Chapter 47
Vistana
The blue dragon roared and drew back to attack. Elsie noticed a message carved above the door, 4 lines written in 4 languages, 2 of which she spoke. She yelled them out, a part of a poem, and as other's crowded in to decipher them, Eliza boldly stepped up to the dragon to buy them time. She fired a extracharged shot wizzing past the dragons ear, a roar of her own. The beast puffed up it's scales in a show of
Erros uses opportunity bought by Eliza to cast a successful fear, the dragon flies off. For a moment.
They puzzle out the poem and try different combinations of colors. The dragon flies back and lands with a crash, now a red dragon, inexplicably. Fire billowed up in its throat.
Elsie ran underneath the wagon, Pidlewick followed. There she found what she was looking for, a wooden hatch. Cautiously wary of traps she pulled herself up and inside. Erros pulled the final lever of the door, opening it up, and before the dragon could strike it vanished. Elsie found a strange shotgun inside and in attempting to disarm it, the gun went off, blasting a massive hole into the door.
Inside the wagon they found a red coat that confirmed it was ezmerelda's (that Erros wore) and Eliza took the gun immediately. They all entered the tower to find an elevator platform in the center, and 4 clay statues holding chains on each corner. They stepped on the platform and the golems came to live, hauling it up 6 inches at a time. The ascent was slow, up through the hole in second floor, the hole in the third. The crumbling wall of the third floor they could now see was rigged with a swinging log trap, likely put in by Ezmerelda. Then the elevator stopped. And the trap door above them opened to reveal Ezmerelda, and the barrel of a rifle.
She demanded to know their names, she'd been watching them tackle the dragon and heard the explosion from her wagon. She claimed they would need to wait for an hour to confirm they were not magically disguised, but also mentioned the anti-magic field. In response to saying Eliza would hurt herself with that stolen gun, she raised her own pistols, and Fabian made note of how they couldn't be disguised if the tower was anti-magic. Ezmerelda looked embarresed, and allowed them up, still keeping her distance in the tower.
Above was a veritable vampire hunting den, and Ezmerelda looked a skilled fighter. She had no interest in hunting werewolves, but only wanted to kill strahd so she could leave, having given up on finding her mentor. She thought little of the group, and Erros's verbose and dramatic plea for her aid she only found amuzing, but this upset Fabian and her passionate response compelled Ezmerelda to hear them out. They all sat together to discuss.
