I am writing this while eating a fine lunch. Last night was oddly eventful in (as usual) a most disagreeable manner, and this morning's meeting has made me even more anxious to return to my music.

According to Tera I had a dream last night. This seems implausible to me, as all of my compatriots had dreams in which the same events occurred, and I don't believe that I could be capable of torturing myself in a dream to the extent of inventing the aroma of freshly killed and skinned bear, compliments of the stable-boy.

I awoke in a white room with a white altar as the only accoutrement. There was a door with no hinges or handle but a single handprint on it. On the altar lay a scroll with a piece of doggerel designed primarily to confuse. All of the other people from the last week were there as well. More importantly, I noticed that all of my supplies were missing, and the prospects of missing breakfast or even lunch were looming large.

After a while spent analzying the scroll, we all grabbed each others' shoulders and argued about who should touch the handprint. Eventually someone did, and the door disappeared to reveal another room much like this one, except with some machinery on the altar. There were five levers and a button, and because the poem referred to powers and pairs and such we made some decision that made sense at the time, raised all but the last lever, and pressed the button. The next door then opened to show us yet another cube, again with an altar, this one with four pedestals and a button.

After more discussion about who might best live through the widely feared bolt of death from the heavens, someone finally pressed the button. Skeletons were summoned and quickly destroyed -- it turns out the stable-boy is a somewhat able cleric, much to my surprise, especially when he then noted that he would prefer not to do any healing right now and nominated me to do it (huzzah for my new healing song!) -- and we found some figurines on the corpses.

There was a piece of text on the scroll that we decided was relevant to this situation. Although the details are hazy now, the words were in pairs with repeated initial letters, something like "Wildhypotheses wreakhavoc" and "Bestsimple besafe". I remember the last since I noticed that one of the figurines was a blue sheep, and since its initial letters matched one of the lines we put it on a pedestal (as I write this I realize that perhaps we should have put it on the fourth pedestal, since the "bs" line was the fourth) and found someone willing to press the button. This time a gargoyle was summoned, which could only be injured by enchanted weapons. This appears to have lowered my damage output not at all, as I still have yet to injure anything we have fought. I miss the fencing dummies in the gymnasium, but it appears that I will have to change my strategies again to deal with these odd foes that I am repeatedly subjected to.

More statuettes were found, and this time nothing seemed to match the words, but at least one of the animals was also blue. We put it on the second pedestal and this time I pushed the button and awaited our new foe.

Instead a bolt of death came from the heavens and rendered me unconscious posthaste. As I slowly bled to death beside the "cleric" I reflected on my past life, and considered whether I would have been happier living in the Outer City with my talents undiscovered and banging cheerfully on a clay pot as I tended the fields instead of where my gifts have led me.

Something odd happened then -- someone said a magic word or two, I'm not sure, I was unconscious at the time -- and I was back in the starting room conscious but badly injured with everyone else. Some lever-manipulating, monster-slaying, and pedestal-rearranging followed, the highlight of which coming when we slew a bear and the stable-boy decided that it was urgent that he drag the bear out of the room, skin it, and process the skin in some incomprehensible fashion that nevertheless left the bloody and skinned bear carcass lying in the midst of where we were formulating our next move. The stench was horrendous. Shortly afterward, we tested a few more theories and ended up facing an ettin that rapidly defeated all of us, a fate that was not entirely unwelcome by that point.

Rather than death, though, I was suddenly awake and somewhat late for our meeting with Tera, enough so that once again I had to go without breakfast. This was becoming quite tiresome, and summoning all of my reserves I was able to perform somewhat diplomatically at the meeting. Tera claimed not to know anything of this "dream" except some vague memories of having seen a reference to this somewhere in her research, but she could not recall where. This unpreparedness is most surprising in our Belar guardians. She also said that Klaus, the Belar who confronted us upon our return with her statue, was from another clan and had recently been reported dead in his laboratory (with witness to attest to this). Rather convenient, but anything that wraps up these loose ends and allows me to return to my studies and performances is to be welcomed with open arms. Graduation is in a month, and Tera said that we could have our choice of post-graduate advisors, which must have come as quite a relief to those other slackers; as for me, this seems like meager reward indeed given that I was not anticipating any problems on that front.

So, now I eat lunch. Afterward Malif wants to drag us to some cave a friend of his has found for reasons that are not entirely clear to me. I anticipate unpleasantness, hardships, periods that would be better spent practicing my music, and opportunities to cement my position as a connoisseur of decaying animal scents. In the last week I have learned the nuances of rotting carnivorous horse and flayed bear as I was forced to rest near them; what awaits me in this cave?

Oh, and Kestrel went to inquire about the provenance of those toys that Pippy sold us, but came back with no information of value. I suspect his information-gathering talents might be aided if he were more willing to cuff the little bastard a few times, but he is not likely to do that. I think I will need to go myself.