There's rooms at the public house for them again! They're accommodating and come with complimentary deep rothe steak, which continues to taste not quite like lizard. The beds, of course, are silk.

Mmm, not quite lizard.

And when she sleeps...

A woman stands before her. She wears a crown, and truly ridiculous armor. She's slightly shorter than Belmarniss, but her heels give her a couple of inches. She's wearing perfume, something dusky and mysterious and only a little bit overpowering.

The Valsharess looks Belmarniss over appraisingly, and smiles. "So. You are the outlander who's given me so much trouble."

"...so, you're a creeper who invades dreams? Don't you have anything better to do?"

She smiles thinly. "Better things to do than investigate the one fated to bring my downfall? I think not, girl. You have humiliated me thrice now, something most do not manage once. You slew my right hand, Sabal, and that is no mean feat. And there is something about you. Your fate weighs on the world around you, another spider on the web."

"Are you hoping to get some kind of juicy intel out of me? How?"

"As long as we are both here, I thought we might speak. One power to another. I'm sure you have questions of your own - and if you care to answer mine in return, I would consider a trade."

"You don't seem that mysterious to me as a person and if I asked strategic questions you could, like... lie."

The Valsharess raises her pale brows. "You have so little faith in your own cunning that you cannot glean knowledge from a lie?"

"Is that what you're hoping to do with whatever I tell you?"

"What an odd child you are. Do they not raise you to compete with your foes, where you come from, but to give up before the game begins?"

"Honestly in spite of all my education I don't think we ever covered what to do if somebody hijacks your dream. It doesn't come up much on my planet."

The Valsharess smirks. "Nor here - it requires a great deal of power. More than most will ever see. But I have so much that I can afford to be... profligate."

She leans in closer. "I do not know what drives you, Belmarniss. But I know that you need power. Everyone needs power. Join me, and I can grant you might and magic beyond your wildest dreams."

"My wildest dreams, really."

"You don't believe me. I don't expect you to. Just know that I reward well those who serve me... and punish terribly those who oppose me."

And then, Belmarniss wakes up.

Ugh, what time is it.

Eight hours after when she went to sleep, to the minute.

Fine, she's up, she's up. Morning Eilistraee, how are you, the Valsharess is a creepsome dream-invader.

Eilistraee provides some mildly amused harp music in the distance.

Eilistraee is cool.

She tells her party members about it too when they're up.

"What a waste of a spell slot. She should've - given you a premonition of some brilliant tactical decision that'd actually fuck up the defense, or something."

"Maybe Valsharess not smart enough to come up with plausible tactical fuckup," Deekin contributes.

"I'd have taken a healthy respect for the scope of my wildest dreams!"

Jojo cracks a smile. "I think many evil people are - if not deficient in ambition, then in creativity. She imagines that no one could want anything more than to rule by her side."

"Imagine how frustrating that would be! She'd try to do some ruling, I'd go 'that's terrible ruling', she'd go 'I'm too stupid to understand that', we'd have a civil war."