Bright and early the next morning, the party speaks to Queen Veris III, as well as her right hand, Knight Captain Ysildea. Veris explains that there is a solution to the refugee influx, but it is not at hand due to being locked away for safety, and before she can entrust retrieving it to essentially strangers, she needs the group to prove that they have Nuono’s best interests in mind by contributing to the city’s well-being. The idea is that if they do so, it would allow enough breathing room to let Ysildea and the party head out to retrieve the relic needed.
Spreading out, the party splits up to do different tasks. Serafina goes spearfishing, as feeding the town is a straightforward way to help ensure its continued safety. She learns to ride a seahorse, drastically impressing the spearfishers Erolith and Maeral, and after landing a bundle of fish, she is given some to take back with her so that she can try to make sushi again.
After Cynthia turns down the opportunity to give a lecture about enemy tactics, Irving is taken to the barracks along with Ysildea to do it instead. There, he gives a lecture on the phantom hunger and its tentacles that the party encountered in Bihara, both what works against it and what doesn’t. The knights square off to practice anti-tentacle tactics, and Ysildea is, for a change, mildly impressed.
Cynthia visits the Reliquary of Pearls, where the dormant souls of dead Nuonians are kept until they ready to be reborn. She learns how an overlapping layer of water and light magic protects the city in the domes, and performs a barrier of interlaced water and ice magic underneath the lower floor of the reliquary to protect it from intrusion from below. She also does some scrying with the Orb and confirms the tower is not yet under threat.
Finally, in the evening, Serafina successfully makes sushi. Everyone eats well, the leftovers go to Mero, and word gets back to the queen of the good work of the party.