[b]Adila![/b] The Bazaar might feel all topsy-turvy, but... well, that's just because of how jumbled up you are inside. And the fact that a lot of stalls and shops are closed; people are at home with their families and loved ones tonight, unpacking the strange rooms of the Labyrinth they found themselves trapped in, and what happened to them there. Eupheria and Alina, with their last wish, managed to put almost everything back the way it was before Eupheria made the Labyrinth. That's the awful power of the Caduceus: it could return the Bazaar to the way it was while still allowing the Labyrinth to exist below. It'll be the biggest new business in town, give it a week. There'll be shops selling spelunking equipment, Caddy-shaped dousing rods, books chronicling the history of Wicked Queen Eupheria, guides who claim to have witnessed the final battle personally, and businesses doing their best to figure out what sells in the new Nightmare Army market. But it'll almost be business as usual. Almost. Because the Clocktower is still a tree, grand and terrible, its roots buckling streets and its branches looming over the entire Bazaar. In its slate-grey bark, where one might expect knotholes, there are clocks; there are watches budding by the leaves, their shining faces peeking out; there are shudders that run through it, almost imperceptible, to no immediately apparent rhyme or reason. Discovering rhyme and reason is the specialty of the Igniters, and so they are assembled in the square where your feet lead you, breaking out sextons and rulers and mathematical formulae and illustrations of the old Clocktower. They are the gnostics, seekers of secrets, and by the time the sun is up they will have published half a dozen competing treatises in code, each one more obtuse than the last, intended to bring only the truly worthy to understanding. You yourself, Adila, are a Palatine; one who follows, not one who seeks. Did the prophecies of the shoemaker even hint at something like this coming to pass? Or is this a new era, one which requires new revelation? *** [b]Kazelia![/b] The drag of the brush through your hair sends pleasant shivers down your spine. Rita is perched on her bedside table, seeing as you're stuck in your chair, and she's got her legs wrapped around you in very feline fashion while she runs both brush and occasionally gentle claw along your scalp. She's even got a bottle of Jedadi perfume lying on the bed to rub into your scalp after she gets your hair nice and neat and glossy. "I owe you a lot, you know," she says, almost to herself. The morning sun lies lazily on your lap, filtered through faux-Iluminan glass. "For choosing Hyperborea. For being my friend when my home was in danger. For looking after my girlfriend. For figuring out how to get her out of her prison in the Labyrinth. The least I can do is help you feel at home. And that means, right now, you are not allowed to worry about anything. No quests! You have been beaten by a princess of Askaia, and now you have to do whatever I say until your sisters ransom you, and I say that you are getting brushies, and then some more tea, and then... well, I haven't decided. Maybe I'll tickle you until you can tell me to stop~" The tea, incidentally, is sitting also on the bed in a shallow Askaian drinking bowl. It's perfect for cats, and for making non-cat princesses trying to drink out of them feel silly for having to lap it up with their tongues. So, a few questions: how does it feel to get pampered and your hair done by an affectionate catgirl? When's the last time you got your hair brushed like this, if ever? What sort of tea did Rita make for your kidnapdate? And how comfy is that Rider scarf over your lips, anyhow? *** [b]Alina![/b] The soldier who enters the prisoner closet is big. Very big. Bronze bracers shaped like serpents slither around her impressive biceps, and her tunic stops halfway down her thighs, the perfect size to squish a princess. Ten to one says that she's one of Shazari's interrogators. She's too stuck-up and fancy to question captured princesses herself half the time, and instead relies on specially-trained soldiers like this one to work the truth out of her prisoners. You would be feeling small and meek in comparison to this soldier if you hadn't been forced into a Jedadi prison uniform: a small bronze bikini and gauzy loincloth, to make sure the prisoner isn't hiding anything up their sleeve. Or, apparently, in their belly button. Your wrists are cuffed above your head, you're sitting on the carpeted floor, and as a final indignity, a flimsy pink veil flutters over the thick, embroidered sash knotted and pulled between your lips. "Well," the soldier purrs in a hauntingly familiar voice. "Look what we have here." She kneels, her eyes drinking you in, and reaches out to lift your chin, making you look up at her. "If it isn't Alina Cascade..."