After the blood loss and intensity of the fight, much of my memory of the remainder of the day is hazy, but the sense of dread sticks out clearly.
After I’d given Aemmin the slip, I was trying to understand the circles he had made when Tittlin pointed out a Nerwora notebook. It contained lecture notes from a lecture that I had apparently given? I was never qualified to run a course on combat casting, so I’m not sure if I’m misremembering the notebook or had filled in for a colleague for the lecture. Regardless. As I read the alleged me describe techniques for how to use magic circles in combat I felt my blood run cold. Leave a decoy. My mind started running a million miles a minute as I turned slowly back to the circles, eyes darting from one to the next. Which one was the decoy? Were all of them? They were.
I practically chased Spesof and Tittlin back outside, desperate to find where the real circle was that Aemmin was headed to. The memories start to blur with adrenalin. Following footsteps at speed through the mud, an inn living through a slow death, Tittlin screaming in exaggerated pain as I fumbled with with seemingly infinite keys, a room in disarray and a map back to where we started.
The memories start to clear as we get back to the abandoned warehouse. There we find a single door off the main hall, the only closed door in the entire building. We burst in with the adamantine ram to find a single, smaller circle and a zombie beholder, taken down within ten seconds. It takes even less time to realize we’re too late. The ritual is over, with the plinth empty before us. With calculations I can’t remember now, I realized we were a quarter of an hour too late. Aemmin had never left the building at all and had finished when we left.
After recording the circle and for the rest of the evening I was absorbed in my own thoughts, trying to think of what his next steps and where to go to stop them. We return to the temple and report back to Drusilia who is able to lift the geas upon me. We agree to exchange any future information about the Minamata Malady when a naked Lathaeril with a bottle of wine and two partially burnt cigars offers Tittlin to join in the hunt of the remaining dark elves, but promises of glory without riches fail to entice him.
We return to the visitorless inn and discover that Aemmin has once again got the edge on us, as he apparently cleared out in our absence. We do however learn from the innkeeper that the phylactery is an orb filled with wriggling smoke.
We spend the night and then return to the temple in the morning to find Professor Lassagaseer, both so I can consult with him and so that I can offer him help. I offer him the option of either staying at Nerwora as visiting faculty or staying at the fief. He’s indecisive about which he’d prefer and I promise to pick him up before we teleport out.