>>5814685“This is honestly the best chance we have to restore him,” you admitted. “The Archmage… She made him, it sounds like. She has knowledge and resources nobody else even comes CLOSE to. I’m not going to force you to do anything you don’t want to, but I really think this might be worth a shot.”
“And if I say no?” she demanded.
You shrugged.
“I’m not going to force you to do anything you don’t want to do,” you said, with a sad smile. “One of us is stuck, at least for now… But we don’t BOTH need to be. Izirina Henzler can probably cloak your escape… If the Archmage can even find a goblin she’s never met with her magic to begin with. I’ll bring the knowledge I gain to you, when I’m done. I know where to find you, after all.”
Zith-Zi looked away for only a moment, the briefest bout of introspection that you’d ever witnessed for such a serious matter, before turning to you and saying (to your surprise): “Well then, we’re in.”
“Wait,” you said, “what?”
“We’re in,” she said with a grin. “What, like I’m going to hang you out to dry when your’e doing all thsis hit for my sake?”
“More for Hershy’s sake,” you corrected.
“Yeah yeah, whatever,” she scoffed, giving you a soft punch beneath the ribs that cause you to reflexively scoot away. “Just don’t take too long, huh? You’re supposed ta’ be smart, right? Learn this shit fast, and then let’s vamoose, alright?”
And so it was that, when you returned, it as with Zith-Zi in tow, just as your benefactor/enslaver had commanded. Like your smaller companion, you too now carried all that you owned in a pack upon your back. It was your first time returning to the tower so late in the evening, and the mages who greeted the pair of you were no Tower Guardians… Or, at least, none that you recognized. There were two of them, male and female, and both wore pointed hats as was standard, but plain and black to match their funeral-black robes and the black bags under their eyes. Each of them had a chimera of a certain strangeness with them: one a cat-like thing which clung, monkey-like, and had a wide mouth with two rows of teeth; the other, an armoured creature otherwise resembling a rodent, but with too-long fangs that dripped with venom.
“Follow us,” they said.
“Yeah, duh,” Zith-Zi muttered. “What else were we gonna’ do?”
You both did as instructed, and were guided down a sloping corridor from the back of main entrance hall and through a winding stairway, to a great gate which—with two strange and overlarge keys, they opened; your mage-senses informed you that a magical discharge had accompanied this, undoing a mystical ward in addition to the physical locking mechanism. Elaborate and interlocking inveteracies of a dwarven sort of design slid apart from one another as the great door split in two at the midpoint and each half slid most of the way into the wall.
