The party managed to negotiate Darry‘s release and persuaded Captain Shayna to give them the box. They swore a blood oath with her to return Grand Duke Ravenguard as soon as possible. Darry was exiled from the upper city to be executed on sight if he returned.

Shayna allowed them use of a room so they could rest and try and open the box. Heated words were exchanged between Darry and the rest of the group as they blamed him for Xanthe‘s death. He blamed them for not joining the fight against the guards. He pointed the finger at Tunweya, “and you just stood there smoking cigars.” Tunweya replied, “I’d stand there and smoke every cigar in the Upper City if I could stand there and watch you die.”

Using Xanthe’s notes on the box, Darry attempted to open it but his luck stone warned him to drop it, saving him from taking the full force of the boxes defences. Darry trawled Xanthe’s notes for more clues and found a small sketch of the Glassstaff box next to a reference marked “Infernal Puzzle Box ➡ Sylvira Savakis, Candlekeep.”

Leofric also tried to open the box. He arranged a rune marked skull, a black candle and a silver hourglass he’d collected from dead cultists on the table while Darry sang words of encouragement. The box opened revealing a large dark space inside; at the end of which they could see a small neat pile of metal plates. Og offered the use of his toad as a way to reach in the box. However, Leofric used his pipes of the sewers to call forth a swarm of rats and asked for a brave rat to reach inside the box. One did and it came back unscathed. Leofric tied some cotton to its tail and sent it into the box, with the help of more rats they dragged out the metal plates.

The plates contained some writing in an unknown language. Darry used a spell to read it and found it was the contract between Zariel and Kreig. In the contract, Kreig was given used of The Companion (also called a Solar Insidiator) in return for pledging service to Zariel and transferring ownership of Elturel to Zariel after a period of 50 years.

The group discussed their next moves which involved showing the contract to Reya and getting a message to Sylvira Savikas.