The Headmaster gives his speech, exactly how she remembers it. The crowd cheers in all the right places.

The master thief is first. Madison Ross and her deck of cards dance through the first three sets of doors without issue. The rain of arrows from the Doors of Steel impale her, and it takes her a minute to get them open. She dodges the bolt of lightning from the Doors of Storm and cracks the lock in an instant.

The Doors of Night are a brilliant moving night sky. The stars glow, and the constellations form a vast symbol. It flashes twice. Madison dies.

Takota is up next, his giant's sledge slung over his shoulder. He drinks a potion and doubles in size.

Swing. Swing. Swing. Swing. Swing...

His hammer pulverizes the walls of the Hall of Wards like they're made of cheap wood. He breaks the wall of force. He carves through the wall of lava. He bypasses the web of lightning. He kills the black ooze. He shatters the dead-magic wall. He survives the sky wall with the clouds of fire. He shatters each layer of the prismatic wall, one-by-one.

The air elementals attack him and die. Takota fails the break through an invisible barrier in front of a wall of liquid metal. He walks away.

Professor Vargas, with his purple suit and monocle, is the next (and probably last) candidate. He spends a minute inspecting the hole Takota made in the wall.

He knocks open the Doors of Wood. He casts three spells on himself. His body is formed of glimmering ice. He phases through the next Doors of Stone and of Iron in an instant.

The rain of arrows from the Doors of Steel fails against an invisible barrier. He disintegrates one of the doors using his staff. The Doors of Storm cannot harm him. They reflect his next disintegrate back at him (he blinks away just in time). He opens one of the doors using an unknown spell.

The Doors of Night flash harmlessly at his construct servant. It says a command word, and one of the doors opens. The Doors of Flame, formed of smoking vines, dispel his icy form. It doesn't stop him. He scrolls a spell and flows through the vines.

He becomes ice again, just in time for the Doors of Shadow to pour forth undead horrors. They cannot harm him. He casts an unknown spell, and one of the doors opens. The Doors of Scouring are a dazzling white. He reads a scroll, which destroys all magic, but the white doors are unaffected. He walks away.

Yanor clearly enjoyed the wizard's attempt most of all. "That was awesome! He almost made it! Maybe. I don't how many doors there are. It's not every day you see ninth circle spells flung around, even from scrolls."

"Perhaps! He said one hundred years, I doubt the Doors of Scouring have previously been breached only by the one past victor. He was surely close. I wonder where he found the scroll. Purchased, I would assume, but from who? I suppose selling a scrolled ninth-circle spell would be one way to make money as an archmage..."

"I have no idea. Well, I would assume Clepati or Morgethai or Razmir, but there could be others. You never know with archmages."

"Clepati is known for selling at least her wine. She may not be the most reliable, but I would anticipate her as the first option. Morgethai is less predictable, and I would guess a less-prioritized option." For people who aren't best served by avoiding Nethys's gaze.

He shrugs. "I didn't make progress on the information from the gems. I'll send you a letter if I find something interesting."

"I will perhaps see you then, in that case. In the meantime I shall most likely volunteer with the guard, finding corpses yesterday rather put me off exploring alone for a time. I doubt I shall encounter anything of interest to you, but if I do, to where should I send a letter of my own?"

"I don't live in Korvosa. You can send me letters through the Bank. It won't incur an international charge until I've left the city. I'll let you know when I do." He gives her the name of his account.

"As you say. Until we meet again!" She nods to him and hurries off.

She doesn't actually have much to do today, and the shops she was looking at are all closed for the Festival. Oh well. Tomorrow it is.

KORVOSAN CARRIER
MOONDAY, SARENITH 1st, 4708

BUSINESS SLOWS AT MIDLAND, ABADARAN ESTIMATES UNMET

The storm has subsided and the sky is clear. At the Acadamae, post-holiday cleanup begins. Everyone gets back to work. A crew sets out from the docks, intent on investigating yesterday's wreck. Rumors spread in Old Korvosa of undead escaping the sewers, but nothing can be confirmed. A small group is found dead, mauled and eaten by some sort of monster.

And she knows what to do today. She writes her warning of the King's death, her blackmail message, her first/final letter to the conspiracy, and her delayed letters warning the Bank of the break-in and King Eodred of the cult in the sewers.

This time, her warning about the cult includes a mention that it has a leukodaemon as well as a fifth circle cleric. Hopefully this way the Marines will come with weapons that actually work decently against them, even without needing special cleric handling.

The rest of the day she spends signing up for the Guard's volunteer list, then running messages. She sees no reason to delay the volunteering by a day, they should have her as a recent caster on the list regardless.

KORVOSAN CARRIER
TOILDAY, SARENITH 2nd, 4708

HIS MAJESTY CANCELS APPEARANCE AT ARKONA GALA, RUMORED DIVISION WITHIN PEERAGE REVIEW

They were getting along so well, at least as far as the public knew. But now all is in doubt. Is His Majesty hiding some dreadful scandal? Is House Arkona? Those of Old Korvosa that care about such things are displeased with the return of such open feuding. Why did the King spurn them so abruptly?

The crew returns from the shipwreck. There were no survivors, but they managed to recover valuable trade goods. Something brews in the sewers of Old Korvosa, and the papers print vague warnings.

She's started on finding the wand of Infernal Healing, but she has not yet succeeded. She has a stronger sense of what magic shops actually sell what.

Eventually, she can locate somewhere which sells what she is looking for, but she can't put many more constraints on it unless she wants to wait for a commissioned one. And even then, she would need to find someone to do the commissioning from. Where does she end up?

The Gilded Orrery is the only magic shop in the city she's aware of that carries pre-stocked wands.

It appears much as she remembers it. Bookshelves, mostly full, line the walls. A variety of magic items are on display in glass cases. Near the back is a staircase leading up to the second floor.

Really this should have been the obvious conclusion, but it is good to hunt when you're planning to spend thousands of shields at a time. Nothing else, though.

Unlike her last time here, she might actually be able to afford something. She'll get to the wand eventually, but first... what exactly are the items on display in the cases?

The display cases have a wide collection of wondrous items. Feather tokens and talismans and baubles of all sorts are grouped up in collections. There's a wide variety of effects, many of them single use. The section with permanent items opens with a traveler's any-tool. At the upper end of the selection is a single headband of vast intelligence.

You're supposed to spend money on permanent items, of course. Mother taught her that. Humans look only to the next week, you are better than that.

...but she might only have a month. If only one month matters, not lasting past a month isn't a problem. And single-use items are usually cheaper than longer ones, and she does not have that much money by the standards of magic items.

She will look at some of the cheaper permanent items, and, with somewhat mixed feelings, also a few of the more expendable ones. At her price range, maybe it won't make much difference.

The cheapest permanent items they have are small stones imbued with continual flame. Traveler's any-tools are also fairly cheap. The other options are not interesting to her. Sorcerers can't use pearls of power. The headband and belt on display are most likely out of her price range unless she taps her secret account. It's now rich with the Breaching Festival bets.

The have a much wider selection of cheap expendable items. Some of the effects are a little... ridiculous. Is anyone really going to use a feather that turns into an ship's anchor for a day? Or a token that turns into a magic lance for one minute? There's one that turns into a bird and delivers a letter at any distance. That one would be useful in a world where the Bank didn't run bulk mail via teleport.

There's some elixirs and potions lined up in a different case, if she wants to keep browsing.

A traveler's any-tool is the sort of thing she would be happy to buy if she wasn't looking for temporary options. Having whatever tool she needs available to hand is impressively useful, and will be for a long time yet. ...probably she should buy one anyway, it's really impressively cheap. Someone must have a very clever design or a source of easy components for it or something.

There must be something expendable which is less absurd, though. No she does not want a lance, and helpful birds to carry letters are... actually wait a moment, how is that one supposed to be addressed? Do you need to give it a location?

You can give it either a location or a creature. It's like a magic homing pigeon.

That definitely has uses. It doesn't detail how much you need to know about a person to send it, but a long-range creature locator even for only people she remembers seeing could be useful. And it might have been a way to get a letter to Morgethai, but probably not, archmages are hard to find. Not relevant right now, though. 

What about those elixirs and potions? The wand she's looking for should serve much the same function as healing potions, but there are other things people want drinkable spells for.