Manald suddenly made a gaping maw out of his mouth and gasped for air. That bucket of water had come in as quite a shock and forced his consciousness to come back to life in an instant. His heart was pounding and going very fast as he craned his neck and stared at Rudolph. Or at least he tried to stare since his optics were still configured for infinity and, quote obviously, refused to change much about that. The lycan blinked repeadetly in order to get the excess water off his eyeballs, but it took more than just one moment for his sight to become sharp again. He heard another man speak up, addressing him by his full name including any titles, and... What ? His hearing, having been knocked out the day prior due to a cannon shot, now felt like being hypersensitive. The guard's voice sounded like that of a Banshee, loud and with some of the syllables being so high pitched that it almost hurt. Of course that wasn't true in reality, but reality was something Manald was just trying to get back into. So: Something about having to be in the keep in one hour ? A quick thought about it later, Manald decided to get up. Maybe a little bit too fast for his still impaired sense of balance as Rudolph repeatedly found himself confronted with the lycan being on the verge of collapsing onto him. Only with one of his hands borrowing some additional stability from the tavern's wall behind him Manald's situation finally stabilized. [color=darkgreen]"Please tell me this is not true!"[/color] he muttered, more to himself than Rudolph initially but still clearly audible. One hour ? For eating, cleaning, getting dry again, dressing himself up properly and getting there ? Sounded like a rush. At least for someone who struggled with going in a straight line. [color=darkgreen]"Alright, food. Let's go!"[/color] Manald detached from the wall the way someone learning swimming lets go of the wall and starts to float freely for the first time -- and he wobbled around pretty much the same. A quite slow and for Manald perhaps a little embarassing bit of a walk later the two men found themselves in a more calm inn. Manald ordered a few slices of meat, raw meat, and some bread. The latter served a more decorative purpose than anything else as the lycan was not in the condition to answer many stupid questions asked by anonymous people. He got better slowly, but still the smell of liquor wasn't entirely gone from his breathing and neither were many items of his to-do list. Only half an hour left until the meeting... It was a rather short breakfast because of that. Manald really would have liked to talk more, but given the current time constraints he and Rudolph would have to postpone that until... whatever would happen this day. He still needed to redress himself and then find the way of course. Berkhoff was not that a small place, so he'd have to rely on people giving him some hints in order to make fast progress. --------------------------- Manald joined the strategy meeting a little late, so he tried to enter the room as silently as possible and nudged the massive door back into its closed position very gently. He had no interest in attracting a lot of attention right now. His clothes were fine again and so was his fur, but there still was that easily recognizable stench of beer emanating from his mouth with each of his breaths. He therefore tried to stay at a distance to the others and more to the corner of the room so hopefully nobody would notice. Then it came to the question of where each of them should be placed. The day before Manald had not been able to do much more than to throw some stones and to linger around otherwise, so it felt like an open invitiation he just couldn't resist accepting: [color=darkgreen]"I want to be where I can mess around with hostile intestines. Also, if I may suggest, we should prohibit every non-fighting citizen from having a good shit today. If the goblins manage to blow up the sewers I'd prefer that happening with as little poo as possible raining down upon us. Everybody got me ?"[/color] That was right, right ? Manald's head ached still and, if he was honest, not all of his cognitive functionality felt like being in perfect order this morning...