The cultists and their minions continue to gather outside the Old Greenest Inn; they don't seem to be making a move to invade, but they appear to be keeping the inn surrounded. The adventurers suspect they are waiting to gather up a sufficient force. Some of them have torches.

Hooflepoof puts on his Cloak of Invisibility and explores the Inn. Just outside the dining room is the lobby, which has a staircase to the upper floor. On the upper floor there is a landing and four doors with numbers, most likely guest rooms. All the doors are locked.

Borrowing Bilbo's axe, and using his Boots of Striding and Springing, Hooflepoof jumps up and bashes a hole in the ceiling above the landing, opening a hole to the roof, and he is able to boost Bilbo up on top of the inn. Bilbo stays low so that the bad guys don't see her, and in her best bird-language skills, calls out to any birds that can hear. After a few minutes, a few curious ravens come to roost on the roof, and when Bilbo whispers to them, one comes close enough to chatter quietly at her. Bilbo asks the raven to bring all his friends, quickly, but the raven doesn't move, and cocks his head to the side as if questioning. "Please," Bilbo says, "help me save my friends." The raven looks her over carefully for a minute more, and then swoops over to his buddies and they fly off together.

Meanwhile, Hooflepoof jumps down off the roof, still invisible, and slips over to the Townmaster's Hall to see if he can gather any help. The Townmaster's Hall is dark, locked up for the night. He looks around for one of the teenage kids who always seem to be running around in this town, and asks him where Governor Nighthill lives. The kid takes him just a few blocks away and points out the house. Hooflepoof removes his cloak and knocks on the door. Nighthill answers the door in just his underwear, and with a flagon of beer in his hand. Apparently he wasn't expecting any problems tonight.

"The cultists are back," says Hooflepoof. "They have us surrounded at the Old Greenest Inn. I was able to escape with invisibility, but my friends are trapped."

"What? I thought you were going to the Keep?"

"Well we were on our way there but we stopped for some dinner."

Governor Nighthill shakes his head in disbelief. "You know these guys are ruthless, and after you or Leosin or whoever, and you just decide to sit down completely undefended at the inn, because you are hungry? You should have just gone to the Keep, that was the whole point! Well, I can put together a posse, but it'll take a few minutes. Let me get dressed."

He disappears back into his house to get ready, and Hooflepoof waits outside his door.

Elfo, back at the besieged inn, goes out to the lobby, where he sees the inkeeper Kaspar at the service desk, completely absorbed in a book. "Got any ideas to take out this mob?" Elfo asks.

"What mob?" says Kaspar, just now looking around and noticing some creatures outside. "Oh, them. Whoa. What are they here for?"

"They are probably after Leosin, the monk. They had captured him before and we freed him."

"Want me to go talk to them? I'm just the innkeeper, I can tell them he isn't here, or something."

"No, don't do that. These guys are cruel and merciless, you never know what they'll do."

Elfo cooks up an elaborate plan to help Kaspar escape, but Kaspar isn't interested. "They're after you guys," he says, "I have to quarrel with them. I can probably just walk out. It's you guys that need to escape. Maybe you should go out through the catacombs."

Elfo just stares at him dumbly, so Kaspar explains that the Old Greenest Inn was built on the ruins of the previous inn, which he calls the "Old Old Greenest Inn", which was destroyed in a town fire many years ago. The old inn was a little bit larger, and was apparently a front for some smuggling activities, because when it burned down they found a tunnel going from the basement of the inn, under the street to the south. When the new inn was built on top of it, the underground area was abandoned, but the passage is probably still there.

"Great!" says Elfo, "how do we get there?"

Kaspar shuffles away into a room behind the front desk and returns with a rusty key. But when he leads Elfo into the kitchen, he realizes that he doesn't need the key. The hatch in the corner of the kitchen, leading down under the inn, is already standing open. Elfo picks his way down the stairs into the dusty basement, and although the passage is musty and full of cobwebs, it is still serviceable, and he passes under the street to the other end, where at the top of the stairs he finds another hatch, also standing open. He peeks out into the room above, finding an old workshop that appears to have also been abandoned for many years. He heads back to report to his friends.

Nighthill comes out after a few minutes, dressed in leather armor and carrying a salvaged weapon. Hooflepoof follows him over to the Keep, where Nighthill rings a heavy bell in a belltower. "They'll know what it means," he says, "especially after what happened a couple nights ago. We should get at least 40 guys or so, just give us a few minutes."

Bilbo, still keeping a low profile up on the roof, has not been spotted. She notices more ravens have gathered almost invisibly on the surrounding rooftops, and the more she looks around, the more she sees. They are everywhere, on every roof line, hundreds of them. The ravens chatter quietly to themselves, carefully observing what is going on below.