Note: Heads up, there's a mini misgendering fest near the end of the chapter.

The drum-player

It was the week during which orphans performed plays in the orphanage's garden. The set of stories on which the plays were based was one that Helena appreciated, and the house's roof was a decent location from which to watch whatever was going on in the area of the garden in which plays were held. It had been a genuinely enjoyable activity for the two first evenings and four first plays, but the second play of the third evening – the story given to nine-year-olds – had become unbearable. It told of a time when even having an official "toy" who didn't leave the sleeping quarters would have been unthinkable for a King who preferred men or a Queen who preferred women, which meant that the same-sex lover had to be met in secret. The story currently being performed by the children included an accomplice who had taken to practice playing drums not too far away from the meeting place to cover any noises that would garner unwanted attention. Considering the age of the performers, the beat played had every reason to be whatever the child portraying the drum-player could manage to play consistently. However, Helena found the beat to be way too close to the one "Tobias" had regularly played in the confines of their secret workroom to be a coincidence. The only reason she was sure it hadn't taken her hours to realize this was that the play still seemed to still be going on; the young age of the performers also meant is was only about half the length of most plays. If she had been "Tobias" and not wanted her and Sune to watch the play, she would have done something similar. Once whatever the sound of that drum was going to her would fade away, she would need to get her hands on a copy of the original story. She tried to figure out how she could get quick and relatively discrete access to a copy. Damn. She was going to have to ask Markus.

Emil would have sworn that there had been other people on the roof besides him and Lalli when the play had begun. He had noticed Helena and Sune leaving, but where had Markus, "Janine" and Runa gone? Markus had taken "Janine" on his lap when her de-facto parents had left so she could continue watching, so Emil and Lalli should have ended up with the child if Markus had needed to leave for a reason that was only his own. If something had happened, he wasn't sure what to make of the fact neither he nor Lalli had been considered worth bothering over it. He also realized that the play was definitely over and that going back inside and actually asking people what was going on was a better idea than staying on the roof and overthinking it. As he and Lalli came down to where Helena and Sune's room was, they found the door shut and the "do not disturb" sign they made a lot of use of hanging from a nail on the door. Mikkel was found on the ground floor's "sick room", Runa in the bed and "Janine" in a small nest of pillows. Emil decided to enquire while Lalli gave "Janine" a closer look:
-What happened?
-Runa has a bad headache and Janine was signing for "hurting" and touching her head before falling unconscious. Markus is the one who noticed Janine wasn't well and brought her down, so I have no idea whether she really was unable to be more precise or trying to avoid acting older than her apparent age.
-Did you ask Daniel about it?
-He isn't here, but should be soon. He's been slipping out to who-knows-where while all of you are watching the play and letting the black-market King use his room with a closed door and curtains so it would sound like someone is working in there. Whatever he's up to, he's been able to time it so he's back little after the end of the second play yesterday and the day before.
Just as Mikkel was finishing his sentence, Lalli suddenly looked in the general direction of Daniel's room:
-He's back now, and the other man is leaving.
At least, Emil no longer needed to ask Lalli whether he was aware Daniel had been sneaking out or not. After a short detour that Emil assumed to be to check on Helena and Sune, Daniel came to the sick room, looking tired:
-I'm seriously thinking of suggesting to those two to go back to Finmi right now. I'm starting to think "Tobias" intentionally arranged to be able torment them even if they escaped. Both of them were familiar with the drum-player's beat. I also found what I was looking for in the orphanage.
Mikkel apparently made a relevant connection before Emil could:
-I thought you might not be going very far. And this week is indeed a good time to search it. Sorry to ask you this now, but there are two other people to examine here. It took a good while longer, but they don't seem to have responded to that play very well either.
Daniel examined "Janine" first:
-Whatever happened to her happened a little too long ago for me to pinpoint the cause. It looks like she just needs to rest, but I wouldn't be surprised if "Tobias" had arranged for those artificial bodies to respond to specific stimuli.
Daniel next examined Runa, and Emil could have sworn Daniel's eyes widened:
-I'm hope I'm reading things incorrectly, but it looks like her control talisman was briefly activated in the last hour.
It was impossible for Emil to not respond to that:
-What control talisman?
Daniel turned towards Emil and raised an eyebrow:
-Did you ever wonder who else besides the Royals could be getting them or why I learned the means of extracting them in the first place when I had no idea that you would need it before I set foot in Scandi?
Emil had to admit he hadn't, but it still didn't entirely answer his question:
-So, why does Runa have one anyway?
-All children who grew up in the orphanage do. Rolf may have changed his mind about Runa a few months after leaving her there, but she did undergo the standard procedure for a new infant resident. And in case you're wondering, it's going to be a very bad idea to do anything about Markus and Dirk's as long as they're still living there and Alicia is still technically under its guardianship for the next three years.
Emil was about ask more specifically for the reason those control talismans had been put inside the orphans' heads, he realized the reason the person actually ruling the country would have to do this, and that there was a more pertinent question to ask:
-Do these talismans stay inside children after they leave?
-Good thinking. They do, unless they are properly extracted. I was hoping to get Niels rid of his. "Tobias" seems to have gotten rid of Vivian's at some point. This makes Kenneth is the only member of the Council we need to watch out for in that respect. Runa will be fine for tonight, from what I can tell.

xxxx

Emil had trouble going to sleep that night. Daniel and Helena had told him multiple times that while the charity work done by the Council members existed for their good public images, people got real help in the process. Now, he had discovered that all former orphanage children were effectively a secret army that Vivian could have raised any time she wanted; and that by impersonating her, "Tobias" had gained access to it. Just as he finally felt like he was falling asleep, Emil realized Daniel hadn't shared what he had found in the orphanage. The room's window opened, and Lalli came inside:
-You're awake. Good. You can help. Go on top of the stairs and keep the others from coming down if they wake up.
If there was one thing Lalli had gotten him used to, it was a situation turning out to be much more serious than he had first thought.
-Mikkel is already down there. What's happening?
-I'm not sure. It's only been described to me. But something weird is happening to Runa. I think I know how to make her better, but it takes a little time and can't be interrupted.
-Go ahead and do it now, then. I'll be right behind you.
Lalli was already downstairs by the time Emil got hold of the top bannister.

Who was this person? She didn't know them. They were speaking, but she didn't understand a single word. Why were they grabbing her? She needed to bite something. Might as well be strange person's arm. There was a new presence in the room. She heard something that vaguely sounded like singing, but she didn't recognize the words. Her head was hurting again. She was tired again. When did the strange man holding her change into Mikkel?

-This is impossible! The only real proof we have that humanity ever had to deal with that disease is the incredibly high number of people who are immune to it even now. The only reason members of our family still know those spells is that every generation manages to produce someone who's utterly convinced that the thing can come back anytime centuries after being completely wiped out.
Reynir had trouble believing those last words were coming from Onni himself, whom he had contacted through the spirit realm. If someone in the family was going to teach Onni's future children seemingly obsolete knowledge for the sake of being cautious, it was definitely going to be him. Come to think of it, Reynir suspected something similar to have happened in his own family. This was however the kind of situation that required the conversation to stay on track:
-Well, for what it's worth, what Runa described according to the others didn't exactly sound like the symptoms I've heard about.
-The symptoms you're most likely to know of are those of being slowly killed by the disease. But being immune and getting killed by it were not the only possibilities. There was a third one. Those who know of it suspect it's the real reason it managed to spread so much whenever it first appeared. Some sources claim some of those that caught the disease became some sort of very aggressive monster with an impulse to attack and bite any healthy human they find. One of the signs of infected people taking that route is becoming unable to recognize people they should be familiar with.
That unfortunately rang a bell for Reynir:
-Helena claimed to have cured Runa. What happened?
-This is something you will have to ask Helena.

xxxx

Luck had it that there was no Council meeting next morning, leaving the household free to start the day early and enabling Runa to be present for the explanation of what had happened to her during the night. A sheep-herder turned party-trick mage not knowing about what had happened to her was one thing. The ignorance of Helena, who had claimed to have cured her almost three weeks ago, was disappointing but made some sort of sense, and in a way, lent credence to her claim of not having been the one to make her sick. Daniel was a little more unexpected. Runa had noticed a few changes in Markus when running into him; considering that gradual but steady changes could take some time to be noticeable, she had figured out that Daniel had to have something to do with them, and would have needed to learn a lot about how the human body worked to make them happen with minimal risk to Markus. Daniel had however managed to find what he wanted without reading anything about the disease that he didn't already know from the prior education Runa had also gotten. Those who died of it were known to develop structural anomalies in various part of their bodies, but Runa never hear anything about people outright changing into monsters. The conversation suddenly became very tedious when Daniel decided he needed to figure out a Scandi-language version of all the spells Lalli had been taught concerning the disease right now and Lalli had turned out to also be the only person in the room with a decent grasp of both Finmi and Scandi. Runa's situation in regard to the disease was one Rolf would need to be made aware of as soon as she returned home. However, she really wanted one of the mages come with her, and all three of the ones she thought she could count on to explain things properly had invested themselves in the translation of the spells. Mikkel, Sigrun and Reynir all decided they weren't needed and went on to do whatever work they usually did in the household; Sune was already watching his daughter. Stig seemed to envy them a little. Helena had insisted that he stay on the basis that there were still a few idiosyncrasies in Lalli's Scandi that only he understood, but none had shown up yet. Runa sat next to him in hope that it would make both of them feel a little less lonely:
-So… you got married to someone from Finmi and didn't bother to learn his language?
The face he made told her he was having mixed feeling about having that conversation:
-I tried, but I just couldn't get the hang of it. When he turned out have been picking up Scandi during the classes meant to teach me Finmi, we decided one shared language was good enough.
-What are you doing about Janine, then?
-Watching her sign with others as much as I can, and hoping I'll pick things up. And since she just plain can't speak, my inability to pick up on foreign languages comes across as easier to get past to everyone else.
-Can't one of the mages fix whatever is keeping her from talking?
-No. Very rare birth defect. Trying to fix it without knowing exactly what to do could mess up her breathing. Helena sometimes seems to be thinking about it, but I think she has too many other things on her plate properly focus on it.
Runa remembered the thoughts that had gone through her head concerning the girl's origins, and decided to see if she could get any idea of which ones were going in the right direction:
-Guess that's how Councilor Vivian had her around to pass off as Helena and Sune's child.
Stig briefly looked surprised, before switching to a more caring expression:
-Helena and Daniel keep telling me I should leave people wondering about as much things I can manage. But I couldn't help but notice that you seemed to like the possibility that Helena and Sune were caring for her despite not her being their daughter.
Daniel and Markus were apparently better about not telling people more than they needed to know about her than Runa had been giving them credit for.
-My mother meant to give birth to me in the orphanage and leave me there, but bad weather, a bad sense of orientation and her sense of what a "large building" was resulted in her giving birth in Master Rolf's spare bedroom instead. After handing me over to the orphanage, he decided to sponsor me, then kept leaving Lady Vivian notes saying I could call on him for just about anything I needed when I would be older. He ended just going ahead and adopting me before I turned a year old. Then he realized he was in charge of raising me and decided he might as well train me as his preferred successor. A surprising number of people I've met gave me a hard time for not being his biological daughter, or turned out to have been treating me kindly only because they had been assuming I was somehow related to him by blood.
Stig was apparently looking for something to answer when Daniel's voice switched from a half-whisper to normal volume after what had to be the tenth variation of the same spell:
-Oh, I think I've got it. I'm getting three different signals from the people within the house.
Lalli confirmed it what he was supposed to see. Daniel continued:
-There's a signal I'm getting from myself, you, Helena, Stig, Sigrun and Mikkel.
Lalli explained those were the people who were immune. As it had turned that even the form of the disease Helena had helped Tobias create could be transmitted quite reliably via skin-breaking bites, Runa was relieved that none of the people who had dealt with her the previous night were at risk… until she realized Daniel hadn't named the entire household.
-There's another signal I'm getting from Reynir only.
Lalli told his that was for the non-immunes who would die if they caught the disease. Runa realized what came next just as Daniel voiced it:
-Guess the "will be turned into a monster if sick" signal is what I'm getting from Sune, Janine and Runa.
Lalli simply nodded. Runa barely had time to piece together what that meant before Helena let out a sear word, asked for Sune and Reynir to come back to the dining room, and started to make plans for Runa to move into the house permanently. Reynir eventually managed to get a word in edgewise. It turned out his own family had been holding onto a few spells concerning the disease on a "just in case" basis, and one of them was intended to keep people from infecting each other out of sheer proximity.

xxxx

-According to Reynir, these otherwise work a lot like the sound-amplifying talismans used in theater performances. As long as they're in the face's general vicinity, they will work.
The first piece of good news that had come with Reynir's knowledge was that Runa could return to her own home without being a risk to Rolf and their house employees. Helena was the one to explain Rolf the situation in his house's dining room, as Daniel had gone to deliver a few items to Randi's hospital. Rolf, with composure only someone with his experience in his job could manage, promptly reminded Helena of the other reason she had needed to come in person:
-You told both of us you cured her on Magda day.
Helena clenched her fists:
-For all intents and purposes, I had. The spell I know doesn't cure the disease as much as make it dormant for the rest of the patient's life. Only time will tell if Lalli's spell actually cured it or just made it dormant again. If not actually cured, it can be woken up again via magic if someone wishes to do so. I guess whoever first came up with the dormancy spell didn't consider that someone would actually want to reverse its effects.
Runa was the one to ask the inevitable question:
-How would someone do such a thing?
-Someone can do it as long as they can control your body remotely.
After that answer from Helena, both her and Rolf agreed that given the circumstances, Runa might as well be told some of the things she would have found out anyway in a few years immediately. The control talismans inside whoever had ended up in the orphanage before turning three years old. Those inside the slaves sold on the black-market. Their possible double duty as cures for some conditions found both in Randi's hospital and Tanja's criminal rehabilitation center. The real reason Daniel was dragging his feet concerning the reopening of the "exchange program" inns Tobias had closed down. Runa and Rolf had no need to know about those inside the Royals, however.

By the time Daniel was near the orphanage again, the first lunch shift had started, which let him examine a large number of people from just outside the dining hall in spite of the limited range of the spell Lalli taught him. There were unfortunately too many people in the room for him to guess whether any of them were the two residents of the orphanage he cared about the most. He thought of the whole situation again, and still couldn't come up with a non-worrying reason "Tobias" would have chosen to make "Janine" susceptible to turning into a monster rather outright immune to the disease. This, combined with the handful of coffin-like boxes decorated with pieces of Moon marble he had found in one of the basement rooms, didn't bode well for "Tobias'" projects at all. The possibility of the plan being long-term meant there could still be time to thwart it, but was also bad news for the length of time during which Tobias was planning on impersonating Vivian.

When Daniel displaced himself directly back into his house's dining room, he found it empty except for Sune crying in Emil's lap. Emil was the only one of the two to notice his presence:
-I'm staying with him until Helena comes back. Could you…
Emil was looking at the door. Daniel was hesitant to leave them alone, before remembering that if Emil did end up needing help, he would probably ask for it. He had to actually do some of the work he had only been pretending to do over the past few days anyway.

Emil sighed. That was a tough one. While "Janine" had chosen the headband without a second thought, Sune had tried every single option offered by Reynir to keep the talisman close to his face, and he couldn't stand keeping any of them on for more than a few minutes. Between the trembling hands with which he had put some of those accessories on himself and the sudden alertness that had come with the two that had required someone else's help, the reluctance was definitely involuntary, at least on a conscious level. Sune's teary reaction to the idea of never leaving the house again had been enough to tell Emil this wasn't an option he quite liked either. An idea suddenly crossed Emil's mind:
-Sune, is it okay if I try something?
-Go ahead…
Emil took the small disk standing in for the future talisman on one of the earring options and lodged it in Sune's bad ear in such a way that some of the outer curves would keep it from falling out. A few moments later, Sune spoke again:
-Are you done yet?

xxxx

Emil ended up being able to go to the market for most of the afternoon. Daniel had already promised that Anna would get a necklace alongside any Royals who turned out to not be immune. Before Emil had gone to his stall, Lalli has discreetly come close enough to Alicia to tell whether she would need a talisman or not. She turned out to need one, which meant Emil had a new task:
-And how can I be sure that thing is only going to protect me from that disease, and not going to corrupt me at the same time?
Emil resigned himself to the fact that making Alicia wear this talisman was going to be harder than I thought it would be:
-Daniel knows nothing about the disease. All he did is wish for you to have one of these. If it can reassure you, the guy who made this is entirely interested in women as far as I know.
-But he still lives in the same house as you and your so-called husband. And Daniel, who could have very well added a few extra engravings after he made it. And you never said he currently was seeing a woman.
-The last girlfriend he had died in the palace fire a few years ago. He's allowed to take the time he wants to start a new relationship as far as I'm concerned.
Another way to approach things crossed Emil's mind:
-Please be honest with me: is there any way I can make you leave the market with this around your neck and convinced that it's nothing more than a preventative for a disease that could be re-emerging? Or am I losing my time?
Alicia briefly adopted a pensive stance before answering:
-There is something you can bring me, and that would make me willing to run the risk of believing you in return.

-So, she's noticed that Dirk was often reading letter from you when she came to see him, but has been insisting that the contents were none of her business. She's convinced that the two of you are discussing some sort of dishonest plan and wants me to intercept one of your letters for Dirk and bring it to her. But I thought that if you wrote something now, carried it in your pocket for a while and gave it to me before leaving, it would look like I intercepted it.
Emil didn't expect the pat on the shoulder and the "good thinking, you may work out after all" from Helena, who happened to be sitting on the side of him that wasn't occupied by Lalli. After they all made sure Markus actually approved of the idea, the rest of the conversation made Emil realize that what he had thought up as an easier alternative to intercepting the letter had an extra advantage: even if Markus simply made a copy of the next message he was planning to leave for Dirk anyway, this let him make sure that the letter contained as few things Alicia or her superiors could latch onto as proof of dishonest plans as possible. From previous dinner conversations, Emil knew that Markus' guard shifts overlapped with Dirk's break time, while Dirks' morning shift ended when Markus' started and the evening one started right around dinner time. This was the reason Dirk never came to the house, in addition to Alicia's departure from the orphanage in all but name meaning that he had to handle all four of his younger siblings by himself. The letters Alicia was so wary about were almost entirely the asking and giving of child-handling advice. Due to the fact that Alicia hardly spent any time with her younger siblings and the clashing points between the orphanage and the Daughters of Magda on child-rearing, Dirk had decided she was only entitled to sparse news about them. The other reason he avoided showing Alicia Markus' letters was that a poorly worded sentence risked giving her and her superiors exactly what they wanted.

xxxx

Of all possible reactions, Alicia had one that carefully crafting the letter had failed to account for:
-You told her in advance, didn't you?
Words came out of Emil's mouth before his brain could stop them and hope to craft some kind of cover:
-I couldn't bring myself to go behind his back, okay? And he shows up for dinner almost every evening, so it was just much easier to do it that way.
Alicia started to tear the letter apart, with a method that bore an eerie resemblance to the way Markus had changed the Daughters of Magda leaflet into a bunch of fine paper strips a few weeks earlier:
-Do you even understand the reason I told you to go behind her back? A letter she wrote knowing I would read it worthless. You can keep that suspicious necklace of yours! I should have known that trusting one of you people was a bad idea.
Once again, Emil couldn't stay silent:
-Well, I wasn't going to give you a letter written by Markus' hand without betraying someone's trust in me. And you would have probably found signs of a plan in an intercepted letter no matter how innocuous the contents actually were.
-I wouldn't…
-Then why is that when I give you a letter written by his hand that spent the better part of a meal in his crumb-overflowing pocket, but completely devoid of what you were looking for, your first idea is that I told him?
-I did make a mistake yesterday by not considering you could simply ask her for a letter, but… wait, did you say something about a crumb-overflowing pocket?
Alicia's face lit up as she asked the question. Emil decided it was a lead worth following:
-Well, he keeps snacks in there and hardly ever washes it, so crumbs come out each time he pulls something out of it.
The fact that some of the stickier crumbs had remained on the letter had actually been one of Emil's least favorite aspects of the plan. Alicia, meanwhile pumped her fists:
-She is still in there. You'd have no reason to lie while making a random complaint. Give me the necklace, knowing there's still hope for her is worth it. But I warn you. I'm going to be keeping track of any effect it has on me, and if it turns out it's not just protection, it's coming off.
Emil silently gave her the necklace. The instructions were to get her to wear it first and foremost. Any more words risked making her change her mind. He had yet to come up with things that Markus hadn't already tried anyway.

xxxx

-I wanted to tell this to the two of you yesterday evening, but the whole letter debacle made it a little hard to get just the two of you without getting too conspicuous about it.
It went without saying that Daniel's level of functioning most mornings was the reason, he, Emil and Sune hadn't had that conversation in the morning. Emil hoped that Daniel would quickly get to whatever piece of information he wanted to tell them fast:
-King Torbjörn is immune. Queen Siv isn't, she'll die if she gets sick. Sune's siblings are in the same case as him.
Daniel gave them the time the needed to process the information, but had the look he had when he was expecting them to find the practical aspect of a piece of information regardless of their emotional response. Emil eventually figured it out:
-If the fire hadn't happened and…
Emil remembered Markus was only supposed to be watching the final preparations for the play from the roof, and that talking about himself in the first person would blow his cover if "the rumor mill in person" was eavesdropping:
-Prince Emil was still the heir, the Royal Family main branch would be made only of immune people. Now, all the potential heirs can get sick.
Daniel simply nodded, now wearing what Emil had come to call his "I know it's bad situation, but we need to bear with it to not ruin our chances of fixing it later" face. At least, between that information and what Daniel had found in the orphanage, the picture of what "Tobias" was planning was taking shape.

xxxx

Markus had gone through most books in the set of stories from which the orphanage plays were adapted over the past few days. His suspicion that it was something worth doing had only gotten confirmed when Helena has asked to borrow one of his books. There was mention of a recurring drum-player in some of them, but the plays from the last three evenings had included her in events from which she was originally absent. Dirk's ten-year-old younger sister had actually played her on the previous evening, on which Markus had written a second letter for Alicia. According to the letter Markus had found upon returning to his dorm room an hour ago, Dirk's younger sister had noticed members of the audience covering their ears or leaving their seat during her scenes and now wondered if she had made any kind of mistake despite having been chosen for the role in part due to her musical talent. Markus was currently gauging whether it would be wise of him to mention Helena, Sune, Janine and Runa's reaction to the music played by the drum-player's incarnation from a couple evenings ago or not. Markus had figured out long ago that for every ten orphans getting the best life they could hope for given their circumstances, one was probably being used as a magic experimentation subject by Vivian. However, during Markus' childhood, there had been a handful of generalized "medical exams" that had occurred only once, and that he could only explain by Vivian having very briefly needed a much larger sample of experimentation subjects. As the rumors about Vivian's permanent experimentation subjects made for an obvious possible punishment for refusing to take part in those suspicious exams, older children tended to cooperate as a precaution and encourage the younger ones to do the same without asking too many questions. But even those had only involved orphanage residents. A couple days from now, when the Royals were going to come to watch the plays performed by sixteen-year-olds and seventeen-year-olds. Was the drum-player still going to use the same beat?

xxxx

Håkan was happy to wake up from that strange nightmare. This was the third night in a row that he moved so much in his sleep that his sleeping robe and the pieces of protective jewelry he was supposed to keep on at all times found themselves scattered in various place of his bed. Fortunately, he had once again woken up early enough to get his hands on each of these items and have them back on by the time his morning attendants came in.

Preparations for the morning meal took a lot longer than usual, yet Håkan's attendants didn't seem in a particular hurry. When he was finally escorted to the dining room, Anna came out of her bedroom with her own bodyguards at the same time he did, which could only mean her own preparations had been delayed, as well. Once again, it took both of them a few moments to remember that nobody was going to come out of the third bedroom.

As Håkan and Anna were being escorted to the dining room, a guard stormed out a room just as the frontmost part of their now-shared escort was about to walk by it:
-I don't care if you don't believe me! I know what I saw! And I'm going to look for that thing myself if I have… oh, your highnesses.
The guard took a few moments to realize she was in their way and step aside. Håkan briefly wondered what the "thing" she wanted to look for was, but by now knew that threats were never as impressive as the guards made them sound when first mentioning them. He briefly looked back at the guard, and realized he recognized her face. It had taken him a while to realize this because the woman was part of one of those pairs of people one hardly ever saw apart, and the other half of the pair was nowhere to be seen. Too bad, the absent half of the pair was the interesting one. Her sword's pommel was decorated with a heart-shaped pendant that Håkan liked; unfortunately, its simplicity would have made it clash with the rest of Håkan's attire more that the two pieces of protective jewelry he had been recently given already did. Coincidental timing in the movements of two of the rear guards made Håkan notice a familiar pendant in the guard's hand. There was a dark stain on it. Håkan suddenly remembered seeing an item extremely similar to that pendant in his dream from the previous night. As he was trying to remember the rest of the dream, he thought he heard someone playing a few beats on a drum. Trying to remember the rest of the dream was starting to give him a headache, and he could no longer remember any kind of detail about the heart-shaped item anymore.