Quoted By:
What awakened you?
This question pierces through the fog of sleep and nails your brain into awareness and consciousness.
It takes all your willpower to not jump out of bed to investigate what is bothering you. You lay on the bed of boughs calmly, acting as though you were still asleep while straining your ears to listen.
The bedroom is hushed. Somewhere, a duo of Baphomet guards are patrolling the castle with spears lent out to them. The wind blows softly and subtly, causing the wooden shutters to quiver against stone. Some sort of night bird sings in the distance, the dawn still hours away.
Was it your imagination?
No.
You hear it again.
A rattle of wood on wood.... within the room.
Keeping your eyes shut, you subtly flex your hands under blankets to prepare to summon Frostbind. Something must be in the room. Could it be an invader rummaging through your belongings? The items on the table are Relics after all, they endured the journey from the World into Avalon and survived.
Yet, you sense no bodily presence within the bedroom. People in an enclosed space have this strange presence that triggers awareness—a sort of primitive sixth sense implying you are not alone. There's no such sensation of someone breathing in the bedroom other than yourself.
Carefully, you open an eye and survey the darkened room. The only source of light is through a thin crack in the wooden shutters, which weakly illuminates your small round table. There's no one in the room, but something is moving on the surface of the table.
You leap out of bed, fully armed with Frostbind, and stab the empty air around the table, just in case there's an invisible enemy of some sort. The blade of the ice spear pierces only air. Surprised and wary, you approach the table and look down to see what is happening.
The thin moonlight falls on the source of the noise. The culprit is a Relic. More specifically, it is the transformed black lacquered menpo mask Yatagarasu had taken from the Kuroda home. It is trembling on the surface of the table. You stare at the unnatural phenomenon, unwilling to come any closer. The mask dances slowly across the table through its trembling until, at last, it reaches the edge and falls with a clatter onto the floor.
It trembles no more. Like a corpse, the armored mask is still.
Creepy.
Bending down, give the mask a quick poke with the butt of the spear.
Nothing.
It should be safe to pick up and look at carefully. The black lacquer is luminous, almost glowing in the blackness of the room by being darker than darkness itself. Originally, it was a bright red lacquered menpo mask with white bristles serving as a moustache. Avalon has transformed it into a black fanged one perfectly fitted for your face and apparently has given it the magical power to 'tremble'.
<span class="mu-r">CLANG CLANG CLANG CLANG</span>
