Annan returned to the Stake in the village. Forgetting what had happened during the day, he ran toward the Stake to save the woman.
Then the ropes binding the beautiful woman slipped loose. Her red lips parted as she thanked Annan for rescuing her, and the firewood around them had somehow become a large bed covered in Velvet.
The beautiful woman pushed him down and was about to straddle him when a giant spider emerged from the shadows behind her, wrapped her up, and dragged her into the darkness—
The dream plunged into a nightmare, jolting Annan awake.
Faint light showed through the window, whose edges were piled with snow. It was already morning. Yet the dream still lingered, along with the scent of perfume in his nose.
Annan tried to get up, then burrowed back under the covers against the cold and pulled his coat from the bedside table into bed with him.
Thinking back on the previous night, Annan suddenly noticed a few problems. The Mage Tower's Fall had been blurry and tilted, with heads bobbing at the bottom of the image. It had obviously been a bootleg filmed in secret... But at ten Copper Coins a ticket and only twenty-odd customers, how could they recoup their costs?
The Eternal Magic Stone? If they had that kind of money, why not spend it on something else?
He rustled into his cotton clothes beneath the covers, pulled up his hood, and stepped into the corridor. As he was about to go downstairs, he heard faint shouting from below.
"I said they're friends!"
Annan stopped on the stairs. Through the narrow gap, he saw Joan arguing with Uncle Murmur.
"I did treat them like little Joan's friends..."
"Not that kind of friend! 'Fat mark,' 'friend,' 'fool'—that kind of 'friend'! Remember