Personal Journal of Marcus Muddywater, Entry 137
By James Scotland
Today, I wake up as a guest of the Kendiri elves. The elves are odd. They seem powerful but they just hide away in their ever shrinking forest. Our party has been asked to stay in a small elven house which has a small garden. It’s quite nice. The grass is green; the birds are singing; and I get to relax and think. I was expecting distain; I got relative comfort. I’ll take it.
Meanwhile, the untrustworthy elf otherwise known as Elre isn’t really a prisoner. He is in and out of the elven house like a smuggler doing the Casperian barge run. He seems to have an increased sense of self-importance. There is nothing more dangerous in life than an incompetent believing that they are actually competent. It always ends in disaster. Finally, Elre blesses us with his presence and updates us. That dirty untrustworthy scoundrel of an elf has gone and told the Lady of the forest everything about our mission! He has told her about Ulene and the power crystal and going back in time and the Ancients and the blood plague. I am starting to question where his allegiances lie, with the Silver Order or with the Elves? I expect that the Silver Order will severely punish him for his treachery. No doubt that unstable foreign female elf will provide retribution. That is if she is able to remember Elre’s dishonor. At the moment she can’t seem to remember the most basic details about her life. Who knows what darkness and atrocities lie within Yugao’s history? Well, at the moment, certainly not her.
As we relax in our tranquil accommodation and await the elves’ judgement, the party members attend to their own agendas. I work with Saha; she is gradually working her way towards being useful. Nothur has some alone time with his strohm. I didn’t enquire further; I appreciate people who are pragmatic about their needs. Adoril practices the crossbow with Astrid. I am surprised that the elves did not inquire more about Astrid. She is very unusual. Vallen and Marrie help Yugao to find out about her past. Kai starts to practice her airborne skills. And, Tavin tries to make himself useful.
Soon Kai finds a friend, a Kendiri woman called Vasati. Vasati seems to be very interested in Kai’s airborne abilities. After a while, Vasati and Kai leave the group together. It’s nice that Kai has a friend; I am pleased for her. Hopefully, she will stop buying potential friends from slavers and start to experience some emotional development. After a while Kai returns; she seems quite happy and is carrying a good amount of fruit and scented soap. She is good kind enough to give me an apple.
A few hours later, I look up and Yugao has decided that she also wants to befriend a Krendiri. However instead of having unique elemental abilities that astound people, Yugao has partially undressed herself and is attempting to talk in a sultry voice whilst at the same time is thrusting her groin backwards and forwards. It is not an astounding magical ability but it is astounding. I encourage Yugao by cheering her on. Unsurprisingly, the guard ignores her. I really should help Yugao out by taking her to the Mermaid’s Tail. I can arrange for her to receive lessons from one of the senior employees, after which she can practice her skills on some of the inebriated patrons. Who knows, she might even have fun and make a few coins at the same time. Tavin always has a great time at the Mermaid’s Tail. When away from the others, he always speaks fondly of that place. I have heard rumors of a branch in Gerulekh.
The next few days pass by fairly uneventfully. Elre disappears for large swaths of time as does Kai. We ask the elves for help with a few things. Unsurprisingly, they decline; they are elves after all. I reflect on how to kill the Revenarum that we once fought in a dream. How do we combat its freezing attack? After it falls, how will we survive the ensuing explosion? I don’t think that the group have yet realized that it may be a battle that some of us don’t return from. I am concerned.
Eventually, Kai returns to the group. She is furious. Apparently, her emotional development lessons with elves didn’t go too well. The elves took pity on her because she has a short life expectancy and because she belongs to a race of elves that has experienced persecution. Kai’s alone time with the elves has resulted in emotional regression. She now has even more mental issues to work through. Perhaps a visit to the Mermaid’s Tail will cheer her up.
After a while the elves come for Nothur and his strohm. They leave together and are gone for hours. At some point I thought that I heard the faint echo of a blood curdling scream mixed in within the constant melody of joyful birdsong. When Nothur returns, he is not happy. The elves have put the spirit of his strohm into an oak totem. Nothur seems a little traumatized by the experience. I am starting to respect the practicality our elven hosts.
The next day, we finally leave the elven village. Elre spent his final night away from the group with Sarafina. He came back to the group looking like he had not slept and smelling like a patron who has just left an upstairs room in a branch of the Mermaid’s Tail. Tavin asks Elre if he got any sleep last night. Elre, smelling of success, just smiled in return. We leave on the backs of a kind of animal called the Kren. The Kren are amazing creatures. We hold onto their manes as they gallop effortlessly through the forest. The dense undergrowth just bends out of their way. We progress swiftly and I am impressed. The next few days each involve 12 hours of riding, then staying overnight at an elven village. In each village, we are not received warmly; I am not offended. In the evening, Tavin gives out free massages. Strangely, Marie winces each time that he her rubs her neck. I expect that she was having flashbacks of when Tavin jumped on her neck in order to soften his landing. In one of the villages, we are given climbing gear. Eventually, the we reach our destination, the base of a huge mountain range. We all dismount, and the Kren stagger off into the deferential forest. The Kren look tired after the long journey.
We make camp at the foot of the mountains. Elre the traitor reads a message on a scroll and puts the scroll back into his satchel. Apparently, we have to find the Whisper’s Path. We make camp and the group decides to build two sleds to help us to transport our gear through the mountains. Kai, Tavin, and I head into the forest to find some wood for a sled frame. To our surprise we find the Kren. They are all dead. Where they were carrying us, their skin is dark, blotchy, and blistered. Contact with our tainted bodies killed them.
Later that night, it is my turn to be on watch. In the starlight, I stare up at the mountains as the cold mist gently rolls down from their hidden peaks. Experience tells me that gently rolling mist contains things that have a desire to be hidden. In my past smuggling life, I was usually the one hiding in the mist. As I reflect upon this journal entry, I organize my mind and deliberately work through my thoughts. I now understand that every party member is damned. We will never return to who we once were. We will never return to our old lives. I will never see my homeland, the Scattered Isles, again. We are all tainted beyond repair. The best that each of us an hope for is to sell our lives as dearly as possible. Although the group have clearly have not thought through how we are to destroy a Revenarum. Also, the elves have a brutal sense of practicality. They must have known what would happen to the Kren, and yet they still helped us. Why are we more valuable than the Kren? What do the elves see in us that we do not see in ourselves? What is Elre not telling us?