Twenty-eight names, twenty-eight questionings but they still knew just as much as before: painfully little. Ambigious, TehLulz, freeZe and Undira had spent the better part of the day running between the various guilds and searching for the potentially involved people Undira had named. None of them had revealed anything of interest to them.

"Well, that was a waste of time." Ambigious said. "Let's hope that Unchosen can identify the poison so that we haven't completely wasted this day. Anyways, thanks for your help Undira."

Undira smiled. "I don't think we're done yet. I'd like you to accompany me down into the lower districts. While we questioned those people I had an idea or two."

With those words she took the lead and went ahead towards the nearest entrance to the lower districts, in this case the one near the Guard. Once they arrived at the bottom of the staircase she stopped.

She said: "What I thought about was that with the potion I could perhaps invoke some of the enchantments down here, maybe there are secret passages that operate like the city gates."

Suddenly TehLulz felt a sting on the back of his hand. The mark was telling him to prevent Undira from interacting with the enchantments, from what he understood for her own safety. Fire had mentioned that there were mechanisms in place that would lash out on anyone unauthorized trying to interact with the enchantments on the eyes, it didn't take much to assume that this was also true for the enchantments in the artificial bedrock.

Undira noticed his unease and asked: "Is everything alright?"

TehLulz said: "Yes… no."

Just before he was about to continue, he had a thought. If he understood the hierarchy of the Eye-and-Claws correctly, higher ranks shared both the privileges and responsibilities of lower ranks. His mark had the highest rank of them all so logically he could temporarily fill any specific role he needed to. The role he was thinking about specifically was the one that Daron held, the recruiter.

"Hold on." He said, much to the confusion of Undira.

He focused his thoughts into his mark, searching for information on how he could assume the recruiter role. He really wished that the mark had an instruction manual of some sort.

A sudden surge of information went through his head, giving him the exact knowledge he needed. Turns out it did have one. The instructions to recruiting were easy enough. All he had to do was create a partial copy of his own mark and imprint it in Undira's skin. However he was also warned that he was personally responsible for whoever he recruited until the mark was finalized.

He sighed. At this point they didn't really have a lot of options left, if against all odds Undira was not truly on their side she already knew too much either way.

He said: "Undira, give me your hand please."

Undira gave him a quizzical look but then extended her right hand. "Uuuh… sure?"

TehLulz took her right hand into his left, then raised his own right hand to the height of his face, palm facing inwards. With a deep breath he entered an enchanting trance, the hum that escaped his mouth was low pitched and quiet. After a few seconds the Eye-and-Claws mark on the back of his hand faded back into visibility, the red eye lightly glowing.

Undira was increasingly uneasy but didn't try to pull away. TehLulz lowered the back of his hand onto Undira's. There was a dim flash of red light and a scream.

Undira quickly pulled her hand away, rubbing the back of it. "Ow! What the hell!"

freeZe asked: "What did you do?"

TehLulz raised his hands defensively, as he did he saw how his own mark vanished again, Undira's was still very visible, TehLulz noticed that it was missing the claw marks below the eye.

He said: "I think I have a lot of explaining to do."

Undira said: "Yeah, you do. What kind of rune is this anyways and why can it be imprinted in living matter?"

TehLulz began: "So, look. When the Mencur-Besh find a human that's trustworthy and has useful skills they give them one of those marks. Well, not exactly what you have but nevermind the details. I just gave you a partial copy of mine, I can't give full marks like a Mencur-Besh can."

"What." Undira said.

freeZe took over for TehLulz: "I know this might be a little much all of a sudden-"

Undira cut her off: "No, no, no. I understand completely, I was just surprised. It all makes sense now! There were always people I had seen around the Mencur-Besh more often, others who rose through the ranks of a guild a little bit too quickly. So far I just chalked it up to random chance or other influences. It. All. Makes. Sense. Now."

She pushed her palms against her face lightly, through her hands she continued: "I should have talked to them. I should have asked more. I… am so glad that we ran into each other after that enchanting session."

She looked directly at TehLulz now. "Why did you give me that mark now of all times?"

TehLulz answered: "Because you probably would have gotten torn apart the second you tried to directly invoke an enchantment here. It's no secret that the Mencur-Besh built Rockhaven but most people don't know the whole extent of their influence."

Undira seemed to think about what he said for a moment, then reached into one of her pockets and pulled out a flask of the demon tongue potion. She took a bit of it herself, then passed the flask on to TehLulz.

After taking a sip he didn't feel all too different, just like Unchosen had told him. He opened his mouth to speak and was surprised at what came out. It was exactly what he wanted to say but it sounded foreign, inhuman.

Ambigious said: "Give me some of that potion as well please, I'll get a major case of brain melt if I have to listen to more of that."

freeZe seemed to agree.

Undira cleared her throat and talked in the demonic language: "This is amazing. Let's have a look at the enchantments in here."

She closed her eyes and seemed to look at the runes in the artificial bedrock.

"They don't move around anymore, must be the mark… wait. TehLulz, you have to see this."

TehLulz closed his eyes as well, his mind reached out to the runes. To his surprise this enchantment was even more massive than he had thought, not quite as intricate as that of the eyes but the sheer scale of it was beyond anything he had assumed. It seemed that not small pieces of artificial bedrock were enchanted, the entirety of the city had one big set of runes applied to it.

"This… is not what I expected." He said.

Undira hummed a high note with demonic undertones, suddenly the wall next to them moved, it moved away from Undira. As she took a few steps towards it, the wall retreated further.

Undira's humming stopped, the wall remained in place. She said: "This… this has possibilities. While I invoked the enchantment it was like I could see a bit into the walls, I saw other tunnels. I kind of want to go and see what I can find."

TehLulz said: "If that's so, we're coming with you. Especially since now that I gave you the mark, it's my responsibility to make sure that you accidentally break something."

Ambigious smirked. "And you want to see whatever's hidden here."

"That too."

freeZe said: "Maybe we'll run into our conspiracy by pure chance, crazier things have happened."

"Let's go then!" Undira called out and immediately resumed her humming as she confidently strode ahead into the depths of Rockhaven, followed by Ambigious, freeZe and finally TehLulz who had started humming as well, causing the artificial bedrock to close back behind them.