Having understood the history of Rocca Galeazzi, Vance left the secret tomb of Brynjar the Unbreakable and set out on the quest to reassemble the Staff of Galvani. His only companion was the practical guide that he had found in the sealed tomb. It was titled Bearshield’s Counsel and contained many overdetailed maps, one of which described a path through the dark, damp catacombs toward the upper sections of the castle. During his advance along this route, Vance again encountered what had once been Sleezar the Torturer. As a coated beast, it patrolled with its many lizard tongues and hunted for the golden butterflies. Luckily, however, it didn’t spot Vance—or perhaps it didn’t care enough to spot him. He sneaked past it without a problem and climbed a long stairway until he reached the door that led out of the macabre maze.

It swung open, and he found himself in a room that was marked on his map as a cellar. There were many casks of wine and several barrels of blood—liquids that had been stagnating for an eternity. He walked among them and stopped in front of a strange wall. It was a solid mixture of stone and bone, but it lacked proper structure and coherence. This isn’t supposed to be here. Vance examined his annotated maps more closely. Using his Flame of Revival as a light source, he confirmed that the wall in front of him shouldn’t exist. Did someone build it to hide the path? Or does it have another purpose? He found a tibia bone that stuck out of the wall in an odd fashion. He grasped it hard and started to push down, and to his surprise, it not only moved but also caused a miniature landslide.

Without warning, the entire wall crumbled into a pile of rubble. After this dusty collapse, Vance found in front of him a spiral stairway dotted with rusty scrap and decomposed remains. Let’s see now. If the maps are right, these are the stairs leading up to the Tower Library. And that’s where the second piece of the staff is hidden. He closed Bearshield’s Counsel and began to climb. Every other step, his dragon feet would land on a deer skull, and it would crumble under pressure and fade away into dust. These skulls … Did they belong to the castle defenders? It seemed that they had been left on this nameless stairway, without a dignifying interment, although the catacombs were so close. They died fighting for their tyrant … It’s a shame there’s no church around to call them martyrs.

Vance crushed more skulls on purpose. As thunder echoed loud outside, he completed his lengthy ascent and reached the end of the spiral stairway. The entrance to the Tower Library appeared before him. It was a steel door coated in a purple aura of magic and decorated with sublime metalwork. A lush forest was portrayed through bends and dents, with a pair of majestic antlers hidden among its metal leaves. The door itself remained unguarded and wide open, but there were deer skulls scattered nearby, along with fresher human skeletons that were frozen in weird positions, as if they had been banging on the door. Were they trapped inside? It was impossible to know for sure, but it seemed that the magical steel door wasn’t always so forgivingly open.

It might be an automatic trap. There was no mention of such a contraption in the pages of Bearshield’s Counsel, but it was better for Vance to be safe than sorry. He needed to make sure that he wouldn’t be locked inside the Tower Library forever, so he started to examine the magical door from outside. As long as it hasn’t been triggered yet, there’s a chance I can deal with it. He found a purple glow emanating from a crack in the stone wall right next to the door. This faint shine gave him hope. He drew his Larval Dagger and started to hit the crack. After many strikes, he had chiseled a hole through the stone bricks, and just as he had suspected, there were purple orbs embedded behind them.

This is the source of the Mana powering the door. He widened the hole in the wall and extracted one of the orbs with care. Then he turned around and flung it down the spiral stairway. It shattered somewhere in the darkness, and not a second later, there were bolts of purple lightning flying chaotically in the air. Vance took cover without delay. The bolts raged for a few minutes before they dissipated and faded away. All right … It doesn’t seem like a bad start. With the utmost care and precision, he continued to extract one orb after the other. All of them went down the stairway, and when he was done, he was pleased to see the steel door lose most of its bewitching aura. This should do the trick.

It was impossible for him to disable the trap itself, since he lacked the needed expertise, but by destroying the Mana supply, he managed to shorten the trap’s activation time. Instead of locking me inside until I die, it should open again after a few seconds. He sheathed the Larval Dagger, kicked the strange skeletons aside, and finally walked into the Tower Library. As soon as he stepped inside, the steel door closed behind him with a loud clang. This sound should’ve caused panic and horror, but Vance only smiled and counted to ten. Between seven and eight, the purple aura disappeared completely, and the door opened again on its own. Traps like these are nothing if you don’t protect the Mana supply.

Having dealt successfully with the threat, Vance turned around and took his first proper look at the library. The stone walls and bookcases were discolored as if they had come into contact with a reactive alchemical ingredient. There were neither tomes nor grimoires left—only ultra-fine salt-and-pepper dust. And all the wooden furniture, whether table, chair, or lectern, must have also evaporated on a rather sultry day. I’m finally here. Vance looked right and left with a mixture of curiosity and caution. Now … Where’s the second piece of the staff supposed to be? He was about to consult his trusty guide again, but at that moment, before he could flip its pages open, he heard sobbing in the dark.

“I’m sorry … I’m sorry … I’m sorry.”

Never before did a pair of intelligible words scare Vance so much. They were sudden, abrupt, and chillingly lachrymose. They reeked of death, guilt, and regret—a truly destructive diatribe against oneself. Who or what was crying so pitifully, weeping so dejectedly? Shaken to the core but still undeterred, Vance placed the incomplete Staff of Galvani—the harmful lightning rod—on the ground. He made sure that it wouldn’t roll away or make any unexpected noise. Then he put Bearshield’s Counsel next to it with as much care. Having freed both hands, he equipped his pair of bloodthirsty daggers and sneaked in pursuit of the recurring sounds.

“I’m sorry … I’m sorry … I’m sorry.”

The sobbing continued, and he followed it in the dark. His steps were short, silent, and cautious. Whenever he could, he advanced in the protective shadow of a bookcase, and with every step he took, the sobbing grew louder and more pitiful. He arrived behind the last bookcase in a long row and peered toward an embrasure—a slit window that revealed a vertical strip of the outside world. The lightning lit the sky again at that exact moment, and its flash illuminated the head of a deer. A black-robed beast was kneeling before the window with its four hands joined as if in prayer. The head of a male deer, the arms of a highlander, the feet of a lunar elf … another chimera.

“I’m sorry … I’m sorry,” the beast sobbed. “I had no choice … I was given orders … I had to start it … We knew more than we should … Everything had to disappear before the advent of the Witch … I’m sorry … I’m sorry … I’m sorry.”

Vance tightened his grip on his spectral dagger and stepped out of hiding. As the beast continued to cry, he took calculated steps and creeped behind it. Before he reached stabbing distance, however, he noticed a soft golden light in the darkness. He stopped and looked more carefully. The kneeling beast had several golden butterflies fluttering around it. They look just like the ones I saw in the catacombs … the ones that were guiding me. Vance hesitated to take another step forward. The beast wasn’t sobbing meaningless words; it was apologizing to the golden butterflies. And the butterflies were dancing around the tears that fell from its shriveled eyes as if in sympathetic acknowledgement.

“Why did you stop?” the beast suddenly said.

Is it talking to me? Vance was taken aback.

“They told me you were coming,” the beast continued, without standing up, without turning around. “Do what you must … Please … I will not fight …”

Vance stood still for a while and observed the situation. The deer-headed beast stopped crying and sobbing. Its four arms relaxed and hung at its sides, while its lunar-elven feet maintained the kneeling position. The gentle golden butterflies circled around it before they landed on its two antlers. Then there was absolute silence and stillness. It felt as if the entire world was waiting for Vance to move. And he did. He took four more steps forward. Spectral Execution. The dark mist erupted from the spectral dagger and coated his arm. Then he swung it and stabbed the beast in the back, through the black robes, through an electro-heart that was embedded in its chest.

“I can see it again … the smoke,” the beast whispered. “This time … I’m on the right side of the Forest Door. With everyone.”

Battle Result

You have defeated Galen the Sagacious, Chief of the Librarians.

Your victory restores calm to the Tower Library.

The corpse of the beast dropped on the ground. Vance took a step back and looked at it with a mixture of confusion and unease. It really didn’t fight back. He couldn’t be satisfied with this cheerless outcome: he felt almost as if he had made a mistake when he raised his daggers against this beast. But the golden butterflies gathered around him and glided gently as if to tell him that this was meant to be. Then, suddenly, there was another sound in the absolute calm that he had created. While the butterflies flew out of the embrasure, a chime echoed through the library. It was the same sound that he had heard in the moat—the same sharp tone that had saved him from the mermaid beast.

What’s happening? Vance listened, and the more closely he did, the more he could feel waves traveling through the air. It was some kind of intangible force or unknown magic. As it filled the Tower Library, books started appearing on the shelves. These sparsely scattered books weren’t made of leather or paper; they looked ghostly and shone like ectoplasm. Still unable to understand what was happening, still baffled by the appearance of these books, Vance hurried back to the library entrance. Once there, he picked up the lightning rod and Bearshield’s Counsel from where he had left them on the ground. He flipped through the guide and read a part that seemed relevant to the current situation:

“When you reach the library, you will find the staff’s crown in the books. But beware of the many deceptive crooks. Say no word; make little sound. Letters are meaningless when they abound.”

A riddle? Vance looked around him. The ectoplasmic books were still there on the shelves, and their glow was unmissable in the dark. Is the staff’s crown in one of them? He raced through the library, grabbed one after the other, and checked its contents. Glyphs, runes, star maps, letters, diagrams. Whenever he opened a cover, it created holographic contents that floated in the air and made zero sense. He thought that he would eventually reach the crown if he checked all the books, but even after he turned the last cover, he found nothing of real value. I’m doing this wrong. A change in strategy was necessary. He gathered all 21 ectoplasmic books and placed them on the ground in the center of the library. Then he sat down and began to think about what he should do.

“When you reach the library, you will find the staff’s crown in the books.” He repeated the first part of the riddle. It clearly says that the crown is inside. He opened one of the books again and looked at the vivid holographic contents that it created. There’s a reason these books are so crowded with symbols … a reason I have to find by myself. He searched through the glyphs, the runes, the star maps, the letters, the diagrams. He didn’t know what he was looking for, but after a full hour of careful examination, he suddenly noticed something interesting. In the middle of the uninterpretable hodgepodge, there was one anthroform letter that was familiar to him. It was an R that appeared once every 200 seconds and remained in view for only 10.

Seeing some promise in this discovery, he opened another book and started to search through its puzzling contents. There’s one here too. He noticed another anthroform letter—this time it was an H. Without wasting time, he opened all the books and lined them up. There were 21 anthroform letters in total: E, T, B, E, R, R, A, B, L, R, A, H, Y, E, K, A, U, N, J, N, B. It couldn’t be a coincidence that there was exactly one anthroform symbol inside each ectoplasmic book. He scratched the letters on the ground with his Larval Dagger, because their cycles of appearance were misaligned. Then he started to rearrange them mentally. His goal was to form any intelligible words, and after a long process of trial and error, he managed to spell a familiar name: “BRYNJAR THE UNBREAKABLE.”

This seems right. He stood up and lined up the books in the correct order. He waited for a few moments, but neither did they change in appearance nor did the staff’s crown appear before him. Nothing? Well, back to the riddle then. He reopened his guide and reread the riddle’s second sentence, with attention and care: “But beware of the many deceptive crooks.” He paused to think a little. Deceptive crooks … Does this mean that some of the books are there to mislead me? He jumped to the next line in the riddle: “Say no word; make little sound.” It was the most amusing hint of them all. It’s telling me outright that “BRYNJAR THE UNBREAKABLE” isn’t the final answer. Laughing at this fact, he moved to the last part of the riddle: “Letters are meaningless when they abound.”

Letters … Meaningless … Abound … The words repeated inside him before he arrived at a new thought. I need to eliminate repeated letters. He examined the three words that he had formed: “BRYNJAR THE UNBREAKABLE.” Careful not to make mistakes, he dropped the B’s, the R’s, the N’s, and all the other letters that occurred more than once. When he was done, he had created a modified sequence: “YJTHUKL.” He put the ectoplasmic books that formed this new sequence together, and as soon as they lined up, they began to shine with an otherworldly golden light. They started moving on their own. They floated and pressed themselves together—one cover to the other. Then their appearance changed: they merged together and transformed into a wooden chest.

Vance stepped forward, reached for this floating chest, and opened it with a single heave. There it was—the crown of the Staff of Galvani. It consisted of a circular base made of the same material as the lightning rod, but above this base, there were spikes decorated with Storm Jewels—precious stones that each trapped an entire thunderstorm within. Vance had never seen so many of them in one place, and he couldn’t imagine how expensive this crown was. An experienced dwarven smith or a well-versed Electromancer would be able to appraise it with more accuracy, yet something on the order of 50,000 gold didn’t seem too unrealistic. And this is only the second piece of the staff. Vance grabbed the crown and fit it onto the lightning rod.

Hidden Objective Complete: The Second Piece

You have found the second piece of the Staff of Galvani and combined it with the first.

Previous effects relating to the first piece have been canceled. While you hold this incomplete item, it will attract all electro-magic attacks, but it will also absorb half of the total damage they deal. Furthermore, your Magic Resistance drops by 25%.

***

So far, so good. Having secured the staff’s crown, Vance had only one more piece to worry about: a magical orb that should fit on top. He left the Tower Library and retraced his steps all the way back to the catacombs. From there, he followed a different route, indicated on his maps, toward one of the auxiliary buildings of Rocca Galeazzi. This humble building was labeled as the Incubator, and it was supposed to be the secure place where the orb had been hidden: “It was judged that the abnormally high manaphile activity in the Incubator was strong enough to disguise any emissions from the orb. And while Galvani may attempt to recover it, it is unlikely that his efforts will lead him in the right direction.”

But the aforementioned Incubator was located in a rather remote spot that was disconnected from the underground passageways, and to get to it, Vance first had to pass through a larger area. He climbed a rusty ladder, broke open a trapdoor, and entered a hall that was labeled as the House of Beneficence. As he walked between two long rows of stone beds, he felt as if he had wandered into a quarantine ward or a prison infirmary. Soon he found tables with old surgical tools. Some were massive; some were miniscule. There were arrays of scissors, enchanted forceps, manual suction machines, and jars for preserving organs. Everything was rusty or broken or eroded, but the character of the place wasn’t yet lost. This hall was once a massive operating room.

What’s this? Vance stopped at a monitoring desk. Long ago it must have been used by Galvani and his Acolytes, but now it was covered with a strange set of anachronistic items. There were several bags of healing patches, quivers full of Carcassian arrows, a bonemeal talisman for good luck, and a few Ezran gadgets, including a still functioning monstroscope. A Turncoat was here recently. Vance started rummaging through the items on the desk. Without any hesitation, he took the healing patches for himself. They were identical to the ones Pamela had used on him before, and he stuck a couple to his arm to replenish his HP. Good. I’ve needed healing ever since I fell into that moat.

The fall had also destroyed the patches that Eleanor had given him, so it was a relief to find a new stock. I don’t think whoever left them here would miss them. He smiled before he looked again at the desk one last time. I don’t really have a use for arrows or gadgets … I should get going. He turned away and walked a couple of steps, but then his foot hit against something. He looked down and found a pocket notebook open on the ground. It was covered in blood—dry but recent. He picked it up with a mixture of curiosity and unease. Turning its pages, he realized that it was a journal. Its starting date wasn’t far from the present, and its first entry mentioned a memorable figure.

He read:

“Duskgloom 13, 879—My second Class Ascension has begun. I woke up in the spring and traveled to Argilstead, where Himilco Magus offered me a warm bed and good company. I’ll prepare for the hunt and set out tomorrow.

“Duskgloom 14, 879—Met an interesting fella at the market. We talked for hours. He sold me an old map to a place called Rocca Galeazzi and told me it’s a treasure trove. I have time for a side quest, so the ascension can wait.

“Duskgloom 15, 879—Hired an ex-Archer and an ex-Gadgeteer. They cost a lot, but the market fella said electromancy doesn’t work well in Rocca Galeazzi, so I had no other option. If I find any good loot, it’ll make up for the costs.

“Duskgloom 16, 879—This place is fucking terrible! No signs of life, no signs of treasure, no signs of anything! All we found were a bunch of old stone tablets that kept yapping about nothing. What the fuck is ‘Wisdom’? And what’s all this shit about ‘becoming the One Undivided’? I hate cults more than anything!

“Duskgloom 17, 879—Examined one of the stone tablets more closely. Almost threw it away like all the others. Super glad I didn’t. I think it’s talking about an ancient staff. Now that’s something I understand! Bring in the loot! Bring in the goodies! If this ends up being a disappointment, I swear I’ll kill someone!

“Duskgloom 18, 879—I can hear loud thunder outside. A storm? The Archer and the Gadgeteer still haven’t returned till now. I only told them to check the throne room for clues. What is taking them so long? Did they abandon me? The cowards! I’ll report them to the Dullahans when I get back to Argilstead.

“Duskgloom 19, 879—The thunder is getting louder, and I’m hearing noises in the dark. This place has been abandoned for 300 years. There shouldn’t be any slayers or beasts. I must be hallucinating … I must be. I gotta get out of here before my mental state gets worse, but I’m too scared to leave the hall.

“Duskgloom 20, 879—The door to the Incubator opened, and beasts walked into this hall. Tens of them. Like rabid rabbits. They’re small but vicious. I’m hiding under the desk, but they’ll find me soon. I saw them feeding the Archer and the Gadgeteer to their mother. I’ll be her next meal if I don’t do something.

“Duskgloom 21, 879—It’s hopeless. I can’t fight. Why? Why didn’t I just focus on my Class Ascension? No, why did I even become a slayer? I can hear them coming this way, but I still can’t move. They’ll feed me to the mother rabbit. I don’t wanna die. Please, Amirani, forgive me! Order is bliss. Chaos is torment. Calm is in submission. Fear is [illegible because of bloodstains]”

Fear is the greatest of all prophets. Vance closed the journal and placed it on the desk. He paused for a moment to digest the whole story. Then he checked the ground and found a long trail of dried blood. The Acolytes dragged the corpse to the Incubator … They must’ve fed it to the “mother rabbit,” just as the journal said they would. He took a moment to reexamine the current situation. I’m very close to my goal, but I’ll lose it all if I rush things. Since the last piece of the staff was hidden inside the Incubator, it seemed that this “mother rabbit” was the newest obstacle in his path—a substantial threat.

And I know from the journal that there will be tens of other enemies. “Small but vicious.” Probably the “children” of this “mother.” He added this important fact to his considerations. I don’t have a reliable Skill to deal with crowds, and if I try to brute force my way through this fight, just as I did with Wasserstein, I’ll end up with nasty injuries. A conventional confrontation was out of the question, especially since he was in the ever-punishing Middlerift. I need to approach this differently, or I’ll end up like these treasure hunters … I need to play it smart so that I have the vitals and energy to fight Galvani next.

Picking prudence over impatience, he turned his attention back to his trusty Bearshield’s Counsel and began to study more about the Incubator—all the routes in and out, all the locations of the doors and the windows, and some details about the installed devices. He also looked for any reliable information about the Acolytes described in the journal. And while there was little mention of mothers or children, there were hints connecting rabbits to the castle servants: “The servants were given the heads of rabbits and sent to reinforce the garrison during the latest stages of the siege. Their frenzied tactics proved to be the stuff of nightmares, especially when they attacked together, and their numbers did not dwindle even when their ranks were decimated.”

It took some time to learn more about these servants and their tactics. When he finished the preparatory crash course, Vance turned toward the monitoring desk, where the Carcassian arrows and the Ezran Gadgets lay abandoned after their owners had died. I might just have the perfect use for all this junk. His mind began to weave a plan—a retirement plan for all the diligent castle servants.