BOOKINGS - Episode 1, Part 5
Source: New York Public Library
A New Coast, A New Mystery
[9 days post-landing]
Not what I was seeking, but my day ends with … something
Digging through sediment, I found impossibly old and tarnished leather scrolls. It took a while to meticulously clean out the muck from the etchings. Some is still completely unintelligible, but i think they’re instructions.
Some scrawling in a string of pictoglyphs and … what looks like pictures of a strange circle. I can’t tell the size or scale of it, but it’s not a piece of jewelry. It seems much larger, given the shadowy shapes around it…maybe a gate?
Inscriptions have a repeating pattern - “ex” and speak of a “plan” over and over. No clue what this means, and no time to assess it here. Officially may have found my ‘bonus’ and will look into this on the return trip.
**
**
[10 days post-landing]
The beasts found me. I knew they would.
Monstrous claws, just like the thing that attacked my boat. I burned through my answers and have almost completely exhausted myself. Caused a lot of noise too. There is still a deep disharmony here, and something powerful is close. I think it made the crab creatures stronger, but also enhanced my summonings, each time I brought something out to defend me. What could be amplifying arcana like this, in such a vague manner?
Without that fortification i’d be dead.
They are non-verbal, close as i can tell. I summoned some small creatures to distract them and then blasted them with psionic energy and summoned forces as best i could - phantasmal illusions, walls of vapor and anything else that could box out, attack or defend me. They struggled most with the defenses, snapping claws at me from a fog of confusion. I took the chance to eviscerate one, and eventually the others were cast away with a tidal squall.
They know i am here now. I worry about what else knows it as well.
Maybe it means that i have gotten close…
**
**
[11 days post landing]
Target acquired.
I’m getting out of this terrible place as quickly and as quietly as possible.
I assembled the casting circle to teleport back to the rendezvous, as planned. They paid extra for this, knowing how hard it is to extricate from deep inland. You can bet your life i am not risking being stuck on THIS island waiting for a sea rescue. The energy it demands has a distinct flavor - everything tastes salty and blue.
Spell should be ready tomorrow.
The staff is about as strange as promised. Glyphs shine reflections of waves and whirlpools, and which give me a sense of energy and strength as i prepare the teleport spell.
The glyphs are unfamiliar. Nothing really comes close. They don’t look like an incantation, these patterns. I did try to use it to influence the waters here, but nothing conclusive. When i try to focus on it and wield it, there is definitely something happening - i can feel the humidity. The salt in the air gets dense. I can feel the waters around me and the life in them. Just…can’t use it like a lantern or a simple aelopile.
All that matters is that I’ll have it delivered soon enough and i’ll be paid in full.
Going to sleep.
**
I have to dig
I have to dig to save her
She is trapped so deep, trapped for centuries
Begging to be freed
I have to dig
**
[wincing] The cultists came at night. They had followed me from the mountains.
I woke from a nightmare - cries and calling from deep deep beneath me, calling me down to them - and they were circling the tree where I slept. I had disguised myself pretty well, at least so I thought. Mirages and tripwires and caltrops and everything.
They came upon me, chaotic and hungry. Emaciated and sunscorched. They battered and bled their way through the tripwires.
The traps ensnared some of them. I hit another with an energy tap. The next with a backfire, then boomerang. This is what you prepare for but try to prevent. Once a dozen, now only three advanced, ignorant of their compatriots’ misfortune.
You can only prepare so much, though. All my tricks played, i grabbed the staff to see if it could deliver me a way out.
I willed all I could into the artifact and it spoke back immediately, firing a pulse beam and pressing the attackers back 15 feet. Shaken, they rose and began clambering at me again.
But before they could reach me, a cataclysm came from the riverside
Elder Spawn. Like a giant barnacle come to life, not brittle but agile. It towered over us all, then advanced.
You know, cultists are funny - they always seem to want to be a part of something bigger; to give themselves up entirely, and yet when they get the chance, all of their planning and wishful dreaming seems to evaporate. Just what happened here - i saw the extinguishing of their cabal, their eternal loyalty to whatever, come apart all at once, along with their viscera, bones, and organs.
With the deed done, the spawn lurched back into the water, seemingly disinterested in pursuing anything else on land..
I stood there, alone.
The noise must have alerted half the island, but perhaps they were smarter not to investigate.
Sunrise, please hurry.
**
She calls out
Horrible wail
Mournful, weeping in darkness
Trapped, alone
Cold
Dig
DIG!
**
TO BE CONTINUED …