"Yes... we should head back now. I'd very much like to know who this was. Garril, will you please carry the corpse?"

He picks up the corpse. "Of course." He looks to Tencednil. "Good work with the rope. Didn't know you had it in you."

"Neither did I! Glad it worked." And why was I the one doing this when you were standing right there, she doesn't say.

Back. Out of the sewers, which are apparently full of powerful casters. That sounds like a good idea.

Navarro leads them a different way out. It's a shorter way up from their current location. They make it back to the streets of Old Korvosa unaccosted. The Guard on the surface struggles to control the potent mix of riots and looters and beasts from below. Tencednil spots a squad of Hellknights in jet black armor killing a small group of man-sized spiders.

Citadel Volshyenek is the same as it was when they left; crowded and overworked. Navarro leads them into a room Tencednil has never seen before. It contains four rectangular stone slabs and is otherwise empty. Garril sets down the body on one.

Navarro searches through the seized backpack. "Doesn't seem trapped..."

Inside is a basic adventurer's kit, the kind of thing Mika would bring, but without anything too heavy. There's also a notebook with every page written in blood. It's written in a language unknown to any of them.

"That looks like evidence! It also looks like something for your wizard to identify once everyone comes back for the night, along with identifying the corpse to return his belongings to his next of kin. Possibly it will also have some other lead. He also may have some enchantments with their auras suppressed, I would be unable to detect them if so. Please be careful."

The guard has at least one wizard, and for all that she's good, a third circle wizard will be her better at identifying objects. And might have some way around Magic Aura-covered traps? She's not sure. Navarro probably has training in magic trap identification, but this seems altogether preemptive, especially when they probably can't legally use any of this. This is the guard, there's a cleric of Abadar right there, they're not going to blatantly break the law.

"Of course. Now, I have to go write up my report and speak with my superiors. Everyone, please wait in the planning room."

Navarro sets down the backpack, leaves the room, and returns to his office.

She waits.

"Quick work on the Silence, that was well done. Does the Church of Abadar have general recommendations for combat against circled casters? I know the guard prioritizes sundering focuses and staying in close. Clerical spells must allow different approaches."

"Silence is very good if you have it. For wizards, you typically want to be up close and personal. It's difficult to cast safely next to skilled hostile combatants. For clerics, it's more complicated. You typically want attack at range, because clerics have less powerful ranged spells but more powerful touch spells. However, a cleric might have a domain that gives fireball or something like it, and then you want to be close."

"Sensible. Does that change at high circles? The Urgathoan priestess had Flame Strike, which I assume is treated like Fireball, but there must be other considerations as clerics strengthen." Unholy Blight is an area spell which doesn't harm its caster's allies, for instance, which must change things. Better to let the apparent expert bring that up though.

"Against high circles you want powerful experts with lots of planning and other spellcasters helping them. Like the marines or great adventurers. If they're powerful enough that those forces would fail... there's not much you can do. I don't know what it would take to defeat someone like the Archbanker or Headmaster Ornelos."

"If there was a known approach, they wouldn't be so impressive, I suppose. What do you prefer for Silence delivery? Landing it on a circled caster seems difficult, but so is grabbing one, as we saw. Do you just prioritize armor, or try to find a more mobile ally, or what?"

She can keep up a discussion of anti-caster tactics for a while, but eventually Navarro will no doubt return.

Navarro leaves his office and goes somewhere else. Eventually, he returns to the planning room. "I've delivered my report. We still don't know who this guy was. We're going to have his stuff looked over. If we can't identify him that way, we'll put out a bounty in the paper for information about his identity. You're dismissed for today. Your payments will be transferred shortly. We found quite a few breaches, good job everyone."

That's oddly uninformative. It's a little worrying that people the guard can't identify at all are coming after Detective Navarro, but hopefully anyone else will also go for him and not make her worry about sudden invisible assassins while she's alone? Maybe it's for the best that she didn't get much attention for the Urgathoan cleanup after all. 

She's not going to try to do something else today, that was quite enough excitement for now. Back home.

KORVOSAN CARRIER
TOILDAY, SARENITH 9th, 4708

THE LIFE OF HIS MAJESTY, KING EODRED ARABASTI II

A seven day period of mourning for His Majesty, King Eodred Arabasti II has been announced by decree of the Queen. A mausoleum is under construction in Gray, which next Sunday the funeral procession will bury an empty casket within. A bounty for information about an unknown man is placed in the papers. The Guard, the Sable Company, and the Order of the Nail all work overtime to contain the horrible beasts pouring from the depths below.

When Tencednil wakes up, her body feels slightly different. She has a new cantrip and a new first circle spell! The cantrip is transmutation and feels like whispers. The first circle spell is illusion feels like glittering metal.

Ooh! There are benefits to almost dying!

...a transmutation whispers cantrip is probably Message. And that means she still doesn't have Dancing Lights. Why does her sorcery keep doing this to her. Isn't sorcery supposed to be from your parents? Shouldn't a drow noble parent mean Dancing Lights is in her sorcery? Why is this taking so long? Augh!

The other one doesn't snap nicely around her, or the shadow... there must be some way to use it. It wants to take an object, maybe? Does it work on the paper? Glittering metal, so maybe her pen? She doesn't need all her first circle spells today (and she probably has at least seven now, maybe even eight!), so trying it out once shouldn't be too much of a problem.

Paper is not a valid target. Her metal pen is!

The spell is incredibly quick to cast, faster than any other spell she knows. The pen shines and glitters like it's made of dazzling silver. Tencednil has the sense the spell can be discharged with a simple mental motion.

Huh. It's... pretty. Distractingly so. In the dark, it's difficult to take her eyes off it. There's no actual light coming from the pen, though. It just looks like it's reflecting the moon. (The sun? Is this how humans see the reflection of the sun? It's much calmer than how she remembers it, but their eyes aren't particularly good...) When she flourishes the pen, it leaves silver streaks in the air, and it's almost difficult to see where the pen is and where it just was a second ago. That would probably be helpful in a fight, if she knew how to use it.

Breaking quickly is obviously useful for something this visible, but it's also a bit unusual. She points it at the shadow and tries the discharge flick. If the shadow vanishes because of this, she knows it's useful in combat, and hopefully she won't need it too much today.

When she discharges the spell, her pen flashes brilliantly in the shadow's direction.

Her familiar is now distressed! They can't see! Their sight returns around six seconds later.

<Can't see!>... <Can now.>

Oooh, that is a useful tool. Especially given how quickly the spell snapped into place, if she had some small sparkly bit of metal (sharp bit of metal? Bit of metal with nice flat pieces? Some coins or shuriken would be easy to slip into her hand in the blink of an eye, and might work) she could blind anything that gets too close. It didn't even need enough time for a sword near her to become a sword in her. That will be a very convenient tool to have.

That also means seven first circle spells per day will be a little tighter, if she's going to use two at once sometimes. Possibly eight, but that still might need her to be careful with them. Of course, being out of spells is far better than being stabbed. She will make do.

And how does the cantrip work? She whispers "_{^{sign if you can hear this}}" and tries casting the cantrip, aiming it at the shadow and the whisper. Does it need anything else?

The spell fails! She feels it try to catch on something that isn't there. An impression of copper wire forms in her mind.

She... needs something? Huh. Right, Message does use a copper wire, and it doesn't just get fed into the spell like most components do. Maybe sorcerer weirdness can't work around things that actually need to be there? Only one way to find out.

Out to the Bank! If she might need components, there is a standard tool for that, so she'll get out enough money for a component pouch. She'll also check her mail while she's there.

Component pouches are expensive. She withdraws a little under sixty silver shields from the Bank. She has no mail today.