The plan came together quickly, although it was a little bit shaky in the details department. The trio decided that during the night they would walk out to Lord Dennyson's estate and then break in through either the servant's entrance or a handy window. Based on the suspicious lack of a butler they decided it was highly likely that the imposter would be alone in the house which would make the infiltration much easier. The next step in the plan was to capture the imposter, hopefully while asleep, and then tie him up before interrogating him. This is where things got a bit hazy due to Terri's insistence that they must not torture the imposter in any way, so it was agreed some improvisation at this point would be necessary.

The three companions were fairly happy with what they’d come up with until Terri thoughtfully asked a question. “What if it turns out he’s not a doppelganger?”

“Who?” asked Aggy. “Lord Dennyson?”

“Yes,” answered Terri. “What if we get him all tied up and discover that he’s not an imposter, just a crotchety old man who’s gone senile since the last time Flem saw him? What do we do then?”

“We’d let him go of course,” Aggy answered.

“And then what?” Flem asked, sounding concerned. “Run like hell and hope that we make it out of Valleros before the bailiffs chase us down for harassing one of the richest people in town? I don’t like the sound of that plan. I think we should make sure we’re in disguise before we break into Lord Dennyson’s estate, just in case he is in fact still Lord Dennyson.”

“Rather than messing about with disguises, I’ve got a spell that should do the trick if we need it,” Aggy replied. “I thought it could be useful in a number of situations so I chose the ‘memory blank’ spell as one of the six I was allowed to put in my spellbook this year. Anyone I cast it on falls unconscious and loses all memory of the events of the past 24 hours.”

Flem nodded his head in agreement. “That’ll do Aggy, that’ll do.”

------------------

The first part of the night’s activities went rather well. The trio waited until it got dark and then walked out to the estate. There were no signs of life at all in the manor or the grounds and it took less than a minute for Flem to pick the lock on the servants entrance and let them into the house. Once their eyes had adjusted to the greater darkness inside, Flem led the way and they began a room by room search for the imposter. This also went rather well as there were no squeaking doors or creaking floorboards to give away their presence, and no clumsily knocked over vases to wake the inhabitants. They found Lord Dennyson in an armchair on the ground floor in one of the manor's several living rooms. He appeared to have fallen asleep while reading as there was a glass of wine sitting on a side table next to him and a book lying open in his lap. It was at this point that things started to go downhill.

The trio had brought along several short lengths of rope with the intention of finding the imposter and then wrestling him to the ground and tying him up. Being the strongest, Aggy was to take the lead in this process with Flem and Terri providing assistance as needed. So it was Aggy who crept up behind the armchair with a length of rope in hand, thinking that she could wrap it around the imposter and tie him to the chair before he had a chance to react. It was a reasonable plan but in retrospect they really should have brought a heavy chain rather than a rope.

Having reached the back of the chair Aggy stretched forwards and flipped the rope around the imposter's chest before pulling the ends backwards and bracing her knee against the back of the chair. It wasn't nearly enough. As soon as the imposter woke and found himself constrained he put his hands to his chest, took hold of the thick rope and snapped it like a piece of cotton. Aggy rolled backwards on to the floor as the rope came loose and the imposter stood up from the armchair making an inhuman roaring sound that was halfway between a bellow and a scream.

Unsure what was happening Terri hurriedly lit up her amulet, temporarily blinding everyone in the room. Seconds later she felt something collide with her shoulder and was knocked to the floor. As her eyesight started to return she felt Flem grab her arm and start hauling her upwards while saying, "Come on, we've got to go, we're in trouble."

By the time Flem had dragged her across the room to where Aggy was already standing, Terri's eyesight had recovered enough to see what was happening at the entrance to the living room. The thing that was pretending to be Lord Dennyson was standing by the door, hunched over with its hands over its eyes. As they watched it lowered its hands and slowly began to straighten up, becoming much taller and wider than Lord Dennyson had ever been. Clothes ripped and popped at the seams as the creature grew bigger, tall enough now that it would have to stoop to pass through the doorway behind it. It had no intention of leaving however and turned towards the trio even while its transformation continued.

Lord Dennyson's skin colour was changing to grey and his ears and nose were receding into a featureless head when Aggy's magic missile hit the creature right in the centre of the chest. The bolt of magical energy burned a clean hole through the blue doublet that hung in tatters from the creature's shoulders, but when it impacted the grey flesh beneath it fizzled into nothing.

"Ogden's beard, it's magic resistant. We need to get out of here now or we're dead." Aggy's bleak assessment caused them all to look around hurriedly for any means of escape. In the meantime the hulking grey creature finished its transformation and started walking slowly towards them. The most obvious way out was a door in the wall behind them and the trio all began to move towards it at once. Flem got there first and threw it open, racing into the room beyond with Terri and Aggy close behind. Aggy slammed the door shut and flipped the latch before jamming a nearby chair between the door handle and the floor. She then spun around to find Terri and Flem already heading back towards her. "There's no other door," Terri said urgently, "We're trapped."