Brigitte Yrsdottir | Evening | 22nd of Leaffall 248 A.T.C

The street outside the Seahorse's Catch erupts without warning. a dragonfolk adventurer who had been sitting outside with a plate of food a moment ago is suddenly crossing the distance to Brigitte at full sprint, sword already drawn, and there is something in his eyes that makes the hair on the back of her neck stand up before she has time to think about why.

Not rage. Not fury. Something that has burned completely past both of those things and come out the other side as pure, directionless devastation. He doesn't look at her like she is a person. He doesn't look at her like she is an obstacle. He looks at her like she is simply the nearest thing, and he hits like he means to end her. She gets out of the way. Barely.

Behind the crazed adventurer, more of them are standing up from their tables. Inside the restaurant, glass breaks. Someone screams. The street, which thirty seconds ago was an ordinary evening in the Lower Saltbrick, is suddenly a very small space with too many drawn weapons in it.

Ervin is already there, bleeding from somewhere and still moving, trying to help a hurt civilian. Sir Everhard has put himself between three of them and a group of civilians, blocking hits that would drop most people through sheer armor and stubbornness. Grasha protects a group of young kids that were playing. Celica has a protective barrier up that is taking damage faster than it could handle. Cassidy, the young lady from the fish cart, the one Brigitte had passed that morning is on the ground with nowhere to go and nobody close enough to reach her.

The crazed adventurers go down and just get back up. That's the thing nobody was prepared for. Drop one of them and by the time you've turned to deal with the next one the first is already on his feet again, same eyes, same terrible forward momentum, like the part of a person that registers pain and consequence has been cleanly removed.

Brigitte shouts it across the street to anyone who can hear: They're poisoned! Tie them up when they fall! Sir Everhard and Grasha hear it but there's no time to adjust. Branded takes an axe handle to the ribs, but keeps going.

Sonya hears the yelling and comes out at a run, already reaching for her baubles. Wilt follows a beat behind her, slower, pulling his hood further over his face — not because he doesn't want to help, but because the sun hasn't fully set yet.

Sonya moves through the chaos throwing her healing baubles at whoever needs them most, which is everyone, which means she is never in the right place. Ervin takes an axe across the back, trying to protect Cassidy. Celica's barrier cracks, then it breaks entirely.

Sir Everhard has been an immovable wall for most of this fight, taking hits that would put most people into the ground and giving nothing back but resistance. Then one gets through — a blow that catches him at exactly the wrong angle and sends him stumbling sideways.

One second. That's all it takes. The crazed lumberjack behind him doesn't hesitate. The civilian opens their mouth to scream and doesn't get the chance. The axe buries itself into their face with a sound that stops everyone who hears it cold. Sir Everhard's roar tears down the street.

"FUCK!"

It comes out raw, furious and completely helpless, which is the worst kind. He gets up. He keeps fighting. There is nothing else to do. Brigitte and Branded are barely in time to protect Celica to stop another of the crazed from finishing what Sir Everhard couldn't prevent.

Then one of the crazed goes for Sonya. Brigitte's vines catch most of it, but not all — she takes a hit and stumbles. Wilt sees it happen. Whatever composure he had been holding onto goes with it. What comes out of his claws is not light — it is the precise opposite of light, black and focused and traveling faster than the crazed fighter can react to, and it drops him clean. Nobody comments on it. There isn't time. Sonya's herbs manage to snap some of the crazed adventurers out of their state.

In the alley alongside the restaurant, someone is watching. Masked, staying in the shadows, not moving toward the fight, holding out a glass bottle with something inside it. Brigitte catches it between everything else and gets to it when she can. A voice comes from the shadows in that language she half-recognizes.

"Come, use this!"

She takes the bottle, a memory hits her without permission... A field of flowers, that smell — and then it's gone and there's still a fight happening so she moves. Two doses. She pours the first into the throat of a downed crazed adventurer and something leaves their body along with the blood.

The guards arrive before it's fully over. Wilt is already moving toward the alley, one claw pressed over his face, the black energy from his hands still not stopping the way it should. Branded grabs Sonya. Brigitte looks at Sir Everhard and Grasha, makes a silent calculation about debts to be repaid later, and follows.

Branded, Sonya, Wilt and Brigitte meet up in an alleyway, pressed against walls, waiting for guards to pass. Wilt keeps his claws tucked, the black energy still bleeding from them in a way he can't seem to stop. Sonya tries to stay close to him, but Wilt keeps her at bay. Branded scouts ahead at each corner. It is slow and it is tense and at one point a guard passes close enough that Brigitte can hear him breathing, and nobody moves until he's gone.

Then Branded spots the sewer entrance. That's their way out of here.

They moved through the sewers to avoid the guards presence near the hideout's entrance. The idea was a reasonable one, except that something was already down there with them.

They heard it before they saw it, a metallic scraping, rhythmic and deliberate, coming from somewhere ahead and getting louder. Then a voice, or something that functioned as a voice, speaking in that language Brigitte half-recognized from the prior sewer incident... The words meant nothing to the others.

To Brigitte they meant enough: "Life form detected." And it was following them!

She told the others to keep moving and split off before anyone could argue about it, drawing it down a different passage, away from the direction of the secret hideout entrance. It followed. She took another turn. It followed that too, the metallic sound staying with her no matter which way she went, patient and consistent in the way of something that doesn't get tired.

She found a ladder, went up through a street grate, and came out into the Trader District in the dark, crouching on the cobblestones and listening. Below her, the sound moved past. Slowed. Stopped. "Life form signal lost..." Then it moved on.

She waited until she couldn't hear it anymore, then doubled back through a hideout's entrance Sonya was in the hallway when she walked through the door and grabbed her immediately, relieved that she wasn't caught or arrested.

Brigitte Yrsdottir | Late Evening | 22nd of Leaffall 248 A.T.C

In the family hideout, Wilt was at the bar looking worse than he'd let on. The black energy was still coming off his claws in slow pulses, and he's trying to sit very still in the way of someone concentrating hard on not letting something get worse. Sloane had pulled up a chair next to him and wasn't talking, which was probably the right call. Wilt pleaded for one of the others to get Gurak, he'd know what to do. Brigitte immediately went to the guest room, where Vesper was.

All the boxes had been moved and relabeled since she'd last been in here — symbols she couldn't read on tags she didn't recognize. Vesper was directing Gurak on where to put things with the easy authority over him. She told Vesper that Wilt needed Gurak. Vesper looked at her with the particular patience of someone who enjoys the moment before they make you say the thing you don't want to say.

Brigitte:
Wilt needs help.

Vesper turns around slowly, looks between the two of them, and smiles.

Vesper:
Well, I'll let him go. If she asks me nicely.

Brigitte holds his gaze.

Brigitte:
Can Gurak go and help Wilt?

Vesper:
Not nice enough.

Brigitte:
Please.

Vesper:
Now in one sentence.

Brigitte:
Can Gurak go and help Wilt, Please?

Vesper steps forward, close enough that Vesper had to look up directly to Brigitte, completely unphased by the size difference, as if she's examining something that amuses her.

Vesper:
Such a good pet. Go on then, take him. Make sure to bring him back.

Gurak sets down the box he's holding and leaves without a word. Brigitte waits until she hears his footsteps disappear down the hall. Vesper passes her on the way out, lets her eyes settle on the collar for just a moment.

Vesper:
"That does look nice on you. Could be a little tighter though..."

Brigitte reaches up and tightens it herself. She doesn't look away while she does it. As she leaves the guest room, she hears Vesper's snide comment echo through the hallway.

Vesper:
"I always get what I want."

Gurak sits with Wilt at the bar and speaks to him quietly, his hands over Wilt's claws, moving in slow deliberate motions like he was trying to coax something back into a shape it had lost. After a while, Gurak asks Wilt to take off his glasses, Brigitte steers Branded and Sonya out the family hall to give Wilt and Gurak some privacy.

The three of them sat down in Sonya's room. She had a cut on her arm that she kept touching without seeming to notice she was doing it.

Branded, Brigitte and Sonya tried to go over everything that happened not even an hour ago. What could've caused those adventurers to go feral? Was it the fish? Is it the water?

Something had gotten into the food, or into the water the food came from, and the people who ate it had become what they'd fought tonight. Brigitte told them about the stranger masked theran in the alley — the same one from the sewers, the one with the staff with flowers on it, the one that Brigitte, Sonya and Reinald rescued. He hadn't stepped into the light once. Hadn't moved toward them. Had simply waited, bottle outstretched, for her to come to him.

Branded and Sonya wonder, why was the masked Theran carrying the cure to the incident?
The masked Theran must've known what was going to happen before any of them did, which meant he'd either caused it or they'd been watching long enough to understand it, and the way they'd handed over the bottle to Brigitte suggested it wasn't the former... Whatever their motive, if they would've have been there, things could've gone far worse.

Sonya said she needed to make more healing baubles, and stock up on antidotes. She was forced to use all of them during the incident. Brigitte realized that Sonya must still be high on adrenaline from the incident. Brigitte then starts to explain the ooze-based process of her healing baubles, the suspension process, the particular properties of the outer membrane that allowed it to absorb through skin on impact. Brigitte and Branded let her talk, it's a good distraction to the both of them.

Reinald Vulperian | Night | 22nd of Leaffall 248 A.T.C

Reinald was in bed writing in his journal when Röka manifested at the window and said he sensed something. Familiar, but he couldn't place it. Reinald suggested that they'd focus on that sensation. What came through briefly was a vision of the sewers. Something mechanical passing through a corridor.

"Life form detected."

Someone climbing out through a grate above it. As the vision ends, Reinald's Niðavellirian arm sparked. Röka's gemstone's glowing in way it hadn't before. Röka said it might be Niðavellirian technology, meaning that whatever was moving below the city ran on the same ancient mechanisms that kept Reinald's arm working. Reinald asked how he knew. Röka said it had simply arrived in his mind, there's no other explanation.

They sat with the possibility that now that the gem is connected to the Niðavellirian arm, perhaps Röka sense other ancient mechanisms nearby...? Which also left Reinald wondering about how Röka might be considerably older than the stone he currently occupied.

Reinald gets ready to go to sleep, when suddenly he hears Aveline's voice from downstairs, urgent. "Ervin! Are you alright!?

Hearing Aveline's voice, Reinald gets up out of bed, puts on a bathrobe, and finds that Victoria had done much of the same. A rare sight for Reinald to see his aunt without her armor. The two of them find Ervin and Aveline in the hallway of the mansion.

Ervin had massive wound across his back. Aveline got him to a chair, Victoria helped him take his armor off, and Reinald uses Sonya's healing bauble on it. The wound didn't close exactly, but the bleeding slowed and the flesh began knitting itself back together faster than it should have. Ervin let out a long breath, Reinald said he really needed to get more of those!

Ervin describes the incident, people eating outside at the Seahorse's Catch and then they weren't, adventurers and guests that went completely crazed, many people got hurt. He'd gotten a few civilians clear, but at least one was killed. The guards had arrived and taken everyone into custody, injured, protector and aggressor alike. He escaped through the backdoor of the Seahorse's Catch.

Reinald is listening to Ervin describe the incident — the way the crazed adventurers went down and got straight back up, the way knocking them out did nothing. Something cold settles over him because he has experienced this before. That dream, which is still so vivid he could still place every detail of it without even trying.

Reinald tells Aveline, Victoria and Ervin about that he's seen something like before in a dream. The same behavior, the same pattern, the poison that had to be cleared before any their crazed condition ended. Ervin, Aveline and Victoria listen to him, despite their initial confusion.

The word we comes out at some point without him intending it to and Victoria's eyes move to him and stay there for a moment without comment... The conversation that follows moves through everything they have.

The fish and where it came from, the water and where that came from. The dam and the purification room marked restricted and what might be happening inside it. The missing people. The flowers turning up across the city at doors, windows and the bathhouse.

Are the flowers marking something? Potential targets or protected, they still couldn't tell which. Victoria wonders if the poisoning might be related to "The Good Stuff" and what it does to a person in the wrong quantity, which would explain the behavior of the crazed people.

Victoria wonders if it explains Lewys cracking down on exactly the places and people most likely to be connected to its distribution. They wonder whether Lewys knows more of what's going on or simply tightening his grip because tightening his grip was the only response he has.

Nobody arrived at a answer.

Ervin's exhausted and needs to rest, and it's best if he remains at the mansion for now. People could be searching for him. Reinald gave up his room without hesitation. Aveline escorts Ervin upstairs, while Victoria helps Reinald settle on the couch in the living room.

Victoria then closes the door to the living room, turning towards Reinald.

"Reinald. When you talked about your dream. You said 'we'. Who is we?"

Reinald wouldn't lie to his aunt, he tells her about the dream properly. The warehouse. Aveline's workers going crazy in the same way the people outside the Seahorse's Catch had gone tonight. The woman, Brigitte he'd been fighting alongside — felt like he'd known her for years before they'd ever been introduced. He'd had that dream more than ten days ago, before they even arrived in the city, and it had never faded the way dreams fade. Every detail still sharp.

Victoria was quiet for a moment...

"Reinald... This is not the first time, I've heard something similar to this."

Then she told him about his uncle, Marco her twin brother.

Leonopolis, 25 years ago. The two of them there as ambassadors, and they were under a lot of pressure. The day of the celebration for Queen Agimi's pregnancy, Marco woke up insisting he'd dreamed that King Anwell Orz was going to be assassinated.

She'd written it off as nerves, but Marco had spent the entire morning buying every potion he could find regardless, which she had also written off as a whim. As the kind of coincidence that becomes a good story. His uncle had told that story at least a hundred times. She had always assumed it was nothing more than that. Reinald experienced something similar... Now, Victoria wasn't sure anymore. Was it a warning? A premonition of the future? What could it be?

Reinald tried to reach Röka, but got no answer...

They talked through what it meant practically. They'd need antidotes, or perhaps help from the clerics at the Temple of Concepts in the nearby city of Velvetglade. But Victoria wasn't too sure on how to approach this matter. But perhaps she could this evening's incident against Lewys, maybe get him to talk.

The two of them agree that investigating The Dam is still the right approach for now. Although Victoria has her doubt about this "Brigitte". She said it carefully, in the way she said things she wanted heard: "You never know what people's actual motives are."

Reinald said he'd keep his wits about him. She looked at him for a moment like she was deciding if that was sufficient, she wished him good luck on his investigation and left the room. Reinald laid on the couch in the dark, and Röka remained unusually quiet...

Best keep an antidote ready.

Reinald & Brigitte | Early Morning | 23rd of Leaffall, 248 A.T.C

Aveline knocked before six. She had sandwiches and the expression of someone who had slept five hours and decided that was plenty. The horses were already saddled at the back of the mansion — two chestnuts and an andalusian for Aveline, all three looking considerably more awake than the ones about to ride them.

They rode out through Haven's Reach checkpoint in the early grey of the morning. The guard on duty was half-asleep against his post and waved them through without much interest when Aveline mentioned "A visit to Needlethorne farm." The city behind them was quiet in the particular way of a city that had a difficult night and hasn't fully processed it yet.

Brigitte was already at the Haven's Reach fountain when they came around. After introductions, Aveline handed her the third horse, Brigitte asked to speak to Reinald alone. Aveline responded that she needed to map out the route anyways, so rode a little ahead to give them some space.

Brigitte told him about the previous night. The street outside the Seahorse's Catch. The enraged civilians who went down and got back up. The strange masked theran in the alley who had waited in the shadows with the antidote already prepared, who hadn't once stepped into the light. Reinald listened and told her it matched exactly what the both of them dreamed about. Neither of them pushed it further than that.

They caught up to Aveline.

Brigitte had noticed it at the fountain and was still noticing it now... something about her sat wrong with her in a way she couldn't articulate. The orange tint in her eyes. Her red-orange hair catching the early morning light. Nothing specific, nothing she could point to.

Except for one thing, she pronounced Brigitte's name differently than the others, technically more correct... And that felt as if every bone in her body registered something unresolved every time she looked at her, like someone else she couldn't quite remember, a face she'd seen before but couldn't place. She kept her eyes on the road and said nothing about it.

At the edge of the road sat a small mercenary camp with Free Roadsmen banners, A harefolk in proper armor approached Aveline, she was nothing like what Vesper's people wore. Aveline informs Reinald and Brigitte that they'd been hired to guard the area, as a Peryton had been spotted in the area. Reinald remembered that Peryton are typically lone hunters, single target, they go for the heart and leave with the spoils of their hunt.

Along the road, the three discussed the plan. Aveline laid it out for Brigitte.

The Ragnaisse supply contracts giving them some legal standing for a structural inspection. As some of the stonework used during renovations a few years ago was done under Ragnaisse contracts.

They come up with covers, Aveline as the authority, Reinald handling logistics and the shape of legitimacy, Brigitte as the practical eye on the stonework and the muscle behind the whole proposition. Brigitte asked why that role for her specifically, but their exchange turned more into some squabbling back and forth than anything else. During the squabble, Reinald called Brigitte "Briggy" and "Brig".

Brigitte tried to object, calling Reinald "Reiny". Aveline, riding slightly ahead, found their squabble quite amusing.

After two hours the road curved along a clifftop and Aveline spotted a flat rock with a decent view and pulled her horse over. It was time for a short break and to discuss further. The morning was clear. No clouds anywhere. Below the cliff the countryside opened up wide and quiet, and somewhere ahead of them, still a couple of hours down the road, the dam was waiting.