Previously...
After being given an assignment to deliver magiline to the Eastern Tower, Dominai, Galiva, Thaddius, Alix, Allisande, and Margeurite departed from the Crux. Dominai was excited to be on his first official mission, but the reality of the trip soon caught up to him, and not just because of Thaddius’ escalating bullying. On his first night away, Dom had a strange dream of a cloaked woman who gave him a cryptic warning and told him to go home to avoid a terrible fate.
Dom attributed the dream to his own nerves, but the promise of something terrible happening seemed to follow him. At the Balor waystation, someone drugged Dom’s drink. After a long, uncomfortable night, Dom realized that Jessic, the mercenary who was heading the caravan’s security team, was the only non-wizard Dom had been around that night. Yet the Crux wizards couldn’t confront the mercenary without risking their assignment, so they kept their suspicions and concerns quiet, ready to wait out that leg of the trip until they could part ways with Jessic and the caravan. Though even with a wariness regarding Jessic and his crew, Dom couldn’t help but dally with the caravan’s faenskamend bard, Vanya. Yet his cock cage and responsibility to create the teleportations that would get them home hindered him from going all the way with the little bard, leaving him more frustrated than ever.
Meanwhile, back at the Crux, Olbric was dealing with problems of his own. After losing his temper on Ambassador Feisal, Olbric hadbeen confined to the Crux. Arlon had confiscated his spells, but gave him a single sending to contact his mother and warn her about the damning letter en route to Olbric’s father outing his gender identity. Between Dom’s absence and the looming weight of coming out to his family on his own terms, Olbric fell into a depressive slump. It was only broken when Cancassi brought Olbric into town to get the sunflower silk gown that the seamstress Varice had created for him.
After the two shared a roadside tryst on the way back home, Olbric finally felt ready to speak to his mother after years apart. She accepted him and his newfound identity with open arms, but Olbric still feared that his father might cast her and his sisters out once Feisal’s letter arrived. They came up with a plan to get his mother a teleporation spell that would get her to safety if the worst came to pass, but there was only one issue: the Crux was out of teleportations.
Because of this shortage, Olbric reluctantly decided to pursue a conjuration mastery, with Arlon acting as his key holder. Cancassi was not pleased about this, and showed Olbric all the reasons why.
While Olbric was learning what difficulties and frustrations came with pursuing a conjuration Mastery, Dominai and the rest of the caravan reached their first obstacle. The Crags are a magically created barrier on the border between Straetham and Kenitka. With steep cliffs and high bluffs, the Crags were prime bandit territory, as the caravan soon discovered.
Yet in the heat of an ambush, Dom released a spell without even touching it to divert a rockslide sent down by their attackers. The attack took both Dom and Thaddius over the edge of a cliff, though thanks to a spell given to him by Alix, Dom was able to stop them from dying on impact. Thaddius was left injured in the wake of the attack, and as Dom searched through Thaddius’ things for supplies, he uncovered proof that Thaddius, not Jessic, had drugged him at the waystation. All because Thaddius believed Dom was apprenticingArlon for the position of Grandmaster. Feeling betrayed, Dom left Thaddius to cool down, only to run afoul of the bandit crew that had attacked them.
The crew was led by an ovisari bandit queen named Sybarin who was all too eager to have a wizard in her employ. Employ that she tried to coerce by cooking Dom inside of his own abjuration spell after she nabbed his spells from him. With some questionable help from Thaddius, Dom was able to seduce Sybarin into carelessness before the two wizards escaped. Yet as they returned to Galiva and the rest of the caravan, the truth about Thaddius drugging Dom came out, leaving the wizards at odds with Jessic and the caravan as well as each other.
At the Crux, Olbric was dealing with the pent-up energy that came with pursuing a conjuration mastery. Bridgette and Garrett had moved back into town after Garrett’s confinement to the Crux ended, and Arlon also admitted to feeling pent up. He suggested he and Olbric find an innocent activity to help relieve it. They settled on practicing with a bhaara, a weapon from Olbric’s home that Arlon was curious to learn. The practice helped keep Olbric’s days busy, while Cancassi occupied Olbric’s nights, but in his downtime, Olbric finished the magiline cloth he had been working on for ages. He turned it over to the dressmaker Varice to make into a garment.
In Dom’s absence, Olbric began to lean more on Cancassi, and Cancassi leaned back. After undertaking a long and physically demanding assignment in the neighboring town of Belton, Cancassi’s chronic pain flared up, and they expressed doubt about their ability to handle such assignments anymore. Their life had changed after the injury they sustained while rescuing Olbric from Diran’s clutches nearly two years before, and for the first time, Olbric opened up about the sexual assault he endured after he was captured. The two realized that the events at the Black Burrows had changed both of them even as the shared trauma brought them closer.
On the road, the Crux wizards parted ways with the caravan in Galiva’s hometown of Kiali, but not before Dom and Jessic said their goodbyes, and Dom had one last tryst with the bard Vanya. During it, or maybe because of the bawdy song Vanya had sung aboutDominai the Bandit Layerto a very full inn, Dom could have sworn he felt a little bit of enchantment magic in the little bard. But the other wizards (save Thaddius) dismissed the idea of variant magic as preposterous.
In Kiali, everyone got to enjoy a bit of a break. Everyone, that is, except for Galiva. After finding her parent’s estate in a state of disarray, she learned that her family had been left teetering on the brink of financial ruin after failing to See a hurricane that had swept through Kiali a few years prior. As diviners in the employ of Duchess Mahia, Galiva’s parents had fallen out of her favor after the disaster. Galiva saw a way to fix this problem, but there was only one issue: whether due to shame or pride, her mother refused to speak to her.
As the Crux wizards waited for the ship that would take them on the next leg of their journey, everyone was left feeling cooped up and frustrated. Dom used the time to get Galiva into the silver and get a message back to the Crux, all under Alix’s watchful eye. But most alarming was when Dom caught Allisande sleepwalking one night. She wondered where they were, and Dom told her before guiding her back to Margeurite, who admitted that Allis’ sleepwalking had become a more common occurrence.
Dom stumbled on Granica Qamari, Galiva’s mother, early one morning in her divining room, and it was the first time any of the Crux wizards had even seen her since arriving. Over an innocent foot rub, Dom gently tried to convince her to talk to her daughter, but it wasn’t until later that afternoon, when the wizards were playing a strip version of the card game Ahn Nas, that Dom learned he’d succeeded. Granica had heard Galiva out and adopted the plan she came up with to try and regain their family’s favor with the Duchess.
At the Crux, Varice returned Olbric’s finished magiline tunic, cut in the Cairish style of a citran. All that was left was to charge the magiline with a spell. Olbric decided to instill a powerful abjuration into the citran with the hopes that it would act like armor to the wearer, and the only person he trusted to cast such a spell was Arlon.
With information about Olbric’s personal life still leaking out of the Crux and into Feisal’s ears, he and Arlon decided to do an educational abjuration demonstration in front of the Crux rather than a private casting session. Casting doesn’t have to lead to sex, and since the political situation with Olbric’s father was so complicated, he and Arlon decided to keep things purely platonic. That is until Olbric’s emotions dropped after the abjuration spell was finished and Olbric sought comfort in Arlon’s arms - and his bed.
Inevitably, the news of Olbric’s involvement with Arlon soon leaked to Feisal, and Olbric was able to devise a plan to root out the informant. Olbric spread rumors about Arlon and himself to the potential leakers among the Crux’s wizards and staff. As another way to keep himself busy, he also started helping Varice at her dress shop as she prepared for the Harvest Festival. But it wasn’t until Feisal appeared at the shop and used a pet name that Olbric had specifically leaked to two of the Crux’s staff that Olbric was able to root out the informant: a cook in the Crux’s employ named Felicity.
While Arlon wanted to fire the girl, Olbric realized that she had been blackmailed into helping Feisal. Olbric vouched for her, allowing her to keep her position while simultaneously earning her loyalty.
Meanwhile, Dom and the others departed from Kiali on a ship called theShirkkada, captained by a dashing auroch named Matis. While Dom learned that he was afraid of the open ocean and prone to seasickness, some unlikely advice from Thaddius helped alleviate the worst of his symptoms. Soon, the group arrived on the islandof Laodeiros, where they had some downtime as the crew of theShirkkadaemptied their cargo and restocked for the last leg of their journey.
That downtime was spent making the last days of Dom’s conjuration stint near unbearable. Collared by both Galiva and Alix, Dom was driven to desperation, but his torment came to an end when he was brought to a temple to Coition, the goddess of sex and magic. Alix left him with his nipples pierced as a memento for his first real assignment before he and Galiva auctioned Dom off to the highest bidder, who turned out to be none other than Captain Matis. Yet as Dom finally cast the teleportations that would serve as their return trip to the Crux, he saw something inexplicable on the stage - a figure made of light that begged him to go home.
Left with an unease he couldn’t shake, Dom used his newfound freedom to find pleasurable distractions with Captain Matis. When the ship reached the port town of Hastett, the wizards parted ways with theShirkkadaand were met by a wizard from the Eastern Tower, a faenskamend named Reneta. She claimed to be Grandmaster Demica’s apprentice and envoy, but there was only one problem - the Eastern Tower wasn’t supposed to know they were coming.
Back at the Crux, Olbric had thought that rooting out Feisal’s informant in the Crux would be the end of it, but that was not the case. After Olbric confronted Feisal in Varice’s dress shop, Feisal spread a rumor about a dangerous wizard threatening foreign dignitaries. With the unrest left in the wake of Diran’s attack on the square, the rumor tipped the hostility among the people of Straetham into outright aggression.
Cancassi was accosted by angry drunkards on their way to meet Olbric at Varice’s shop, and upon returning to the Crux, Olbric found both Feisal and Captain Thora of the Royal Guard speaking to Arlon. Feisal denied any involvement, and Thora warned that therumor had lit a spark in the city. It was one that could easily turn into a firestorm if the Crux wasn’t careful. Feisal left Olbric with the threat that if Olbric wouldn’t return home to Cairish, Feisal would ruin his life in Straetham. Because of this and so many responsibilities from the Crown piling on Arlon’s shoulders, Arlon made the difficult decision to break off his newfound casting relationship with Olbric, but Olbric made one last request. He wanted to earn his freedom from his conjuration before they ended things fully, and Arlon agreed to grant that request during the Harvest Festival.
Instead of wallowing, Olbric threw himself into helping Varice at her shop in preparation for the upcoming Harvest holiday. Not only was Olbric grateful for the distraction, but he also formed a close friendship with the old seamstress. Yet one night, after leaving Varice’s shop, Olbric was attacked. The men were sent by Feisal to kidnap him, but they botched the attempt, leaving Olbric bleeding from a careless cut on his neck. Olbric just managed to make it to Garrett and Bridgette’s house in town before bleeding out. But the failed kidnapping gave Olbric the leverage he needed over Feisal. Olbric’s father wanted him home, not dead, and Feisal had nearly delivered his corpse. The consequences of killing a Shykh’s heir would be dire, and to avoid the wrath of the Shykhdar falling down on him, Feisal was finally forced to leave Olbric alone.
The Harvest Festival finally arrived, and with it, the end to Olbric’s conjuration. Arlon brought him down to the dungeon where Olbric acted as a human serving platter for the Harvest feast. Cancassi, Garrett, and Bridgette also joined and made sure that Olbric earned his conjuration mastery by creating a batch of teleportation spells before he was freed. Arlon took him up to his room one last time, and when Olbric asked what the meetings hewas having with King Thermilious were about, Arlon admitted that an Immen scouting party had been intercepted near Airedale - an ominous sign of an impending conflict between the two nations.
Olbric realized that if a war were to break out between Straetham and Immenbach, he and his fellow wizards would be sent to the front lines. And though he was sad to see his and Arlon’s relationship come to an end, he understood that keeping the Crux’s residents off of a battlefield took precedence.
During that time, Dom and the others started the last leg of their journey. Reneta seemed to be an honest and kind wizard, but the Crux wizards couldn’t shake their suspicions that something was wrong at the Eastern Tower. But the reality of the situation was far worse than they ever could have imagined. While the residents of the Eastern Tower were by and large unaware of the snakes in their midst, Demica, Galiva’s sister and Grandmaster of the Eastern Tower, was working directly with Diran Barclay as well as Lucien and Jaret, the two disgraced wizards who had narrowly escaped the hangman’s noose in Straetham.
The Crux wizards were captured, and it was revealed that Diran had been tracking their entire journey thanks to a divination spell he had embedded under Allisande’s skin when she had been his captive in the Black Burrows. Galiva, Allisande, and Margeurite were thrown into cells, but Diran gave Thaddius an opportunity to join him, thinking that Thaddius’ impending expulsion from the Crux would be enough to sway him to Diran’s side. Dom, however, was taken to a divining room, where he was forced into the silver and left there, alone.
Yet while in the depths of the silver, Dom started seeing things. Visions of the others, of Diran, and of a vast well of magic lying beyond the realm of Quietus. Dom wasn’t sure what was real and what was his own mind trying to protect itself from the nothingness of the silver, but in the void, Dom somehow, impossibly, foundOlbric. Even without a caster, Dom inadvertently got a dream walking to Olbric, a brief warning of what was happening, before the spirit of the dead wizard Virico sought out Dom for revenge.
