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Terri stood at the gates of the cemetery, pondering the series of events that had brought her back to the place where she'd passed her initiation test just over a week before. She missed the weight of the hammer hanging at her hip but more painful than that was the knowledge that this time Aggy wouldn't be waiting for her when she came back. With a sigh the young cleric put her worries aside and began to walk along the main graveyard path. The night was much darker than the last time she'd made this journey, so Terri had lit up her amulet before she'd even left the Gravenhall gardens.

The doors of the crypt were closed but not locked and made no sound as Terri quietly let herself inside. The cover of the sarcophagus had been moved back into place in the intervening week so Terri walked around to the edge of the black stone coffin and pushed as hard as she could against the lid. Nothing moved. Trying again, the young cleric strained until she was red and sweating but only succeeded in sliding her feet backwards across the smooth marble floor of the crypt. Terri was now starting to understand why the supernaturally strong zombies had been having such trouble during her initiation task. Stepping back from the defiant sarcophagus Terri considered her options. The obvious next move would be to ask Avandar for the strength to open the coffin, but the extra power would be pointless if it only resulted in her feet sliding more quickly across the marble floor.

Terri's brow furrowed in anger. It was ridiculous, she could be back at Gravenhall within ten minutes once she had the ring, but that wasn't going to happen if there was no way to get inside the damn coffin. She didn't even have her hammer to try smashing the lid to pieces. Terri walked all the way around the sarcophagus, trying to push the lid off from each of its four sides but in every case the floor was too slippery and it was impossible to bring her full strength to bear. If the crypt had been a bit smaller she could have tried bracing her feet against one of the walls, but even at full stretch she just wasn't quite tall enough. Terri collapsed on to the floor in frustration and leaned back against one of the walls that was just a bit too far away from the coffin to be useful. She couldn't even sit down on top of the coffin itself because the lid was covered in ornate mouldings and decorative carvings that would make it a very uncomfortable place to rest.

It was a full fifteen minutes later that Terri suddenly leapt to her feet, cursing herself for being a fool and a half wit. Placing her hand upon the amulet hanging around her neck she asked Avandar for the strength to fulfill her obligations and open the lid of the coffin. The young cleric immediately felt Avandar's power begin to flow into her body and she walked quickly up to one of the long sides of the coffin. This time, instead of pushing, Terri braced her feet against the base of the sarcophagus itself and took hold of the mouldings on top of the lid before pulling with all her might. With her feet jammed up against the side of the coffin Terri was finally able to use all her strength without slipping and the cover slid suddenly towards her in a rapid explosion of movement. The young cleric ended up on the floor of the tomb with the coffin's lid teetering on the edge of the base above her. After quickly backpedaling to the wall of the tomb, Terri stood up and carefully walked around to the open side of the sarcophagus.

The interior of the coffin appeared to be exactly as she had left it. The skeleton, its black robes and the ruby ring all brought back memories of her first trip to the cemetery but this time Terri didn't pause. She immediately reached into the coffin and removed the beautiful piece of jewellery from the dead man's boney finger. Turning back towards the door the young cleric walked to the threshold and waited a moment before screwing up her courage and tentatively stepping outside. Once again there was no lightning bolt, no ominous rumble of thunder or quaking of the earth. Terri sighed in relief and at once began to quickly make her way back through the cemetery to the professor, and Gravenhall.

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The professor looked up from his desk as Terri entered his office without knocking. "That was quick. How long did it take you to figure out how to get the lid off the coffin? When I first went to have a look at the ring I sat on the floor for half an hour before I realised I should be pulling the lid instead of pushing it."

Terri was in no mood to answer questions however and simply walked across the room and dropped the ruby ring onto the desk. "You wanted it, here it is. Has my debt been paid?"

"In full," the professor replied. "And now I suppose you have a great many questions you'd like to ask me. Well, I'm all ears, although I can't guarantee that I'll be at liberty to answer all of them."

"You're right that I have a lot of questions, but I don't have time to ask them now. I need to find my friends." Terri turned around and started to walk back towards the door before the professor stopped her with a firm statement.

"I guarantee you that your friends are safe. They are currently at home, no doubt fretting desperately about what's become of you. While I'm sure you'll want to immediately run off and relieve their fears, you can probably afford to spend at least a few minutes getting some answers."

"How do you know where they are?" Terri stood with her hand on the doorknob, unsubtly implying that she had by no means been convinced to stay. "And while we're at it, why do you care so much about whether or not I get answers to my questions?"

The professor seemed unperturbed by Terri's aggressive tone.

"I know where they are because I used the time that you were away to make some enquiries. One of my colleagues from the rogues' guild informed me that your friends met with him several hours ago and that he was able to convince them that you weren't in fact dead. After that he had them followed and was informed by his agent that they went straight home. The answer to your second question is quite a bit longer, would you like to sit down before I begin?"

Terri walked back across the room and sat down opposite the man she had thought of as Professor Emeritus Nomenclature. When she had settled down the professor resumed speaking.

"The reason I wish you to have answers, young cleric, is that I need you to perform another job for me. Due to the fact that you have now discharged your death debt I cannot compel you to perform this task so I must therefore convince you to perform it. The information I am going to give you is in service of that goal. I flatter myself that I can guess some of the questions you will want to ask me so unless you have an objection I will begin by telling you what I think you want to know. Then if I've missed anything we'll cover it at the end. How does that sound?"

Despite the confidence she was projecting, Terri felt more than a little out of her depth so she nodded her head in agreement to the professor's suggestion.

"Right then," the professor said brightly, "let's start with Professor Emeritus Nomenclature."

Terri listened with growing interest while the professor explained that when he began his career at Gravenhall, nearly forty years ago, it had been as a rogue, not a cleric. For twenty years he'd risen up through the levels while performing tasks for Gravenhall, until a moment of 'divine intervention' had caused him to switch guilds.

"I was visited in a dream by the goddess Aganthe who told me in no uncertain terms to immediately become a cleric in her name. I ignored it of course. After all, I'd just spent twenty years becoming a rather exceptional rogue if I do say so myself, and I wasn't about to throw all that away over a dream. Aganthe, however, is nothing if not determined and after the pleasant dreams didn't work she moved on to nightmares and then daytime visions of impending fire and doom. That was when I gave in and went from high level rogue to initiate cleric in the space of a day.

"The next six years were spent following the same path you've just started on, and I eventually forgave Aganthe and learned to appreciate the joys of being a cleric. I'd been away for some time on an extended task and had just returned to Gravenhall when I started to notice little oddities around the place. The first was that while I'd only been gone six months, one of the staff members I knew quite well didn't seem to recognise me when I returned. Then I began to notice other things, such as ongoing changes in Gravenhall policy. Nothing dramatic enough on its own to cause suspicion, but little bits and pieces that added up over time.

"For example you might have noticed that Gravenhall is extremely protective of its secrets. Well it wasn't always like that, we used to be more open about everything. Little by little the nature of this place has changed even though its outward function has ostensibly remained the same. It was about ten years ago that I decided it was time to start taking action to protect myself and Professor Emeritus Nomenclature was born. I was fifty five by then and it didn't strain my acting skills too much to pretend to be much older and more senile than I actually was. I didn't change overnight of course, I spent about eighteen months distancing myself from all but a few trusted friends and slowly making myself appear nuttier and nuttier. No one even commented when I changed my name and now for a lot of the people here I've always been Professor Nomenclature, a dottery old man who couldn't possibly be any threat to anything that is going on behind the scenes."

Here the professor paused and looked expectantly at Terri. The young woman waited a moment before finally asking, "And what is going on here?"

"I don't know," the professor replied, "that's what I need your help to find out. What I can tell you is that the institute of Gravenhall has been infiltrated by some kind of organisation, but who its members are and what their agenda is I still have no idea."