February 24th

The party awoke the next morning and, over some eggs and salad, debated their options.  Generally the accepted path was to return to Holtburg to begin cleaning house and establishing themselves for their next moves; claiming the Pyreal mine near Marblebush, recruiting miners, movers, buyers, and sellers to work the Pyreal, and to find out what happened in Janwall to the ship they'd claimed and the captain Kolson had hired to staff her.

As they left the inn, Fierneceal buckled over in confusion and pain, and in short order received an extremely vague telepathic message from, of all people, Higaide.  Higaide was trapped in the Garden, having been let in there by Flux back on Vesayen Lassel.  She insisted, strongly, that they go to this place and try to help both him and her brother, emotionally over-wrought over the news that her brother was still alive.  Rekarg, who was well familiar with the Garden though the party did not question him on this, had no troubles teleporting them to the Garden.

Therein they found it similar to how it had been when they left, save an odd plume of an explosion frozen in place, and the teleporter pad being missing completely.  The explosive fire was severely damaging (with Araiguna having his fur and skin burnt off by it), but Fierneceal walked into it without issue and absorbed it into her being.  In the center they found a very unconscious Higaide, around several of the machines they'd left here.

In short order they learned that the Tumerok were instituting a brutal slave regime on all the people of Vesayen Lassel to build some kinds of fantastically advanced machinery, that they had all departed the island not too long ago which lead to Flux leading a daring raid to rescue several people (including Higaide), and that someone had re-designed the entire Garden to remove the teleporter in it at some point in time.  After considering their options and the best path forward, the group prepared to move the equipment for the Anti De-Weaving augmentation, which had been damaged, with them to the Fire Temple when one of the pieces was violently jostled, causing significant damage to the people nearby (which was immediately healed of course) and leading to another 'frozen' explosion (which Fierneceal consumed).  The equipment thusly abandoned, the group decided instead to head to Holtburg with Rekarg's teleportation.

They arrived at the Hub and were immediately accosted as unexpected visitors, but Rekarg smoothed things over with the guard in short order. 

The moment Higaide left the Garden he felt a terrible malaise grip him, as he struggled to have the mental energy to do even normal mundane tasks.  Zeiss left to begin looking into recruiting a large number of Movers, Sellers, and Buyers pronto to get business running while Snarg and a few others secured one year's rights to the Pyreal mine. 

They also were notified that two letters were there that Van had found at Kolson's Holtburg address, one from a couple of weeks ago, one dated several days prior.  They were from Kezrinthka.  The party was enthused to hear from her and learn that she was alive, but quickly deduced from the way she wrote it that things were still off and she was unwilling to speak in depth about such matters over letter.  She said she had secured rights for one person to visit, and so Kolson volunteered and began drafting a letter in return.