After some time dAnkan finally begins to come to his senses a little, but still muttering about “mOoRRee…EggNOt” under his breath every now and then. To let him sober up completely you decide to sit him down on a rock on the side of the road. The moment dAnkans feathers hit the surface of the rock they stiffens up, almost like something possesses them.
— “Uhm, hey dAnkan, are you okay? Did they put something in your drink, or did that shadow-realm leave some sort of curse on you?” you ask with a concerned voice.
— “Igs…hVs…qcAAobrg…kWhV…bC…fsdSOhwBu…zsHhsFg,..vSzd..as” dAnkan gurgles out while simultaneously giving out what seems to be a broken smile.
— “Okay, yeah…no, uhm…something is wrong. Don’t worry though, I’m here to help you, I just have to find out what actually is wrong with you first.” you say as you start looking around to find some sort of clue what actually started this madness.
After what feels like hours, but actually was just a minute and 32 seconds, you start to look at the rock. On its surface, right next to where dAnkan decided to sit down, you find a weird box shaped piece of rock sticking out just slightly. After some slight hesitation you cannot resist pressing it with your big soft sweaty hand.
*clank* *hzzz* *hmmm* *brrr* *wack*
The rock starts giving out weird noises, mechanical noises, until it finally reveals what looks like a mirror. On the top you read: “Congratulations, you have been cursed. Please enjoy your short- lived experience. PS, there is definitely, most surely, no cure in this mirror, do not even look.”
— “Well that is not ominous at all. But this mirror awfully resembles something I saw back at Linus’ tower, but it does not seem like him to curse people with it. Or now that I think about it, I do not actually know what that wizard actually would do.” you say as you strike a thinking pose, but quickly go back to work as you hear dAnkan continue with his gurgling nonsense. “Why did this curse have to affect your speech dAnkan? It is going to be very difficult to find the cure when what you are saying cannot help me in the slightest!”
Not hearing a word you said, dAnkan wanting to be friendly fumbles and manages to hit the mirror, prompting the word “hf” to appear. You start touching the mirror with your wings, finding that somehow it magically reacts to your touches. Weirdly enough, it only seems to react to some of your touches. But with a determination like no other, to save yourself from hearing dAnkans nonsense gurgling that gives you headaches, you keep going, hoping to find a cure.
Create a TCP connection to djul.se at port 5556
This is most easily performed by invoking the tool 'netcat' in
your terminal, like so: nc djul.se 5556
(swap 'nc' in the above command for the appropriate netcat tool
on your system! Some other possible names for it are 'ncat' or
'netcat')
If you are using Windows, you can download netcat from
https://nmap.org/ncat/
It should already be installed on MacOS and most linux distros,
otherwise install it with your favourite package manager.
Touching the window a final time, the rock start giving out more mechanical noises. The window goes back into the rock, and the small box shaped button appears once more.
— “Uhg…Uhm…Tha…That took you long enough. What took you so long?” dAnkan asks as he begins to snap out of the curse.
— “What do you mean dAnkan, how was I supposed to know what to do? You know this magic stuff confuses me!” you say, fully expecting dAnkan to thank you for saving him.
— “How were you suppo…I told you exactly what to do, dummy. Did you not listen to what I was saying?” dAnkan answers back.
— “You were only speaking nonsense, even more so than when you were drunk. I could not understand a single word that you were saying.” you answer, more confused than when you were trying to save dAnkan.
— “Me, DRUNK? I would never! Eh, let’s just keep moving forward, we are really close to the marking for the Dragonic Runeblade and I think a bit of walking will help me get rid of this headache the curse must have given me.” dAnkan says as he starts marching onwards.