[[1493-04-04 - Hour 5|<< Hour 5]] | [[1493-04-07 - Hour 6 II|Hour 6 II >>]] ## Hour 6 I Well, things could be going worse, I suppose. Sure, Achlys was able to insert herself into my dream, and yes, she did have some pretty ominous words for me. But we also found a safehouse of sorts, and it has beds and showers. So win-lose. The dream had me waking up in a house that I knew I had built for me and Ezmerelda. But she was nowhere to be found; neither was Rudolph. Only Achlys. Achlys was the one who told me that it was a dream. That's when I remembered Elysium. Achlys informed me that she was there as a courtesy and that things don't work in Elysium how they worked in Borca and Barovia. She told me that there isn't going to be any grand heroic finale. According to Achlys, she has nothing to do with us being in Elysium. The dark powers apparently want us out of the domains entirely – which I'd more than happy to comply with, at this point, if I wasn't presently stuck in one. I would've written the whole thing off if Ezmerelda hadn't also dreamed about Achlys telling her pretty much the exact same thing. Not sure how she managed to get in our dreams, but I'm hoping it stays a one-time occurrence; "courtesy" or not, it was still unpleasant. When I woke up, the clock chimed six times. Me and Ezmerelda went downstairs to see what stupidity the new hour brought. The stupidity, it turned out, took the shape of strange symbols drifting around all of our heads, save for Selise's and Ireena's. As strange as the symbols were, I could still comprehend them for some reason. They seemed to be relaying our thoughts or something: Rictavio's said stuff about justice and his supposed curse; Skoll's said stuff about how nice he is and about his fear of rejection; Nia's said that she's bad at communicating and is afraid that she's going to turn into a monster (poor Nia). Ezmerelda threatened everyone against reading hers. I didn't think she was threatening me, though, so I snuck a glance – hers mentioned a responsibility to stop evil, and also that she wants to hold onto the happiness that she's found. I found that last part to be very sweet, but it made me a bit nervous to learn what mine said. Ezmerelda started to tell me when I asked, but she cut herself off. It definitely didn't help my nerves that she seemed embarrassed about it. Ireena ended up writing mine down for me. The first said: > Truth. It matters greatly to me to understand the whole of things; not just who's good and evil, but why people do the things they do, and what I should be doing about these things in turn. Which, okay, true. The second said: > I would do anything for the woman I love. Okay, well, I would do anything for my loved ones in general, really, but. Especially her. Also admittedly true. Still, there's exactly one person that I would've chosen to broadcast this truth to, and it'd be kind of embarrassing even then. So instead of kind of embarrassing, it was instead incredibly embarrassing, so that's cool. The last one said: > Some could say that I don't engage with certain situations the most appropriately. Mostly when it's to do with myself, and how I feel about myself, and the value I place on my own life, and... well, it's not a big deal. Not sure about that one. I think I place plenty value on myself and my life. Ireena tried to reassure me; she said that she thinks that I act plenty appropriately and that it's sweet how much I care about Ezmerelda. After everyone had their fill of having their shit on blast, we decided to check out the new inn rooms we gained access to. There were three to check out: 22, 130, and 207. 22 was a bust – another spider egg room. Room 130 was mostly empty, save for the large mimic-chest and the bloodstains coating the floor. The mimic could talk. He introduced himself as Whippersnapper, saying that he was a "bit of a trader." His trade offer: information for flesh. Considering that information has been ridiculously hard to come by in this shitty, shitty place, we decided to take him up on the offer. Me and Rictavio ran down to Cicero's to retrieve the corpse of the imposter-Nia; it was unpleasant as ever to see, but sometimes you need to satiate a mimic so that it can tell you to go dunk your sentient weapons in some goo at the bottom of the lake, I fucking guess. Room 207 seemed pretty cool at the time, but has since then managed to become completely useless to us. It was a comfortable place – a safe one too, judging by the ward on the ground. It had a bed, which me and Ezmerelda called dibs on. But again: literally doesn't matter anymore, because now we have access to an entire house. Before we left the inn, I got out Amelia's diary so that Nia could look at it through the mirror. She was able to read two more entries: > I returned to the sanctuary on the lake to meet my strange new friend. Each of his faces has a different smile, and I find myself growing more uneasy as the hours pass, but his thoughts are too valuable to so easily discard. > No sleep. I have not slept since I boarded the train. Perhaps this is well, for my dreams were haunted by a strange tapping, like a finger on the other side of a window. So she got on the invisible train somehow. We had a quick discussion; if it's in the ethereal plane, Rictavio can help us see it. I'm hoping it's that easy. Having finished our business at the inn, we headed for Cicero's to fulfill our promise of food and a repaired roof. We didn't make it far before we came across more of those druids; they were conducting a ritual that looked a lot more involved than the last one we had seen. One druid was plugged into what appeared to be machinery while the others stood around it. A few of the druids looked like they had sustained pretty heavy wounds recently. Ezmerelda was pretty sure that they were the same druids who she had gotten into it with a couple hours ago – the ones who knocked her down to four out of nine lives on the Charm. I wanted to kill them. I kept it to myself; Ezmerelda didn't want anything to do with them. So we doubled back and took another route. The next thing to stop us wasn't any cause for alarm, but that doesn't mean it wasn't depressing. It was a funeral procession. Ezmerelda was familiar with the people in the dark gray cloaks, dragging the bodies through the streets – they're called custodians. I'll have to ask Ezmerelda why she knew that and why she seemed so sad watching them, though I'm sure the answer isn't going to be very fun. We made it to Cicero's in any case. Cicero remarked that it's good that we're still kicking – he actually seemed to mean it, too. Skoll dragged Rictavio off to cook. Ezmerelda called them repulsive; Nia called it surprising. Ezmerelda then proceeded to ask why Skoll would be interested in Rictavio of all people. I should've realized that it was a rhetorical question. But I didn't, which is why I ended up saying that I guess that Rictavio is kind of handsome. It wasn't enough that I was hedging my statements, and it wasn't enough that Ezmerelda was the one who asked in the first place – she still wasn't happy. She told me to go work on Cicero's roof, and so I went. The roof was an easy fix. I took some time to chat with Cicero while I was working, but I had a little trouble making any kind of small talk. Instead, I ended up asking him if he thinks there's any hope for Elysium. He didn't give me a straight answer; he just said that he doesn't think things will ever go back to how they used to be. By the time I had finished with the roof, Skoll and Rictavio had finished cooking some elven bread. It was good, unsurprisingly, and it was nice to eat something other than rations. Cicero fed some of the bread to one of the alley cats who frequents his bar. Skoll – of course – wanted to go feed the others, which is how we all ended up in a courtyard with what had to be over a hundred cats. Most of the cats scattered when we showed up, bringing the number of cats down to the much more manageable single digits. Still, those remaining were pretty strange in their own right. One was wearing boots; one vomited up gold pieces; one was hairless and looked like it was pulsing; one was mummified and had three mummified kittens. There was also the one that vomited up a substance which Ezmerelda identified as sovereign glue; Ezmerelda took it upon herself to collect it for me, probably because she's the sweetest and funniest person ever. There was another cat that looked like a starry void. We'd soon learn that touching it teleports you to that fucked up staircase; we'd also soon learn that the staircase is called the "infinite staircase." Lastly (before the Cat Lord, who I'll get to in a second) was Mr. Nibblets. He's a wobbly looking guy, with too many toes, a sideways eye, and a crooked nose. And I love him. I think he loves me too, judging by how happy he was when I pet him and when I got Ezmerelda to remove the bad-luck curse he had plaguing him. He even followed us all the way to our new safehouse. Anyway, the Cat Lord. Skoll put some bread down; soon after, we heard humming coming from down the alley, and then I saw Ezmerelda walk from out of the shadows. Except Ezmerelda was standing right next to me, and the one coming from the alley had a cat mouth, tail, and ears. I started laughing. and that was before it started to shift between cat-like versions of the rest of us. The Cat Lord settled on looking like Skoll before it got down to business, which wasn't really business at all; it wanted to play cards. We were happy to indulge, though it quickly became clear that any game we played against the Cat Lord would end up as a loss for us. After a few games, it had us draw individual cards. According to the Cat Lord, all the cards we ended up drawing were good luck. I'm inclined to agree, considering we got an inn key and a land deed to a safehouse out of it. We also got ahold of a strange spherical device – the Cat Lord's favorite toy, apparently. I'm not sure what rules the Cat Lord was playing by, but I'm not going to complain. I even played a game of my own with it using my illusion cards once we were wrapping up. The Cat Lord declared that it likes us and that it will be showing again up at some point; it also made sure to mention that doors and locks are not a concern for it. So that's cool, I guess? We left the Cat Lord and traveled to the safehouse located at 8 Angel Mews. The safehouse is incredibly comfortable. It has four bedrooms, each with big ass beds, and all three of the bathrooms seem to have working toilets and warm showers. There's also soap in the bathrooms and food in the kitchen. We lucked out, basically. It'll be good to have a warm, safe place to sleep in this hellhole. Nia found some kind of electric gun in a safe inside the house, but it was thankfully out of ammunition. Nia seemed to be the only one who was all that beat up about it. Speaking of Nia, she was able to identify the spherical device given to us by the Cat Lord. She found that it has a guy in it; the others are getting ready to talk to him, so I should probably cut this short. I'll write another update once we have another chance to breathe, which hopefully won't be too long from now. --- ## Page Tags/Properties **Tags:** #Journal **Category:** [[Journals and Writings.base|Journals and Writings]] **Character:** [[Krue d'Avenir|Krue]] **Campaign:** [[City of Eyes]] **Date ([[Calendar of Harptos|Harptos]]):** 04/06/1493