The final grain of sand in the hourglass falls.

KORVOSAN CARRIER
FIREDAY, DESNUS 29th, 4708

ACADAMAE STUDENTS ON RELEASE FOR BREACHING FESTIVAL

The spring rains have been unusually long. You can hear them flow down off the roofs and into the gutters on the street, if you're listening. A Chelixian trade galleon bound from Corentyn pulled into the dock at Midland this morning. In two days, the gates of the Acadamae will open to outsiders for the exhibition. Dark things move in the Vaults beneath the earth. Last night, there was a tragic accident involving two house drakes, a careless wizard, and a walking mushroom.

So, nothing particularly out of the ordinary for this time of year.

Tencednil is seated at the desk in her room. Her hammock, bookshelf, and dresser are as they were weeks ago. The black curtains are closed.

The notes on her desk are older than she remembers and in different places.

Either that was a vision with a remarkably smooth-flowing ending or she (her future self? Who she could have been?) was wrong about these being visions.

Can she...

Silent Image.

Yes, she can cast second circle spells. She could not do that on Desnus 28th.

The shadow is there, and it has the subtle additional tendrils and vision-spots she remembers on the way to the Bank. She herself doesn't have any of the minor twinges from pulling muscles slightly in practice, but her spells are still there, settled cleanly in her mind.

When she tries to remember what happened last week, she definitely remembers the last week of Sarenith, not the last week of Desnus. In fact, her memories of late Desnus are fading — she starts writing what she recalls down on the blank papers in front of her, in case it turns out to be relevant.

She gets up to take a step around the room, and... yes, she has the instinct for how to step subtly and quietly, where to place herself to be harder to see. She developed that in the vision.

Whether it was really just a vision or not is irrelevant, then. What does that even mean? She currently has the memories, skills, and spells of someone who lived through that in truth, and the body of one who didn't. There's nothing else to know. Chase not information you care not for; its price exceeds its value.

She just lived through (one, possibly possible, result of) the next month. And at the end of it, Korvosa's population had been (mostly?) reduced to mummified corpses by a conspiracy (was it? The weather connection was strong, it almost certainly was) which also killed King Eodred and put Queen Ileosa on the throne.

So. Maybe that will happen again, maybe it will not. If the conspiracy exists and has the same goal (again? As in the vision? Whichever), she needs to plan for it. She can't stop it, not as she is now (can she? Could she delay Ileosa's ascension to somehow push it off? That wouldn't help, she can't prevent every way a... seventh circle wizard? Eighth circle wizard? Whatever Togomor was. She can't prevent every way a high-circle wizard could kill Eodred, and without that, all she would be doing is pushing back the clock. No value unless she needs the extra week.

She does, however, have a map drawn for her of what the conspiracy's plan is, and how it will react to events. She's seen what they do, and how they plan. There are choices they could have made which would have been better, for all of them, her, and Korvosa. There are also choices they could have made which would only be better for her and Korvosa, but in ways subtle enough that a trusted advisor could argue for an improvement all around.

The best she can do to alter the course of events is to give them a somewhat trustworthy source of information, then. Is that actually a good idea? Well, the other thing to consider is that if she remembers the next month once, she may well remember it again. She should also be trying to improve her results next time she wakes up today, and that means gaining circles but also gaining information, gaining knowledge... and a few other things.

A plan is starting to come together.

Tencednil spends about an hour sitting in front of her desk, scribbling on her papers in ways which might just be notes, or might be something else entirely. Sometimes, she seems to be copying words from one place to another, but on inspection the copies are definitely not the same letters.

She also copies down the contract for sale of a buckler ring from her memories. It's been a month, but she remembers most of it.

At about the appropriate time, she heads out to the Rusted Anchor. This is still the first chance to verify anything she's seen, and the starting funds will be useful. No reason to change how she presented, the approach she remembers worked well.

The Rusted Anchor is as she remembers it. Mika sits at a small table, eating. Anton and Julio walk in soon after. Tencednil easily convinces them to bring her along for the raid on Matei's lair.

The party makes their way across the city. Mika leads them to a dingy corner store. Anton and Julio pick up masks. Tencednil gets her marbles. They travel down into the sewers through the entrance at Stone's End. It's a long trek to the rusted ladder. The cylindrical chute and the waterfall smell terrible, as always. They pass down the ladder and through the long maze. The stone brick walls become old and cracked.

Goblins ambush them at the intersection. Three this time, slightly different than her previous encounters. Her color spray deals with them easily. Mika finishes them off, as usual.

The maze continues. Anton guides them through another ten minutes of winding passages, then through a trapdoor and down a twenty-foot ladder. The stone cobbles and bricks have faded almost completely, replaced with tunneled cave walls. This place is less of a classic maze but no less strange for it, with tunnels of every shape, many going nowhere at all.

Eventually they make it to the cavern. The river splits it into thirds. The water is murky, but it doesn't smell like the sewage from before. There's a few plants on the dirt at the edges of the river. The sound of insects can be heard faintly. Five minutes past the river, within the winding caves, they find the illusory wall. Once they find the door, Mika cracks it up.

Two zombies assault them, leaping out from Matei's lair. The party baits them out into the hallway. The zombies slip on the marbles. Anton actually lands some of his castings of disrupt undead this time. Everyone is unharmed.

The party loots the desk and the dresser and find everything Tencednil expects. She identifies (from memory) the spells on the red book. They begin to travel back up the way they came.

Halfway through the tunneled stone leading to the maze ladder they're jumped by the dire rats. Color spray works its wonders. Anton is slightly injured, but it's nothing serious.

They make it back up to the surface by early evening.

She offers the contract. They accept, and she runs back home to get it signed. They take contract and ring to the bank, and receive the price, split evenly among them. The party assures each other they will receive letters sent to those accounts at the bank, and go their separate ways.

She buys her onyx and withdraws some shields. She copies down the account creation information, writes it up properly, and goes to sleep. She needs children out and about for that phase to work.

KORVOSAN CARRIER
STARDAY, DESNUS 30th, 4708

SCANDAL AT HOUSE GREY, SECRET HEIR REVEALED

The weather worsens. Rain pours in loud sheets. The sky crackles with lightning. Three ships delay setting off until the storm passes. Gemshare Jewelers is robbed by an expert. The value of the stolen goods exceeds ten thousand silver shields. Archbanker Darb Tuttle sells a regenerate.

Her shadow once again has convenient Taldane imprints on its surface in the morning, perfect for writing with.

Onyx: deposited! This time, she writes a few extra letters, imprinted by the shadow, and pays for them to be delivered to various banks by messenger. They won't be decrypted until the evening, when the banks reconcile their accounts and the code phrase is shared. Even decrypted with her account's code phrase, though, these messages appear to be nonsense.

In the initial paperwork, she included a note assuring the bank that some apparent gibberish would be delivered. Any paper which does not contain instructions directly for the Bank of Abadar after decryption should be copied and stored with the rest of her paperwork, even if it has no evident content.

KORVOSAN CARRIER
SUNDAY, DESNUS 31st, 4708

SHINGLES GANG BRAWL TURNS BLOODY, NINE DEAD

A perfect circle is carved into the sky, two miles wide. The storm seems to bend around it. It's a bright, sunny day. The Acadamae opens its doors to outsiders for the festival. The guard struggles to handle a crowd. A small ship wrecks against the Varisian coastline, far in the distance. A devil has breakfast with his great grandson.

She copies some letters a final time, double-checking every step of the encoding. She copies down some contracts, encoding the words but leaving a space at the bottom for a single signature. She tests the shadow's speed at writing, ensuring it can manage this every time without fail. Tomorrow pays for all.

The Breaching, now. One last check before she commits.

She travels to the Acadamae. The illusions are as pretty as she remembers. The exhibitions range from somewhat dull to extremely impressive. She makes it to the substantial crowd shortly before the Breaching begins. The raised platform is almost completely full. The King and his family are visible from their private box. 

The Hall of Wards is a plain, rectangular wooden building with minimal decoration. Large windows face the crowd, and through them one can see a large empty room with a glittering wood floor. There is one set of double doors at the front. Nothing on the building looks like an illusion, although of course this is a lie.

A few minutes of waiting later, the Headmaster appears in the sky, greeted by a long blast from a mighty horn.

"Hello everyone," his voice booms like thunder "and welcome to this year's Breaching Festival!"

"I know our five contestants, which include our very own Professor Vargas of the Hall of Shaping, are eager to begin, so I shall keep this introduction short. This year, as every year, the contestants will attempt enter the Hall of Wards by any means available to them. The first person to step on the floor of the Hall of Wards shall win our grand prize, located further within the Hall. If no winner emerges by dusk, items equaling one thousand gold sails in value will be added to the prize for next year. As it has been one hundred and sixty-three years since our last winner, the prize has grown truly astronomical. Our current best estimate puts its total value at over one hundred and thirty thousand gold sails!"

The crowd cheers, even louder than the Headmaster's voice!

"Now, there are some rules. Each contestant only gets one attempt, ever. Avoid collateral damage; you are at fault for any injuries in the audience as a result of your attempt. You must actually enter the Hall of Wards; no illusions, no projected images, no simulacra, your actual physical boot must touch that floor. No divine intervention... if your god wants the prize they can come get it themselves. And no wishes. With that, our contestants will draw lots, and we shall see among them who goes first."