[b]Mittens![/b]

Eupheria's laugh is as clear and sharp and fragile as the finest crystal glass. She rears back and holds one hand to her mouth, laughing like your Momma laughs when you tell her a joke while doing a handstand, but... harsher. There's less fun and more anger in it, and your little stomach sinks hearing it. She's not going to give you the answer you were hoping for, or even the answer buried deep in her heart. She's going to share some of her pain with you.

"When I was your age, Mittens," she says, with a grand wave of her hand, "I thought love was the best thing that had ever happened to Hyperborea! I thought it was [i]multiplicative[/i], that the more I gave out the more came back to me, and that would just make the world better and better and better!" She stands and does a twirl in her beautiful bride's gown, and the only thing that spoils it is her smile, until she opens her eyes and they're just as jagged and bitter. "Then I met this wonderful, lovely [i]pit[/i] of love! The more I shoveled in, the more convinced I became that eventually, sooner or later, I'd get something, anything back! Yes, she taught me the most important lesson about love: it's a hilarious farce!"

The look on Old Adila's face before the wall of careful indifference comes down is almost tragic. Of course she feels terrible about it. She still has a conscience, after all, buried deep (deeeeeep) down.

"Everybody falls for it! Oh, I'll do anything for love, they say. Ha! Love isn't this special, unbreakable force! It's a bridge between two people, and sooner or later, a heavy enough weight will make it [i]snap[/i]!" She twirls Caddy, and the sound of cables snapping under terrible strain fills the entire compartment in high fidelity audio.

"But you don't have to take my word for it," she adds, quite rightly anticipating your objections. She snaps her fingers, and the door on the right side of the cabin slams open in a howling gale. There is nothing beyond but sideways rain and shrieking wind and the terrible, ear-splitting cry of the Roc. Then, Eupheria uncurls one hand next to you and offers you Gold: shining, glorious Gold.

"You can have our Gold, Mittens," she purrs. "Just tell me I can do [i]whatever [/i]I want with your Rita, and you can have it back. It'll make your next room-- all the rooms-- a pleasant stroll in the park. It's practically [i]cheating[/i]!" Her fingers start to curl shut, silently putting you on a very short time limit. You're on the spot and she's got five hands on your shoulders and back pushing you to the door, it's getting closer and closer and your lights can't overcome the horrible, hungry darkness beyond the doorway and Gold's [i]right there[/i]...

***

[b]Kathelia![/b]

The way out of the next room is very obvious. It's a giant door in one side of the massive wheel of the room, with a delicate series of keyholes in its center. The trick is going to be getting the keys, or, rather, buying them. The room itself seems to be the Bazaar folded in on itself: the shops and the spires, the rope ladders and the towers, the stalls and the fountains and the streets, stretching below you and above you, and ropes spun carefully between either side of the wheel serving as a second highway, and it is here that the Nightmare Army is going on a shopping and bartering spree.

The first order of the day is going to be figuring out which vendor is selling the [i]actual[/i] keys, because it seems like every other stall has a different set of keys on sale, and then the second order of the day is going to be haggling for them, and then the third order of the day is absolutely going to be figuring out how to pay for them. The fourth order of the day is figuring out how to do a three-legged race with a cheerleader fox who is clinging to you and purring happily, her tail swishing and knocking gremlin porters head over heels, her arm wrapped firmly around yours (seeing as she's holding pompoms), and gosh is this the curse or is Kyouko just enjoying not having to be the "villain" now that she has a bit of plausible deniability??

Okay, she's covering your mouth with her tail when you try to speak and then giggling until she doubles over. She's definitely still a little bit "villain" mode.

***

[b]Adila![/b]

What emerges from the muck is not the snake-husband. The snake-husband was made out of stone, you see, and was similar to a cobra, and also had laser eyes. This giant sea snake is made out of glass, and is -- as mentioned before -- a sea snake with rippling feathery sides, and also she has [i]poisoned[/i] laser eyes. She also has a really wet, detailed mouth, and while you're pretty sure letting her swallow the Jedadi mercenary and the Watchwoman wouldn't be fatal at all, it would be, well, like being trapped in a giant, wet, rippling tunnel, and it strikes you that there is absolutely something worse than being tied up. Oh, gosh. Just [i]infinitely[/i] worse.

The problem is that you have made the gremlins practically invulnerable to being rushed, and as soon as the, well, let's call her a snake-wife, as soon as the snake-wife bends down they're just going to toss their sacrificial captives into her mouth! Bull-rushing them is out of the question, and you don't have very much time at all before the two of them meet a slimy, disgusting doom.

Also, you're trying to think of something while desperately trying to duck out of the way of green laser blasts that leave the swamp bubbling noxiously and make any stray gremlins hit by it keel over groaning and clutching their stomachs. There's always "plan: punch a hole right through her," but that seems really uncomfortable after what happened with the snake-husband, and if you hurt her how will you ever manage to coax her onto a date with the snake-husband???