As the train pulled into Zurich, Enna started awake; she had been having a rather unpleasant dream about being chased by fish, and was glad to be given the reprieve. Her coffee, she noticed sourly, had gone cold, which was par for the course lately. She felt listless and frustrated, and suspected her time of blissful indolence was approaching its end. She wondered exactly how she would break it to John.

"Ah, you've come round," he mentioned, straightening his tie as he picked up his briefcase. "Are you getting off here?"

"No, I'm going through to Lichtenstein," she replied, yawning and brushing the sleep from her eyes. "What about you? Business in Switzerland?"

John nodded. "A bit of a curious case, honestly. I've had trouble finding a... buyer for a particular item, and I'm hoping to turn up some historical provenance on it."

Enna blinked. "Is that a thing? I mean, I don't know much about it."

"Oh, yes, quite so." He smiled brilliantly and ran a hand charmingly through his coal-black hair. "An asset's value is mostly made up of its history, you see. Anyone can claim 'oh, this particular knick-knack is thousands of years old' but the only way to prove it is to have a record of its ownership and sale through the years."

"And you're hoping to find someone here who owned it?" She raised one eyebrow skeptically.

"Oh, no, I expect it was quite some time ago. There are lists of sale records, you see, but they're not for public viewing." He leaned in close and winked conspiratorially. "You have to be 'in the business', you see."

Enna grinned back. "I see. Well, good luck with your search. It's been nice traveling with you." She extended her hand, relieved that she wouldn't have to have the conversation she'd been dreading.

John bent and kissed it. "Goodbye, Juliette. Fair weather and following seas -- if you travel by boat, at any rate." He tipped an imaginary hat and turned to leave.

As Enna watched him go, she tried to shake off the lethargy that had settled on her like a coat of dust during the past few weeks. All right. Surely, now that she no longer had a traveling companion to chat idly with, she would become sick of lazy self-indulgence and really buckle down into her search for spiritual mastery. Whatever that looked like.

She was just about to call for one last cup of coffee when her gaze fell upon the folio that John had left behind.

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Gentry made his way out of the station, casting about for his bearings; a thick, gloomy rain was sheeting down, which he felt set the mood quite appropriately. Opening his umbrella, he stepped out into the street and carefully proceeded towards his destination. Behind him, Enna fished about in a garbage can for a discarded umbrella of her own, but could only come up with a gin-soaked poncho, which was about what she expected; her magic had been behaving unpredictably in the recent months, and she wasn't sure why. Cursing, she tucked the folio and her book under her arm and hurried after him.

Gentry quickly darted through the city streets into the quarter of Unterstrass, hurrying down Nürenbergstrasse until he reached his destination: an alleyway between a massage parlor and a residence, which led to an unassuming back door into what local maps would show was an unoccupied commercial property. Stepping inside, he folded his umbrella and set down his case. The interior of the building was pitch-black, but he appeared unperturbed. After a few moments of patient waiting, he coughed delicately.

The light of a candelabra bloomed in the darkness, and after a few moments, its bearer came forth into his range of vision. The five men were robed, and the one in the middle, bent nearly double with age, carried the light. "You are the one who comes seeking the lore of Astakilpus?" the old man quavered. "We have received your letters."

Gentry bowed. "Ancient one. Thank you for your consideration."

The old man sniffed dismissively. "You have promised rich payment. There are some among us who are..." -- he appeared to search for an English word to convey his meaning -- "...skeptical."

"I assure you, meister, I do indeed possess articles of worth." He produced an amber-colored gemstone from a pocket; the stone was about the size of a small apple, greatly tarnished by the passage of time, and carved with many faded runes. "The last of the surviving Masonic zaubersteine of the 14th century, for your consideration."

There was considerable consternation amongst the robed figures at this development; Gentry waited patiently, hoping they'd figure something out before his arm got tired. He was operating on fairly limited information here, having cobbled together his purpose with these worthies from a handful of rather nonspecific divinations and a few back-alley rumors; mostly, he was just happy this building wasn't empty. After a few moments, they seemed to reach a decision, and the elder turned towards him once more. "Your offer is pleasing, but it is not enough. Have you other artefacts?"

The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

"I do," replied Gentry calmly, "but I would need to see proof of the lore before offering anything further." The elder's free hand twitched towards something under his robes, causing Gentry's eyebrow to go up. "You have it with you, then?"

The elder shuffled backwards in surprise, casting the faces of the other robed figures into deeper shadow as he carried the light with him. "We are not... accustomed to being questioned. Perhaps this was a mistake."

Gentry sighed, letting his hand fall to his side. "That's unfortunate. I'm afraid I've traveled a bit too far to go back empty-handed."

There was a moment of tension as each side considered the other, which lasted several seconds. Then, without a word, the two nearest men charged him, while the others began chanting spells.

Gentry quickly gestured at the two men chanting with the zauberstein while muttering an edict, then shoved it into a pocket as he brought his umbrella up to defend himself from the charging men; behind them, the other two spellcasters shrieked as they erupted in golden flames.

The nearest acolyte seemed to fade slightly as he lashed out with a curved dagger; the blow seemed to expand and fray in Gentry's vision as his opponent attacked a number of variable spaces at once. It was a clever strike, and any attempt to parry with a normal weapon would have been quite difficult. Gentry, on the other hand, simply opened his umbrella in the other man's face, then kicked below it to shatter the fellow's kneecap. As he dropped to the concrete, howling, his voice merged with the agonized shrieks of the two burning men.

Closing his umbrella, Gentry reversed its trajectory with a two-handed twist and flip, then plunged it rather sharply into the abdomen of his other opponent. The umbrella, which had been quite thoroughly reinforced by a number of spells and enchantments, penetrated with the titanic force of British cultural tradition straight through his enemy. Opening the umbrella a second time, Gentry scattered his foe across the floor in various splatters and chunks, then picked up the other man's dropped dagger and drove it through his throat with a perfunctory gesture. He'd need a cleansing enchantment after this one, for certain.

As he stepped forward, a shockwave of power washed over him and launched him powerfully into a concrete wall; a number of the protective charms cached all about his person disintegrated, and he cursed as he staggered back to his feet and quickened his steps. The meister, it seemed, was not content with escaping, but was joining the battle himself. This was likely to be challenging.

Well, first, he'd need to see the old gaffer. Touching his fingers to the zauberstein again, he traced another of its runes and murmured a different invocation; his eyes began to glow with the same color as the stone as his night vision sharpened. In moments, he could see without the aid of light, which was quite essential since the meister had extinguished the candelabra. He spied his adversary a few dozen yards away through the gloom after a moment of searching and noted that the old man was no longer doubled over; instead, he stood tall, eyes blazing with shadowy wisps of power, as his muscles bulged with strength. Gentry marveled at the possibilities; had the old man flooded his body with vital energy, as the Asian fellow in Florida had done? Or was this something else, like handing over his body to a powerful demon or something equally novel? He grinned as he strode forward, casting aside his umbrella to free up both his hands for spellcasting.

The old man rushed forward to meet him, launching a flurry of rapid jabs and clawing gestures; Gentry had to quickly infuse his own body with power to block or dodge the attacks. He took a few punches to the ribs, which burned out another two of his protective wards, and ducked under a wild swipe which scored inch-deep furrows in the wall behind him (despite the fact that it was a good three yards away). He wove the Sign of Helel in the air and closed his eyes as it dissolved into a burst of blinding light; as his foe scuttled back into the shadows, he scrounged in his jacket pocket for a vial and downed it in a single gulp.

Instantly, raw power flooded through him as if he'd just drunk a bottle of lightning; he rushed forward, turning the tide of the battle in an instant as his blows rained down upon the old man's iron-hard flesh. Before long, the meister was backed against a concrete wall, and Gentry was readying a coup de grace of magical power.

The old man suddenly ducked under Gentry's blow and flicked his fingers in an impossibly quick flurry of mudra; Gentry counted five before the first one even took effect. Blasts of power erupted from all directions -- a jet of fire from the ceiling, a rush of water from a suddenly-bursting pipe in the wall, a hammer-blast of air from one side and a spatial distortion of a rushing wall from the other -- as the meister unleashed the terrible Fivefold Doom of Danzinn, a crushing onslaught of the four elements coupled with a simultaneous burst of psychic static to disorient and stun the hapless fool who had earned its caster's wrath. And even as the Doom struck, the meister was still casting: a flesh-rotting curse, a blinding smite, and a scything blade of darkness all piled in one after another, relentlessly hammering the space where Gentry stood.

For a moment, everything was chaotic, with the impacts all obscured by the darkness and flying debris, but when the dust cleared, Gentry was unharmed. A diamond-like shimmer cascaded over his body as his Moment of Timelessness spell expired, and he shrugged apologetically. Then he plunged his right hand into the meister's chest as his opponent stared in disbelief. Hefting the faltering heart in his hand as he recovered, he nodded respectfully to the old man; the meister quivered and tried to spit a curse at him before falling dead, but didn't quite have the strength. "Cheers, sir," Gentry murmured as the corpse thudded to the concrete floor.

After a moment's pause, he tucked the old man's heart into a pocket prepared with cleanliness enchantments; he could probably make something fairly powerful from that. He wiped his hands with a handkerchief, then bent to retrieve the Codex of Astakilpus from the corpse. What a find! He'd only hoped to get hints of its location from this meeting, but this would speed things up considerably. He turned back to his briefcase, intent on stowing the tome away safely, but he was arrested by an unexpected sight: Juliette, her mouth agape, holding a folio he'd left back on the train.

Oh dear.