gone. Beiydark is gone with it, or rather somewhere else entirely. The elder brain and the mind flayers are gone. We have Beiydark’s research in a portable hole, a tarot card no one’s identified yet, a lunar musket, and a direction. Southwest, toward some lights.