When we saw Bagram missing from the clifftop, we feared the worst, that he had been killed for our insolence. Little did we know his fate was even worse than we could imagine. Like Nicele's villagers, he had been possessed by the black oil, and turned into an assassin. He was sent after Phillip, and succeeded! Then, he was killed soon afterward by the city guard.

We had to rescue Bagram's children before they were taken over as well and sent to kill more senators, possibly dying in the process. Kendrick pointed me in the direction of one Belthrax the Malefactor, who could be found in the infernal city of Dis. Rego had a gate in his shop that could take us there, and we quickly met up with this Belthrax. He let us know that Doak and Liri were being held in the plane of Acheron, and he would safely guide us there. The biggest danger would be the shadowy hellfire wyrm guarding them.

Since I've only viewed the mountain top they were chained to, and had never been there, I could teleport directly there, but even if I could, we knew there was prolly a teleport trap that would prevent me from just jumping us there. Once we made it to Acheron, we were a few days out. Again, even though Belthrax pointed the mountain top to me, I couldn't dimension door there either, for fear of what kind of defensive magicks they had up against magical teleportation. But they couldn't have the entire plane trapped. Grey fashioned a kind of makeshift door frame. I would dimension door to the base of the mountain since it was within line of sight. Then, I would quickly set up the portal, garner sympathy to it, then teleport back to the group. Grey fashioned another makeshift door, and I used it to open a gate to the other frame.

Once we were at the base of the mountain, we stealthily made our way up it. We saw Doak and Liri were being guarded by a couple of infernal humanoids, but no sign of the dragon. As we decided our plan of attack, the wyrm somehow managed to sneak up on us. We quickly spread out so he couldn't get us all in one blast of his infernal breath. Cassie and I managed to get away, but Grey and Trent were caught in the blast. They fought it out with the dragon while Cassie and I went to rescue the Fossils.

Cassie had given herself wings so she could strike from the air. In the excitement, I forgot all about the possible teleport traps, and teleported to the mound above where Doak and Liri were chained to free them and maybe ambush the guards from behind. I only realized my mistake at the last second, but by then, I could feel myself being dragged to the base of the mountain. But, I managed to overcome the magical pull and teleport successfully.

Luckily, the guards were too pre-occupied with Cassie to notice me. I did a quick flip off the mound, driving the guard currently fighting Cassie to the side, giving her an opening to get in a wicked hit. We continued in this fashion, with me distracting the guard and tying up his defenses to make him easy pickings for Cassie. After she slew him, I switched it up on the other guard. I figured he noticed our tactics and would expect me to distract him with a series of feints so Cassie could strike him. So I lulled him into taking the offensive on me so I couldn't whack his blades out of the way to create an opening for Cass. As soon as he made his attack, I easily weaved out of the way of his blade and countered with a lethal riposte that slew him.

After we finished the guards off and freed the siblings, we saw Trent and Grey finish off the dragon with fist and arrow. We brought them back to an inn in Dis so they could recover before we brought them back to Alestia. We waited until then to break the bad news to them about their dad. They were devastated of course, and I tried comforting Liri. She was distraught, and our emotions got the better of us. Or rather, I slipped up and took advantage of the situation. I don't know how it happened, but I'm pretty sure I initiated things. And I had wanted to be with her again for so long that I was too weak to do the right thing.

Afterward, when Cass saw me coming out of Liri's room, she figured out what happened and slugged me for being such a scumbag. I can't blame her, I felt awful for what I did. I swore I would never take advantage of Liri like that, but I did. It was a definite eye-opener. All these… indiscretions over these past year. What the hell was I doing? Just because the blood of devils ran through my veins, did I need to succumb to my basest instincts? But was it too late for me?

Anyways, after we got back to Farne, we pondered where to hide the Fossils. I suggested Hilda, but then we realized that was sure to be awkward, given their father killed hers. And I don't know how they'd react if they both learned about my dalliance with the other. So we decided to gate them to Masayume and have the Crane clan watch over them, paying the family with the parts we harvested from the umbral dragon we killed.

It wasn't an ideal hiding place, since the Fossils were in a foreign land where they didn't speak the language, but we had more pressing matters to attend to. These assassins were a huge thorn in our side, and too many innocents were dying at their hands. We needed to stop them and as soon as possible.

In my research I had discovered that the Keepers of Enma were a small cult, no more than a dozen or so, who had learned arcane techniques to place devils into innocents, and that was what the black oil was. Given there were only a handful of these people, probably operating somewhere in Alestia. Once we found them we could stop them from implanting devils into innocents and prevent further assassinations of Alestian dignitaries.

So, we came up with a plan to use Grey as bait, and Trent would try to gain control of one of the devils and pull it out of the possessed and make it tell us where these Keepers of Enma were. The plan was successful, they attempted to attack Grey outside of the Alestian Library, and walked right into our ambush. We neutralized the assassins, and got the devil to tell us where the Keepers were holed up.

We informed the Alestian authorities, and now all we have to do is storm the place and take them out.