<div class="spoiler_container"><div class="spoiler_header" onclick="hideSecond (this);" role="button">Danae's History</div><div class="spoiler_body">The book was not very old. Conversely, the silver emblem bore the classical iconography of some brotherhood ancient by the measure of modern enlightened colleges. Just what it represented was not clear, except that Doctor Rehner was known to be an Ezrite, and of Gundarkite birth.</div></div><br/><br/>Megujult Eletem was not a tome which lent itself to brisk attention. Clearly it was a memoir, and illuminated some manner of transformation in Rehner, but no single event exist to describe the nature of it.<br/><br/>There was a dedication.<em>For Emalia. </em><br/><br/>The name appeared again on a skim, in the chapter titled<em>The Devil: </em><br/><br/><em>"We were told of an ally in the north, who we would know from the aging windmill on the hills before the forest. Members of the resistance could find succor there in a bed and grain, a reeded pond to bathe and clean washed linens. There were none in this rural family I knew so well as Emalia, the matron of the house, who bore the burden of the terrible circumstances of war with dignity and warmth (...)<br/>(...) word reached us of the Teufeldorf Massacre. I know not what I expected to find as closure for my unrequited adoration. There remained no possibility I would take Emalia's hand in rescue, for so much of her invested in that husband and those children that nothing beautiful could remain with me(...)<br/>(...)Beyond the devil Strahd's grisly trophies the hill lay barren, the windmill razed. Oh, Emalia! There was no consoling my spirit back to those delusions of wordless exchange, of knowing souls interlinked. She was gone, and all longing unspoken spoilt in my own mind. A physician knows all mortals go alone into death's embrace, but the agony of having lived and loved on so remote an island left me inconsolable(...)<br/>(...)Was it possible for two beings to experience the world as one, to dwell within a single body and share fully all thought, emotion, sensation? If it were possible to rescue a part of Emalia, and extend life and happiness, it must be the highest moral obligation to do so." </em><br/><br/>Emerging into the asylum's narrow upstairs halls would certainly lead to a confrontation in which any number of bottlenecks could see an invader outnumbered and surrounded three to one. Carving through lunatics and orderlies would be bloody, and costly, and ultimately unnecessary, for the stairwells to the lower level were unguarded. The withdrawing room windows, too, overlooked an empty if wet and muddy yard a ten foot drop below.<br/><br/>Left to her own devices, Eloise fell into a richly upholstered chair and stared into the flashing storm for the orderlies to collect. Any dim spark of recognition aroused by the arcing lightning was momentary and fleeting, subsumed in an unnavigable fog.