Enola Yarn – blogpost 25

Valentine investigates Spites’ body. Spite has nothing on him, except for his wand – that Farryn quickly puts in his bag of holding. He grabs his dimensional shackles and puts them around Spites’ wrists. Wormriddle enters the room when we’re done investigating. She scratches Spites’ cheek disinterested and asks for the book. “Hallaster is not a patient man…” She mentions when she walks off.

After an hour or so, Spite wakes up. “Hi, Spite.” Says Valentine. 

“Let me go now. It doesn’t have to go this way.” 

“You’ve said this before, but look at you now. All hurt and nowhere to go.”

“You don’t have anything on me!”

“I have a feeling you’re going to hand us that book,” Valentine says suggestively. 

“Oh, yeah, of course. Let me get the chest for you.” Spite creates a mage hand and projects the chest Valentine got in her pockets on it. 

“I have a better idea. DON’T make jokes!” Zeph says irritatingly. 

“Just give us the book,” Valentine asks again.

“Of course, the book!” Again, Spite creates an illusion. 

Farryn has had it with Spite. He seems to think his robes are magical because he just rips them off of Spites’ body, leaving him standing in his underwear. I feel for the young boy, all alone, in his underwear… He must be afraid, but also must be thinking about how to get out of this conundrum. I use my medallion of thoughts. However, when I listen to his thoughts, it is totally silent. I try to probe deeper into his thoughts, but still, I can’t hear anything. Confused, I look at Spite. “I am just really in control of my thoughts,” he says. “EW! What the f*ck! Is this necessary?!” He shouts as Brightwing puts his tongue in his ear, and Grond bites in his arm. Farryn walks closer and stitches the wound. “I just wanted to have a look if your wounds are magical or not. This one seems normal.” 

“Autsj, your stitching is really horrible. Give me my wand. I’ll do it myself!” 

“NOPE.”

We’re all done with Spite and interrogating him, he doesn’t tell us anything. We try to scare him too. Zeph creates an illusion of Dumara (‘oh no, Spite, help me, help me please!’). I cast phantasmal killer, but only to scare him. His face gets paler and looks scared up at me. He moves over the floor to the wall and makes himself invisible. “No… no no no no… Stop… STOP NO NO!” He cries. Zeph makes him visible again by covering him with glitter from his wings. I try to detect his thoughts but fail again. I discuss with Farryn what kind of magical effect this could be. We come to the conclusion that Spite has cleared his mind of thoughts. This needs to be dispelled. 

“If you want us to stop, you have to open the chest. NO jokes.”

“We don’t have anything against YOU, just give us the book. We’ll let you go.”

Zeph suddenly gives a squeak. He needs to go to the library to validate the idea he just had. I give him Spites’ sending stone (I have the other half) and send him on his way. 

Spite is still not talking. He is mumbling and crying: “Just a couple of minutes more… a couple more…”

I lift the fear from him caused by my spell, but Valentine dispels the spell that is preventing me from reading his thoughts. Farryn gives the cloak back to him. I listen again to Spites’ thoughts, and suddenly… I hear his voice. He is cursing at the top of his lungs – mentally of course: “Damn, damn, damn! They’ve dispelled my spell! How am I going to get out of this?!” He promptly stands up and asks: “So, when can I go?”

I call Zeph back to the common room. “Guys, let’s bring him to Hallaster. He has to admit to his crimes.”

Suddenly, smoke emits from the other side of the room. For a second, we’re all scared but quickly come to the conclusion that this is Spites’ illusion. When Zeph gets back, we tell him we need his magical powers to get Spite to talk. Zeph flies towards Spite and gets up in his face, looking angrily at him. “Help us NOW, without any jokes.”

Spite starts answering our questions. Apparently, he is drinking potions of longevity to stay young. He has three books with him, one is the one we’re looking for. The others are his life’s work. In Hallasters’ book, there are more spells for Spite to learn. However, he is referring to the Arcanalot, instead of Hallaster. Hallaster is not here and has never been present in the Wizard Academy at the time we were there, including now. “I KNEW IT!” Exclaims Zeph. Arcanaloths are shapeshifters and are known for being library keepers. Spite doesn’t know why the Arcanaloth is posing as Hallaster, but maybe it could be power-related.

Spite agrees on giving me his two books with spells in them – “Yeah… she kind of deserves them…” – before he tells us more about Wormwriddle and her puppets. We need to get the toenails out of the puppets before we can destroy them. The toenail is the link between the puppet and Wormriddle, as long the link is gone, all puppets are safe to be destroyed. He knows all of this because he is studying here for about a hundred years. In that period, he also met Dumara. They had kind of the same goal: spreading darkness. But, he is not really mourning her death: “You come to life alone, and you will leave live alone…” He sighs.

We discuss our plans. We need to fix the puppets before we leave, then tell Violence and Turbulence they can leave the school, and lastly, we want to take Spites’ books with us. We are going to hand in Hallasters’ book as well. However, we know that if we take Spites’ books, and Zephs’ enchantment is lifted, he will not stop before he kills us and has his books back. So, we know we’ll have to kill him. Before we do that, we let him tell us where we can get to the next level in Undermountain. We NEED to leave ASAP. We all move out of the room, except for Valentine, who is taking the responsibility of getting rid of Spite.

We head for Hallasters’ office – aka the Arcanaloth, but we’re not going to let it know we know the truth – but I immediately turn around by the sight of his chair. Farryn follows me out of the room and asks for the book. I forgot I had it on me. Next step: Wormwriddle. We make a plan to distract her, so Valentine can sneak in and destroy the puppets. Farryn and I fake a fight, and Zeph gets Wormriddle to come to inspect us. Farryn throws a trident, but accidentally REALLY hits me. I cast thaumaturgy and shout at him in ‘anger’. I try to miss Farryn with a firebolt. 

“What is going on here?”

“I’m totally DONE with this place!” Farryn shouts – and walks away. 

“Yeah, this school is not for everyone…” Wormriddle scoffs. She walks off too.

Zeph and I turn around and walk after Farryn. Zeph pulls the nails out of a puppet. It is Valentine. He got a couple of puppets off of Wormwriddles’ belt when she was distracted. We lay the unlinked puppets on the ground and set fire to them. Suddenly, we hear a shriek. We run towards the sound. We see a group of people standing around someone. It is Skrianna. A teacher says: “Skrianna has become unwell.” Might it be that Skrianna had a puppet as well… and that Valentine did not unlink it…? No time to dwell on this, we need to go. We see Valentine and Turbulence standing in the same room, surrounding Skrianna. Valentine and I drag them out of the room and explain the situation. “You can return to Skullport. But, you’ll have to go NOW.”

“There were puppets of Violence and Enola. I’ve destroyed them both.” Valentine says. “You can go now.”

“We’ll get our stuff!”

“If we get to Skullport, where can we find you?”

“Middle Skullport. We have a house there.”

“Quickly. Get your stuff and GO! Leave this place!”

“Thank you so much. We can finally leave.”

We decide to all turn invisible and make a run for it, out of the Wizard Academy. We find the exit Spite told us about. It is a hole in the ground. I cast feather fall on everyone and we jump down.

We land on an altar. The purple lighting doesn’t show their faces. The creatures are banshees. I’m super scared of them. Luckily, they did not notice we dropped in – literally, but for how long…?