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tomorrow belongs to those who prepare for it today
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The lair is eerily silent.

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...A victory! That was... closer than she hoped... but she won!

...she gains nothing by killing her allies here, she needs the students alive to read the map and she needs Mika alive if she wants to survive next time something like this happens. And no necromancy professor is going to have two zombies as his only defense. She rushes in and looks around. Who's going to die within the next minute without treatment? She doesn't really know what she's doing, but she can try to staunch bleeding.

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Anton sounds the worst out of everyone, his breathing is very erratic. Mika has bad looking bruises on his face and chest.

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She will attempt to get Anton a little more stable, then. And if this involves tearing open his upper body clothing and getting a look at anything he might have on him, she's not going to object, but him not dying is urgent right now.

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Anton has a backpack with some fancy-looking books, a sealed vial of ink, a pen, soap, a half-empty waterskin, two meals worth of trail rations, and twelve silver shields.

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Those books look interesting...

Wait. No. She was stabilizing him. Books are not important right now! ...and that's about five seconds wasted. Oops.

She spends another ten or fifteen seconds trying to make sure he's at least not actively choking on blood or anything. At that point, he looks pretty stable, though that may not be due to anything she did.

With that finished, she has some time, and she can't wake the others with any of the spells she has available. May as well satisfy her curiosity! Does a Detect Magic spot any auras on any of the three of them?

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A wand on the floor next to Julio and a stoppered vial in Mika's belt pouch have magical auras. She can't discern the school of magic for either.

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He was using that wand to cast his spells, so it's probably his bonded item. Assuming he wasn't lying about that.

...she'll leave it. 

The vial might be important, but if it's a healing potion she would rather not know until she's finished her investigations here. She drops the Detect and takes a look at the books. Are any of them recognizably Common or Elvish?

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The books are all in Common. Anton's backpack has:

Elemental Fundamentals V: Sound

Second-Order Evocative Interactions

Principals of Elementary Thaumaturgy, Second Edition

The Book of Magic, Fourteenth Edition

and two untitled books, one of which is probably his spellbook.

If the stamps on the inner covers of Elemental Fundamentals V: Sound and Second-Order Evocative Interactions are to be believed, they were checked out from the Acadamae library.

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Disappointingly normal, for someone whose familiar is off doing unspecified suspicious things! And he worships an ascended human, but at least one of the respectable ones. Nethys may be mad but at least he's interesting.

Oh well. Maybe it actually isn't doing anything suspicious, or they haven't taken the evidence of it with them into the sewers.

What does Julio have on him? She'll look closely and then a give him brief pat-down, but she's not going to tear any clothing that isn't already torn.

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Julio has a similar kit to Anton: books, writing utensils, ink, some food and water, a compass, and thirty one silver shields.

Less books than Anton: two unlabeled, Recognizing Charms and Compulsions, and Dungeoneering For The Busy Wizard.

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Boring boring boring. Maybe they really are just what they said they were. That's kind of disappointing. For the best.

Over to Mika! He's the one who might have a potion, so she can even justify this one. That's a lot of money if she's right, though. What does he have?

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Mika's backpack is quite full! She finds four cylinders of chalk, a flint and steel, two unlit torches, a grappling hook, a spool of rope, six pitons, soap, an iron pot, a hammer, four meals worth of rations, two waterskins (one full, one around half empty), a set of thieves’ tools, a pouch with one hundred and twelve silver shields, and some other assorted junk.

In his belt pouch is the magic vial (red), two more vials (one black and one clear), three daggers, and four pinch.

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At least someone here was actually prepared. The nonmagic vials are interesting, but she has no particular way to identify them. Instead... she casts her Detect Magic again, points it at the vials (and the wand while she's at it), and... concentrates. And focuses. And focuses some more.

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It takes her about twenty seconds to identify the wand's school (faint universal) and another twenty for the vial's school (faint conjuration).

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Universal is exactly what she would expect from a bonded item without further enchantment. The potion is probably a healing potion? Right school, at least. Does she need to use it now? 

...no, they seem pretty safe for the moment. They'll take a while to recover, but there's no need to steal the choice from Mika when he'll probably be able to express an opinion soon enough. She puts everyone's gear back together, closes up the pouches, and repositions people until they should be able to breathe clearly and won't hurt themselves when they get up, as long as they do it without straining anything.

And then she sits and gets back to her slow experimentation with understanding Detect Magic's feedback. She's been at this for most of the past week, she can do it for another few hours here.

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After an hour, Anton slowly wakes up with a long groan.

"Ughhh, my head, what..." He opens his eyes and looks around. "Ah, fuck. They got us good. Did anyone die?"

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"Not yet. Stay down, you'll go right back to bleeding out internally if you do anything too forceful. We might be able to get out if nothing jumps us, but I wouldn't want to bet on it. 

"I don't suppose you had any plans for what to do if one of you was wounded? Is your familiar anywhere useful where you might be able to signal someone to pay for a channel, maybe?"

Also, while she's looking around again, she may as well check the zombie corpses. She would have picked up any magic on them, but maybe they have something less interesting?

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"We've got money to pay for a channel, but not nearly enough to get someone all the way down here. Not that they could even find this place, without the map."

He pauses and concentrates for a moment. "I can't reach my familiar, we're too far away."

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The zombie corpses have nothing but the moldering clothes they were wearing.

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Unsurprising.

"I expected no less. Do either of you have Infernal Healing in your spellbooks? None of you are likely to die in the next few days, and you should all recover within the week with good care, but I can't exactly provide that down here."

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"We've both got it but neither of us have it prepared. Julio can cast it from his wand, if he wakes up. He usually keeps the devil blood is in his coat's inner pocket."

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"I'll check that the vial is still whole. If it is, we can wait a few hours and hope he wakes up. If not..."

She sighs.

"I'll try to get out myself, buy some, and find my way back. Hopefully it doesn't come to that, I wouldn't bet on you three all making it out alive if it does."

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"That's... fine with me..." He shuts his eyes and rests.

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Does Julio have an unbroken vial in his pocket, if she goes over and checks?

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