A dream:

You find yourself standing on walls surrounding a large stone and wood structure, some kind of castle or other defensive building. guards patrol the walls, from here you can see the guards themselves are made up of a couple humans, an orc, an elf and something else. They march in pairs around the tops of the walls interacting with the guards stationed every couple hundred feet along the length of the wall. You can see just a short while after a guard passes a figure appears over the edge of the wall he's cloaked. He climbs very slowly over the wall itself and hunkers down behind the parapets. Quickly checking both ways before making his way along the wall towards the center structure. He carefully grabs ahold of the stonework and climbs down the wall section into the interior Courtyard between the main building and the exterior wall. Suddenly throwing himself up against some kind of horse stable as a couple of guards, bearing torches, patrol past him. Once they are out of sight he once again steps out of the darkness of the shadows that the moonlight leaves. The person quickly then pulls a bow from his back and readies it, and makes his way carefully towards the building. He makes it to one of the walls of the building, kneels down and pulls some kind of crossbow looking mechanism off his back. He places his bow on the ground as he starts to crank the mechanism of whatever it was he was carrying. Unexpectedly someone comes around the corner a torch in hand. After just a second they see this intruder and their hand reaches for their weapon at their hip. Reacting quickly to the person who has found him, the hunched figure scrambles for his bow and quickly releases an arrow striking the guard in the throat. No sound but a sputter comes from him. He isn’t finished and quickly frees his blade and rushes this attacker. The blade swings through the air and comes down on the bow, there is the spark of metal on metal with the collision. The blade deflects off and the assailant swings it so that one of the limbs strikes the guardsman in the face causing him to recoil as he does the continuing spin of the bow knocks the feet out from under the guardsman. With a metal thud he lands on his back, the hooded figure quickly dropping the bow and pouncing on top of the fallen man. A dagger is quickly pulled from his belt as the hooded figure settles, a jab or two of the blade finds nothing but armor. An armored fist comes up from the guard and lands heavy in the face of his assailant. His head quickly flips back in response to the force and his hood falls back. An elf, no mistake about that, the short pointed ears stick out in the flickering torchlight. A few more quick jabs from the dagger, these find purchase through the armor in the armpit of the mail. The struggle ends quickly, the elf assailant then pulls the hood back over his head. Rolling the body over onto the torch quickly extinguishes it and the area is once again only the heavy shadow of the building. He goes back to the mechanism he was working on before and goes back to cranking on it, more intently than he had been just a few moments ago. There is a small click sound and he stops cranking. He places an odd looking bolt in the mechanism and after quickly peering around to make sure there are no more guards that can see him he releases a catch and the bolt goes flying high into the air, at the height of angle it was released at it will clear the roof. You can see a thin wire or bit of string spooling out from the base of the mechanism the bolt was fired from. The bold lands with a series of metal clicks and the line goes slack. Finding the wire with one hand he ties a bit of rope to one end of what you can now see is two strands attached to whatever it was that was fired. Pulling fiercely on one of the two the rope starts to worm its way up the side of the tree story structure, moving in perfect time with the line being pulled by the one who had launched it. Snaking its way up the wall and then back down over the course of a minute or so, you then see the elf grab a hold of both strands at once and give them a firm yank. One then another and another, testing the hold of whatever it was that was fired. It seems to be holding, first a little of his weight then all of it as he starts to scale the side of the wall. With the aid of the rope he makes his way quickly up to a third story window. He holds himself with one hand and the rope running through his belt and pulls a set of tools from a pouch and places them on the outside window sill. He seems to struggle with the locking mechanism of the window for a second before he quickly returns the tools to his pouch.

Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

Your perspective changes, you are inside now, a bedroom of some kind, a long wooden framed bed sits to one side, occupied, the decorations in the frame and posts of the bed are gilded in gold, there are several lights going in the room, they appear to be magical, as you see no source for them, they are gentle, not brilliant like most magical light tends to be. The window on the far side of the room opens. As it does the violet purple of the cloth drapes flutters softly as the airflow in the room shifts. You see the hooded figure check the inside of the window frame. He then slowly settles his weight onto the sill and starts to peer around the room. He tilts his head slightly to one side then the other while staring at a spot on the floor just in front of the window. He pulls a piece of vellum paper from a case on his side and opens the scroll, it lights up for a second before starting to crumble in his hands. You see something on the floor light up, lines in different shapes and arcane script appear on the floor for a second, before slowly starting to fade from the center outward. The hooded figure then very carefully places one foot down then the other on the floor then seeing nothing happen he steps into the room. The light from the different sources let you see a bit more of him than before, a scar over one eye, his hair appears black but where it meets his forehead you can where something black and oily is starting to run slightly down. He takes one step then another very cautiously towards the bed. The occupant of the bed is still breathing steadily and deeply. The figure stops, kneels down and pulls a pair of daggers from his belt. With one he seems to check the stones that make up the floor tapping at them gently and as quietly as he can. Very carefully he checks one stone then the next before he is standing right next to the bed. He looks up and the bed is empty. Standing near the door is a tall slender man of Garigill complexion, in a wine colored silk bedclothes. In an instant the newly awakened figure reaches out his hand and a sword appears in it.

“Who are you, what is it you want?” he asks firmly in an elvish accent.

The would-be attacker makes a step for the man, as he does the man starts the words to some kind of magic spell and small baubles hanging from the handle of his sword illuminate as light starts to gather in his hand. The elf thinks better of his choice and turns quickly on the ball of his foot and makes for the window. He leaps just as fire springs from the rudely awakened man’s hand in several distinct long bolts, two of which miss the assailant and fly out the window lighting a streak through the night sky. Several more hit the target just as he is clearing the window frame. The figure starts to tuck his body as he falls out of sight of the window.

You wake.