Carl and Donut use Donut’s improved Puddle Jumper spell to reach the skyfowl administrative building and ask to see Magistrate Featherfall. Inside, they find a wealthy, insulated skyfowl bureaucracy where non-skyfowl workers serve abusive eagle customers. Featherfall’s assistant, Miss Quill, refuses them because the murders they are investigating did not involve skyfowl, confirming that the town’s leadership is indifferent to anyone outside its own kind.

To force a reaction, Carl pulls the murdered prostitute’s corpse from his inventory and drops it on Miss Quill’s desk. Because Carl had previously shown a town guard the body along with his official gate pass, the guards do not arrest him when Miss Quill calls for them. Under pressure, Miss Quill reveals that Featherfall is not present during the day and now only comes out at night. Carl checks Featherfall’s chamber door, discovers it is magically locked, and leaves without getting inside, but he and Donut decide they will return and confront Featherfall later.

With two hours left before their scheduled interview, Carl decides to spend the time gaining experience outside the city. He experiments with his new xistera by carrying pre-lit hob-lobber bombs in his inventory so he can fire them with a shorter fuse. After finding an area that has already been cleared, the group approaches an abandoned pool containing the corpse of a previously killed neighborhood boss called the Divider.

The group is suddenly ambushed when magical darkness falls over the area and red enemy markers close in from both sides. Donut identifies two city elves among the attackers, and Carl realizes the ambush likely ties back to the enemies they have been hunting. Carl uses the xistera to kill one unseen monster and one elf, but the darkness remains as large undead creatures advance. He then throws goblin dynamite in both directions and jumps into the pool for cover, only to land on the Divider’s bloated corpse and lose consciousness when the explosions trigger a massive secondary blast.

Donut later explains that the dynamite kills most of the attackers, the dead elf breaks the darkness effect, and the Divider’s corpse explodes hard enough to fling Carl onto a rooftop. Covered in gore but still functional, Donut grabs the neighborhood map, uses spells and Mongo to finish the surviving monsters, and heals Carl. When Carl wakes, he learns the attackers were Shambling Berserkers, darkness-empowered undead abominations. Carl and Donut conclude that Featherfall probably sent the attack, making the magistrate seem even more likely to be connected to the murders and the broader plot against them.