Trell woke up to Byleth yelling and an empty bed. It was better than the first time he had woken up that night, wherein his face was firmly pressed against his rival’s pectoral, though the sudden lurch of lucidity was the sort of shock he was never fond of. Indeed, if it were up to him, no person would be awake until the sun had peaked for the day.

It took him a moment to adjust to what was happening around him. He rubbed the sleep from his eyes and sat up, then he blinked once, twice, three times, and the image of what was happening in front of him finally started to materialize into his understanding.

Forric, still in his tight nightclothes, had his sword and his shield in hand, the blade colliding with a swirling tendril of mist that seemed to emerge from the wall itself. His shield was keeping him safe from the little spits of fire shooting off of the Innkeeper’s wand. Huh. The Innkeeper had a wand. She also was looking fairly spry for an old woman. In fact, it looked as though she may have used her bare hands to rip a massive section of the wall off to give herself access to the room. Trell admired someone who knew what they wanted, though he was generally unsettled by uncharacteristically strong old women who could tear apart sections of wall.

Byleth was also in his nightclothes still, though he was a bit more covered as the sheets were clinging onto him like a hug from a ghostly relative. He wasn’t throwing hexes back at the old woman, since he still had no staff to speak of, but he did seem to be muttering counter-curses under his breath, since his focus was still locked onto her. He didn’t notice that Trell had woken up.

The last time he hadn’t noticed that Trell had woken up, he made up for it with a flurry of kisses and teasing words, then a meal at an expensive restaurant. Trell had insisted on paying his portion, but Byleth had the money and the motivation, and ultimately won out, much to Trell’s irritation. He didn’t much like people paying for him, and, if he had to admit it, he didn’t much like going to expensive restaurants.

Now though, in this exact moment, Trell would happily forgive Byleth for not noticing him, since an old woman had the walls dissolving into mist to attack their companion and had a small sphere of fire floating above an old stick that would spit out fire every so often.

It was quite fortunate that Trell had woken up when he did, as a matter of fact, since the blanket he was under had just caught fire. Thinking on one’s feet was never easy when said person had just woken up, but Trell had practice maneuvering through strange scenarios. Enough that he was ready for action after just another second of contemplation. His reflexes were slow and offered him very little help in his movement, but he managed to hurl the burning blanket at the old woman, catching her face and wand underneath, and roll towards his jacket in the corner of the room, all without getting lit on fire.

Her fiery orb burnt through the blanket for her, and she seemed relatively unphased by the brief disturbance of vision, but the speed at which the tentacles attacked seemed to slow, at least slightly.

Trell rifled through his jacket and pulled loose his knives, then stood up behind Forric, ready to join the fight in full capacity. Unfortunately, his fortitude didn’t match Forric’s, and a tendril, in all of its translucent and dusty glory, snapped from the wall and struck him in the chest, knocking him back and onto a collision course with the bed Byleth stood on. That shook Byleth’s balance, which in turn ruined his focus, which culminated in him tripping down and landing behind the bed.

The tendrils thickened now, devoid of the restraint of Byleth’s counter-curse, and more sprouted from more parts of the room. The doorframe was already full of them, but now some emerged from behind Byleth, some spiked up through the floorboards and snagged Trell, and more lashed at Forric than ever before. He caught most of them with his shield, but one caught him on his thigh and drew a spatter of blood.

The tendrils graded from the opaque color of the walls to a clear, almost water-like look at the edges, though that said nothing of just how solid they were.

Several more latched around Trell now, drawing his back more intimately close with the floor than possible. In fact, the floor had seemed to liquify, drawing him into it as though it was sand. Forric experienced the same issue, which led to an inability to move quickly enough to counter every bolt of fire and tendril lash that came his way.

Naturally, Byleth remained completely untouched by the carnage. The floor even seemed to operate as normal for him, though the tendrils didn’t let him pass easily. As he rushed towards Forric to cast something of pure offense at the old woman, he tripped around one of the tendrils that curled close to Trell, and ended up face-to-face with the other man.

He sat there just a moment, enjoying breathing his air and feeling the warmth of their skin brushing in so many places, then he stood up and snapped out a few words from the archaic tongue that all magic was spoken in.

The woman crumpled and fell backwards, though the only circumstance that changed with her movement was the fire emerging from her wand. The tendrils and sinking ground kept up their assault on both Trell and Forric. Indeed, Forric had nearly sunk down to his knees now, and Trell’s incredible neck-strength, born from events that shall go undescribed, was the only thing that was keeping him from suffocating in the wood that his body was sinking into.

“Byleth? Magic is your area of expertise. Anything in your studies that would help us here?” Forric asked, still doing his best to keep the tendrils away from any part of him that they could possibly reach. More had continued to emerge, however, and it was proving difficult to do anything in particular. “And not that I’m overly concerned with the safety of Trell, but he does seem close to suffocation.”

Trell tried to glare at him, though since most of his neck was melted into the floorboards, he couldn’t look up enough to catch his eyes.

“I’m… thinking,” Byleth replied, stepping around Trell and Forric and peering into the hallway.

The hallway twisted and spun. It folded in on itself. The candles lit and unlit. They bled and unbled. The wall opposite of the doorway Byleth stood in rotated up and around him, though the rest stayed where it was, and swung back behind him. He leapt forward, and the doorway he was standing in was completely covered with the wall he was just staring at. The door was now in front of him, and he could see Trell and Forric still struggling, but couldn’t reach them.

He shouted out a protective spell, though it drained him significantly, and ran forward to reach them again. The wall pivoted to his side, and he collided with a wall instead of making it through the door.

He spun around and found the door again, though this time, he paused before rushing towards it. All that was left above the floor was Trell’s nose, chest, a few fingers, and his knees, and Forric was down to his chest now. He looked over at Byleth with a longing and a fear that melded so closely together that Byleth’s heart hammered harder.

Forric tried to scream, but the tendrils, now more closely resembling parts of the wall bending from their normal physics to move, struck him across the face.

Byleth knew what was happening. He knew that somewhere, in the depths of his studies, he had learned about exact situations like this. That there was some sort of entity that could sometimes possess personal residences -- but did it apply to inns? He wasn’t sure. He thought it was only for homes, but current circumstances would suggest otherwise.

Trell and Forric would be safe, at least with his protective spell cast at them. For the moment. But that didn’t mean the moment they passed on the other side of that floor they wouldn’t be in immense danger again.

The rooms didn’t bother to spin around now that Byleth was in place. He looked at the picture frames dangling on the walls, the peeling wallpaper, the blood running up and down behind it, then at the splintered floorboards.

A sliver of wood stood up from the ground. Byleth looked at it another moment, then at his bare foot, then sucked in a breath and stepped down onto it. He winced, preparing for the pain to come, but it never did. He looked back up to see that he was now facing the complete opposite way from before, and there was no broken board beneath his foot.

That answered another suspicion. This place wasn’t designed to kill. Whatever entity lived here, it didn’t want him dead. It wanted him alive. Presumably to hand over to his parents.

That didn’t apply to Forric and Trell, though. This thought bubbled up in his belly and burned his chest. He looked back through the doorway, and both were gone now.

There was a singular stroke of luck amidst this stress, however, and it came in the form of the unconscious woman next to his feet. Provided he could make it over to her, he could snatch the wand she was using right from her spidery little hands and make something happen. He wasn’t quite as skilled with a wand as he was with a staff -- wands were for more clever and less dramatic spells. Wands casted things like curses and hexes. They made smaller things happen. Not necessarily less dangerous, just… smaller. Staffs could be used for more exciting things, like incantations. They were more exciting, at least to Byleth. Summoning blizzards, creating fiery tornadoes, making the earth rumble beneath one’s feet…

But the wand would have to do. And the presence of the wand in the woman’s hand confirmed something else to Byleth: she was not connected to the entity in the inn. Entities could not wield magic in the same way people could. He snatched it from between her fingers, though he thought for a split second that she was going to come up and snatch it back from him.

He examined it between his fingers for a moment, and his lip curled up. The craftsmanship was abhorrent. The thing looked like a twig from a tree broken off with nothing done to clean it or give it any artistic value. He doubted he would get much out of it. Back at the Castle, he had access to the best of wands, despite his distaste for them. They were always magnificent works of art. Some even had gems in them to focus their power to even finer a point.

But he realized after another moment of scrutiny upon the distasteful twig that this situation had no room for his tastes, and that he had sat idle long enough.

Trell and Forric had ended up in the room below the one they had spent the night in. Trell landed first, though he had the decency to wait for Forric to drop down, too. There was very little light in the room, and there was very little space, either. A broom collided with Forric as he landed, and his bulky form snapped it in two.

Trell and Forric were in very close proximity once they were both back on solid ground. Close enough that Forric could practically feel Trell’s eyes roll against his skin when asked if he was in one whole piece. After a few more moments of idle chatting and uncomfortable shuffling that pressed them together in ways tighter than they had experienced last night, Forric shoved his shield outward, and the two burst through the door and into the main hall of the inn, both still scantily clad, leaving brooms and mops and other cleaning supplies tumbling out behind them.