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So, in the twenty-third hour, a second connection to the University is uncovered. Fie and fray! Aye, fray it all, if you just had more time, just a few more hours, you might have been able to properly follow up on this. But now - no, no as it is, there is a real possibility that you might not be able to complete your itinerary and leave the Mount tonight. If you were to tack on this, then it would be a real <span class="mu-i">impossibility</span>.
As you have no way of knowing how much time you are going to end up spending here, it really wouldn't make sense for you to consider switching something in your itinerary out for the University at this point. However ... it certainly <span class="mu-i">would</span> make sense for you to open up this particular crate - though as it has not been opened and you lack the right tools, that turns out to take quite a bit of doing. Eventually though, by abusing your knife you are able to get the lid off the box, revealing a set of smaller boxes. You start to swear under your breath, but you stop yourself once you realize that none of them are nailed shut. And your mood improves dramatically once you open them up to find that they are all filled with silverware, appropriately done up with a leaf-and-vine motif.
Heh heh heh! Honestly, if you knew that there was this kind of money in the University, you wouldn't have bothered with the ... wait, <span class="mu-i">is</span> this silver? Its too heavy - you'd say about twice the weight that it should be. You grab a fork, and bring it up closer, to get a look at it. Immediately, the malaise and aches in some of your head gets noticeably better. At first, you assume that you must have discharged Hide-Eyes ... but when you experimentally pass your hand through the envelope, it discharges then - meaning that the relief you just felt couldn't have been caused by that. And right now, you are holding the fork over your chest ... and the aches and pains in your chest feel better. You have no doubts about it now - whatever this fork is made out of, it is insanely effective at Shielding.
The basic rule of thumb is that the denser the substance, the harder it will be for a cast to penetrate it - so it is easier to cast through air then it is through water, and easier to cast through water than it is through stone. However, there are some substances that are harder for casts to work through then their densities would suggest they are, and whose presence can have deleterious effects on casts. Such substances are referred to as Shields, and chief among the metallic Shields is hydrargyrum - colloquially known as quicksilver - and plumbum - which is lead. Now, whatever the Hell this is, it is Shielding a fork-sized footprint of your body from the effects of the remediation cast - and it is doing it as well as quicksilver or lead might. But it cannot be lead, as it is too dense and not soft enough. And it certainly can't be quicksilver, because it isn't a liquid. So what in the Heights of Hell is this, and where did Aldoin get it?
