Dear Spellbook,

There has been a bit of an incident with Dagmar.

Riloth 19th the 1088th

The next morning I flew straight to town, flying right over the walls and landing in the market square as the stall keepers set up by lantern light. My arrival caused a small commotion, blowing dirt into the air, but I ignored them running over to Dagmar's sleeping spot. She was already gone.

"Has anyone seen a filthy dwarf?" I yelled to the onlookers who'd all ceased their preparations to watch me.

A few finger pointed to the eastern gate and one brave voice said, "You just missed her."

With Fly still active but dormant, a light steady breeze blew from me in all directions. I ran, increasing the force of the wind replicating Wind Run.

I stopped at the guard house and demanded, "How long ago did the dwarf leave?"

He looked at me, confused by the sudden breeze.

"Five, ten minutes ago?" he said, uncertainly.

He moved to look through the papers my spell had blown away back to town. She was heading to the Kituh, and I knew a shortcut.

I Teleported down into the slavers' cave, and then into the Kituh tunnel, I knew to be nearby. I cast Light and flew through the dark tunnel toward the entrance.

The experience was terrifying, and I nearly crashed a dozen times in the short flight. My control was not as great as I'd thought it to be. In the sky, it's hard to tell how straight one's path is, but on a narrow tunnel, it becomes quite clear.

I waited patiently for Dagmar to descend. As soon as I saw her, I sent a Mind Spike at her.

"Arg," she yelled, clutching her head.

Despite the pain and surprise, she charged me.

I sent her flying with a blast of wind from my still-active flight spell and then struck her again.

And again.

And again.

She said... something I didn't quite catch between the mental attacks, but while Dagmar's Will capacity outstripped my own, she had to expend much more than I spent to defend herself.

I drank a clarity potion as I stared down at the unconscious Dagmar laying before me in the tunnel, contemplating how to move her.

I summoned a Force Disk beneath her and brought her to the runed plate we’d used countless times to navigate these tunnels. With a bit of effort, I pushed her onto the back and took off into the darkness. Once we were near the slaver’s cavern, I Teleported Dagmar and me across, appearing inside one of the cages and startling the now awake men in the process.

I greeted the men jovially before my arrival had fully registered. “Good morning gentlemen, I have a job for you. Watch my friend here, I’ll be right back.”

A Teleport to Barion’s loot stash—or is it plunder?—I grabbed a sack of gems, popped into Levar’s for another potion, and then Teleported back down to the two slavers who were in the middle of a heated debate.

“—saying we should run, just that—” the smart one was saying to the dumb one as I appeared, going silent when he noticed my arrival.

“Here,” I said, tossing the sack of gems. “Take this dwarf up the north road until you find—”

I paused, looking around the room for something to mark the turn-off for the Dahn. A clothes line lay strung across two rough protrusions in the wall, and a pair of bright red pants hung amongst the more drab garments.

“—this!” I said, grabbing the pants.

“Hey!” shouted the dumb one, “those are mine!”

“More incentive to deliver my friend quickly then. There will be another sack of gems buried beneath these as well. Make sure to drug her too, you do not want her waking up.”

I gave them more specific directions as the dumb one mumbled about the pants and then Teleported away before flying back to the Dahn.

I updated everyone on the events, and Roland went out to hoist the pants near the road, recruiting a “few” birds to wait some distance down the road and alert him when the slaver’s cart approached.

Then I took a nap until the chirping of a flock of birds woke me up.

I came out of my room to see the dining hall covered by a flock of sparrows. Swarm is a better word, the birds were devouring all the loaves of bread Levar had been stockpiling as he practiced baking.

“I think the slavers are coming,” Trish offered from where she sat drinking a cup of coffee—she’d come around on the stuff finally. The birds stayed well clear of her.

I left the chaos for Roland to deal with and hiked out to pick up Dagmar. I found her lying in the dirt beneath a tree, with the red pants and gems missing.

With the help of Force Disk, I dragged her back to the Dahn where we placed her in a specially prepared room. We’d taken everything out of Dagmar’s room—including the door. Once she was inside, Daulf closed the door opening, leaving only a small window.

Levar inspected her before we dropped her in, confirming the same drug had been used on her that had been used on Bearskin, and he set to work brewing something to wake her. Once he’d finished, we all gathered outside the room turned cell.

“Should we tie her up?” I asked.

Bearskin stood looming over us all as I asked.

“No,” he said, crossing his arms casually.

Dagmar was an incredibly skilled warrior, but robbed of her equipment, she stood no chance against Bearskin if it came to a barehanded brawl.

“Fair enough,” I said. “Maybe you administer the antidote.”

“Stimulant,” Levar corrected. “And I agree.”

Levar handed Bearskin the flask of the same stimulant used to wake him. Daulf opened the door to the room with a thought. Gently, Bearskin poured the liquid into Dagmar’s slack mouth, causing her to choke before finally swallowing it.

The reaction was immediate and she sat upright, looking around seeing the bare room.

“Weavil rot! You kidnapped me!?” she said as if my actions were completely unforeseen.

“What did you expect me to do?” I asked through the open doorway.

“Not kidnap me!” she yelled.

“You’ve been compromised by a psychic monster from beyond our Realms,” I explained, not really believing that I had to. “What else were we to do?”

“You were supposed to agree to the deal!” she yelled, ignoring the whole mind control thing, but otherwise still acting like herself. “Abby means you no harm. She cares not for our mission and would gladly help if we agree to help her in return,”

I looked at Daulf whose eyes had a subtle blue glow., and he nodded that she spoke the truth.

“Does that mean her words are true, or she believes them to be true?” I asked.

“The latter,” he answered.

“Of course I’m telling the truth!” Dagmar yelled desperately. “Why would I lie to all of you? Are you guys blind? This is the key to ending the resets! The prison is within our grasp!”

I’d told the group about the outsider’s claim of knowing where the Primordial’s prison resided, and like me, they reserved their excitement for a more credible confirmation of the claim.

“Dagmar,” Daulf said, speaking softly to our captive ally. “You have been compromised. You must believe us. The aboleth has corrupted your mind and is forcing you to see her as trustworthy. She is evil, and we cannot unleash her into the world, no matter what she claims her intentions to be.”

To her credit, her face crumpled in confusion at the cognitive dissonance she must have been going through. Why she could rationalize any one of us to be mistaken or even lying, she had developed a great respect for Daulf for his commitment to his goddess, seeing many similarities to her own people’s role in service to Torc. The confusion didn’t last long though.

“She says you all are wrong,” Dagmar yelled in frustration, confident once more. “You just don't understand. Lets just go back to her and she can explain it all directly.”

Levar turned to me, eyes wide as I turned to him,

“The aboleth can still influence her!” I yellowed as he said something to the same effect.

Dagmar broke for the door, but Bearskin grabbed her by the shoulder, halting her progress. He let go after only a moment but Dagmar didn’t move from her place. She tried, but her feet were Bonded to the ground with Bearskin’s magic.

Bearskin left the room, and we sealed up the door.

“How can we break the connection?” Daulf asked as if Levar and I knew what we were doing.

“Fauell if I know,” I said, causing the Chosen to flinch slightly at the curse. He didn’t appreciate curses pertaining to Faust or his spawn.

“Distance?” Levar suggested, not confident at all.

“We can’t exactly move the Dahn,” I said, dismissing the idea before asking. “Can we?”

Levar and I both turned to Daulf.

“As far as I can tell,” Daulf said, “It isn’t really anywhere in the Material Realm, so we can’t move it.”

“What if we remove the door?” I asked. “Will it come back when the reset occurs?”

“I’m not sure, but I might be able to make the door reappear from the inside.”

We left Dagmar to yell futilely in her room, muffled by the stone. Daulf conjured a door handle from thin air and handed it to me. Go outside, I will close this door. If I don’t open it again in a few minutes, open a new one.

I stepped outside the Dahn and closed the door behind me. A moment later, the door vanished in a blink, so fast it was hard to believe it had ever been there. Shortly after, the door reappeared, and opened to reveal Daulf.

“I think it's safe to remove the door,” he said, inviting me back in.

Quickly, we prepared for an extended session of isolation in the Dahn. Roland left to gather all the provisions he could from the surrounding wilderness, while I flew back to town with the door rod. Once there I bought a bulk order of necessary provisions such as flour, grains, and coffee. I loaded it all up onto Force Disks in an alley, and opened the door, pushing all the disks in as quickly as possible before jumping in myself and dismissing the door behind me lest Tilavo follows. It had been a risk, but we didn’t want Abby to get her hooks any deeper into Dagmar than she already had. Clearly, the damage persisted through resets, and we had no idea how long it would take to fade.

My unvoiced fear was that somehow Abby would break Dagmar’s mind, causing her oath to break to the Hardune and forcing her to lose her ability to retain memories between resets. In that case, her oath would be restored when her memories got reset, but with that would go her experience of these last three years. With the state she had been in when I’d met her, I suspect It would be harder to convince her of my non-demoness now with all the knowledge I had of her, not easier.

“Hey it's me, I know everything about you, don’t worry, you’re not in Fauell, come with me to this conveniently located extra-dimensional space that has been missing from your people for hundreds of years. By the way, the Primordial of Time is nearby and we need to find it to stop this all from happening.”

Obviously, I wouldn't say it like that, but no way she would believe me.

Once we were all settled back in the Dahn, Daulf dismissed the door. The doorway itself didn’t disappear, but it opened to a starry void—unless of course the person opening wished for it to return to the Material Realm, then the door would reappear in the clearing. This effect worked for everyone that Daulf wished it to. We tested this out, a final safety feature should Dagmar somehow escape.

Together we went back to Dagmar's cell. She wasn’t visible through the small opening, but Daulf did... something and the hole in the wall silently moved away from us. Once it had disappeared around the corner, he opened another window and through it we saw Dagmar lying in wait below the other window, which was now on the far side of the room.

“Wow, that’s really disorienting,” I said to him.

“I agree,” he said, apparently not immune to the strangeness of the situation.

Dagmar looked across the room at us when we spoke.

“Falling rocks,” she cursed, as she let her legs slide out below her and slid her back down the wall until she was sitting.

“Can you still hear Abby?” I asked.

“Of course,” she answered immediately.

I didn’t need Daulf’s magic to tell me that she was lying, but even still he confirmed it.

“Great,” I said. “We’ve severed our connection to the Material Realm. This mind control nonsense should fade eventually.”

“I’m not mind controlled!” she protested.

“You were about to ambush us!” I protested right back.

“Well, you did kidnap me.”

Yelling now, I said, “Only after you stabbed me in the heart two days ago and tried to get me to make a deal with a freaky tentacle monster!”

“Bah!” she said, waving her hand to dismiss my last comment. “No need to resort to name-calling. What's for dinner?”

Whatever control the outsider had placed on her made her deflect or change the topic whenever confronted with something it couldn’t cause Dagmar to rationalize.

“Bread,” I said.

To everyone’s disappointment, our diet was about to become much less varied.