While none of you know the detective, it should not be hard to check what station sent men here who was at the scene for the preliminary investigation-provided you have either access to police information or very good connections. With the video now copied in one of the spare removable disks of the archives, this would be the best lead you had since the investigation begun.

Meanwhile, Reed and Arnold uncover information in less conventional ways; Reed realizes the bank is full of magical auras; there are faint but pervasive traces of necromancy and transmutation covering the entire area that may account for the dead plant. There is a powerful necromantic presence around the two dead guards in the vault and a slightly smaller one in the archives. More interesting are the transmutation auras concentrated in both the oxygen vials and the dead guard outside as well as the air vents right above the archives. Most interesting of all, there is a series of auras of blinding intensity in tightly packed concentric circles around one of the storage compartments within the vault; the circles alternate between abjuration and conjuration and, through Reed can't be sure, must once have formed seven layers-and that is frightening; despite their current intensity, the auras are only remains of broken enchantments.

Arnold senses an aura of evil polluting the air. It clings to the three corpses as if what killed them infected them with a tiny piece of its presence but it also gathers around the archives as if whatever evil robbed the bank paused there for a time. But as Arnold turns his gaze deeper into the vault, he gags, takes a couple steps back and almost vomits; there is a vile presence of such terrifying intensity emanating from one of the storage compartments that Arnold could swear some supernatural evil stood before him. The compartment though is empty. And while the aura must once have been tightly packed to fit inside, it is now slowly seeping to the rest of the vault's interior.