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[Valdis woke in a panic, to emotions not her own and she wondered briefly if this was what X had felt once the shock had worn off. But she didn't make any moves until she was sure of herself again, taking time to pick apart the dream and remove herself from it.

That hadn't been easy. The turmoil of the crew, the black, oily shadows that twisted with their own life. Far too reminiscent of darker things. Had some creature from the Death Plane managed to reach through a breach? And if so, was this some kind of warning? As someone who could not dream without some power at work, she had long since stopped discounting them.

It was still dark outside when she turned on her video stream.]

Has anyone else had strange visions tonight?

[Her voice is steady, more certain than she feels, but Valdis refuses to allow dread to overwhelm her.]

I tried to sketch what I remember, but it's more the feeling of it that I can grasp. A sense of fear and...a black, oiled shadow that seems to move on its own.

[It was that oily shadow that bothered her the most.]

And a name...Nerrin.

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[The Dreaming had never been fair when it came to visions, but this one seemed to be more of a warning than anything else.]

It didn't seem like a crash, more like they were being attacked...but the beast was corporeal even as it wasn't.

[Valdis realized that this didn't make much sense, but she couldn't find another way to describe it.]

I'm not sure I'd call it a beast, but it was pretty hard to tell how sentient it might've been from the dream. I've seen shadows move kind of like that before, though.

[Not that this was Shadow magic like what Bakura could wield - at least it didn't seem to be. Pepper frowns in thought.]

It definitely felt... malicious, I guess? If a bunch of Dreamfolk were seeing these people, they have to have gotten connected to the Dreaming somehow.

The shadows seemed to almost move with life, as if it was targeting prey. Not possessing my normal senses, it's hard to decipher much more...it was definitely a ship and whatever it was terrified the crew and Nerrin.

[But there had to be two parts, Ilda hadn't mentioned a ship. Yet some of the visions seemed connected, as if from different witnesses.]

What do you mean by them not being where they were supposed to be?

[Pepper doesn't reply immediately, humming to indicate that she's thinking. The fact that she's even waiting to articulate this properly suggest both it's seriousness and her relative growth in Konryu.]

I think Nerrin was some sort of mechanic, maybe the lead person on the ship. He was... in tune, I guess, with the engines, with what they sounded like. And they sounded wrong.

It was sort of like a phase shift - like everything was vibrating out of sync all of a sudden, and that was before the ship started lurching around.

A lead mechanic...

[That seemed more in line with what she saw. All she could discern was some kind of authority figure and the longer and harder she thought about it, the more the thoughts seemed to flee.]

It could have been some kind of shift...how many have returned from those before? Would there be anything to compare it to?

In an emergency, if he were a captain I'd think he'd be on the command deck, not the engine room. I guess it'd depend on whatever their standard protocol was. Is? Hard to tell when they were.

I dunno what kind of records there are, but if this is Dreaming-related then I'd bet the Aisling Tower would have the best data. It might be worth knocking on doors.

[Valdis hesitated to visit the Aisling Tower, anything that had to do with the Dreaming she wasn't particularly keen on messing with.]

Perhaps if you have time, you could look into those particular records?

Yeah, I can poke around. [She and Bakura are already doing some poking around the Aisling Tower for completely different reasons, but Pepper does not think this is a good idea to mention over a public network, or possibly at all.] They'll probably be interested in this stuff anyway, since it's pretty much what they're studying. As long as they don't try to attach a bunch of scanning machines to me, it's fine.

I'm sure they have more intelligence than to do such a thing.

[They might be used to the destructive qualities of the Dreamfolk, but that didn't mean they lacked care when it came to testing. Besides, Bakura wouldn't let anyone hurt Pepper and his moral code was a bit lesser than hers.]

Let me know what you find.

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