Coldest Trail, Part 6
EPISODE 2, Conclusion
ART: GERMINUS, THOMAS; Source: New York Public Library
Escape to the Light
[heavy panting]
Without resources I can’t fight the fallen ones. I need an escape route. Fortification
Ball lightning
[charged electricity; grunts and falling rocks]
That’s about it. The debris just need to slow them down enough
**
[running]
**
**
Out of the crypt. Safe from its terrors now, and into the open air.
It’s much easier to feel the power from the hills and mountains. If i can recharge for a few more minutes, i can even block off the crypt entrance so I’m not followed.
[explosion and flames]
Damnit, damnit. I wasn’t ready. Couldn’t concentrate, or not enough power to cast the spell. Shrapnel everywhere. More cuts.
I have to keep moving, but that spell may have fractured my damned arm.
**
[sound of quiet exterior]
[wincing] Healing salves. The true best friend of the expedition hunter.
Not the best news. I’m fully tapped out and my arm is just gone. The damn thing has been through too much. I think i can make it to rendezvous, then to see if I can save it.
I may not check in again. If that is the case, may this log be a guide to others. There is a note in my pack detailing where i will hide my prize for the night in the event i do not survive this.
**
The procedure was a success. The alcohol probably won’t help healing, but it got me through. my arm won’t ever be the same. Everything hazy.
Walking along the flagstones again, and they feel significant. There’s a power here, i just don’t have the mind to seek it and master it. The city that died under the zealots of Farrell almost took me as eternal company. A cult that, even beyond death, worships the power that could doom a city and create a demon. Maybe i wasn’t its only visitor, but only I am here to share my story of finding its holy relic.
**
At rendezvous, successful.
All night the echoes of the crypt have been rattling around. I thought history could provide answers with its secrets, but down there it was only a final coda to a mourning song. Not terribly encouraging for our futures here on Terisiare.
Another thing. The parchment from the crypt. I just can’t stop peering into it. There is certainly writing, but it seems to read in depth rather than to the left or right. The longer i stare at it, the more it tries to tell me. Not in a language, so much as in a tone that speaks. It almost has a pulse or a heartbeat. I will keep trying to study it. It is just … compelling. Like little tendrils of awareness, wrapping over each other and descending into the dark…
This was the assignment i always wanted. Stepping on the stones of history, surrounded by the ghosts of incredible individuals driven singularly to power. The artifacts of an age not too long ago, but one which could hold the secrets of how to untangle the threats looming overhead now. I suppose this artifact can speak to some of that. On the other hand (that phrase doesn’t have the same ring anymore, ironically), these people were driven to depravity and madness, and decorated the bones of their despotic leaders while they starved in crypts surrounded by horrific beasts above. Not exactly a recruitment portfolio..
**
The Green Sail was happy to see me, and kind in words about the arm. Apparently there are some magics that might help, but he doesn’t believe in them. I told him of one time i held the book of Rass and used it to great effect in battle, but at the cost of my lifeblood. In a way, this felt similar, but more visceral. He didn’t say much, but gave me the name of some mainland artisans who can create replacement machine limbs. Figure i can try both.
I have time, and the hazard pay bonus will be more than enough. I told him a bit about the crypt and the figures carved in as decorations in that old place. He didn’t want to hear much of it. He did mention something about the beast though. He said it was a giant carrion feeder of sorts. Something that hunts animals in the darkest forest, and sometimes in snowier elevations. He called it the Lhurgoyff. Seems like a scary children’s story now, from this boat and far from those cursed Sarpadian islands.
**
I cannot stop fussing with the tuning fork from the underground grotto. I can ring it in the open air now, and its drone also speaks to. But this isn’t an alien and conceptual language. This is speaking to me in a common tongue. But the sounds and the voice are strange; i can’t tell the accent and i can’t make any sense of its meaning. Foreign words mixed with common ones, discussions of materials that sound completely fabricated. It is surreal, and i don’t think i want to explore this on my own. I wonder that it’s a connection to something very old, and very distant. But it knows me somehow, and has always known.
**
I was reviewing my log and i can’t believe it. The DREAM! The defiant, crystal statue and the light and dark nightmarish figures. I was projecting into the crypt!
But that dark serpent. That endless dark form in the deep, that remains unsolved. Nothing like the beast that hunted me on land, and certainly not the eater of the dead.
What was that nightmare?!
END