I spent the night in an inn run-down enough to make me question whether I shouldn't have just spent a few Scales, gone back to Azure Prime, and returned in the morning.
The room cost only fifteen Scales, and even so it felt expensive. The bed creaked at any shift of weight, the mattress seemed made of compacted regret, and the half-clogged pipes in the walls spent the whole night producing a symphony of turbulence, whistling, and metallic banging. The staff were polite when they checked me in, even kind within what the Red Squid Slums allowed. The problem wasn't hospitality. It was structure. No one there could offer silence when the entire building seemed to cough along with the city.
What bothered me most was learning that, according to three different passersby, this was the best inn in the area.
I woke up tired, with a sore neck and enough bad mood to earn its own classification in the system.
