You bid farewell to Seniyad and his companion, leaving the great tree behind you as you head west, judging it to be the fastest route to exit the Cloakwood and get back onto the roads that are hopefully a little less bandit ridden. The forest proves itself an ample supply of food wand water to collect on your way, and you have little issuing supplying yourself. Even making decent time however, you are unable to breach the wood's borders before night is upon you and you settle in for the night.

Safeguarded by her staff's improvements, Caelyn is able to trance without concern, but Senna and Sam bear no such aegis, and find their minds assailed by yet more nightmares.

Spoiler: Senna
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Gone from the forest, when you open your eyes, darkness surrounds you. The ground is rough stone, stained by what you can guess are all manner of bodily fluids. A small pile of straw represents the sole 'bed', and a bucket reeking with the scent of dead flesh rests in a corner. Above you a small barred window emits a dull grey light, the only illumination with which you have to see. Three walls are the same stone, but one is thick iron bars.

Beyond the bars is no freedom however. Instead, what lays past your prison cell is another prison cell, adjoined and connected, with no way out. A creature wreathed in shadow paces back and forth on two-jointed legs, though its clear the cell is far too small for its size. Its four arms each end in claws that drip with crimson blood, the only colour to be found in the cells. The creature scrapes the claws against stone, the sound piercing into your mind. As you observe it, it turns to look back at you, matching motion to motion. Its face is elongated and noseless, with blank voids were its eyes should be. It lacks any lips with which to conceal its row upon row of sharpened teeth.

It lurches forward, its massive arm reaching through the bar towards you, and you're forced to press yourself against the back wall as flat as possible, head turned away from the creature. The claw wafts past your face, slicing the air but just barely avoiding your skin, and for a moment it seems like you're safe. Then the metal bars begin to creak and buckle.

A deep resounding laughter follows you as you awaken.


Spoiler: Sam
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Images of your conquests and triumphs pass through your mind as darkness takes you - a fortified cam, secluded from the outside world, flush and fat with bandits and brigands that fall before oyu as you move about them. Then you are descending deep within the earth, through the mines and the depths that they held, the vampire overseer falls as the rest of them had. Water flows around you, its rushing tide carrying out south to the great tree, where the hags collapse merely at your passing. You float up, up beyond the tree to float above the forest, surveying all that came before, and to the north all that might come soon.

You turn to look to the south, to Candlekeep, and come face to face with yourself. A likeness in stone exact to the smallest detail. From the stone comes a voice, accusing and yet amused. "Such pride undeserved, great predator, when your whole being is borrowed. Credit where it is due, and dues where payment is demanded."

A dagger of bone rises up between you and your onyx doppleganger, twisting in the air before piercing the stone square in the chest. It cracks slightly, but the pain you feel is as if you are being rent asunder. "You are made as you are," taunts the voice, "and so you can also be broken."

Even when you awake in the morning, your chest still twinges with pain.