The Gradskan kings' jester Arlin leads Aeris's spirit to the Raven House forge. There, Aeris finds the fairy Polaris has crafted decoy fauxlacteries identical to his own, but finds his own with Arlin's help. Reawakening in his now skeletal body, Aeris leads his party to retake the phylactery at the forge, where they kill Polaris and the fairy thief Lacewing.
In the last game, Ishild killed Aeris as part of a ritual to make Aeris a lich. Aeris's spirit returned to his body in Hollin's royal mummy cache, where he overheard Ishild and the other immortals there saying that the phylactery had been stolen by the fairy Lacewing.
But before Aeris's spirit could rejoin his body and track down the phylactery, his presence caused a split between the spirits of the Gradskan kings interred there, who fought Aeris and each other over Aeris's plan. Ultimately, Aeris's animal spirit Isaf the Black Worm won the battle for Aeris and the evil kings.
During the battle, Aeris's spirit had been knocked unconscious by the good kings, but now his spirit awoke, not yet in his body. Isaf the Black Worm was gone.
He sees the "evil" king Shakkan and the other survivors bent over him. Looking beyond the kings, Aeris sees that a crowd of other spirits is crowding the entrance to the cache.
Shakkan tells Aeris that at one point during the ritual, they noticed that Marduk's court fool Arlin was gone, but they didn't think anything of it. It was only after that they noticed the phylactery was gone. Now they've sent for Arlin to return, and just as Shakkan is saying this, the crowd at the cavern entrance parts. A spirit in a court jester outfit skips into the cavern, but you can see that despite the skipping, he's deadly tense. He takes a knee in front of Shakkan. He says, "My, umm....lord, I have heard that our great liege Marduk is destroyed...the king is dead, long live the king." You can see that although the fool's head is bowed, he's looking sidelong, left and right, like a hunted animal. The fool says "Now that the great Marduk is dead, who will save you from my lash for being impudent, Shakkan?"
The other kings' spirits laugh grimly. The fool Arlin says, "Now you rule Marduk's kingdom...this...spectacular one-room cavern."
You see one of the other kings hand Shakkan the whipping crop that Arlin mentioned, apparently from the spirit-body of Marduk. Shakkan handles it thoughtfully, and just says grimly, "Arlin, tell us where the phylactery is."
Arlin suddenly laughs in delight - like the crazy Mozart laugh from Amadeus. He says, "Well, I was enjoying the ceremony when a beautiful woman came in, moving from shadow to shadow, I think it was a fairy. I was captivated by her beauty, and I watched as she took the phylactery and escaped, again moving from shadow to shadow. I left the cavern after her, following her out of the Mooncalf. She took it down Market Street, across the Thoroughkill Bridge, and into Lofton Castle." He gives the shrill Amadeus laugh again. "That woman was spell binding!"
Shakkan just say to Arlin, "You will take Aeris to the phylactery." Arlin gets the hunted animal look for a second, but then laughs shrilly again and says, "Aeris, my friend, can we leave now?" If Aeris leaves with Arlin, on the way out of the cavern Arlin stops for an instant by Marduk's pile of spirit dust and you can see from the expression on his face that although he was Marduk's fool, they must have been great friends.
Arlin leads Aeris out of the Mooncalf. Outside there's a terrible, apocalyptic storm over Hollin. He leads Aeris to Lofton Castle, down into the Raven House forge. There, he sees two spirits, Lacewing and a craftsman. You can see many broken tools there, and then you see that the craftsman is making something disturbing - it looks like a space-time shell, just like the phylactery. In fact, you see two more of them nearby on a work table. Then looking around you see there are already several of them - about 20 - scattered about the room in different places, some on tables and some on the floor. The fool laughs shrilly and says, "Here's the phylactery, Aeris!"
The craftsman was Polaris. Although Aeris's space-time phylactery was indestructible, it was also indistinguishable from the twenty fake phylacteries that Polaris had made. Derek immediately labeled them "fauxlacteries."
Although Arlin knew which was the real phylactery, as a jester he wouldn't tell Aeris outright. Instead, they played a game with the same logic as the niche door safes the party had encountered before, so Aeris was able to pick a phylactery that would be the correct one with chance 19 in 20. His spirit entered it, and he woke up in his body back at the royal mummy cache.
When Aeris enters the correct phylactery, he wakes up in his body in the royal mummy cache. His body is now skeletal. The other immortals step back in surprise as Aeris's skeletal body gets up from the granite slab. Many of them gasp.
Aeris wrapped himself up so that his new skeletal appearance wouldn't alarm Hollin, then immediately led the evil party - Bane, Kane, and Treasach - back across the bridge to Lofton Castle, where Polaris still had his phylactery. There, they fought Polaris and Lacewing. Aeris's old friend, the Tinkerbell fairy Ivy, now saw that Aeris had an evil plan and joined the fight on the fairies' side.
Polaris and Lacewing had these and these statistics, and Lacewing had the powers Shadow Jump and Strike from the Shadows below. Although Ivy escaped, Aeris and the evil party killed Polaris and Lacewing and claimed the phylactery.
