You hear a scratching noise, then a tapping, jolting your from your trance... though as soon as you open your eyes, you know you are not in the waking world,  the inside of the boat cabin being simultaneously brighter, and dimmer than if you were to be perceiving it with your own eyes. Where you focus is crisp, while at the periphery of your vision things trail off into wisps of shadow. 

*CAW*

Your gaze is draw to the large raven that is perched upon the former Deep Father altar, now largely stripped of its foul trappings and cleared of the accumulated wealth. The bird cocks its head at you before continuing to peck at a bit of desiccated flesh. Managing to pull it free, it tosses its head back and swallows it, given a raven-y chuckle. It struts the width of the altar, really nothing more than a block of marble set on a wooden base, before regarding the wall where the octopus fetish recently hung. It gives another caw before fluttering across the room to land on your chest, one glinting eye looking down at you. Unable or unwilling to move, you just gaze back, you watch as it gives a soft caw and gently lowers its beak to press against your forehead.

Pulling back, it gives a swift peck on your cheek, and as your hands fly up to the trickle of blood down the side of your face, the bird flaps away from you, flying directly into - and through - the wall above the altar in a flash of searing light, for a moment, a raven's head outline superimposing before you blink and the world comes back into clarity. You are conscious, and out of your trance. You feel no injury on your cheek, but your fingertips are dark and damp with a drop of blood.

You find yourself back in the Beer Room with all of your companions... but... you left? You distinctly remember being down at the docks, fighting against the kuo-toa, and as you think that, you find yourself there. Yes...that's right,  you'd gone down to the docks and defeated the archpriestess, and then ---

A horrible roar sounds, and your mind flees from what came next, back to the safety and security of the Beer Room.

((Start track below.))

 Your companions... perhaps even friends, around you, eating, drinking... smiling! Smiles you've not seen much of in the week of arduous travel following your escape. Yes, at least some of these could be considered friends, if not now, then in the future. It's not a true memory, at some level you recognize that. Largely because there are people sharing your table who were not there... Neth for one. In this scenario, he and Stena are playing some sort of guessing game involving upside down cups and a crab claw while the drow child watches. They seem to be having a great time. But he wasn't there, was he?

You also see Ront, his normally surly orcish face grinning as Io comes and sits down on his lap, wrapping arms around his neck as she gives him a peck on the cheek. When did that happen? Topsy and Turvy are there, chatting excitedly with Eldeth... telling jokes? You like jokes! As you move to join them, you see movement out of the corner of your eye... turning to look, you see all of the kuo-toa in the bar staring at your part. Suddenly, a group of them vanish.... no, the floor vanished beneath them, and they fell. 

((Adjust volume of initial track to 25%, played concurrently with track below set to full volume and 1.5x speed.))

 You turn back to the table, to warn your friends, but they don't seem to understand you, nodding and smiling, before turning back to whatever they were doing. Frantic, you grab Thom and shake him as he smiles and drops out of your grasp, plummeting as the floor vanishes beneath him. In a few more moments, the entire Beer Room has plummeted into darkness, the stool you sit upon the only thing remaining, before it to plunges into the dark. You fall, and fall, and fall, feeling things in the dark reaching for you, snatching at you, as your hopes plummet along with your body. You despair. You fall.

((Stop previous tracks and play the track below.))

 You hear something that brings hope, the music swelling within, as you know your celestial guide is here, you can feel their presence. The darkness is pushed back around you as you glow, the graspers in the dark pulling back out of sight, as you manage to correct your tumble... At the edge of your vision, you can see falling friends, if only you could move faster, you could reach them! 

No sooner thought than provided, great luminous wings erupt with a triumphant chorus from your back, and you plunge like a diving falcon after your companions. As you reach Stena and grasp her arm, her form vanishes, but you hear a note ringing in your mind that represents her... strong, forceful. She is with you now. You fly onward, collecting your companions and the musical notes that represent them... Galingal, dark and haunted, but with a well of strength... Jimjar, cheeky and jubilant, playful... Buppido, unpredictable, wildly shifting... Neth, a cold thrum of unknown depths, the drow child, Ranador, the cry of one who had given up hope.

You cast about for the others, but you do not see them... are they farther down? Have you flown past them in your rush? You don't find an answer before you jolt awake, the music of your dreams still swirling within your head.

You are on a trading ship as you wake. For a moment that doesn't seem right, this ship sank, right before ---  but no. Now that you think about it, that must have all been a dream. You've never been on a ship that went down, you've always had great luck with your trips. The ship lists to the side, and there is the creak of timbers. Now that you're listening for it, you can hear the wind driving the rain against the ship, waves breaking across its hull. That must have been what you heard in your sleep that put that dream of wrecking in your head. 

Knowing you'll not be able to get back to sleep now, you rouse yourself, and pulling an oiled wrap about yourself, venture above deck. Strangely, despite the storm the moon shines down, the pale light washing your reddish skin out to a dark grey. Winds howl through the rigging, and rain lashes across the deck, but the sky remains clear of clouds, moon and starts shining above. The rain is cold, you shiver as some hits you with a more solid presence than you'd expect from rain. Reaching to your neck, you feel an wet, icy chunk that quickly melts in your hands. It continues to get colder, now hail drumming across the deck as the crew struggles to keep the ship righted. You duck beneath an awning, the sound drowning out all others. You are about to head below when the ship shudders and crunches, and your thrown against a wall, your shoulder popping with excruciating pain. Staggering out, you slip on the deck, and one of the crew shouts a warning as some of the rigging falls directly towards you.

Pain and darkness wash over you, and as you come to, you're in the water... sinking... The rigging must have swept you overboard, looking upward, you can see the underside of the ship's hull, impaled on a mountain of bluish green ice. You realize your head is pointed to the depths as you look up at the mountain towering above, and realize that the ship has struck an iceberg... but was that how it happened? Wait, happened? What do you  mean by that? It's happening NOW! You're drowning NOW!

You struggle to get pointed in the right direction and swim, but your shoulder must have been dislocated by the impact, you're not able to get it wrenched around to move in the correct manner, and something is tangling your feet. Looking down, you see rigging and sail has enveloped your legs, you can't pull them free... did you grab your dagger when you got up? You can't remember, but fumbling at your belt, you can't find it. Your brief struggles gain you nothing, and you mentally call out to any and all gods who might help. It's come to prayer... but nothing answers, as the ship drifts beyond your vision... and then even the glow of the moon on the surface fades, and  you're in darkness, your lungs burning as the cold, cold water presses in on you. 

To give up... to give in... to let it all end. Such a waste... that shipment would have made you a fortune.

Finally, with nothing more to do, you inhale frigid seawater ----

Huffing and puffing, you throw yourself bodily into an alcove in the darkened tunnel, desperately trying to slow and quiet your breathing. IT can hear you if you're too loud. Last thing you'd want to do is prove those bastards right...

"Stena isn't cut out for this work." "What IS she cut out for? "She's gonna die down there, all alone." "At least there's not family to notify."

The low rumbling growl sounds behind you... closer than you expected, and you take off, hurrying down one twisting passage after another, trying to shake both the creature hunting you, and the nagging feeling that it is playing with you... It didn't have to growl... not unless it wanted you to know it was there... to know it was close. If only you'd gotten a good look at it, you'd have a better idea what you were facing... but glowing eyes and a gaping, toothy maw was about all you saw as you fled your campsite, leaving behind fully half of your gear. If you'd even managed to grab your bow, at least you'd be able to attack it from range, but that was shattered in the initial scrum, and your quiver and arrows sent scattering. You were fortunate to have snagged your shortsword, you suppose.

You hurry onward, across a span of stone forming a natural bridge, and spot a recess in the stone above the passage that continues on. You feel an odd sense of having been here before, having seen that recess, and having had to made the decision to hide there, or continue fleeing. At some level you know you fled before... or someone did. Could that have been the same person? You decide to try something different, and head down the trail to a cliff edge, stepping up to it before backtracking and making for the recess. You climb in and wait, slowing your breathing, trying to call on your training and dwarven heritage to think like stone... to look like stone... to be like stone. 

Within minutes, the creature ambles across the stone bridge, its form denying your ability to perceive it, the outline fuzzing away to shadow, except for the eyes and the open, slavering mouth.  Screwing your eyes shut, you hold still as the creature sniffs the air. Risking it, you peer out, and watch it casting its gaze across the cavern, its eyes passing right over you as if you were not there. Daring to hope, you hold still, and it gives a whuffling snort and moves on, following your trail to the cliff edge. You risk moving from your position to track its movement, but reaching the end of your trail, and not seeming to buy that you jumped off the cliff, it backtracks. You freeze, fully exposed, but not daring to scramble back to the recess and surely alert it. The creature pauses, casting its gaze around, including right across you, with no recognition. You are certain that it must be able to hear the thudding of your heart in your chest, but it seems to remain confused and clueless. 

It moves back along the bridge, and seizing upon wild desperation, you stalk after it... as it reaches the middle of the bridge, you lunge forward, your shortsword parting the tendon connecting the calf to the heel, and  you find that the creature can in fact bleed! You slice the same cut on the other leg, and it collapses on the narrow bridge, topping over and falling, falling, falling... until its fall is abruptly halted by a stalagmite that bursts in one side and out the other. Panting, you head back to retrieve your gear... no one will be mocking Stena Igensdottir for running away and loosing half her gear, not this time! Not again!

((Is this a dream or more like a memory? Either way, I think Stena would just have willed herself on. Maybe tried to will herself to do things, "No, there, hide there." And "Now! Kill it!""

Overall it went well so she wouldn't try to interfere. She would wake up considering the dream though,  and what the nightmare creature was!

Good work Spider,  it was an exciting read!))

I was thinking more like an alternate ending to a memory? Perhaps some bits of it were real, some were changed, but if on one of her earlier trips down she ran into something and fled back to the surface and got razzed by some of the folks in  her company? Or was just worried she would be? Either way, in the dream she seized hold of the opportunity to be a badass in a way that circumstances are forcing her to in her waking life.

It does feel like an alternate version,  like you say, where she had actually needed to abandon her gear but just kept running home. I feel like most of worries about inferiority are in her own mind and her colleagues gave her more pity than derision. She is the type to fixate on the negative, though. Especially after losing a number of friends in the battle for Gretgrym (I think?) she closed herself off more.

She is desperate to show people (of the right races) she is competent.

Sure, entirely probably that the voices she hears denigrating her in the dream are her own internal doubts being projected onto the people around her, completely imagined. 

You hear a voice quietly calling out to you... there's a strange overlapping of sounds, one harsh and unintelligible, the other friendly and cheerful.

"Heello, my good friends! So pleased I am to see you!"

(( Kinda this vibe, if you've seen "Barry".))

Stena:

 Neth: 

 "I was just telling my buddies that you and I haven't hung out for like - forever, I'm glad you stopped by!"

Neth calls out to his familiar “We might have something going on here. Strange voices I don’t know where it’s coming from. Come back and help keep an eye out.”

"That is why everybody likes you, buddy! You always so ready for sharing! Do you have any dinner left over? I missed my meal tonight."

@Neth

((Didn't need another WIS from Stena, just Neth.))

"Oh, that's alright then buddy. I wouldn't want to impose."

"Hey, I know, buddy! How about you join me for a swim! The water is lovely right now, we can just relax, and you can tell me about your day..."

@Neth:

 @Stena:

“Yes, maybe check the water. Carefully I don’t want to have to get a new one of you.”