Grinning in anticipation, Isolde shut her eyes. As she squeezed her fist tight, a crunch popped from between her fingers, followed by a flashing, metallic, fiery explosion. Silvery flames whirled around the chamber, defying Isolde's roars of shock to engulf the necromancer's reeling body.

    Tangle cheered and pumped her one free fist. "You were so right. This is a spectacle!"

    The dark bonds that rooted Talwyn receded, chased away by the fire's vigorous draft. She set her sights on Isolde through the last of the dissipating flames, opened her mental floodgates, and inundated the necromancer with her pent-up frustration. Amplified by her fear for her friend, her blast of psychic energy met little resistance as it battered Isolde to the floor.

    Neither the lurking shadows nor the smoke from Isolde's flashing embers stopped Talwyn from seizing her by the shoulders. "Wake up!" she cried as she searched the necromancer's void-like eyes for the merest hint of welcoming mist. "She doesn't control you, Kerensa. You're in control, and you always have been."

    "Foolish girl," Isolde hissed, bubbles of black foam leaking from the side of her mouth. "I don't control her one bit. She trusts me – more than she'll ever trust you."

    "I wasn't talking to you." Crashing another wave of anger into Isolde's head, Talwyn took the woman's hands and squeezed. "It's your body, Kerensa, not hers. I need you to believe that, and I need you to wake up now!"

    Another venomous retort primed itself on Isolde's tongue, yet before it could fly free, her body seized up. Barraged by physical, psychic, and spiritual assaults, Isolde's presence ebbed away to leave Kerensa's lifeless body in Talwyn's hold.

    Talwyn rocked her friend from side to side, fresh tears stinging her eyes. Though she sat in silence over Kerensa's lap, her mind trembled with longing pleas for her friend's return.

    The thoughts turned to whimpers as Kerensa stayed silent. She had never taken this long to emerge from Isolde's mind before. Something had changed. Friese's spirit, the faderock, perhaps even the flawless folds of darkness in the chamber had empowered Isolde, she knew it. Now, that woman held Kerensa's spirit prisoner, trapping Talwyn's best friend beyond her reach and taking over the very body that –

    "Talwyn?"

    Laid out beneath Talwyn, traces of spectral mist swirled into the necromancer's eyes. The burns, cuts, and plunging wounds that assaulted her flesh scattered into ethereal dust, allowing the features of her friend to resurface. "Kerensa? Are you back?"

    More clouds puffed out to cleanse the darkness from Kerensa's eyes, and her wild hair settled into calm, straight strands. While the gash in her neck remained, it did not dampen the cheery smile that kindled on her lips. "I think so. Spirits don't have headaches like this, do they?"

    Cheeks wet with delight, Talwyn cupped her hands around Kerensa's face and fell forwards to plant a warm, eager kiss on her friend's cheek. "I'm so glad you're back," she whispered as she nestled in Kerensa's cold neck. "I hate seeing her walk all over you like that."

    "I'm not so fond of being stuck inside that miserable woman's head myself, as it happens." Kerensa wiped a tear from Talwyn's face, deep brown flesh coating her clammy palm. "I'd much rather be out here with you, darling."

    It did not matter to Talwyn that they were in a city far from home, or that they embraced on the filthy, sandy floor of a relative stranger's cellar. What mattered was the comfort of her best friend's hold, her unwinding breaths punctuated by the sparse, rattling beat of Kerensa's heart. Wherever they were, this was where she belonged.

    Kerensa tracked her hand down Talwyn's back, her lips brushing against her friend's forehead. Slowly, she lifted her head from the clumped sand. "That's odd. Is something...burning?"

    "What?" Talwyn took small, swift sniffs of a distinctly smoky scent that hung above them. It had not been there when they had first entered the chamber, nor had it reached her during the ritual. In fact, now that she focused her senses, it seemed to stem from right beside the same crook of Kerensa's neck that she had huddled into. "Kerensa, your hair!"

    With a startled yelp, Kerensa slapped her smouldering hair out in the sand and hid her singed locks in her hands.

    Replacing his fallen hat on his head, Darius strolled to Tangle's side and cleared his throat. "I hope you realise how lucky you were just now," he said with folded arms, his eyes filled more with worry than anger. "What were you thinking, going for a necromancer all on your own like that?"

    "Sorry, grouchy-guts." Tangle picked a particularly large red leaf from her sprouting skirt and, giggling to herself, nestled it into the band of Darius' hat. Her glee faded as it became clear that her friend did not share her joy. "What? It just looked like the scary lady was going to smoosh that rock to bits. So, I nabbed it from her."

    "You did what?"

    Running her tongue over her pointed teeth, Tangle dug inside a pouch and produced the rough green stone that Isolde found within Friese's boot. "Check it out! I pulled a li'l switcheroo so she ended up crushing a flare seed like a doofus."

    Pausing his efforts to remove his hat's new adornment, Darius marvelled at all sides of the angular rock. "You actually took it. How in the world did you manage that?"

    "Easily, duh." Tangle juggled the faderock before Darius' face, ending her display by catching the stone in her opened pouch. "Beats me why she wanted it so badly, though. It just kinda tingles if I squeeze it."

    "Faderock does more than merely tingle. That much is clear even from my passing knowledge of arcane matters." As his housekeeper reawakened the room's dormant wall lanterns, Steele strode into the sand pit with one hand on his chin. His other hand gripped the head of his gold-ringed cane, its quivering stem bearing more of the dwarf's weight than usual. "If this is part of the contraband that Friese discovered at the Lupate Corporation warehouse, then we must tread carefully in our investigations. The Justicars will never take our word over that of a Syndicate family like House Lupate without damning evidence."

    "Then we'll get damning evidence," Talwyn said, dusting the sand from her dress and helping her friend to her feet. No pangs of dread or anxiety checked the hurt that struck her from Friese's desecrated corpse by her feet, a sore guilt that could not go unaddressed. "You all heard Isolde just now. This faderock stuff can get nasty if someone wants it to, and Friese saw a bunch of it moving through that warehouse. We have to chase this up, right?"

    Darius kneeled in the sand, his jaw clenched as he inspected Friese's corpse. "Right. I don't know what they're planning to pull off with such powerful magical components, but I'd bet it isn't anything good," he said with a lingering look at the body's ruined state. No matter how leaden the beats of his heavy heart grew, he did not leave the amari's side. "What's our next move, then? How are we going to get inside this warehouse?"

    His words flocked to Talwyn's ear, pulling her from the drifts of her own thoughts. Despite the chamber's muggy air, a nervous chill ran along her spine. Darius had not posed his question to his allies or to Steele, but to her. "Oh. I don't know. I don't really do this kind of thing a lot."

    "Please, gods, let us break in there." Arlo's fingers twitched around the handle of their hammer. Excited sparks sprang through their eyes, each arc accompanied by an indulgent lick of their sharp teeth. "It's been too long since I got to smash something – like, really smash something."

    "I shall devise a separate solution for your destructive needs," Steele replied, unbothered by the disappointed scoff that constituted the entirety of the dragonborn's response. Though he spoke with composure, the shake of Steele's head and the drum of his fingers on his cane betrayed the rapid calculations that occupied his thoughts. The introduction of politics into the mix had clearly posed new headaches, if not unfamiliar ones. "For this, I believe discretion is our ally. I shall arrange for some Adamant Shipping stock to be transported to the Lupate Corporation warehouse tomorrow morning, a delivery you all may accompany as a protective escort. All favouring us, that should grant you a level of access to the warehouse's interior, from whence you may pursue the trail of this smuggled faderock."

    Fixing her unleashed hair back into its semi-tidy bun, Kerensa gave out an indefinite noise of approval. "How exciting. I've never escorted something before," she said, eyes wide with delight. As she stared off through the ceiling, a light gasp rose from her lips, and she linked arms with both Talwyn and Darius beside her. "I know! We could dress ourselves up in little matching guard outfits. Wouldn't that be ever so cute?"

    Nothing moved in Steele's expression. "That...shall not be necessary. Simple plain cloaks shall suffice," he said, cutting off Kerensa's answer with a tap of his stick against the floor. "Now, it seems I have more letters to write. Take the remainder of the day to rest, for tomorrow, our work begins anew."

    As he parted from the chamber, Steele hung in the double doorway. "And know that I admire all your efforts in these endeavours as much as I appreciate the sacrifices you make." Though he addressed the group, his and Darius' eyes met for the final few words, as if the rest of the room fell away for a snatched second.

    Talwyn pressed a fond hand to Kerensa's arm, yet her mind trailed elsewhere, somewhere far from the practice chamber. The glint of the faderock lingered before her, its jagged green edges hovering like the face of Vidias through the shadows. Like the scarred moon from her dreams, there was no telling whether it wished to guide her or steal her away. There was just a sourceless, relentless pull. A pull that whispered only to her. A pull that promised the answers to her father, her future, herself.

    A pull that her heart burned to follow.

    Our first glimpse of necromancy, and now we know why Kerensa doesn't pull that bag of tricks out every chance she gets. Talwyn and Vidias, Kerensa and Isolde, Darius and the power of sweet tunes - is there a magic-user in this city that isn't possessed by some supernatural-esque entity? 

    Also, RIP Friese. I'd love to say our favourite dead squirrel guard was in a better place now, but I don't think Isolde had his best interests at heart when she smooshed his skull and spirit. At least he stuck around long enough to point our intrepid idiots in the right direction!

    Some things to think about while we rest and regroup for a moment:

1. Dunwall's excerpt in chapter 4.1 presents Fey as powerful and impulsive creatures of fancy. How does that depiction line up with Weiss' behaviour in his encounter with Talwyn?

2. As well as our first Fey encounter, the group had their first on-page brush with faith through Salahara and Friese's belief in the Lightkeeper. What do you make of the main cast's distance to divinity? Do they demonstrate faith in alternative ways, and if so, how?

3. How much light do the chapter-opening extracts bring to the events that follow, both in their chapter and beyond? More generally, do they alter your reading experience at all? Do the various genres of extract represented so far (academic, transcript, verse, etc.) have different effects?