* * *
Alestere
* * *

I raise my hands to each side to show that I'm unarmed - much good as it'd do me right now to have a weapon. "May I rise and face my doom?"

"Aye, ye may," the Captain growls. It's so strange to hear that tone from him when it's aimed at me. Elesse only heard such a tone aimed at other people, people who the Captain considered a threat. The Captain, of course, never considered Elesse a threat. Few ever did.

* * *
Lyric
* * *

I drum, just like Elric told me to. Now, I've never been much of a musician. My family'd be the first to tell you so, and we were all raised to at least appreciate music, if not make it. I don't really understand all those fiddly music note marks that Stevane and Daddy read when they're playing piano or whatever else, and I can't understand why my singing sounds "off-key" to everyone else. But I do understand a beat, because I understand dancing, and I am at least good at that. That being said, when I start drumming, it's more of a konk-konk-konk than anything else, and I wonder what Elric thinks is so special about this drum other than what it's made out of.

...A coconut. This is totally a coconut, just has a few extra holes in it. I'm gonna throw up all my guts later, but for now this damn thing is a coconut and I'm drumming up a storm on it.

* * *
Lyric
* * *

It's strange walking down this hallway. There's something weird in the air - like something's going on, or it's just about to happen. Is this how Poets feel? I don't quite like it. I start to wish I'd been able to train a little bit before getting kidnapped - maybe if I were a really good Poet, I could have planned for this all. Jhe h'Logos is a Time Lord, after all. Couldn't he help me predict stuff like this? I mean, Gerald didn't seem like he was doing anything Poetic on purpose, but he's Gerald, not the Poet King.

Surely the Poet King would know what to do about this ominous feeling, and the near-visible flashes I'm starting to get of other places and familiar people. I'm thinking of Ebrellin-i so much right now - maybe because I've been around his mother so much? Ugh, that just gives me the chills.

* * *
Jax
* * *

We're hacking through the undergrowth in the woods around the big castle here when Gerude tells us all that we shouldn't be hacking through it with the particular method that we're using now. He phrases it in a pretty creative way, though:

"YEEEAAAUUUUGH!!!"

I think pretty much anybody could understand that.

I didn't know you could shoot a tree dead, but I guess Arms can shoot anything dead. Kennit and Caerig manage to put three holes through the trunk of the tree that Gerude seems to be having a problem with before I realize that it was already dead-looking before he shot it. It's then that I notice that the trees in these woods are moving, but the air is stale and still. There's no breeze to make those limbs creak, so why are they--