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You make your way to the carriage. Like before, there is no driver. Lifeless horses are connected to it, their eyes glazed over. There's an ethereal, dream-like quality to the way they're standing, almost like they are ghosts, or physical manifestations of some idea rather than real, physical horses. Such magic does exist, and you are familiar with the basics of how it works, but some of the things you've seen here are, to say the least, very advanced.
You duck into the passenger seat of the carriage. Just as you're closing the door, you notice a small-looking creature hobbling up to you.
He looks like a cross between a man and a beast. He is hunch-backed, and he carries all kinds of trinkets on his person, such as potions scrolls, with a pendant and a key around his neck.
When he is close enough, he shouts to you, his voice muffled by the loud rain. "Hey!" he says. "Lady! Excuse me!"
He seems to be approaching with friendly intentions, but you are not sure how to address him. "Y-yes? Who are you?"
He cackles and reaches into a sack on his back and pulls out a medium-sized cloth bag, its contents concealed. He hands it to you. "The Master told me to give this to you when you left."
"Oh, thank you," you say. You take it.
The strange man-beast gives you a big grin, then turns and starts hobbling back toward the castle without even a gesture.
Puzzled, you look inside the sack. Inside it are four small pieces of parchment, and a small note on a different type of parchment.
You quickly inspect the note, which is written in common in raven black ink:
>A parting gift. I have hundreds of them in the archives.
You look inside the bag. The other four pieces of parchment have nothing written on them. It takes you a moment to process it...
These are paper birds.
<span class="mu-s">Enchanted paper used to deliver a message over long distances. You know this because they are exactly like the one you gave him.</span>
you quickly pull out your other two paper birds to compare - sure enough, the ones Strahd just gifted to you are the same size and texture of yours. It's as if Strahd was merely feigning gratitude when you gave him one of the ones you received from Vasili; as the Lord of a massive valley, these are completely familiar to Strahd, and it makes sense that he would stock hundreds.
What do you do?
>Continue to Krezk.
>Do something else. (specify)
