i knew i was close to finishing up the paper but i thought that meant one more night in the open library and then a quick review in the morning before i submitted
then margana located sykes – and he noticed her scrying – so rakela had to move quickly to present the "job offer" and then smuggle him out and we'd have to move quickly or be caught by whoever was protecting him
so i stopped triple-checking my work
by nightfall i'd stopped double-checking my work
rakela returned around midnight with an unconscious emmer sykes – "he declined the offer" – but i still needed more time
she used a "doorknob" artifact to open a pocket-room (like what zer' has made before) but it only lasted two hours at best so she dragged him in and i got back to work
i was so exhausted by then that when codex said they weren't feeling well and needed a break i didn't really think too hard about it
fortunately bell did
she escorted them back to the dormitory for a quick check-up ... and that's when relic got that bad cinnabar-like feeling again so he and spark joined them
that's when they found out that technically the killer wasn't codex but an evil spirit possessing them
with the help of the others relic managed to subdue and purge the spirit so codex was fine afterward except for having a little missing time and an awful lot to think about
while they dealt with that i submitted the paper! "renew, mesh, partial self-harmonize: three steps to bring the forged component and the grown body together" (arcane congress #998.341-1804.130-1)
just in case anyone needs to reference it
anyhow we all converged at the dorms just before the aundarian elite guard arrived and ordered us to surrender
so naturally we ran instead
but they'd cleverly disrupted all the wayfinding and location magic
all credit to bell for thinking to call out for codex because they heard us and guided us to the skydock on the roof
with a brief explanation to the pilot? we were ushered into a sleek airship (powered with lightning?) where we let rakela out of the pocket-room
she said we were headed to "xandrar" then hauled sykes down to a heavily-warded holding area
and then i basically passed out until now
medya says now is mid-afternoon
i can't thank my friends enough
they helped in every way they could to get me through the ordeal of publishing that paper in a rush
and if they hadn't been there to help codex and stop that spirit from using them i might have become the fifth victim
. . .
but i'm still here and we're all in this together
forward it is