The Ballad of Adler Young, Canto 2.5

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>Well, it's been a long while you had a visitor around here, what with the plague o'battle clouds remaining and so...
>Adler: *GASP* It's someone from your past that has miraculously survived. Maybe Burnside or Thompson (the one that doesn't emote very well).
>It's a door to door salesman wanting to sell you cleaning supplies, something to get rid of that mountain of corpses would be useful.

Who could be at the door? Did this mean the vapor from the Plague of Battles had dissipated enough that the field could be safely crossed? But Albric Tor was completely surrounded by Gaps! This would have to be someone who survived the battle and had been living in the city all this time ... but how? What had they been eating? I shuddered at the thought.

No, it was more likely this was somebody who snuck in through the Gate while I was distracted, talking to Ash. That meant it had to be an elf, but not somebody with security clearance to enter the tower uninvited.

"Did any of you see this person approach?" I asked the Ixie. "Where did they come from?"

"Sire, I have no idea," she replied nervously.

Whoever was out there rattled the door handle and then knocked sharply a couple of times.

If it was a battle survivor, there was no way of knowing if they were sane, or a bloodthirsty Plague-ridden zombie. I needed to see who it was before deciding what to do.

>Look (discretly) from the window above as to who that may be.
>Instantly regret peeping out the window. The sight is so horrifying

0210window.gif

I thought about just looking out the windows, but the ones overlooking the porch were high above the door - and besides, these tower widows were made of some kind of strange, milky glass that admitted a dim illumination, but you could not see through them.

I quickly returned to the scrying orb and used it to view the tower porch (keeping my view angle low so I wouldn't have to look at the decomposed carnage of the battlefield).

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A small masked and black-cloaked figure stood pressed against the wall beside the door. It clutched a dagger in one hand and seemed to be tensely waiting for the door to open.