"Excellent."

On their way out, Gann leans on the warden's desk. "If you would return my possessions, my good witch?"

     She scowls, retrieving a long box from a shelf behind her. "Take them and begone, dreamwalker. I shall be glad to be rid of you."

"Shall you indeed?" Gann laughs. "And you have never dreamed of my face, my hot passions, my wicked embrace? It seemed sometimes as if I was the only thing livening your twilight years, o matron-of-the-cell."

     The witch snarls audibly. "Leave, hagspawn. Curse only these fools with your presence."

"Very well, very well. Perhaps in another life and in other forms we shall meet again, and your wrinkles and thinning hair and bad hip will serve as no impediment to our love."

And he saunters out of the prison, carrying his possessions with him.

"Do you have Dream Shield?" Belmarniss murmurs to Safiya.

"It's never seemed like a priority," Safiya says ruefully.

"I did say I would not peek into your fantasies, did I not?" Gann says irritably. "At any rate, Belmarniss, you may rest - as it were - assured; I did not say idly that your mind is studded with thorns. You would be a most inhospitable environment, even to one as skilled as I."

"Oh, good, I'm delighted to hear it."

"An amoral dream-walker, a Red Wizard, and a foreigner cursed by the spirits... I don't think we'll have any trouble making friends in this town," Safiya says under her breath. "Should we collect the wayward angel now, and complete the set?"

The sun does appear to be going down.

"Yeah. Gann, you coming on that sidequest, the deal only covered the bear god situation."

He shrugs. "It sounds intriguing. And if this angel turns out to be another beautiful young woman, well, so much the better if I aid in her rescue."

"...We could pick up Dream Shield if they have it in a shop here for other people," Belmarniss suggests to Safiya.

Safiya nods. "There was a scroll vendor in the market square, as I recall. I'll check there."

Gann rolls his eyes but declines to comment.

Dream Shield y/n?

The vendor does have a scroll of Dream Shield! It can be theirs for the price of a reasonable amount of money, which Safiya is happy to provide.

Gann looks terribly bored throughout the shopping process. "If we're ready to move on from protecting this young woman from my no-doubt-depraved clutches to actually finding her?" he suggests.

"Yeah-huh," says Belmarniss, turning into a centaur so she can scribe the spell into her book while they walk, "let's go find a portal. People might think your clutches were less depraved if you didn't say creepy shit about them? Just a thought."

"I apologize for calling you beautiful," he says caustically, "and for implying that I enjoy the positive regard of women. My shame knows no bounds."

"You show such a deep and thoughtful grasp of the concept of creepiness, well done."

"Why don't you elucidate me, then? If it was not my calling you beautiful, or my saying that I should like to help rescue a beautiful woman, what made you so abruptly sure that you needed to protect the maiden from my wiles?"

"It was actually mostly the weird pass you made at the prison warden, it sort of contextualizes everything else."

He laughs disbelievingly. "I think I am permitted to say unpleasant things to the woman who held me captive under the threat of violence. Perhaps I should judge you on how very unkind you have presumably been to your enemies. Or perhaps you should judge your Thayan companion before me."

"I admittedly don't know much about her but she did break me out of a spirit barrow and let me copy spells off her so she seems fine so far." Shrug. "I wouldn't be complaining about you if you'd told the warden to freeze in hell or something. The sexual harassment just seemed like it slotted into a pattern."

"We stick our foes with the pins they give us," Gann says coolly. "And I can needle an old woman about her cooling lusts without preying on anyone who does not invite me in."

Safiya squints into a dark alley. "Portal," she says without fanfare. "Shall we?"

"Yeah-huh, sounds delightful."

Through the portal they go. Shadow Mulsantir's darkness is cloying, almost physical, but Darkvision still pierces it.

Safiya looks up the hill on which the city is built and lets out a startled laugh. "I'm guessing that's our destination," she says, pointing to a massive building carved from what look like the bones of giants, complete with a grotesquely massive skull at the top.

"How... blatant," Gann says, wrinkling his nose. "I suppose your western gods are in that habit."