[@Lady Amalthea]

That's a fair point. I had thought NPCs were static and had some sort of literary device of plot armor round them.
I'd didn't fully expect Femnal to know where Ntaj is per say, could have overhead something. Or just simply state he doesn't know/give a damn and leave Thomas to his meal.

With respect to editing the time down, the character isn't designed that way, so he'd be even more useless with one spell.