I Walk in Dreams -- An Esoteric Journey Quest

While you cast a longing look at his array of treasures, ultimately the greatest value Frank has to offer is how much he's done and seen, and therefore what you yourself might do and see alongside him. And besides, he is sort of ridiculous in a way that you can't help but enjoy. Spending time with him sounds like it would be fun. "Sure," you say. "Where are you headed?"

"Capital!" Frank says, climbing back atop his horse. He points, unsurprisingly the way he was going when he overtook you. "I have it on good authority that the Vaults of Innocence lie in this direction, though at some point we shall have to leave the road and go by trackless ways."

You can't help but scoff. "The Vaults of Innocence? Really?"

He cocks an eyebrow at you. "Have you not heard of them?"

"No, I have," you respond. "But they seemed like obvious nonsense. The only references I found to them are in the less reliable books, and besides..." You take a moment, trying to elucidate the intuition you possess. "A place where you find the wonder and delight of children taken physical form just rang false to me. The dreaming-realm is beautiful and wondrous, but in complex ways. Something so, well, saccharine didn't fit with everything else I had learned."

To your surprise, Frank nods. "Well-reasoned! Truly fortune smiles upon me, to have acquired so canny a traveling-companion!" He raises a finger. "You are correct, in part. That is not the nature of the dreaming-realm. However, what your writers did not realize, and which I believe myself to have deciphered, is that the Vaults of Innocence are epiphenomenal to something else, something more consonant with the complexity wise-dreamers perceive." He smiles at you. "I wonder if you can figure it out yourself? You seem the scholarly type, and puzzles to you are as inviting to the chase as horizons are to me."

He is not wrong. Your mind races, trying to backsolve for what Frank thinks he's figured out. Then you shake your head. "Well, let's start moving, and I'll see if I can figure it out myself."

"A fine attitude!" He nudges the horse with his heels and it placidly starts walking. "I would offer to let you ride behind, but, alas, there isn't the room and I have no desire to overburden my Rosid. But we can switch off every now and then, in the name of fairness."

"A noble offer," you say automatically. It's remarkably easy to get caught up in Frank's energy; he'll have you belonging at Ren Faires before you know it, if you aren't careful. You match Rosid's pace; it's a little brisk, but given the offer to switch between walking and riding, you aren't concerned. "Let's see for ourselves."

With the sound of Frank's jaunty whistling (which matches no tune you've ever heard), you set off.

---

You stare up at the cavern mouth yawning open before you. "This is the Vaults of Innocence?" You'll admit, if Frank is right, it will go a long way to explaining why they were not well-attested. Instead of the monument to childlike amazement you had imagined in your mind, this sort of looks like a monster's lair. Your brain spits out the obvious followup thought. "Uh, Frank, has anything claimed the Vaults, according to your best guesses?"

Frank is in the process of rubbing Rosid down, but seems to perk up. "Oh! Do you think there will be a dragon?"

"I'm kind of hoping there won't be, actually."

"Ah," he says. "Nothing I have heard indicates that the Vaults are the dwelling-place of anything except memories. We shall go in, see what there is to be seen, and leave."

"And what makes you so certain that this is the place?"

He smiles enigmatically. "What do you see above the cavern entrance?"

You look up. It's a big mountain, disappearing into clouds. "One of the higher mountains of the dreaming-realm, without an obvious way up from here."

"What you do not see is the source of my certainty."

You sigh. You'd like to be annoyed with him for not explaining, but in all honesty you'd be more annoyed if he just told you and deprived you of the chance to figure it out yourself. Though time is almost up. "OK, Frank. Let's go in."

He finishes caring for his steed, making sure that it will be comfortable while the two of you are in the cave (and that reminds you of Hana, and you're glad for the contingencies you arranged for), and then you head in.

The cave is vast. Vaster than it seemed from the outside. Vaster than what you think ought to be able to fit into this mountain; but, then, you're used to that sort of thing by now. It just keeps going, as far as your light (courtesy of some fire cantrips) reaches. There's no sign of any monsters, but there's also no sign of the wonder and delight of children. It's just a standard big drippy cave, as far as you can tell. "Uh, Frank," you begin. "What-"

He claps a hand over your mouth before you can speak more, and gestures upward. You look up, and are relieved to not see swarms of horrific bats or anything he's worried about disturbing, but you also don't see anything else of significance. Just stalactites. Kind of weirdly shimmery, but-

That's when you see it. Your eyes look past the deposited minerals and see, and you see:

A toddler delightedly playing with oversized chess pieces, most their height or taller, on a chessboard at some seaside resort, while adults that seem like they might be parents and grandparents watch.

A little girl riding around on a fluffy dog that would be big by adult standards and which is positively elephantine by hers, gripping the fur on its back as it bears her with placid tolerance.

A pair of young teenagers (Teenagers? That seems off to you) dancing awkwardly in what looks like a school gymnasium, looking nowhere but at each other.

You snap out of it, returning to yourself, and then look more carefully elsewhere. All of the stalactites are like that, you can sense, and you and Frank by unspoken mutual consent split up and begin to wander the cave, letting your eyes be drawn to the condensed deposits of episodes from people's lives. It seems like it ought to feel voyeuristic, like a violation, but somehow it doesn't. It feels like the time your trip to Paris got thrown off-schedule and you had a day with no meetings and relatively little work to do so you took a train and visited the Normandy American Cemetery and Memorial and the expanse of thousands of marked graves. It feels like bearing witness. It feels holy. You watch moment after moment in silence, the only sounds your breathing, your footsteps, and the slow steady drip of water.

Your eyes widen. Of course! You want to accost Frank and ask him if your guess is correct, but you hold your tongue until you're both out of the cave, blinking in the not-sunlight, whereupon you turn to him. "Mnemosyne, right?" you ask.

He grins even wider. "Yes! That is what lies above us."

Mnemosyne is a spring, or a river, or a lake (accounts differ) that is the equal and opposite of Lethe: where its more famous cousin takes memories, Mnemosyne restores them. Far above the cave is where it can be found: the Vaults of Innocence are the result of its water dripping down, down, down, eroding the rock (which is no rock at all, but dreamstuff, and whether it precedes humanity's thoughts or succeeds them it is plain to any with eyes to see that dreamstuff reflects them) and depositing the minerals in stalactites. With the results which you witnessed, and which became so easily distorted in the retelling.

"Well," you say. "I got there in the end. Let me guess, the deposits are just anything pure enough to endure, and forgotten memories of that sort are mostly but not entirely from childhood?"

He bows respectfully. "That is my theory."

The two of you part ways, after that: he's off to go see some other amazing feature of the dreaming-realm, whereas you are going to find the next route leading upwards. But despite the depth of the emotions you felt, you don't think this experience is going to wind up as a stalactite any time soon. It's etched too deeply into your mind to forget.

---

PAGE OF SWORDS

Some time later finds you in a structure that looks like an abandoned fortress, built into the side of a hill. It looked from below like there was a proper path leading up the hill on the other side of it, so now you're just trying to find your way through and continue your Ascent. You're wondering what your next station will be when you run smack into it.

Or, rather, you don't. You hear the monster from around the corner, and that prompts you to step cautiously until you turn and see it for yourself. It is something like a bird and something like a wolf and its outline is traced entirely in blades. It turns its "head" towards you, and you can feel terror seize your heart and gut. It is a Sicarius, a spirit from out of nightmares.

It is also very clearly trapped within a magic circle, and just beyond it you behold the magician.

He is a young man, late teens unless you miss your guess. He is chanting a ritual spell, and while you are unfamiliar with this specific formula the gist is apparent: he is attempting to bind this nightmare to his service, so that it will attack only as he bids it.

His expression is focused but anxious. His gestures are a little too forceful. His technique is clumsy but passable. If nothing interferes while he focuses on his working, he will probably succeed.

How will you interact with him?

[] Move on, saying only a few words in passing, or nothing at all: Gain this card as an Aura.
[] Spend one Willpower, helping him complete the binding: Add this card to your Pneuma. Gain one Supernal Force.
[] Spend one Supernal Connection or Aura of the suit of Cups, dismissing and banishing the spirit: Add this card to your Pneuma. Gain one Supernal Connection.

[][ASCENT] Keep exploring.
[][ASCENT] Wake up, ending the Night.

---

Decks and Resources: Character Sheet
Night-specific information: 2/max 6 Explorations

• The adventure kind of got away from me, apologies. Luckily, the premise of the Page of Swords (being found mid-binding) meant that there couldn't be a lot of character interaction there just yet and so the update as a whole didn't sprawl too much.
• You have now met a court card from every suit! Hooray!