"Unfortunately," Shiroe said, "I don't have a plan."

Just like that, everything stopped. The map's glow faded, and it stopped responding to input. The Ritual of the Prolonged Siren's Song failed. Even the decorative runes lining the ceiling faded to almost nothing.

"That's odd," Shiroe said.

Xylara clutched her arms around herself as the sudden lack of mana chilled her. "It's gone," she said. "All of it's gone!"

Tirra stopped carving her wrist as she realized she wasn't getting mana for it anymore. Even Amara was tapped dry. "Please come here, Eva. I require your assistance to treat Tirra's wound without magic."

One by one, Olrara, Jarnaren and Zulrola entered the room, each seemingly suffering the same mana withdrawl as Xylyra.

"What happened?"

"We ran out of mana sooner than I expected," Shiroe said.

"I'm sorry," Amellia said. "I was so focused on throughput, I didn't even think about where the mana was coming from..."

"No, Amellia," Shiroe said, "don't blame yourself. I was tracking our mana economy in my head the entire time. By my estimate, we should have been able to keep up that pace for at least another four minutes."

"Then I'd say that's a pretty bad estimate," Zulrola said, "wouldn't you?"

"Indeed. Judging by when the map failed, I'd say we're about 523 Mana short. Or 258 Health, or 1247 Stamina, if you prefer. Give or take 1%."

"How much is that in Imps?" Niki asked.

"Well, Imps are a rougher unit of measurement, because not all Imps are created equal. But I'd say we were probably short about 25 or 26 imps when all the magic failed. Why do you ask?"

"Because not all of the magic failed." She pointed to a spot on the map where a couple dozen glowing dots, presumably representing Imps, were still visible.

"That's not part of the map," Xylyra realized. "It's an Illusion spell someone must have cast earlier!" That's why it was still working. The mana to sustain it had been spent upfront.

"What does it mean?" Jarnaren asked.

"It means that I was fooled into thinking there were more Imps on the map than there were," Shiroe said. "It means we have a saboteur among us."