Journal

The cognitive static didn't clear all at once. It receded like a tide, leaving behind a raw, aching expanse of grey void inside Shierra’s skull.

For four agonizing days, the party had been entirely locked down in the limestone hollow beneath the rocky ridge, pinned beneath the sweeping perimeter of the mercenary vanguard. Shierra spent the first forty-eight hours drifting through a void of pure neural exhaustion, her body shivering under heavy marcher blankets as her brain slowly re-stitched the basic architecture of language and memory.

Beside her bedroll, the small cobalt-glass vial of Assidian and poppy distillation that Dashiel had pressed into her hand sat entirely untouched. He told her it is a sleeping potion, but she preferred her senses raw, even if it meant enduring the rhythmic, persistent ringing in her ears.

But the gnome hadn't just left the potion. Before slipping out to check the perimeter traps, Dashiel had set down a pristine, thick leather-bound volume along with a glass inkwell and a sharpened goose quill. A flash of rememberance lit in her mind - she recalled the journal was bought back in Frederick store in Fieri. She welcomed the return of her mental faculty. 

“I prefer my graphite stick,” the gnome had mumbled, tapping it against his leather apron. “My mind works on so many ideas at once I tend to erase and rewrite what was written. Ink is too permanent for a mechanic. But for you... I figure your mind needs something heavy to anchor the thoughts before they drift off again.”

By the fourth dawn, the reality outside the cave mouth was hardening.

Reis and Morohtar had maintained a grueling, sleepless watch rotation at the throat of the ridge. Through the narrow fissure in the stone, Reis’s had spotted the distant green armor of the tracking vanguard clearing the brush less than a league away.

Reis strode back into the low cavern, his massive frame hunched under the stone ceiling. He wore only his tattered marcher tunic and his sword-belt, his large hands clamping onto the leather grip of his bastard blade as he prepared to face the incoming hunt.

He glanced at Shierra, his icy blue eyes shifting slightly. 

“Mehr wants you to continue resting,” Reis said, his deep, gravelly bass carrying an absolute, protective gravity. 

“We are moving to intercept them in the thicket.”

Shierra’s brow furrowed in deep, exhausted confusion. Her emerald eyes, still threaded with tiny broken capillaries from the blowout, blinked slowly. 

“Mehr? Who… who is Mehr?”

From the darkest corner of the cave, where the shadows met the damp stone, a fluid silhouette shifted. Morohtar stepped forward just an inch, his silver hair catching the faint light of the hearth, his hands resting lightly near the pulsing red guard of his sabre. A faint, razor-thin smirk touched the dark elf’s lips.

“When you were deep within your mind-burn in the gully, you could not even speak your own name—much less mine,” Morohtar chimed in, his deadpan delivery cutting through the quiet cave. 

“Your incoherent state looked straight at me and called me 'Mehr'. I will allow it for now, half-elf. At least until your vocabulary recalibrates.”

Another sudden, sharp spark of recognition lanced through Shierra’s lingering mental fog, though a flush of color rose to her pale cheeks.

Reis didn't linger on the banter. He adjusted the heavy leather strap of his sword-belt, his focus locking entirely back onto the tactical grid.

“He hefted you for many miles when your legs couldn't work. And he’s right - you stay in the hollow,” Reis commanded softly, the gravel in his voice leaving no room for negotiation. 

“This is a straight clash of steel - a standard physical engagement, not your battle to fight tonight. We will break their vanguard line and return before the sun clears the ridge.” Reis added.

* * * *

A few hours ago, the heavy boots of the knight, the silent tread of the dark elf, and the burgeoning canvas pack of the gnome vanished into the dense, foggy treeline, leaving Shierra entirely alone in the silence of the stone.

Now, the morning sun was slowly rising, casting long, pale shafts of light through the briars at the cave mouth. The birds were beginning to sing their morning songs in the high canopy, completely detached from the bleeding reality of the trail.

Shierra sat alone against the granite wall. She ignored the cobalt sleeping potion. Her fingers, still slightly stiff from the residual neural tinnitus, uncapped the glass inkwell. She dipped the goose quill Dashiel had left her into the dark fluid, pressed the nib against the very first page of the pristine volume, and began to force the things she felt onto paper.

The sun is rising on a new day as I write this; the first of many tales that I hope will fill this volume...