Throughout the second night, a tumultuous wind sweeps the moor, rustling the old shutters and clattering the shingles.  The ethereal beings that patrol the halls keep their silent vigil, but their presences can be felt more clearly in dreams than during the day, and there is a constant feeling of being-- not quite alone.  It is for this reason that, when the dawn's light threatens to break the horizon's murk, Cris notes the presence of others in the room, but is unable to see them, and although she clutches the dragon in her hand still, she feels a light tug as she finds a delicate metal chain threaded through the tiny loop, its length secured round her neck.<br/><br/>*<br/><br/>The fog and murk of the moors will be steaming this day; that much is clear, and the mires of the peninsula have again played the victim to the winds' fickle ways.  The sun, barely a glow in the sky, has driven the clouds inland already, and streams red into the sky like radiant fires of a thousand cremations.<i>Red sky by morning, sailor take warning.</i>Heat will follow... the pressing, swamp-heat of summer, as the alarming shifts of weather are prone to produce this time of year... and beyond doubt there will be storms, the kind that bear down with ferocity to break the surf upon the rocks as if to destroy the shore's dwellers outright.  Seadevils have been seen on days where the sunrise is this red-- squalls of waterspouts that bring with them the lizard-like, spined raiders that seek to ride the chaos of the storm and raid settlements.  Sometimes the remnants of old ships wash ashore, sometimes the broken bows or planks of serviceable ones lost to the waves.  But that is for the city... this is the Garden District, and though the port can be seen with a spyglass from the highest towers, it seems a great ways off now.<br/><br/>Breakfast is boiled wheat with bits of leftover beef, and a small tankard of watered beer.  Protein and grain... strength and energy to live by but nothing more.  An hourglass rests on the table as well, its sand running smoothly from one glass bauble on top into the lower.  Beside it, a simple note in Fen's hand-- Common script.  "Eat and clean the dishes, and be in the courtyard when the sand's out."  The elven boxer has been pulled away before dawn, and Fen herself slipped away without a meal, or explanation, but with Malia in tow, leaving by the main gate and taking a fine horse.  Thus, it's just Cris and Mina to make a pair at breakfast,  and though the glass will take a full hour to empty, it was started some minutes before, leaving them with little time to enjoy the food or wake to the world before they must dip their arms up to their elbows with soap and a tough-bristled brush to scrub the two pots, plates, and few spoons.  By then, the mugginess of the morning is just beginning to take hold, and though they make it to the courtyard early, they can feel the sand slipping away at its place on the table.<br/><br/>The high stone walls of the old manor loom around them, somehow seeming more like a prison yard from within this space.  The windows are high and heavy-framed like the narrowed eyes of old Faith tapestries leering down upon the two of them.  The East Wing, with its massive tower-- accessible, no doubt, from within through one of the many heavy, locked doors-- stands before them like a bastion.  The top of the tower looks to be a lighthouse of the old world, restored-- but so far from the coast would make it of little use for this purpose.  Rimmed with iron fence, this tower of trimmed and cut stone seems to be the most utterly intact piece of masonry in all of the kingdom, though no thought at all has been given to decoration.  It simply stands there-- hard to imagine not seeing it before-- and lords over all as an old god would.<br/><br/>There are... structures here.  A pit of black sand, ten feet across.  A wooden barricade, covered with slats of wood, each a foot high, with room for many more to be inserted onto parallel poles that make a wall.  Sacks of leather stuffed with woodchips and riddled with bits of iron.  Dummies of wood and scrap metal.  Ropes.  T-shaped crossbars.  Strange frameworks...<br/><br/>The pair barely have time to take it in before they hear the shrieking of metal unsheathed.  From behind them.  (perception: 25 to have noticed her beforehand).  A figure in ebony and oxblood armor, over six feed in height, emerges from the dawn-cast shadows in the great walls and steps, willfully, into the courtyard with a blade as long as its body in hands.  There is a rustle of cloth as it strides closer, and it drags what could be a corpse behind in its following hand.  The great, armored figure, its mask horned and glistening as golden-yellow eyes gleam with inner fire from within a closed visor, like those of a demon-possessed hawk.  It crosses its legs with umistakeable grace as it draws up, and there's a whisper of steel like the spinning of a grindstone as the grip of its blade spins in its gauntleted fingers as a child's toy would.  Displaying supple wrist, the massive blade arcs overhead and whistles through the air in a great arc, lopping through the wooden cross-beam of a target dummy and shearing through like warm butter, leaving smoldering stump behind.<br/><br/><div class="floatleft">(https://i.imgur.com/puhJmim.jpg)  </div>"Two.  Little.  Girls."  The blade whistles and severs the target-dummy-- the round stump of a tree making up its body, the lid of an ironclad chest making its 'breastplate'-- cleanly in two like a reaper's scythe to a brittle cornstalk.  The "enemy", now in two halves, topples to the ground as its stumps sizzle and smoke. Its voice is sultry and fierce and inhuman, but feminine as it strides closer.  "We sent for warriors.  We sent for hunters.  We sent for assassins.  We are given little girls."<br/><br/>A kick, and it--<i>she</i>-- lifts the severed dummy with one armored boot, sending it up and over their heads to clamor down into the patchy, dried weeds in pieces.  "We like that they're pretty, but we<i>have</i>pretty things."  The blade finds purchase in the earth, and the dead grass around it bursts into smoke and flame, curling into curling red worms of flame before dying out.<br/><br/>She stands before the two of them, looking them over from under that visor, and lifts her helmet.  The horns that showed were her own, and the fierce tiefling woman glowers down at them.  "We had are not impressed."<br/><br/>Raising her left hand, she tosses the bag at the girls' feet.  Brown leather can be seen within.  "Wear these.  They will hold your broken bones together and hide the bloodstains."  She folds her arms over her breastplate, watching intently.  "I am Lady Deloth.  You will call me Master.  I will not tolerate your disobedience.<br/>You are forbidden to disrespect me.  That means you will not disobey my orders, you will not question me, and you are not, under any circumstances, allowed to die."   She clenches her gauntlet into a fist.  "... or I will bring you back and make you regret it.  You belong to me.  Now change so we can make some use of you.  Or don't and I'll beat the rags off your back."