Mercy's wild magic surge did not resolve cleanly. As chaotic energy radiated off him in unstable pulses, the world around him bent: he pulled a Unicorn from the Upper Realms, and multicolored lights shot from his eyes as he began to uncontrollably weep. His body was rendered temporarily invisible as it healed the wounds he had taken and fortified itself against alcoholic effects for a calendar week. Transferable Curse magic formed on his right hand before both his hands temporarily transformed into iron, grasping vines coiled around him, and the earth itself rose up to encase him on all sides as it had in Bleak End.
The unicorn was clearly shaped by Mercy's personal heritage, a dark beast with a billowing multicolored mane and an icy horn. Named Hallannaë, the unicorn healed the injured and wished to share knowledge of dark forces set to sunder the planes apart. As they did, they were teleported again without another word. Without much recourse, the Crew helped Mercy break free of his earth-prison, patched themselves up, and pressed on. They did not get far, however, before spotting the lizardfolk shaman lurking in a corssing ahead, plotting a second ambush. This time, they did not hesitate to negotiate, and Nessa, Merben, and Mercy opened fire on a lizardfolk civilian rushing toward the group; but again, the shaman intervened, twisting the creature into a massive Lizardfolk Render mid-charge.
While Punmiri and Snapdragon braced against the powerful foe, Sassafras used her magic to send Ellenor airborne. The flying half-elf descended on a warrior hiding in a nearby pond. After she beat him in a brief melee, the warrior tried to escape underwater, but Elle sent a supercharged Devona after him. The spirit shunted the diving lizardfolk back upward, and the rogue executed him with aplomb. Meanwhile, the Render thrashed Punmiri and Snapdragon brutally before she and Nessa coordinated a tag-team strike, and the latter carved upward through its belly before putting the render down. Having lost another ambush, the shaman loosed a volley of magical stones that once again nearly killed Sassafras and once again tried to swim away. This time, Elle was able to use Devona to shove the shaman back to the surface, and Nessa ended things with her rapier, a fitting revenge after nearly being turned into crocodile food.
The Whistledrop Crew regrouped outside the Faeriefort, where Coriander's hundred gangsters were assembled and waiting. Mercy and Ellenor sweet-talked the tiny gate guards into fetching their Elder, and Laceleaf Flashlashes descended to meet them with visible wariness. She had a complicated history with both Sassafras and Coriander, and she made no effort to hide it. She invited the party down, and they moved carefully among the joyful fairies of the Fort, offering gifts and watching their every step. Reading their quest as the potential suicide mission that it was, Laceleaf forbade Sassafras from going any further. After some negotiation, the Elder ultimately allowed Glitterati passage, but on the condition that the Undermire door be permanently closed behind them. The gang passed into the magical farmland of Sprite's Hollow, but something in Coriander's manner revealed an unspoken truth: he believed Sassafras was his daughter.
They descended into the Undermire behind the invisible fairy vanguard, moving through layer upon layer of ruins left by different societies across the ages. Punmiri noticed something strange about that marks repeating across a hallway of flagstones; they resembled the symbol worn by "V," the cult leader she had once fled. She pressed a larger matching flagstone and knocked open a hidden door to a small closet of a room, its walls covered in writing. Mercy translated a strange fable written in Infernal, which he had happened to learn in order to connect with his heritage.
What followed was a backstory Poons had kept close: the cult had plans for her, plans tied not to Ixhis as she had believed, but to a darker entity named Virathul. They had intended to transform her, and she fled the Scycaen Imperium to escape them. As Punmiri spoke, Ellenor went pale: this "V", the black-bearded man with the half-mask, was the same figure who held power over her own family. She knew he had been working toward something terrible, and had fled his influence much like Poons had. The weight of this strangeness sat with the Whistledrop Crew as they followed the Glitterati deeper into the dark, past symbols that Mercy believed were related to Wild Magic, each one pulling at something unexplainable within him.
Then they reached their quarry, the imposing and inscrutable Undermire Dwarf-Door. Nessa, Punmiri, and Merben slipped to the side of the silent chamber, while Mercy and Ellenor stood with Coriander and Snapdragon, and the Don traced the key symbol into the stone. The door ground open slowly to reveal a secret standing before a threshold of inscrutable darkness: it was a GUY. Ellenor recognized Ulrë Helefir immediately, the bastard son of the great Helefir family and a rival thief in the Murkmire Malevolence, tangentially responsible for her losing Matthew. Coriander knew him by another name: Vex.
The nobleman greeted the Glitterati with a sneer, and with impossible speed, slashed forth towards the Don.