[b]Eska Glinteye![/b] These blasted Hyperboreans! You’re dangling the crybaby’s mother over a perilous drop, and instead of falling on her knees and pleading, here she is charging at you, glowing with that same terrible radiance. The one that makes all your arrows useless against her. Well, she’ll have to choose between dealing with you and saving her mother, and no Princess would ever— +I have reason to believe that Princess Azora Howl has hypnotized you.+ Gah! Your train of thought derails completely. This stupid dragon! Every time you think she’s been as unhelpful as possible, she finds a new way to screw things up. Well, you’ll show her. You wheel around, furious, intending to order her in no uncertain terms, as her “friend” (blech) that she needs to go back to Azora [i]now,[/i] and that’s how the little cat princess manages to hammer you right in the sternum. You go down. Hard. The scaffolding sways dangerously underneath you. You need a little more time. You need Adila to be useful for once. You need to shut up this stupidly cheerful little cat. You need— Then the clocks begin to chime. Every last one of them. Damage your Sniper stat, clap your hands over your ears, and run for it. *** [B]Alina![/b] It’s close. Too close. For a moment, you have the panicked thought that you’re not going to make it. You have to make it. Your world narrows down to the way Momma twists in the air, looking up at you, her scanty silks fluttering in that terrible rush of air. Then you wrap your arms around her, and you wrap Gold around her, and when the two of you hit the ground a second later it’s like falling onto goosefeather pillows. You bounce out, Eska’s nasty little bots still shooting at you uselessly, and end up rolling into a small cactus garden. Each little spine pokes your skin, but refuses to pierce; it feels like being hugged by hedgehogs. You reach up and tug down the black silk over her mouth, and the first thing that comes out of Momma’s mouth is filled with so much pride. “You’ve grown so much.” Then the clocktower starts to chime. Gold muffles the sound, stops it from being deafening, but you can still feel the vibrations of the tiles underneath you. Your Momma’s face goes slack with dread. “Lina,” she says, hoarsely, “you [i]can’t let her open the tomb.”[/i] *** [b]Adila![/b] Eska is saying something at you, but you can’t hear her. Your head is bells. +WHAT?+ She yells louder, as Rita covers her ears and opens her mouth in a soundless yowl. There is a bell and it is trying to crack your skull open. +I CAN’T HEAR YOU!+ Eska rolls her eyes, her hands clapped over her ears, and then rolls easily to her feet and runs up the scaffolding, to where you can see Azora Howl dragging Dandy into the clock to help save her, the two of them vanishing from sight as they pass inside. Unless... Azora Howl hypnotized Eska into telling you that she could help Dandy and really she’s going to go hypnotize her! Oh no!! You have to save Dandy, Adila!! *** [b]Kazelia![/b] Mother Void eats the sound of the bells. For a moment, you can hear the great and terrible sound of the bells, and then— silence. You can see the vibrations, see people reacting to the awful sound— behind you, Kyouko is caterwauling and curling up into a silky fluffy ball— but it’s gone. It’s just [i]gone.[/i] Which means you can see, clearly, Azora dragging Dandy into the swirling portal that has opened in the clocktower, the face of the clock she was enchanting having folded neatly to either side. That looks ominous. Deeply, deeply ominous. And Mother Void, inside you, doesn’t seem to know a thing about what that is. So it’s not a doorway into her. It’s a doorway to somewhere else. (Or, given what you saw of Eska’s notes... [i]somewhen[/i] else...)