9 Tarsahk 1361, for a bit longer
This is the dream we all shared. I should mention that this was not exactly a new dream; I seem to remember something very similar as we left Odiare.
We saw a mysterious figure slowly walking towards us; he, she or it was dressed in a dark, tattered robe with a hood covering the being's face, but wisps of long silver hair spilled from the shadowy opening in the cloak. The hands that emerged from the sleeves were gnarled appendages, as pale as death, that resembled bone more then they did flesh. The robes resembled spider webs, and large black spiders crawled across the surface of the robe.
With each step that this man of nightmares took, another image briefly superimposed itself upon my subconscious, then another, and another until the images fairly raced by . I saw a face with eyes of golden light and brown withered skin, then a walking skeleton smelling of dry spice, then a beautiful woman with the head of a cat, a gypsy girl, a fallen knight's dead hand lifting his helmet's visor, a blazing circle with twelve points, a red eyed skeleton in flowing robes, a door in the Mists, a decrepit old man, a laboratory filled with corpses, a tunnel of rainbow light, a fat man on a throne, and lastly a ghostly figure reaching for me. The nightmare figure reached his hands out towards us, closer...closer....so close....and he grabbed us!
"Ah! You performed so well for me, my servants. Yes....I called you my servants, for now you will exist to serve me when, where and how I choose for you are now my tools. I have forged you in these dreams so that you may serve me. No longer can you ever be certain of what is real or of the line between the waking world and the dreamscapes I cast you into. Look upon me now- I am the Nightmare Man, your master! You will do my bidding, whether you know it or not. You have the strength of arm to accomplish my purposes but lack the wisdom to fight me. It is true that you penetrated the truths of the Dream Within, but even then you did not see the truth. So I showed you the truth. As you looked into my Cracked Mirror, you worried about the future I have chosen for you, yet you continued to press on foolishly. And now you have felt the Touch of Death and have discovered that you can be powerful with the right tools. Now, awaken, remember this and live to serve me." The creature reached its bony, gnarled hands towards its cloak. It grasped its hood. It threw the hood back... And we awoke!
We awoke in a strange inn, very disoriented; I was relieved to see that Sam was alive (albeit very weak), but Liss and Sirius were both gone. Soon, an albino girl named Blasse came up and told us that the master, a man by the unfortunate name of Mr. Fern, wanted to see us. With nothing better to do, we went downstairs to meet old Ferny, and immediately, a bit of strain came up. It seems that he'd found us all in a boat about a fortnight past, all sick with the same illness that Tolec had way back in Odiare, and with Liss and Sirius dead. The other townspeople had wanted to get rid of us, but Ferny had remembered some prophecy and had paid all the requisite fees to get us into this (highly regimented) town, heal us up, bury Liss and Sirius, and so forth. The upshot is that we all owe him close to fifty pieces of gold, and since none of us has anywhere near that much (I suspect he raided my pockets at some point, but I can't prove it), we're going to have to work for him until we pay this all off.After due discussion, I was put to work as a scullery maid. Imagine, an elf of my noble lineage, being forced to work as a scullery maid in some third-rate inn! It's enough to make me ill! And at the measly rate of two silver a day, too! I'll never get this paid off at this rate!
The first day passed fairly uneventfully, and that night, we went down to the common room to hear the bard, one Adadar Topeo by name. I had offered my services in his stead, but poor deluded Ferny decided he didn't need two bards and that one was enough, so I was curious to see how good this guy was. And I have to admit, he's a very good singer. I don't agree with his music, naturally (he seems to be a fairly religious type, and I am not so much so, of course), but still...