The Occult Bastion. Sail halfway around the world, use an assumed name, bury me in a cave on the Moon, and they would still find me and ask for a favor. I tucked the sigil away and sat down on the bed, gazing out over the city and the distant jungle on the hills beyond. The Bastion is a quasi-underground guild which offers magical training to the magically gifted, provided they have money, or preferably - are willing to go into debt.  By a combination of political chicanery, protection rackets and open threats they close off all but a very few institutes of arcane instruction. Then they use their ‘debts’ to compel half the spell casters in the world to do their dirty work when it suits their purposes.

In my experience the Bastion is ninety percent made up of cruel blowhards and swaggering braggarts. The problem is that the other ten percent are terrifying spell casters, spell blades, and arcane killers, which means they can't just be ignored. Still this was the end of the world, it seemed unlikely that their operatives here were of the highest order. I wondered if they actually wanted something, or if they were just throwing their weight around. I supposed I would find out.

Further ponderings were interrupted as I saw Beren crossing the flagstone street below and entering the inn. I let out a sigh of relief to see him fine after his frantic pursuit of whatever had been snooping in our room. I heard his footsteps coming down the hall and instinctively prepared, laying back on the bed and shaking out my hair before propping my head up on my palm. 

“It is the most beautiful thing I have ever seen… and the ale isn’t bad either,” I joked, my eyes wide with honest astonishment that he had managed to find such a prize in this malarial jungle. I beckoned him over towards the bed with a crooked finger and a languid smile. 

“I take it the strange news is about our visitor?”