Surprisingly, the samurai's servant asked to travel with us, without his master. I suppose it cannot hurt much for now, provided he leaves once we rescue the prisoners. With his frivolous use of magic, he can only be a burden. Two of the knights will also accompany us – a ranger and a rogue.
The only event of note during the journey was an encounter with a giant porcupine. The ranger tried to draw it away with a bit of food, and the servant tried to trick it with a lengthy and overly elaborate series of spells, to no avail. A pair of electric bolts from my own repertoire killed it quickly, and we were able to get on with the journey.
During our travels, the three of us discussed our final strategy, though I can not say we came to any profound conclusions. We must learn our Enemy's weaknesses, and play to them. The Infiltrator does not believe we need to fear our Enemy yet. He does not necessarily know who we are, and he only saw two of us, since I was disguised as a cultist at the time. Almost all our time spent in the world of man, however, has been in retrieving my journal and chasing down those who learned about it, and our search has led us directly to the Enemy. I can not doubt but that he suspects our presence.
After a few days, we arrived at a small port town reminiscent of that den of thieves that caused us so much trouble. This one was in far worse condition, its walls destroyed and the town guard its only defense, and, fortunately, they did not take our weapons. Two hundred prisoners could not be hard to track down, so we entered the first tavern we came across, and the woman interviewed a mercenary. Just as he was about to tell us where we could find the cultists, a bolt of fire came shooting through a broken window, and would have killed the man had that strange aura that surrounds the winged woman not been there to protect him. I immediately cast a spell, and flew out the window to pursue the attacker.
I tracked the sorcerer from the air, and directed the others to his position. Soon, he was joined by two warriors, one of whom wore a necklace of beads which, when thrown, burst into magical flame. The chase was quickly over, however, with only myself suffering injuries from the sorcerer's spells. The warrior wearing the necklace escaped by jumping off the pier. I tried to find him in the form of a white dragon, but came up with nothing but his armor and shield. If his allies are to be believed, he escaped into the sewers.
We learned a few things from our two captives before we left them in the hands of the knights. These three had been sent out as assassins by an agent of our enemy, a man who used to be the courier of the emperor in the east, but who had since defected, and was now our enemy's major domo. As I had suspected, a trap had been laid for us, by an Enemy who knew we would follow the slaves. We will remain true to our word and continue to track them down, but after that we must become less conspicuous, or our mission will be lost.
We learned where to find this defector, but I do not believe it wise to track him down. He is not our target, and he will surely expect us to find him when he learns that his assassins were unsuccessful.
Finally, we learned where the slaves are headed. We have booked passage on a ship to this place.