Get ready for the worst recap ever made! It’s been months and I remember nothing!

So, the group (including Diafani) goes to meet Aurifar in the now-ruined City of Brass. And who should meet them there but Shallows. Turns out he’s not dead, he’s a bloody traitor! He has Bailiff, keeping them floating up in the air using telekinesis. The reason Aurifar had access to the full Psionic power wasn’t because he’d gotten a new Vessel spark; it was just that Shallows was doing it for him. He’d been working for Aurifar since the trial with the Lady of Pain.

‘If you attack me, they’ll fall to their death,’ said Shallows, gesturing vaguely towards Bailiff. ‘I know being betrayed is uncomfortable, but you must realise the situation you’re in? Give me the password for the flask and we can all get what we want.’

The first to act was Uzi – she cast Time Stop and launched herself straight up to catch Bailiff, while Vi and Cranzalar (once time resumed) assaulted Shallows with spells. Cranzalar now held the Evocation spark, and his spells were about three times as potent!

Uzi passed the unconscious Bailiff to Diafani, who used the Cubic Gate to open a portal and get back to Sigil. With them safe and the cube retrieved, Uzi joined the fray.

Shallows fought back with mind blasts, psychic lashes, and telekinetic geysers that launched the party high into the air. Despite this assault, Cranzalar crashed through his defenses and sent him flying past the City of Brass outskirts.

Uzi marched by Cranzalar. ‘Give me the spark,’ she said. Cranzalar clasps hands with her, and the spark is transferred.

Shallows was trying to reassemble himself after the assault of blades and purple fire. His hyperactive metabolism had kept him immortal all this time. Uzi, using the Evocation spark, sent out a bolt of lightning that briefly lit the whole of the plane of Fire with cold, blue radiance.

Shallows was dead.

Unfortunately, Aurifar never needed the password. He’d simply destroyed the flask, along with its contents, without opening it. Pitting the party against Shallows was a win-win situation; if Shallows succeeded in killing them it would have meant retrieval of the Evocation spark and a threat removed without any risk to Aurifar. If Shallows failed, Aurifar got the Psionic spark, again without much effort.

The party learned all this upon their return to Sigil with another illusory visit from Aurifar. ‘I’m only missing one final piece,’ he said. ‘Diafani. My vessel. I’ll be waiting atop the city of Floodwall. Bring her, and perhaps I’ll allow it to keep on standing. Along with all the other planes it’s connected to.’

It was decided the best approach would be to nip Aurifar’s spark-gathering in the bud, and travel to the Elemental Plane of Earth to deal with Rosso before the God could get to him. After some faff in Sigil with an illusory Shallows that almost led the group through a portal to the Far Realm, they contacted Nico and agreed to get her stolen Planar Lantern back from Aurifar in return for her taking them to the Plane of Earth – because yeah, Aurifar stole it a while back.

    Upon arriving in the Plane of Earth, and seeing the half-destroyed city of Drywall, the party was quickly accosted by a small army of Dwarves, unwillingly under the command of Rosso. They were building a big gate to march on other planes, to eventually retake Floodwall.

    The party negotiated a meeting with Rosso, and in his flaming throneroom thing they tried to convince him of the coming threat, and that the only way to escape is to give away his spark. He was initially unphased, instead just angry about being locked in the Plane of Earth.If he’d been on the other side of the portal then he could have just used Knock or something.

    Uzi’s like ‘Hold up what?’

    Cranzalar’s like ‘Yeah Knock suppresses Arcane Lock for ten minutes.’

    The conversation was cut short by the whole city of Drywall being dismantled and lifted into the air, collapsing upwards around them. Using Teleport to escape, and bringing Rosso with them, the party-plus-Royal escaped to the Plane of Fire.

    ‘So, Aurifar came in after us?’ says Vi.

    ‘I don’t know,’ says Diafani. ‘He shouldn’t have access to that level of power, even with Shallows’ spark. He should only be able to use a bit of it? He needs a container spark to attach it to!’

    ‘Could he have gotten a new one from the Leviathan?’ asks Cranzalar. It’s because of him the Leviathan died, har har.

    ‘Oh shit,’ says Diafani.

    ‘Right, I’m willing to give up this spark now,’ says Rosso.

    After some debate, some things are figured out.

    1: Don’t die while in possession of a spark, or your soul is included with it when Aurifar reclaims it. Those that die with a spark cannot be revived.

    2: Besides death, sparks can transferred with just physical contact and informed consent on both sides, with no other limits on number of times etc. Though there must be other ways to take them besides death or willing transfer, as evidenced by Zelena’s survival (however miraculous that was).

    3: Diafani can’t give her spark away – it’s less a ‘spark’ for her and more a changing to the shape of her actual soul. Were she to give it away, she’d die. Also, she’d been calling it a ‘bowl’ all this time, but a more accurate term would be ‘vessel’, which is creepy. 

    4: Cranzalar is probably the most resilient, and… in his words, has the least to lose (‘You two have family to go back to after this,’ he says. ‘You’re family too!’ say the other two, in a really nice group moment). He’s the one that takes the spark from Rosso.

    They go back to Sigil and Rosso vanishes into the city, exiting the narrative. In their house, they receive another message from an irritated Aurifar.

    ‘I’m just going to kill your friend, then,’ he says.

    ‘Fuck you,’ says Uzi.

    They agreed to meet on neutral ground in 24 hours – the City of Brass. Aurifar would bring Bailiff, safe and sound, and in return Cranzalar would give him the password for the Iron Flask with Mavi in. Neither would ever, ever double-cross the other.

Back in Sigil, the gang does a bit of shopping, gets a bit of breakfast, and discuss with Shallows about returning the Lantern they’d got from his friend Ardent.

                Uzi and Diafani stay at the house for a while, and when they leave for breakfast, the two are holding hands.

                Shallows needs help with a play he’s throwing – he doesn’t actually have the money to pay his actors, so he needs Cranzalar, Vi, and Uzi to star. They’re reluctant, but his friend Ardent will be attending and they need to get their collateral back. No play, no Ring of Wishes.

                The play is ably performed by the three budding thespians, though Shallows isn’t very good and also has a massive fucking ego.

                Returning Ardent’s lantern, Vi grills him on just why he’s helping. He says they have mutual enemies, and that he’s interested in peace returning to the planes. Vi absolutely doesn’t trust this, even using magic to see that Ardent definitely has a divine influence, but assuming he’s maybe an Aasimar and leaving it at that.

                Returning home to the Regicider base on Floodwall (with Shallows and Diafani staying in Sigil, and Bailiff and Zelena heading back to the Plane of Water) the three decide that their next step is to head down to where they think Czerna might be – at the very bottom of the city, where the spike first pinned a tendril of the Leviathan.

                Before they can go, they check in on the city’s status – it seems that the Church forces have largely retreated, and the rebellion is now in control of the majority of the city. Also Redford is still in prison. And something is watching the three of them as they stand in their base, but they can’t pinpoint it.

                They journey down, finding that the tide had risen, and travel along the route they’d travelled when they were last down here, and they first met Zelena as a group.

                The tunnels and caverns are overgrown with dusky pink vines. That feeling of being watch returns as well, and after some inspection, several of Czerna’s shadowy assassins appear. The party deftly deals with them, with Cranzalar doing like 800 damage I think.

                The feeling of being watched hadn’t subsided, but the group presses on.

                Upon reaching the centre spire, they find the source of all the vines: a huge brain, growing out of a small jar of mayonnaise. The Illithid they’d polymorphed and left submerged in magic mayo had mutated into this, and its cholesterol is absolutely terrible.

                They destroy it and prepare to dig.

                But Uzi has seen an opportunity to check in on what Aurifar is doing, if he’s even still in the picture – she leaps out to touch the spire, and has a vision just like when she first touched it.

                She finds herself stood in a familiar place – the bedrooms of the Regicider base. Zelena snores in the corner, and Bailiff sleeps nearby, blissfully unable to hear.

                A figure stands in the room, and turns to Uzi. ‘It’s been a while,’ he says. ‘I suppose I’ve been unmasked.’

                It’s Ardent.

                ‘What the fuck are you doing here, dickbag?!’ says Uzi.

                ‘I simply have–’ begins Ardent.

                Uzi launches a sixth-level Lightning Bolt right into his face, interrupting him.

                ‘Get out,’ she says.

                Ardent – Aurifar – clutches his face. There’s a crack in it, and light is spilling out. Uzi leaps forward and tries to tear it wider, but he throws her off.

                ‘I don’t know if you think you have nothing to lose,’ he snarls, ‘or just that I wouldn’t take it from you.’

                He marches over to Zelena’s sleeping form. ‘You can go now,’ he says. His hand shoots out, and Uzi is thrown from the vision.

                Cranzalar and Vi are there to catch her, and she tells them they need to get back to the base, almost incoherently.

                (Fun fact! Since the Mind Spider no longer exists, Aurifar has access to divination magic and can Scry on you, making you feel like you’re being watched!)

                But they’re interrupted by Czerna. That ballroom she so favours appears around them, and she appears not as a shadow, but as herself. She wants to make a deal – something is hunting her, so she wants to offer her surrender if they’ll let her leave the city. They can be in charge now.

                ‘You aren’t in much of a position to bargain,’ says Cranzalar, evenly.

                Uzi is frantic. ‘We need to leave, Czerna. You have nothing to offer! You let us leave, or you die!’

                Vi subtly prepares to cast Sunbeam down through the floor.

                Czerna admits she’s been having dreams of Aurifar coming back to retake his power. She hasn’t lived this long to be snuffed out now. She recognises Uzi’s urgency and says she’ll let them go if they promise to let her go.

                It’s no deal. Vi and Uzi destroy the floor, though even as they land the illusory ballroom stays fixed around them.

                Cranzalar focuses, and his sight is able to pierce the veil for just a moment. He sees a skeleton knelt in the corner, arms chained to the base of the spire. Its bones are black, and it has a broken horn. Its ribcage holds a still beating heart. Cranzalar casts Shatter, and Czerna’s illusion drops.

                Cranzalar steps forwards and brutally drives his Booming Blade through the skeleton, ending Czerna.

                The three of them rush back to the base, and find Bailiff missing, and Zelena dying in her bed.

                Uzi rushes in and manages to find a pulse – she’s still holding on. Zelena’s eyes fix on her daughter’s, and her hand grips Uzi’s weakly.

                Vi has been readying to cast True Resurrection if necessary, but seeing that Zelena is still barely breathing, she channels a massively powerful Regenerate, and somehow fixes the damage to Zelena’s soul.

                ‘Bastard tore my spark out,’ coughs Zelena. ‘…Glad you’re here.’

(Fun fact! If they’d waited and attempted to resurrect her, it would have failed! Her soul wouldn’t be ‘free to return’, since Aurifar would be in possession of the spark it was attached to! Wow!)

                Cranzalar carried Zelena to Sigil, so she could recover somewhere safe. Vi and Uzi searched for clues on Bailiff’s status, but could only confirm that Bailiff hadn’t been killed, and that Aurifar had taken the Iron Flask with Mavi in it.

                The house in Sigil was a mess too. Shallows’ bed was just drenched in blood, with his body nowhere to be found. Diafani’s room was empty.

                Fortunately, when Aurifar had been searching for her, she wasn’t in her bed.

                She was waiting in Uzi’s. Everyone got an eyeful except, sadly, Uzi herself.

                A plan was made once Diafani had gotten dressed. She’d need to find somewhere to hole up for a while, as if Aurifar was active again, she’d be in danger.

                Vi, Cranzalar, and Uzi would track him down and deal with him. They didn’t quite have a plan on how to do that yet, but there wasn’t time to waste.

                They set out to rescue their friend and kill a God.

Once more, I wish I’d recap more often.

After spending some time away – Vi confronts her shitty Dad, and learns a recipe for a tea that can erase memories from Granny Hestia – the party returns to Floodwall with a plan to remove the Mind Spider from the collective unconscious, thus killing it forever. It’s a memetic entity that’s immortal as long as creatures in the multiverse remembers it, so they’ll add the memory-wiping tea to the source of all water (which happens to be on the same plane they’re from) and deal with it that way.

They go shopping. They make a deal to get a map from a friend of Shallows named ‘Ardent’, but end up with a lantern that’ll point to the very centre of whatever plane it’s on instead. Uzi gives up the ring of wishes she got from her Mum as collateral.

And then they sail away on a boat Zelena made! Diafani goes with, after a somewhat embarrassing confession from/to Firuzeh. It makes the whole quest a bit awkward.

Upon finding the centre of the plane of water, and the tunnels where water is spread to other planes, the party fights a weird sea-hag that’s been blocking the routes. They diffuse several of her scariest abilities through Vi’s use of Feeblemind, and defeat her handily.

The three (plus Diafani) prepare to mix-up the tea and spread it through the multiverse, erasing the Weaver once and for all.

Damn ok uh

You went to Eberron, did some jobs for Nico there

You trapped Mavi in a bottle after faking going to a Royal Meeting, with disguises and stellar impressions of said Royals. You then chucked Rosso through a portal to the Elemental Plane of Earth and Cranzalar Arcane Locked it behind him.

Czerna is hunting for you.

You got a lot of fireproofing and a treetrunk-thick Staff of Anullment from Nico, in return for ‘a favour after all this is over’. You used it to kill Oltin by dispelling layer after layer of wards on them until you reached the True Polymorph. They fought back even when turned humanoid again, turning Firuzeh into a prawn. Vi finished them off with sinister wound magic (I deeply regret not doing a proper narrative recap for this. It was in-person and everything ಥ_ಥ).

You had an emotional conversation and Vi revealed that she’d murdered that Inquisitor.

Y’all decided to go for a quick holiday in the Feywild, to try and recover and re-find yourselves; Vi especially.

Right we’re caught up it’s fine

Okay I don’t think I can do a proper narrative-style recap for this one; too much went down. Why don’t we record these?!

The whole point of the trial was to determine if the Leviathan had a rightful claim to the shards of Aurifar’s power, or if it would be made to cease and desist, as it were. Of course, ‘cease and desist’ in this case is a euphemism for having its champion ‘discarded’. ‘Discarded’ is also a euphemism.
Also, to keep things fair, if the Defence won, then Aurifar’s champion would be the one to be discarded. Perfectly balanced, blah blah Thanos meme
Vi was given the ability to compel truth from those on trial. It was pretty useful. After a quick 30 minutes to prep – during which Uzi hurled some abuse at Aurifar, and Cranzalar learned that Eadro really did want to drown the city, because its position above the water was unnatural – the trial got properly underway.

First on the stand was Aurifar himself. The main gist of questioning was ‘Why are you such a bellend?’
Aurifar explained his coming into the world causing cracks, his accidental creation of life, and his desire to save that life from the rising water – this led him to build Floodwall, with the help of several trusted advisors.
He also told the court about Diafani’s role – how she was the first to receive a spark of his power, and the only one not to take more than was offered. Her job would be to travel between the planes and maintain the massive arcane spikes pinning down the Leviathan.
Since he’d given away the spark that granted him immortality, Aurifar would have to pass on his other sparks to keep the tide from swallowing the city. Unfortunately, everyone else took way more power than Aurifar had intended, and rather than pissing off back to skyworld or whatever, Aurifar fell dormant for millennia.

Diafani was next. She told the court of her initial role as a sort of errand person for Aurifar and his actual generals. About the fact that the maintenance of the other towers was much more combat heavy than expected, and there was no way for her to defend all of them at once – the reason any had fallen was simply because she hadn’t been there at the time.
Cranzalar posited that this seemed like she’d been given an impossible task – that she’d been doomed to fail from the start.

Afterwards, the party called Lilla to the stand. She was pretty obstinate at first, but she was gently reminded that she didn’t have much better to be doing, being dead and all. She was a bit more compliant after that, though still not particularly helpful. Though she did let slip that the immortality was first suggested by Mavi and Ban, and it was something they all had to work pretty hard on – Rosso’s ‘potions’ took the longest, she thought.

Next, Mavi was the one to be questioned. His initial reaction was ‘Fuck this, I’m busy in Floodwall controlling the populace from my broadcast tower’, but the Judge’s Compulsion got him talking.
‘Was seizing immortality entirely your own idea?’ asked Vi.
‘It was not.’
‘Did you conspire with another entity?’
‘I did.’
At this point, Uzi was shooting Aurifar death glares, assuming he’d been the one to suggest all this – to keep himself entertained as an immortal being.
‘What was the nature of the entity that you conspired with?’
‘It was powerful, and older than any of us, and-‘
Vi’s tone was stern. ‘Its name, Mavi.’
‘…The Weaver.’
Mavi then explained his finding the mask, how he never put it on, but how he’d linked his life to the Spider’s – neither can die while the other lives – and how one day he’d lost the thing. He assumed it had grown tired of his refusals.

They called the Weaver itself to the stand. It seemed delighted to be there, and explained that there was more than one mask, and in multiple worlds. That its whole motivation was to stave off boredom. That Mavi hadn’t put on the mask, but Ban had – until he’d died, anyway.
The Ban that the city dealt with was simply a series of pre-recorded messages, expertly interacting with the world through Ban’s divination. When he’d received the spark from Aurifar, his visions were too much – so he’d made a deal with the Mind Spider to understand them. In return, he’d given the Weaver the divination spark upon his death.

So, earlier, the party had discussed how to get out of this whole business without anyone being euphemised to death. They decided their best bet was to get it declared a mistrial – and for believability, since they still had to play their roles or risk being chucked into a labyrinth by the Lady of Pain -Cranzalar should be the one to declare that, as defence and everything.
Anyway, Uzi got all fired up and yelled that the influence of the Weaver meant that this whole thing had started in bad circumstances, and the question of anyone’s claims’ validity isn’t relevant; the Weaver is the real issue here, this is clearly a mistrial.

After this was an hour’s recess to regroup and figure out if the mistrial thing was correct. Of course, rather than working on the case, Cranzalar, Vi, Uzi, and Diafani capitalised on the fact that Eadro was contained in the trial – Cranzalar’s soul was outside its reach right now. It was True Resurrection time, beech.
Shallows got himself a sandwich; salami and ham on a nice seeded ciabatta.

Upon their return, Eadro was all ‘Cranzalar. You’re looking well.’

The next logical witness was Ban himself, his shade manifesting just like Lilla’s had. He told the court that the Weaver had indeed influenced their actions, and that its overall goal was entertainment, yes, but also survival; the Weaver, in essence, is a memetic creature, only existing as an idea. Since Ban’s memory went forward as well, and since the weaver had his shard and thus his soul, then there’d always be someone to remember it, and so it’d always exist.
The party began thinking up ways to split Ban from the Mind Spider. Uzi sneakily got the Archive to copy down one of the witness containment circles. It’s a surprise tool that’ll help us later.
Also, yes, since he’d seen the future, and got his power from Aurifar, then Aurifar should have been able to as well. So why did he send Diafani out, knowing full well that she’d fail?

Anyway, after this, the party got Aurifar back on the stand. ‘Why are you such a bellend?’ Uzi asked. But also, they asked whether Ban’s comments at the end were correct. Why had he sent Diafani on a quest she couldn’t possibly fulfil?
‘Because,’ said Aurifar, struggling against the Judge’s Compulsion, ‘That was the only way I could be sure she’d still be here when I got back.’
Everyone’s jaw dropped. Well, except Cranzalar, who’d sort of seen this coming. And Uzi, who proceeded to call Aurifar an incel.

Last on the stand was the leviathan, currently bound up in the form of Eadro by Cranzalar’s thoughts. He spoke of his goal to destroy any aberrations, regardless of cost- to return to the natural order of things. In the short term, this meant drowning the city of Floodwall; depriving Aurifar of his shards was the way to do that.
In the long term, it meant returning the planes to their original form; one seething mass of chaos. Yes, all current life in the Floodwall cosmology would cease to exist, so would the leviathan. But, it meant that things could begin properly, without everything broken by Aurifar’s landing.

Throughout the trial, before the dismissal of each witness, Cranzalar had been asking each who they thought Aurifar’s sparks belonged to. And each of them insisted that it was finders keepers, so to speak.
So the party argued that no, the Leviathan didn’t have any claim to the parks. But neither did Aurifar himself, not anymore. Nobody had broken the letter of their original deal. It was in essence a no-man’s-land sort of situation.
And the Lady of Pain agreed. She severed any ties the gods had with the party – Aurifar lost his ability to make Uzi spontaneously combust, and Eadro’s power left Cranzalar – he’d have reverted to a corpse there had they not True Resurrected him in the recess.
The gods remerged, and were sent back to Floodwall to begin their battle from scratch.
Cranzalar realised he needed to find a new god. And then the party bought a house in Sigil????

Oh my god you guys a lot has happened.

Okay, so, upon returning to the city the party was swept up into an illusion by Czerna, in which they fought against Rosso to stop him from reaching the Regicider Base and wrecking the place.
In the real world, a large group of Church Guards assaulted the base, following the dead-man’s-switch beacon the Inquisitor had left behind.
The party – breaking out of the illusion without realising it – made their way to the bottom tier, to throw this beacon into the sewers. There, they came across Zelena.
And since Uzi wasn’t wearing her disguise, Zelena recognised her. Turns out she’s her Mum, sort of.
Zelena was really more a craftsperson than a proper spellcaster like the others. She’d made a Ring of Three Wishes – the First wish, centuries ago, made her immortal and practically impervious to all threats in the plane. The Second, much later, was a wish for a child. She just didn’t specify that the child had to turn up safely within sight.
When Uzi flashed into existence in the sewers, Zelena just assumed the wish had failed. This all came out in a mother-daughter conversation, where Zelena apologised for not being there and insisted that Uzi take her Ring of Wishes.
Travelling back to the Regicider base, the party found it trashed, with Bailiff and Carnival hiding in the panic room.
After healing Carnival’s missing arm and reinforcing the wards – along with creating some alternate doors to the base (courtesy of the Archive), the party were all like:
‘Hey, we should make an entrance in the Dry Land bar on the Fourth Tier. Where is Redford, anyway? Also we really should find Diafani.’
Redford had been in prison since the business with the Mind Spider. Whoops. The party learned this through a conversation with Nico, who also sold them a Cubic Gate to get to Diafani – she’d ended up in the City of Doors, Sigil, after planeswalking to escape the collapsing hospital. Nico had heard rumours that she’d got a bit of notoriety there.
Anyway, after a brief aside to get Redford out of jail – with disguises and Zelena’s help – the party travelled through their Cubic Gate to Diafani’s location… which was in a courtyard, overseen by the Lady of Pain herself.
Diafani was drawing up diagrams of arcane power to summon and bind divinities. And the group found themselves pressganged into roles in the court – Uzi as Prosecution, Cranzalar as Defense, and Vi as the Judge.
And the Lady of Pain was all like ‘Begin.’
COURT WAS IN SESSION

In light of their recent successes, the party received some tickets to a spa/resort/hotel thing from Bailiff. It was a nice gesture; Bailiff had signed up to Nico’s special membership scheme and pulled some strings to get them. They declined to go with the party, though.

    The hotel was pretty fancy. There was a hot spring and everything, though since they were split by gender in the Japanese style, it’s probably a good thing Bailiff didn’t come.

    Anyway, there was an encounter with the Fire Genasi Inquisitor – a brief conversation with him, leading to a confrontation as the party tried to leave. There was also a conversation with his apprentice – a blue dragonborn who’d lost her name when apprenticing, so gave her name as ‘Carnevalle’. Well, she said ‘Carnival’, but that first one is how she thought it should be spelled.

    The altercation ended up with the Inquisitor in the Regicider’s dungeons, and with Carnevalle eating a load of big ham sandwiches in the common room. Cranzalar wanted to kill the Inquisitor, as his deity could convert that act into sustenance, and stop his body decaying further for a time. Firuzeh absolutely did not want that to happen, since the Inquisitor was their prisoner.

    Cranzalar relented, eventually, and stormed out to clear his head. As he reached the edge, looking out over the ocean, something ruptured in his chest, and he blacked out.

    When he awoke, he was deep, deep underwater. Something had been rammed through his chest, pinning him to the seabed. He tried to contact Eadro, but found himself facing Aurifar instead – who explained that he’d found it necessary to pin Cranzalar down in a similar way to his pinning of the Leviathan. The thing in his chest was a spire, like the one the city had grown around.

    Cranzalar was able to summon up his pact blade, even in this weird place, and struck at Aurifar, waking himself up. He freed himself and floated to the surface.

    Meanwhile, Uzi had gone to look for her friend. She followed his trail to the edge of the city, and then into the ocean – leaping down and diving to look for him. After a time, Vi followed, and the two saw in the distance this huge, magical flare go off.

    The flare was sort of Cranzalar’s fault. He’d ended up on this strange island that had been transmuted into different precious materials – trees made of emerald, diamond sand, even animals made of rare woods. After making his way to the centre, he found himself face to face with Oltin, the phoenix Royal, who let off a burst of transmutational power so strong it began to turn Cranzalar’s bones to obsidian.

    Cranzalar ran away, very quickly, and jumped onto a carpet he’d brought.

    Back in the city, as Uzi treaded water, Vi went back to the base to tell Bailiff about where they were going. Then she nipped back down to the cell with the Inquisitor in it.

    As it turns out, she agreed with Cranzalar.

    She didn’t find anything important on the Inquisitor’s corpse.

    As Cranzalar flew back, the Phoenix hot on his heels despite the multiple rounds of lightning bolts he blasted down onto it, he saw a massive tidal wave racing towards them, with Firuzeh commanding it from within.

    He rolled the carpet around himself and shot through the wave like a message in a pneumatic tube, and the full force of the tidal wave hammered down onto Oltin.

    The Phoenix died for a moment.

    Then, reigniting, it flew back to its island.