<b>"Ring and a city, eh..."</b>she murmured to herself, gently opening the book and flipping through the pages. Unlike the tome, the thin sheafs of paper were much more corroded by time, and she took extreme care not to bend or break them as she thumbed through.<b>"Here we are."</b>Her green eyes flicked back and forth across the page, straining to read the faded ink.<b> "Looks like it mentions a place called Kivarossa. That's a port-city not too far south of here, I think." </b>She had never been there herself, having traveled overland to get to these ruins, but it was well known as a hub of trade and the home of the regional mage guildhouse. She continued to scan the page for a moment, brows furrowing.<b>"Hrm. It says he entrusted the ring to a 'confidante', but...that was centuries ago. Unless they're an elf, there's no way they'd still be alive."<br/>
</b><br/>She drummed her fingers against the book's cover, thinking.<b> "Maybe they had family they passed it on to? Or it was reclaimed by the local mage's guild when they passed away." </b>Magical items weren't supposed to just drift about willy-nilly, although a black market for them certainly existed. In her earlier life, when she had still been a part of her family's trade caravan, they had dealt with such things in the past. There were people willing to pay a pretty penny for you to smuggle them an enchanted goblet or cursed sword or some other magical artifact. If they ended up having to search for the ring through those channels, maybe her family name would give her a bit of an advantage. Still, finding one ring in a major city was going to be no easy task. She shook her head helplessly, looking back to "Ipius."<b> "I'm not sure. You were Zargga's teacher, surely you must have some idea about the people he conspired with."<br/>
</b><br/>She watched as he drifted about, confused as to why he couldn't stray much any further from the ritual. He had a point--he should have been locked to the book he had been trapped in, rather than the conduit he had traveled through. "I don't know..." she trailed off, backing away from him. There was a note of frustration in her voice as memories of repeated failures surged through her mind. She thought she had been improving. She thought she had had a chance at this.<b>"Everything<i> should</i> have worked, I followed the ritual to the letter. It just..." </b>Looking back to the ritual site, she approached and knelt to examine it, rubbing the chalk lines on the ground. Her eyes strayed to the fine ash that had once been bones, and she blinked, beginning to wonder.<b>"If those were your bones I had to use, do you think that would have affected it?" </b>Unbeknowst to her, those were in fact<i>not</i>the bones of the wraith hovering nearby, but as far as she knew, they were. In truth, it was the glyphs she had chalked onto the ground that were tethering him. The tome was written in an ancient language, one that today survived as a form of magic-imbued writing commonly used in summoning sigils. She had noted the similarities, but hadn't expected them to be an issue. Indeed, that issue was already starting to resolve it. As she rubbed the chalk dust away, breaking the circle, Zargga would feel the tethers loosen, even as the book's energy began to pull at him instead.