Searching through the rooms, the group found a relatively small amount of old coins, but several ancient artifacts and gems, which would probably sell for a sizable amount. Nothing magical for them to use, which Tahir found disappointing, but the funds would likely go directly toward Meti finishing the project she’d been working on for a while now, as well as Theo finishing the last batch of elixirs for them, so the endeavor proved far from unrewarding. They also took the time to harvest from the laughing stalker as well, taking some of its blood, some of the mane across its back, and Theo carved uncomfortably deep to take something that Tahir didn’t stand around to watch.

Once everything had been gathered and put into storage bags, the group got together to decide what they were going to do next. There’d been no indication of why the laughing stalker was here - though they could guess that they put the barrier in place to block its laughter from reaching anywhere else in the ruin. After a while, they settled on going back. There were no shortage of gold and platinum Redclouds going through the ruin right now, and their presence wouldn’t necessarily be missed. As Murabi stated, there were most certainly more dangerous rooms that would also offer more rewards the further down they went.

As they were confirming this, the Traveler pulled Tahir aside to speak. “I must say, your growth in such a short period of time is rather inspiring, though I’m sure it has been in no small part due to the others who you’ve pulled to your growing flock.”

Tahir thought that they were referring to the rest of the group, but a couple of seconds passed before he realized that the Traveler spoke of the other spirits. “It’s no exaggeration to say I wouldn’t be here without you, certainly.” He admitted. “You especially, given your help in the ruin near Balrech. Soon, though, I think you’ll get the chance to meet the others. I’m near strong enough to handle multiple of you at the same time with a reasonable amount of power.”

“You flatter me. For that, and for that lovely sight of the canyon earlier, allow me to help you along.” The Traveler leaned in, to whisper into Tahir’s ear. “My name is Neremyn. Know and learn it well, Tahir.”

“Neremyn.” Tahir repeated quietly, as Neremyn stepped away, and immediately felt a rush of power between the two of them. Now that he wasn’t in the middle of a fight, he had time to properly examine the difference when he knew a spirit’s name, an intimate familiarity that he didn’t have before, and the spirit themselves had also changed. Once more, the details on their suit grew more complex, interlocking and near seamlessly transitioning between each other. The faint butterfly wings on their back had also grown visible at all times, but still translucent. At this point, everyone else had noticed something had happened, and turned their attention to Tahir and Neremyn. With a nervous chuckle, Tahir asked. “Anyone got a mirror?”

Theo took out a small, hand-sized mirror from her storage bag and handed it to Tahir. He could see that his hair had turned almost completely silver, and his eyes had a soft glow to them. As he handed the mirror back, he pondered the fact that Neremyn was out at tier four. One off from the strongest Tahir could supposedly summon at, and in fact the strongest he could get until he had a comprehensive understanding of Neremyn’s name, and Neremyn as a spirit in general.

As if reading Tahir’s mind, Neremyn turned to him and spoke. “Now, if your desire is to leave this place, I can certainly help with that. I’ll need a bit more energy to make it work, though.” With a nod, Tahir converted most of his mana for spiritual energy for the Traveler. He looked to everyone else, who seemed ready to leave for the most part.

With a smile, magic began to swell around the group in a circle, taking the form of butterflies that fluttered around the group and nearly blocking all of their vision. They culminated in a bright flash, punctuated by the distinct snap of Neremyn’s gloved fingers. When the light faded, Tahir was hit with the warm late-afternoon air of the desert, and found himself staring at the gates of Nagyermend at sunset. Tahir blinked in surprise, taking a moment to comprehend what just happened. They had to have moved 20 or so miles in the space of a second. That was magic that easily stepped into the realm of mithral and Adamantine Redclouds. Glancing at Neremyn, they didn’t even look tired or pressed, and it didn’t even use the full pool of spiritual energy between them. Hells, if Tahir had used more aura to summon Neremyn, they could probably do that twice in rapid succession. There had to be limitations to that kind of magic, but Tahir couldn’t comprehend them at the moment.

“W-wait, shouldn’t we have gone back and reported that we cleared that room?” Theo asked, equally as floored at what just happened as Tahir.

“They’ll send someone to check.” Meti replied. “I’ll take this over camping outside the ruin or walking back in the middle of the night. Thank you, Traveler.”

“Of course.” Neremyn gave a light bow. “Now, allow me to be so bold as to ask to take a walk around this city. Even from a distance, it looks positively lovely.”

“Oh, sure.” Tahir answered, but then swallowed hard. “At a lower tier, though, they’ve been having some trouble with spirits recently.” He remembered Namilah rushing toward him with killing intent after having a spirit out at tier three. Having Neremyn walking around at tier four might cause one or both of them to be surrounded by guards, or priests, depending on whether or not Namilah was the only priestess of Odium looking for the ones behind the spirit attacks.

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“We’ll need to sell the stuff we got from the ruin, so we have some walking to do anyway.” Hasio said.

“Let's go, then! I want to see if that stand we ate at before is still open.” Shukri said, and started making her way to the city, with everyone else following behind her.

###

Tahir brought Neremyn down to tier one - or rather tier two since he knew their name now, and the group enjoyed a pleasant walk around Nagyermend in the fading daylight. They stayed close together on their way to the market, but split up with several pieces of their shared bounty from the ruin to sell, leaving Neremyn to do as they pleased. After nearly an hour of haggling and discussing prices with local merchants, they all met back up together, totalling up what they’d gotten from their various sales. With the teleportation getting them swifty back, they’d probably gotten the best price for their various sales, before the market inevitably flooded with other Redclouds coming back from their own delves. All things considered, they got around what they expected, but before they could determine what they’d do with their funding, Tahir heard a familiar voice calling.

“Ah, is that Tahir and company? Wonderful, you’ve saved me the trouble of tracking you down.” As everyone turned to look in his direction, Merui approached with a smile on his face.

“Oh, Merui.” Tahir greeted him. It had been a few days, they’d likely followed up on at least a couple leads. “Right, we were in the ruin today actually. We just-” He paused, not knowing where to begin to explain Neremyn’s incredible jump in power. ”-got back sooner than expected.”

“Splendid. I was just in the area talking to some of the vendors, specifically to see if anyone had bought any of the materials you gave us recently. I have some thoughts, and potentially some work for you, if you’re interested.”

‘Work’ probably meant that they were willing to let him help in the case. He did ask for it after all. “Sure. We were just about to head back to the Redclouds’ lodging, can we walk and talk?”

“Certainly, I’ve already wrapped up here.” As they began walking, Merui began to cast a spell. Similar to the truth-telling spell he cast before, Tahir felt the magic wash over him, though it didn’t seem to be forcing the effect upon him like earlier. “A spell to mask our conversation, anything anyone other than the seven or so of us hears will sound like pleasant but pointless conversation.”

“To the point and discrete.” Hasio said, glancing around to look at the faces of people passing by. “I like this guy.”

“I take it there’s some confidential information involved, then?” Meti asked.

“Eventually, but in the short term, you never know who might be listening on the streets.” Merui replied. “To begin, back in the market, I had just confirmed, but there had been no major rise in the purchase of any related materials that you passed along to us for spirit summoning. This leads us to two conclusions. One is that they’re sourcing their material from wholly outside Nagyermend, and the other is that they’re importing them privately. Going with the second assumption, as the first is incredibly unlikely, we’ve narrowed down the list of people in Nagyermend who could feasibly import large amounts of such materials with little to no scrutiny.”

Merui paused, so Tahir thought about it for a moment - who’d be able to get those materials in the city without it getting found out? Someone with power, obviously, so Tahir could only go with who he knew to be the ones who had the most power in the city. “A council member, or a merchant prince?”

“Correct.” Merui’s smile grew larger for a moment. “Though, don’t tell Namilah that the former is even in question. Now, we’ve narrowed it down to merchant princes. They’ve all got their schemes in place, and their hands in as many organized crime operations that they can manage, but usually none of them are so brazen as to openly support or even privately fund attacks on the city. This is all of their little sandbox after all, so if harm comes to it, they’ll rally to its defense eventually. One of them would have to find a venture with the potential to make them so rich, or secure their own standing in Nagyermend so much that they’d be willing to risk getting everyone else against them.”

“Reminds me a bit of the mage collective in Esharia.” Meti said. “Though it's harder to tell just how much crime they’re actively involved in since they use so much magic to cover it up.”

“Any ideas?” Tahir asked. Of course, having just come to this city, he had no idea the various relationships between the merchant princes.

“We’ve narrowed it down to three, mainly because these three are usually in support of or in cahoots with each other, and one of them is tangentially involved in an event that took place not too long ago.” He paused, looking around at the group, who listened with rapt attention, then sighed. “Might I ask that you not repeat what I’m about to tell you - or at least don’t say you heard it from me?” He asked.

“More secrets?” Hasio said. “This is getting really interesting.”

“Sure. Why?” Tahir answered. Nods of agreement from mostly everyone else followed.

“Well, there’s just a rumor that priests of Odium are entitled to a couple of consequence-free kills every year, and I’d really not like to test whether or not those rumors are true.”

“Is this about Namilah?” Tahir asked.

“It involves her, certainly.” Merui replied. “To be specific, her adoptive father, a council member himself, had been attacked by a powerful spirit not too long ago. As powerful as the one you had summoned when she found you. While we’ve yet to identify who was behind the attack, one of our merchant princes has a curious connection to the aftermath of the events.”