Alptraum, cloaked by a spell of near-invisibility provided by Shadow Mage Rorschach, works his way through the city of Babel, approaching the Coalition Tower. He happens upon Yodhsunala Sutrana, who is scoping out the building, and he decides to try to use her presence to his advantage. He uses a flash bolt to try to draw the attention of the guards to her position, but he makes the mistake of looking at the point of impact when it goes off, temporarily blinding himself. The guards investigate, and around that time, Alptraum's spell starts to wear off! However, the ploy works, as Sutrana is forced to deal (violently) with the guards. With what's left of his fading spell of invisibility, Alptraum makes a panicked rush down the now-unguarded causeway, and into the Coalition Tower.

Sutrana's actions have alerted the guards, and the alarm is sounded. Alptraum, now minus any magical invisibility, has to rely on his own ability to sneak about stealthily, plus the old blueprints of the Coalition Tower construction he got from House Cenesta. He avoids some guards – who are really none too eager to personally run into a Yodhsunala assassin anyway – and finds a false wall that he breaks through to get into a dumb waiter shaft. The moving mechanism forces him to escape the shaft on something other than his intended floor … and he surprises an elderly woman Eeee and a small red-furred Eeee child in one of the guest rooms.

Alptraum tries to play the role of a "maintenance worker" who mistakenly got out on the wrong floor, as he helps the old woman up. The child swipes Alptraum's acid spray bolt, and in order to get it back, Alptraum bargains to play a song for the little one. When he gets his bolt back, and seems to be about to leave without doing his part, the child protests, and Alptraum relents, playing a tune (quietly!) on his recorder. He is curious about the identities of these "guests" of the tower, and despite the older Eeee's attempts to keep the child silent on the matter, he pries out of the little girl that her name is Blakat. The little girl seems to think that she is the Blakat (as in, the goddess), but the older woman explains that the Yodh have filled the child's head with nonsense, and that she desperately wants to make sure that noone hears of this, and has any reason to think that this child is in any way special to the Yodh.

Alptraum comes clean with his own identity, promising not to tell about the little "Blakat," and instead tries to find out what is going on in the tower – and how he might help.