Virgil's Grimoire

Maine was almost through the circle when the cocoon spoke.

Virgil had not truly recovered. Cynthia's hemp had only started the work of holding him together. He woke for a moment inside it, half-conscious and still close enough to death that his first instinct was to make a joke about old VQU exams.

Then he called Maine over.

The others were waiting to leave the Void Realm. The teleportation circle was open. Cold still clung to them from the mountain and the bear den. But Virgil had one more thing to do before Maine stepped back into Gravenhurst.

He handed Maine a book.

It was his grimoire: not just a spellbook, and not just a souvenir from a rescued warlock. It was a record of what Virgil had studied, survived, and written down through his own adventures. He admitted he had not been using it much lately, then looked at Maine and said, without cruelty, that Maine did not look like much of a warlock.

No offense.

Maybe, Virgil said, someone connected to one of the new causes could make use of it.

That made the gift bigger than Maine alone.

Maine received the grimoire as a living piece of Virgil's legacy, something that could become a path if the right person studied it. A warlock who read it might learn more about what Virgil had understood, where he had been, and what his old magic still knew how to open.

The party had come to Cynthia's cave to return a husband.

Before they left, Virgil returned something too: a thread of knowledge that could keep moving after him, carried by Maine out of the Void Realm and back into the campaign's future.