Carl woke to find his faced pressed against a roughly-hewn wooden table. When he lifted his head he was dismayed to find that his cheek had been resting in something sticky. He rubbed at it with his sleeve in distaste while trying to work out where he was. He had long since given up on coming to with all his recent memories intact. His brief slumbers were so deep and unforgiving that they often temporarily wiped out whole hours of his life. He had discovered that the best way to deal with waking was not to dig through dream-shattered, misorganized memories, but to rely on his sharp senses to orient himself and his quick reflexes to get him out of any trouble he might be in.

So those sharp senses went to work. A tavern or low inn. The common room. A regular enough sight to be seen on waking, though so far he didn’t think there was a correlation between drink and his sleeping episodes. It was just that he spent a lot of time in these places digging up jobs. Or trying to forget that he had trouble getting jobs of any kind these days, on account of the fact that as soon as prospective clients found out what was wrong with him they all turned away and took their money with them.

A tavern then. A dark and dingy one at that, and not too busy. There were a few of the rough-and-tumble sort scattered throughout the place, and behind the bar there was a fat man slumped all over a stool, with his head on his chest and his eyes closed. Ah, a brother of the dreamworld, thought Carl. Then he continued his survey.

He was wearing all his clothes. That was good. People of the unsavory sort had a tendency to forget past friendships or associations and take all his clothes and any other money or equipment he had on his body whenever he had one of his fits. He often found himself lying in an alleyway when he woke. It was a wonder he hadn’t yet found himself lying dead in an alleyway. In any case, the few precious things he had left now were stashed up on a rooftop out of view, rather than on his person. Whenever he found out where he was he would go outside and locate that rooftop by orienting himself in relation to the Tower of Pain. The Tower of Pain was the only landmark in the whole town, and it stood out no matter where you were. Unless he’d somehow made it to another town. Always before his spells had lasted only an hour at most, and usually he was awake again within moments. In fact it wasn’t often that he found himself in a completely unfamiliar place.

In any case, as soon as he discovered what that place was he would go out, locate the Tower, and go and climb up to grab his loot. If his spells were beginning to last longer now it was probably time to get out to the country and retire honestly. He shouldn’t be spending time in dangerous places like this when he could fall asleep at any moment, leaving himself defenseless. Places like this. Right. He continued his orientation.

His eyes took in the number of men and women in the place, the number of weapons they carried. He was nothing if not sharp-eyed, and now he relied on this more than ever. He noted the sign over the door that said: “Don’t forget your coat.” He noted the lack of natural lighting. He noted the ink stains on one of the tables nearby, which indicated the regular presence of some kind of scholar. And finally he noted the dwarf sitting across the table from him with a ferocious scowl on his face.

Carl jumped. If anything the dwarf’s scowl grew deeper, his entire face folding into a myriad of wrinkles. As his mouth twisted his bristly black beard shifted to one side to match. Like most members of his species he was gaunt, hunch-backed, and appeared quite aged, and would probably come up only to Carl’s chest, or thereabouts. His eyes were inscrutable, mostly on account of the smoky glass lenses he wore over them. These, Carl knew, were a special invention of the dwarves to shield their sensitive eyes from the brightness of the daytime firmament.

“I’m sorry to wake you,” said the dwarf. His voice was a crispy rasp, like two small bits of gravel being ground together. This was an oddity for a dwarf. The people were known to be “silver-fingered, golden-tongued,” as the old adage would have it, and Carl had never met a dwarf who went against type in that regard.

The wrinkle-deepening grimace had not lightened, and Carl suspected the dwarf might be a little upset. “Perhaps, if you’re quite done napping, we might continue?” the little man went on. Even though Carl couldn’t see them he could feel those dark subterranean eyes fixing him mercilessly.

“Ah…” said Carl, giving up on his senses and scrabbling desperately through his sleep-fogged mind for a memory that would help him. He scrabbled in vain.

“Yes. Yes of course,” he finished, rather lamely. But he arranged his best cool, business-like expression on his face, and it seemed to work. The dwarf’s beard straightened out a bit.

“Very well then,” he rasped. “As I was saying, my name is Luunchpael Bukzemwynch.”