Gozran 3, 4713 (evening, Muliwan)

I brought the last of the rescued into town this morning and took them to where Dasi has been staying. He’s worked diligently over the last couple of days to get them all settled here, setting them up with the money we provided and, in the case of those who need it, people to care for them while they recover. He’s done well putting this all together. It helps that he’s charming, more or less native to the area, and a good judge of character. Normally, I’d worry about townspeople taking advantage of them after we left, but I don’t think that’s going to be a problem here.

Despite its small size, Muliwan seems to be the right sort of place for them. As a trading town, it’s got plenty of foreigners and none of the hostility towards them that seems pervasive on the plains of Hongal. It’s also far enough from Ordu-Aganhei to not be under its influence, and I don’t think I have to explain why that matters.

I’m spending the night here again because I feel like it. We’ve got over a month of travel ahead of us, and I’d like another night in a real bed before we go. That, and I want to be around people for a little while longer, the sort that are just going about life without some sort of mask on. You go outside here and talk to someone who says they are a baker and odds are pretty good that they’re just a baker. They’re not hiding a mysterious past or living some double life. You can almost feel like you’re normal when you’re surrounded by it.

Qatana asked if I could make a large tureen and some bowls in the usual Groetus motif. She’s setting up an impromptu soup kitchen in a couple of nights to help the needy and homeless here—human settlements are pretty much the same no matter what part of the world they’re in—so I said yes. I have often wondered what Shelyn thinks of this sort of thing. It’s not the first time, nor is it likely to be the last, that I’ve whipped something up in this theme. She obviously doesn’t disapprove as there’d be no question about that if she did, but that does not necessarily imply approval. Or maybe I am overthinking this. Maybe art is still art, even when it’s creepy, grinning skulls.

And then there’s Nihali. Am I flaunting my nonconformity? Heretical is probably a little strong, but entering a Shelynite temple with a black raven on my shoulder has to at least qualify as eccentric.

Gozran 7, 4713 (early morning, The Forest of Spirits)

Zosi looks nervous. We’re leaving for Minkai—again—in the next hour or two and his anxiety suggests he is not eager to go. He doesn’t talk a lot about hinmself or his life before joining up with us so I don’t have any idea what it could be, but clearly it’s not his first choice. Which means he more or less signed on with the wrong crowd. If we are successful, we’ll be there for a while. If not? We’ll be there a lot longer.

Gozran 27, 4713 (evening, The Forest of Spirits)

We crossed a major river today. It was a lot easier than that time we forded the Taraska at the Crown, when we had to find shallow waters, wait for low tide, and float the wagons across the icy river. This time we had the benefit of spells and literally built a bridge. It won’t win any awards for design, but it did the job.

So this is it. We’ll be out of the Forest in just a couple of weeks.

We asked Miyaro for advice, as just rolling through Minkai in a caravan so obviously not from this side of the world seems unwise. She suggested seeking out a band of ronin in the Osogen grasslands. It appears that the nascent rebellion has begun in the north, which makes sense since that’s about as far from Kasai as you can get.

Since Dasi is actually from here, and has lived under the Jade Regent, we asked him what he knew. He remembers Emperor Shigure coming to the throne, but being sent into hiding for his own safety when rumors of an assassination plot came to light. Most of the people in Minkai are waiting for him to return.

Of course, we know that’s not going to happen. We told Dasi about the visions we had in Brinewall when we found the Seal. To say he seemed concerned would be an understatement. He was probaby holding out hope, but I am convinced that, deep down, he knew. We just stripped away the veneer.

Desnus 17, 4713 (afternoon, Minkai)

After nearly ten months and some 9,000 miles of travel we have finally arrived in Minkai. The caravan emerged from the thinning forest into rolling grasslands.

There was this moment when I had a flashback to the visions from Brinewall. I was standing here, or somewhere very much like here, as legions of oni descended into the country spread out before me, storms raging overhead. It was a metaphor, obviously, but the view was real. The place is real.

Desnus 23, 4713 (morning, Osogen Grasslands)

Miyaro is guiding us to a series of farms and rice paddies near the Kosokunami River, just below they Kyojin mountains. The ronin Hirabashi Jiro is known to live here, and is potentially sympathetic to the idea of an uprising. That we’re somehow going to find literally one person in thousands of square miles of landscape strains credulity, but Desna is no stranger to Minkai so I’ll just have to trust that she’s laid the path.

We have passed a number of villages and farms, and with each mile they become more frequent and more populous. After so many months of isolation it’s a welcome change.

Pharast 29, 4713 (evening, the Forest of Spirits)

Munasukaru, The Least is dead, and with that the voices in my head have finally silenced. I’d grown so used to them that I was nearly startled by the stillness. As Munasukaru’s body fell to the ground, Yuka’s thoughts coalesced into a single, coherent voice: My tormentor is dead. I can finally leave in peace. And then there was nothing.

Almost nothing. I was staring at the naginata still clutched in Munasukaru’s lifeless hands, and I knew right then that I could use it. Yuka may have passed on, but somehow she left this macabre gift behind. I could sense the naginata’s balance, time it’s swing, see it flowing and dancing around me as it cut and sliced…and I wanted it. And now that we know what it is? I want it even more.

How exactly did Munasukaru come across one of the ancestral weapons? That’s probably another entry on our list of mysteries that will never be solved, though I suppose in this case the “what” is more important than the “how”. Dasi examined the symbols engraved in the naginata and said they identify the House of Sugimatu, one of the five imperial families of Minkai. Like Suishen, the naginata even has a name—The Thundering Blade—though unlike Suishen, it can’t talk. Which, as far as I am concerned, is a point in it’s favor. One talking ancestral weapon has been more than enough.

I am holding on to it. For now, anyway.

Munasukaru, The Least. They actually called her that. The oni kept a library of sorts, shelves filled with everything from carved tablets to silk scrolls to rice paper tomes. The most interesting of these is an enormous volume that serves as a historical record of the Five Storms—turns out it’s just some stupid, arbitrary name—written in a beautiful and meticulous tien script. Munasukaru, it seems, was part of their leadership, or officers, or one of the board of directors, or whatever you want to call it, and “Munasukaru, The Least” appears to have been her official title. We see it printed here, over and over again. I bet they even called her that to her face. Can you imagine?

This record doesn’t end with their escape. The handwriting abruptly changes to a sloppy script that degenerates over time into nearly incomprehensible scribbles on the final pages. It must be Munasukaru’s writing—it seems she was The Least at penmanship, as well—chronicling her descent into madness after being abandoned here. She was ordered to stay behind for the sole purpose of keeping the kami out, so that they wouldn’t learn what the Five Storms had done or what they were planning. Finally, the Five Storms had found a job that Munasukaru could handle: sit and stay. Good girl.

If I am reading this correctly, she was obsessed with the leader, Anamurumon. She desired him, lusted after him, and also hated him for ordering her to stay here. Why am I not surprised to learn that the oni have mastered the art of abusive relationships? And, ever the victim, Munasukaru obeyed without question, probably hoping that he’d someday care.

It’s all just so overly dramatic and pedestrian. The more I read, the more obvious it becomes that what the Five Storms do best is undermine each other. It’s page after page of betrayal and infighting. Like they learned how to be human from bad theater, the sort that makes Kikonu’s play into an aspirational goal.

Yet, despite all that infighting, Anamurumon has always been the head of the snake. That in itself makes him pretty dangerous, and then there’s the whole “wind yai oni” aspect on top of it. We’ll almost certainly have to go through him to put Ameiko on the Throne. So there is that to look forward to.

The kami say that Munasukaru was not originally part of the oni that make up the Five Storms: she came along later. She and her hobgoblins were just some wandering nuisance in the Forest that eventually found their way to the House of Withered Blossoms, and once she entered she couldn’t leave. I am guessing she wasn’t expecting that. (Neither was I, but I guess it’s nice to get a question answered for a change: the screwy rules that kept the Five Storms imprisoned applied to newcomers as well. Hence why her spawn couldn’t leave, either. The whole family was basically stuck with each other for eternity. I don’t even know where to begin with that. We may have accidentally done them all favors.)

The next few days should be interesting. The kami didn’t pay us for our services, of course, so we are claiming everything we found as compensation. Which is a polite way of saying we are looting the House and everything underneath it. That means we are carrying an enormous pile of sheer random crap: opium, ancient coins, carvings, shoes, gold- and silver-plated whatsits, porcelain whosits, and enough morningstars and tatami-do armor to equip an army of hobgoblins. I haven’t seen a pile of junk this big since Snorri Stone-Eye’s funeral boat.

It will take the better part of a week to liquidate it all, and the only city for hundreds of miles is Muliwan. Which means going back to Muliwan. It’s been long enough that I’m not really worried, but if there were another option I’d choose the other option.

Pharast 30, 4713 (morning, the Forest of Spirits)

We head back to the caravan today. Given the option we wouldn’t walk, but with sixteen rescuees to escort to safety we are simply too many for magical shortcuts. Not without splitting us up, anyway, which we don’t want to do. And that’s fine. I am actually looking forward to it. We spent too much time literally in the dark.

I was able to talk to mom earlier. We found this crystal ball in Munasukaru’s den and I figured, why not use it and save myself a spell? It’s got a flaw in it, but it’s not one that keeps it from working. “Working” is pretty much all that I needed.

I was hesitant at first to tell her about Yuka; about what happened. But then I did. I am not sure why. Maybe I just needed to talk it out. Maybe I thought it was the right thing to do. Maybe I felt she deserved to know. Whatever the reason, I did it.

You’d think that it’d be something of a shock hearing your daughter tell you about that time she was possessed by the ghost of a woman who was brutally tortured and murdered at the hands of a demonic spirit, but the number of times I’ve seen mom be surprised by something falls in the low single digits. She was all casual, as if this sort of thing just happens. Oh, you were possessed by a spirit, were you? Was she nice?

I told her about the dreams, the images, the whispers, the memories that weren’t mine, and about the effect it had on me.

“What bothers me most is that I knew what I was doing. I made those choices. She wasn’t forcing me to do anything.”

Mom was silent for a while. Then she shook her head sadly and said, “Did you really believe you could do this thing without getting your hands dirty? Is that what you thought?”

“What? No! Of course not! It’s just…I don’t want that to define me. I guess.”

“Stop pretending the ‘how’ matters. Whether you kill someone yourself, or merely help your friends to, in the end dead is dead. This line you’ve drawn…it doesn’t really exist.”

“I don’t believe that.”

She shrugged. “And that’s why you’re struggling. Just accept the fact that some lives are so corrupt that they’re not worth saving.”

“That’s rationalizing, mom. It’s how zealots justify crusades.”

“Isn’t that what this is?”

These were not the words of encouragement I was expecting to hear.

Pharast 31, 4713 (morning, Forest of Spirits)

Complicated plans are kind of a thing with us, though this time it’s born out of necessity. We have sixteen former prisoners that we can’t take with us to Minkai, and a mountain of stuff to sell. Dasi thinks we can settle the former in Muliwan while he works on finding buyers for the latter, so that’s what we’re going to do.

Obviously, we’re going to use magic because backtracking in the caravan will take too long, and unlike yesterday we don’t need to go all at once. Over the course of the next couple of days I’ll teleport our settlers there in small groups. Dasi will come with me on the first trip so he can get things rolling. Some of the others, including Ameiko and Shalelu, want to go into town for a couple of days, too, so Qatana will bring them in using a spell that lets you travel on the wind. When they’re ready to come back to the caravan I’ll take them on one of the return teleports.

Got all that? Clear as mud, right?

I can do two round trips in a day, unless of course there’s a mishap. I’ll take the scrolls with me in case that happens at the end as the last thing I need is to get stuck over night, alone, in some random part of the Forest or Hongal because I botched the landing.

(morning, some random part of Hongal)

Shit.

Pharast 28, 4713 (evening, The Penance)

There is nothing to do here but sit and wait. And, I suppose, prepare for the next day, but that is just one of many hours that we have to pass. So most of us are making ourselves busy. We’ve gotten good at making ourselves busy. We had months of practice.

Ivan set up some traps around the collapsed bridge while I and a couple of others searched the artwork for…anything, really. Clues or hints or some sort of story that might tell us what we are facing. My hope was that this would be a pictorial history of the Five Storms, but there is no story here. The vast majority of it is simply fantasies put to stone and ink: depictions of hobgoblins torturing humans, conquering humans, performing unspeakable acts against humans, all intermingled with images of oni doing much the same, with an obvious obsession for Minkai. They don’t just desire it, they lust after it, and that lust is on display in every square inch of these walls. I’ve seen such an excess of depravity in so little time that I have become numb to it.

One pillar in the hall did stand out, though. Instead of the usual violent and obscene portents, it depicted five oni. The one at the top was the largest and most distinct, very clearly a wind yai looming over the others. Below that were three more oni, more heavily stylized but almost certainly yai of some sort. And at the bottom sat the unmistakable, but heavily stylized, image of Munasukaru.

What does this tell us? For one, it’s pretty obvious where Munasukaru stands, and that’s “at the bottom”. As we’ve long suspected, we will be facing the runt of the litter here shortly. It also suggests that the leadership of the Five Storms might, literally, be five oni. Whether that’s just a coincidence or the name is intentionally descriptive is anyone’s guess, though common sense would suggest it’s the former (If it was the latter and you had to add a sixth oni to the leadership ranks how exactly would that work? Do you have to rename the organization? Print all new business cards? Change the company letterhead?) But then again, common sense has not exactly been a theme so far.

The image at the top also, rather heavily, implies that a wind yai oni sits in the coveted executive position. That…is bad news. The yai take the form of giants, generally those with a connection to one of the elements. Giants based on air tend to be tougher than their brethren, so if that holds with oni, too, then there is that to worry about.

For now, though, the focus is on tomorrow. None of us likes the idea of blindly dropping through the drain at the base of the steps. That means scouting ahead, and the safest way to do that is with the spell I used to explore the pagoda (gods, was that just two days ago?) That means an early start to the day, as Qatana will need to know what we are facing before she begins what passes as prayers to Groetus. And, no, you don’t want to know.

There was this moment when she and I were hovering over the drain, staring down into the darkness. The sound of rushing water echoed around us and it was almost hypnotic. I could feel myself being swallowed by the inky void, the din of the cascading water fading as I descended.

Qatana’s voice snapped me back to the present. “You haven’t had to pee in years.”

And it was such a random, bizarre statement—directed at no one because we were the only ones there, and she wasn’t talking to me—that I reflexively looked over at her. She was still hovering at my side; still staring down into the hole below. She must have noticed my surprise and confusion as she met my gaze and said, simply, “Beorn”.

“Ah.”

She kept mice more or less as pets when she was living in Magnimar. I say “more or less” because that sounds more formal than it was. It’s more like, she was living somewhere and that somewhere had mice and so she had mice. She talked to them when they were alive, and she still talks to them now. Each of them has a distinct personality: Beorn is aggressive and unpredictable, Star is equally aggressive but rude, Badger is sneaky, Huffy is friendly, and so on. Sometimes she asks them for advice, sometimes they just offer it up. It…took some getting used to as she has these conversations out loud. At the start of this it was more than a little unsettling, but now it’s just Qatana.

Are her mice really talking to her, or are these voices just aspects of her personality asserting themselves? In other words, is she being driven mad, or is this her madness? I don’t know, and I am not even sure the two are mutually exclusive. But, my suspicion is that those who seek out Groetus either are mad to begin with, or are driven so by his providence. The price of drawing spiritual power from him is to make that madness essentially incurable. Cutting it away from Qatana would be excising a significant part of her identity and existence. We’ve certainly been witness to our share of the fantastic and paranormal on a scale where Qatana’s affliction is mere noise. So here we are.

What does it say about us that all this passes as normal?

Pharast 29, 4713 (early morning, The Penance)

We have a much clearer picture of where we are headed. With my spell, I was able to explore three chambers below us until the eye could go no further. I sketched a rough map for my friends based on what I saw, pointing out potential hazards and foes. Now we’re just waiting for Qatana to prepare her spells.

We were right to worry about water. That much seemed obvious already but I always welcome validation where it can be found. In the cavern directly below us the water is only a foot deep, but it drains into another where it’s easily four to five. The former is merely an inconvenience, but the latter is trouble. Or would be, if we didn’t know in advance.

Even without the water it’s going to be a challenging descent. I could see two ja noi oni in the first cavern, torturing human or humanoid prisoners held in cages that are suspended from the ceiling. These oni are almost certainly more of Munasukaru’s spawn, much like Ichirou (though possibly not as spineless). In the second cavern I saw two naga that must be her daughters swimming in the water. Or undulating. Or whatever it is that snakes with human heads do in water. They are more dangerous than their oni brothers; before we face them that water will have to go.

The final chamber is actually a room of carved stone. The water from above doesn’t drain there, but it leaks in through the ceiling so the floor and walls are wet. More problematic than wet floors: the near end of the chamber is crisscrossed with metal chains and blue-skinned human-like beings lurk among them.

Kytons.

You can’t spend time in Shelyn’s church without learning about her brother and the thing he has become. While not all kytons are his servants, there are common themes of torture, mutilation, and an affinity for chains. That is enough of an overlap to get my attention. I don’t know what arrangement Munasukaru has with these things but I don’t really care: they have to go, too.

At the far end I saw prisoners hung in metal gibbets along the walls. I couldn’t tell if they are dead or alive. That is…not a good sign, and it’s put me in a somber mood. Some of the others, too.

This will be over soon.

(continued)

Munasukaru tried to buy us off. Or rather, a ja noi oni samurai that claimed to speak for Munasukaru tried to buy us off. That tells me two things. First, Munasukaru is clearly concerned because otherwise why even ask? Every single oni we’ve encountered so far, including to some extent Ichirou, has bordered on egomaniacal and you don’t try to cut a deal when you’re convinced you’re winning (or too stupid to realize that you’re not). Second, she doesn’t understand us at all. Which, I suppose, is not too surprising. From what we’ve seen so far, rational thought was an early casualty here.

Just in case we were morally bankrupt, we were offered riches and rewards once Minkai falls to the Five Storms. What riches and rewards? Her spokesperson didn’t provide details, but I imagine we can take hints from the decor.

It actually took some nerve to stage a formal ceremony in the middle of a gods-be-damned torture chamber in order to make the offer, especially mere seconds after a cloud of poisonous gas had rolled over them (I’ve been having fun). If I was in their position I’d not be in the mood for diplomacy after that, which suggests Munasukaru has a pretty strong grip on her faithful. I can almost hear her saying, “Suck it up.”

Dasi responded that we represent the Amatatsu family. That put an abrupt end to the negotiations. Then Ivan put four arrows in the oni, putting an equally abrupt end to Munasukaru’s State Department. Cleaning up the kytons and the hobgoblins took a little longer, but only because there were more of them.

Four of the prisoners hanging from the gibbets were still alive. Like the others, we can heal their wounds but there’s nothing we can do for their memories.

Pharast 28, 4713 (early afternoon, The Penance)

The farther in we go, the more I see the echoes of a long-lost grandeur. I hesitate to describe anything the Five Storms have touched as magnificent, but this place has the feel of a once-great hall deep into its decay. How long were they held prisoner here? Hundreds of years? Thousands? That is a lot of time to excavate. The rubble in the hall suggests there was a collapse at some point. How much more was there? Are we just scratching the surface?

What did they do here? Did they entertain visitors? The kami said they were forbidden from leaving, but it was a prison with no guards save for the complicated rules that kept the oni from leaving. There was nothing stopping outsiders from coming and going as they pleased. You could build an empire that way.

It really begs the question, “why so lax?” Was it assumed the oni would just sit in here and rot for all of eternity? Clearly they had other plans. Whoever created their jail (and more crucially, this arrangement) was afflicted with a startling lack of imagination. And Minkai is paying the price.

Whatever this place once was it’s more mausoleum now; a crumbling monument to another time. It’s dark, dank and depressing. Even the oni that remain are depressing. The guardian of this checkpoint, as he called it, was as decrepit as the hall itself, though at least he was reasonably aware of the pathetic nature of his role. There was this moment when I was invisible, hovering just close enough to see him when he called out to us in the darkness. Qatana, for her part, managed a very credible impression of Ichirou’s voice and insisted on passing through. He tried to talk “Ichirou” out of this decision, reminding him what had happened the last time he’d visited his sisters. When “Ichirou” insisted on going anyway, he buried his head in his hands and just shook it sadly.

Can you imagine? Proud samurai Oni of the Five Storms, reduced to babysitting. Such tales of glory and fortune he must have had.

Wretched though he was, he was in our way. And he was mounted on a gorgon because of course he was, which also made him dangerous. We went for a reprise of yesterday’s trick: Qatana cast her spell, I walled them off behind a barrier of ice (because they can’t fly), and we let them beat each other to death while we took pot shots with arrows and bombs.

His living quarters was the height of elegance with its lice-infested bed and living, wall-to-wall carpet of beetles. I swear I am not making that last one up. What was even keeping them there? This place keeps challenging my notion of “the worst thing I have ever seen”. Repeatedly. It is not supposed to be a competition.

Speaking of “worst thing I have ever seen”, the decor in this hall includes an image of a hobgoblin nursing two snakes. Just in case there was any doubt about that.

(midafternoon)

One down, one to go: we found the bonsai tree, discarded and forgotten in a dark storage room that is leading the race to dilapidation. Like everything else here the tree is barely clinging to life, probably from days or weeks without sunlight. If it wasn’t for the water leaking through the walls and ceiling it probably would have withered and died.

Yet again, I am left wondering what the plan was here. Why bring a plant—one which quite obviously needs sunlight to live—to a place completely steeped in darkness? How were they planning on keeping it alive? The only light in here is in the fire pit, and even if that were sufficient it’s two stories up. The would-be gardener was obviously not thinking this one through.

Now that the tree is safely in our possession maybe we can afford to be more indiscriminate in our methods. (OK, fine, we were hardly careful up in the pagoda. But there were no hobgoblins there, and no hobgoblins meant no tree. It was solid logic, and as it happens, we were right.)  Or maybe not. Yuka’s memories suggest Munasukaru gets personally involved when it comes to her prisoners, and that means there may be some down below. I’m guessing we’ll have to do this the hard way.

I probably should have thought of that sooner, before I sent a cloud of poisonous gas down that hallway. Fortunately, it was just a few hobgoblins, a hill giant, and these bizarre lizard things that were far more dangerous than anything else we’ve come across. Which makes me think they weren’t part of the original plan. That, and the pile of hobgoblin bones. They reminded me of that thing that attacked us up in the arctic. These lizards were blind, too, and they tore into us with huge blasts of sound. Except like everything else down here, they couldn’t fly (so maybe they were part of the original plan after all?)

Gods, it’s been a long day. I am spent. Qatana looks exhausted. Dasi’s voice sounds like it’s going out. We even lost Zosi’s puppets: they tried to walk across the bottom of the lake and something—we never saw what, but it was something big—extirpated them. They are utterly gone; there aren’t even any remains! I shudder to think what must be in that murky water that’s capable of (I assume) swallowing them whole. The pool is closed until further notice.

This underscores how unprepared we’ve been for water. We’ve mostly avoided it so far but it’s been a consistent theme and I wonder if our current tactics will hold. At the end of that hallway, where the lizards were, water pours in through cracks in the cavern walls and flows down the steps into a drain at its base. Which means we will have water to contend with down below, too. What if there’s something in the water that we have to confront?

The good new is that we have a few hours to figure this out as we are going to shelter in this hall for the rest of the day while we recover. Is this safe? Not really. Is there someplace safer? Not really. Not unless we want to leave and come back, which seems particularly unwise. If anything tries to come up from below, or descend from above, we need to be here for it.

Pharast 28, 4713 (late morning, The Penance)

Now I can add “copulating hobgoblins” to the list of things I neither want nor need to ever see again.

Ichirou was one of Munasukaru’s children. The hobgoblin women he was…ahem…entertaining said as much when we descended on them. They avowed that we would never take the great spawn of the even greater Munasukaru from them, and bravely fought to the death, giving their lives to shield him as he even more bravely begged and pleaded to not be killed, and surrendered and bound himself at Radella’s demand. While the battle raged on. Yes, you read that right: he surrendered at the beginning, while his concubine fought and died in his honor. What madness is this?

In the interest of accuracy, only one of them actually fought. The other one was caught up in the web from my spell, and she burned to death in her lover’s bed after we set it ablaze. Incinerating her was more satisfying than watching the aranea roast, though it was probably no less disturbing. I think. Yuka’s memories are pretty clear on what the hobgoblins had done to her so it’s hard for me to look at this objectively.

I overheard the others talking earlier and someone, I am not sure who, said “Kali seems more bloodthirsty than usual”. That is definitely true. It’s hard not to be when you see what I have been shown. And I know I should, but I just can’t feel bad about what I’ve been doing. Or her memories won’t let me.

Ichirou kept referring to himself as the greatest or the chosen spawn of Munasukaru. I have my doubts about that. Not about him being her son, but about that bit where he is “chosen”. Given how quickly and readily he surrendered, how desperate he was to spare his life, and how he was all too eager to sell out his own mother—an Oni of the Five Storms—in return, it’s difficult for me to see what’s so great about him, and why anyone would choose him for anything of any importance.

I didn’t sit in on most of the interrogation because Yuka was more or less urging me to burn him alive, so I had to settle for the executive summary. He was supposedly the “overseer” (those were his words) of this level of what his mother calls “The Penance”, but his official duties seemed limited to bedding hobgoblin women. The answer to every one of our questions apparently got sidetracked into women in general, the Sisters of the Broken Path specifically, and when and where he’d rendezvoused with all of them. Even the map he sketched out for us was more or less referenced in relation to his sexual escapades. Do I need to keep going on here? No? Good, because I have had enough of it, too.

The Sisters of the “Broken Path”. That’s what he said the hobgoblin monks (all of them women, obviously) are called. What does that even mean? The path to where, exactly? And how or why is it broken? The name is as ridiculously arbitrary in Tien as it is when translated to Common, seemingly chosen for its edginess and mysteriousness.

Ichirou wasn’t the only one passing the time here with romantic interludes. His mother has, apparently, been busy herself. Ichirou says he has siblings, and there may even be some he doesn’t know about since he doesn’t get downstairs too often. He talked a lot about his two sisters. They are “mean to him” (gods, it’s like talking to a child), and more helpfully, that they are large, snake-like beings with faces. We put our heads together on that one and concluded they are naga of some sort.

So Munasukaru lays with hobgoblins and gives birth to naga. How does that work, exactly? I mean, sure, oni are demons in the flesh, but the biology just doesn’t make sense and even magic has limits. And, is it a failure or a success, anyway, when an oni mates with a hobgoblin and gives birth to a naga? On the one hand, her daughters are apparently still alive so that points to the latter, but on the other hand, Ichirou was still alive, too, so that’s not much of an argument. Maybe we’ll ask Munasukaru when we see her.

Ivan shot and killed Ichirou after we were done talking to him. While he was still bound. I should probably be feeling bad about that.

(noon)

Why are there so many oni still here? Why is Munasukaru still here? I mean, what is the point? The Kami said they couldn’t enter the House as long as even one oni remained. Well, we are up to our ears in oni here: Fujai, Ichirou, and of course Munasukaru and however many other oni she has spawned over the years. If it only takes one, why do they all stay? They can obviously get out because the rest of the Five Storms did it, so what’s keeping everyone else here? Can’t they take shifts or something? This makes no sense.

The only explanation I can think of is that Munasukaru has gone completely mad. She must want to stay here, and that means she is out of her gourd.

The rest of this place makes no sense, either. There are all these hobgoblins down here, and they are living in filth and squalor like it’s paradise. Why? To be closer to their “living god”? What god chooses a garbage pit for their domain? Who follows their god into a sewer? What could she possibly be giving them that is worth being trapped underground in your own refuse? Maybe we’ll ask her that, too.

Pharast 28, 4713 (mid morning, beneath the House of Withered Blossoms)

I think I overplayed my hand. In fact, I am pretty sure I did and now I’m concerned that I’ve done the exact thing we were trying to avoid: spread the alarm ahead of us as we go. My intent was to avoid the long slog through this cavern—having to fight our way through ambush after ambush on their terms—to reach the end by having the end come to us, instead. That part certainly worked, but the commander of the garrison here knew something was up when he came. And the whole thing just took too long, so we more or less knew that he knew. But how did he know? That’s the question that has me worried.

Maybe Munasukaru never actually comes up here. That’s certainly possible. No matter how good my illusion, no matter how clear my memories of her, none of it would matter if it was just all wrong on that basic level. It goes back to what Ameiko and Sandru have tried to teach me about bluffing and disguise: the details matter, yes, but you have to get the broad strokes right first. My game with the hobgoblins was fun, and they were certainly too terrified to think too much about what was going on, but their commander may have known better because it just doesn’t happen. Or at least, not in that way, or without his knowledge.

That’s the more benign theory, and to be honest, I don’t give it much weight. The more problematic one—the one that I think is more likely—is that they sent a messenger further…in? down?…wherever, in order to find out if she was really here. Or maybe they sent to her or someone close to her using magic, and learned that, no, she’s exactly where she should be and who is crazy and/or foolish enough to try and imitate her? (A rhetorical question when I ask it, though maybe more of a head-scratcher for them.) In which case, now several people are aware that something is going on, even if they don’t know precisely what that is.

If we’re lucky, they’ll blame the trickery on Akinosa. Though I am not feeling particularly lucky.

But, hey, at least we avoided the slog. Or, part of it, anyway. And, as a bonus, we ended up springing a trap without having to be there for it. So there is that. But, I can’t shake the feeling that I’ve compromised our long-term success for short-term gains.

It was a pretty nasty trap, though. Or would have been, had it come as the surprise that was intended. We learned a little about constructs back at the academy and I’ve picked up some here and there in my own studies, but this was the first time we’ve come face to face with one. They are largely resistant to magic and even physical blows which is probably why they are so coveted as guardians. These clay ones, though, are particularly nasty because the injuries they inflict simply do not heal, resisting even magical intervention (something we learned through personal experience). Imagine having to fight our way through waves of hobgoblins after tangling with that.

(late morning)

While the others searched the store room I took the time to memorize a couple of spells. That seemed more productive than digging through rusty tools, junk-drawer supplies, moldy vegetables and racks of cured mystery meats. Gods, this place is disgusting. It’s like an estate sale for someone who died while I was still living at home.

I remember when I first came here. It was a long time ago. Long before I was born. It wasn’t the hobgoblins but the aranea. There were so many of them back then, more than we normally see around the forest, and they wanted to know why (I don’t remember who “they” were. Give me a break; it’s been half a century.) I stumbled onto the House, only I didn’t know it had a name back then. It was just this improbable pagoda rising out of a depression in the forest.

It looked a lot different. The aranea hadn’t gutted it, and of course we hadn’t burned what was left. Now it’s just a chimney, but when I first saw it? It was beautiful. The pit was there, though. It looked different, too. This was before the front lines of this stupid war were really drawn. I made my way down because I was curious.

Because Yuka was curious, and because it didn’t make any sense. She made her way down and she was captured by the hobgoblins, and eventually brought before Munasukaru.

I don’t remember how long I was down here. How long she was down here. But I She remembers being tortured and killed, personally, by Munasukaru. And no one should have to remember that. I shouldn’t have to remember that. It wasn’t even me, but she remembers, and so I remember.

(later still)

This part of the … whatever this is … is as an even bigger joke than the cavern above. One of the lines of defenses was, of all things, a leper colony. Really? That’s one of your tactics? You’re going to defend this place with a bunch of sickly hobgoblins by transmitting a disease with a one month incubation period? Exactly how does that work? We start the battle, then come back in three to four weeks?

Also, news headline for you: we can fly.

It was so easy that I almost felt guilty. Almost.

Next up was this ridiculous open pit, criss-crossed with bars with mist or fog rising up from below. We were trying to figure out what it was when three hobgoblins stepped out onto the bars and started threatening and taunting us. Something about this scene triggered Yuka’s memories, and I realized I was looking at a sort of bizarre dojo.

Here’s what I’ve learned about taunting your opponent: don’t. Just don’t. Not before the battle’s over, anyway. It may feel good at the time, but it doesn’t really accomplish anything and it’s always possible that they know something you don’t. And then you look stupid. And then you die, looking stupid.

Here’s the thing: We. Can. Fly. Do not taunt your opponents while balancing on metal bars above a steaming pit if they can fly and you can’t. Why do I even need to explain this?

And even if we couldn’t fly, we are quite deadly even from a distance. We knocked two of them to their deaths without breaking a sweat. We never even got close to them. We didn’t have to!

I have to wonder what went through their minds as they fell into the pit. Was it regret, maybe? That feeling you’ve wasted your life training for exactly the wrong moment? Or maybe it was just the sinking sensation in your stomach, when the realization dawns that you were fighting the wrong battle?

Or maybe it was just abject terror. The sounds from below…the noxious, billowing mist…we think it may be a gorgon down there. I wouldn’t want to fall on one of those, either.

(even later still)

We can hear sounds of … well … an intimate moment through one of the arches off the pit. I picked up just enough to make out the words, “I thought I heard something on the lattice,” but another voice said to ignore it, and then they, um, resumed their thing.

Or at least, that’s what it sounds like. It’s a lot louder than…never mind. I guess this explains why they didn’t hear us earlier.

Pharast 27, 4713 (afternoon, below the House of Withered Blossoms)

How long has this dungeon been here? What was its purpose? How long did it take to build it? Those questions are on my mind for some reason. Probably because it feels like we’ve just gotten started here. We travel farther and farther down this road and there’s just … more road.

All the excavation suggests a level of boredom that I can only begin to imagine. When you are held prisoner for eternity, though, I suppose the biggest challenge is occupying your time. The Five Storms’ solution was, apparently, to dig a big hole in the floor and just keep going. The Kami said they swore an oath to hold the oni prisoner here, but we don’t really know how long ago that was. Hundreds of years? Thousands? Longer? I suppose we should have asked, though I guess it doesn’t really matter. It was clearly a long time. Even with spells, all this could not have been done quickly.

Assuming, of course, that this was the work of the Five Storms. We don’t really know for sure. A more troubling answer is that it was just Munasukaru. I mean, if boredom was a problem for the oni before, imagine what it must be like for just one of them now. Abandoned by her peers, left with only hobgoblins and hill giants for company. Trapped here, unable to leave. That can’t be healthy, can it?

How long ago was their escape? Again, the Kami didn’t say (and, again, should have asked…) but we can do some math. The letter from Rokuro was written over 25 years ago; he and his family fled Minkai 30-some years before that. The Five Storms’ plans for Minkai didn’t unfold over night, so figure two or three generations as a starting point. That means Munasukaru has been a placeholder here for at least a century. Maybe even longer.

The hall where we were ambushed was filled with images of … disgusting acts. The oni chose a life of flesh and blood so that they could indulge in the pleasures of the former while spilling the latter. The carvings in that hall suggested a depravity and imagination in both that goes far beyond the worst of humanity. And those were just the carvings. What they did with the bodies of the men and women they had captured…

And what of the hobgoblins? I don’t know how or why they fit in, but they are here and they are a part of it. I just want to make that clear. All of this is on them, too.

We turned the tables on that ambush. Obviously. And I think we did it without spreading the alarm any further. So we have a reprieve for now.

The hobgoblins had enlisted the help of a pair of hill giants. That would normally be a problem but they succumbed to Qatana’s aura and turned on each other. I trapped them behind an invisible wall of force, and there they raged, beating on it and each other until one of their heads bloomed in crimson. We dropped the survivor when I dropped the wall.

Sometimes I think I am kidding myself.

(HouDarWhereABlossmwWhosThr)

I have two lives and two names and two histories but it’s not clear which are from me now and me before. I came into the Forest with companions that have never met yet we were all traveling together so that seems wrong somehow because we were always together and we spent a long and bitter cold winter crossing the ice in darkness where there were just plains, tundra and forest.

I remember growing up in Minkai and now I am returning there, a country I’ve never seen and only know from stories and memories. We traveled when I was a child growing up here and in Avistan so that makes sense but I haven’t spoken to my parents in so long that they must be worried I am lost or have died and I know they are worried because just last week they said so but that was not me it was me.

I know it wasn’t me because I remember dying here I felt my bones breaking and the darkness swallow me and I saw my body hung on a wall along the balcony where I was standing with my friends the ones that didn’t come with me before I died but came with me after. It is an odd thing to see yourself alive and dead and that too seems wrong because how can I be both? I cried out in anguish through her or was that through me? I helped take myself down from the wall and wrap myself in burial robes and that’s how I know I died and I know who killed me I know her name and I know what I have to do even if I don’t survive it. I didn’t choose to be here but I came here with a purpose and now there is another though they are the same except for why.

(evening, House of Withered Blossoms)

Yuka is still here. I can hear her at times, sometimes even see her. Or see myself as though I was her. I don’t know how to explain it. It’s like there are moments when I don’t recognize myself, only sometimes it’s me as me, and others it’s me as her.

I … feel what she is feeling. I know what she wants and why. We can … communicate in a way. It’s not like talking, though sometimes I can hear her voice. It’s mostly … intent. And I can’t exactly ask her—myself?—questions, but when I have a question about something she knows I have memories that answer them. Her memories. My memories?

She wants us to kill Munasukaru. There is a burning intensity behind that. We were already on board with this plan, of course, and that seems to have satisfied her for now, and I no longer have the relentless whispering, begging, pleading. But she is still there, still speaking to me without speaking in a voice that isn’t mine.

She’s not hostile. It’s more like she’s … desperate, grieving, longing … all of these things. I can hear her now as I write this because I’ve opened myself up to her. She’s trapped here, bound by the unfairness of her death and the hatred it was borne from, much like a ghost only without the mindless, formless rage. (I want to say she’s lucky in that respect but that would be a callous dismissal, as though one would be “lucky” to lose only one arm instead of both.)

I don’t mind. Truth be told, I was curious. And maybe a little jealous. I remember Sandru around the fire and I guess I wanted that experience, too. It’s childish of me, and selfish, and … probably wrong because of why. I thought we made a mistake by expelling that spirit, but now I am less certain. I can feel her again as I write this out. It’s not right that these spirits are tied to the material world. They need to move on.

But, it also wouldn’t be right to forcibly expel Yuka, either. She needs help moving on, and that means doing this the right way: seeing it through to the end. If I am the vessel for that, then so be it.

We are holing up in the hall of pillars for the night because we need the rest. It’s possible we’ll get interrupted again, but there’s no better place so we’ll just take our chances with the next change of the guard.

I said “again”. I sent Nihali up to tell the prisoners we freed that we’re spending the night. So they wouldn’t panic and do something stupid. She returned almost immediately because a small group of hobgoblins had come down the flue, seen the battle scene we’d staged, then turned around and left they way they came. We were worried they might take their chances exploring the pagoda. If they found the prisoners we’d freed …

So we raced after them. They were setting up a magical rope to clear the smooth walls of the shaft where the stairs ended.

This answered the question of how the hobgoblins managed to come and go so easily. It also gave me an idea, and I conjured a storm of sleet and ice where they stood, extending it up to the top of the bore. I figured this would at least slow them down. If I got really lucky they’d slip and fall to their deaths.

I got really lucky. Two of the four did exactly that as soon as the ice enveloped them. The third needed a little encouragement from Zosimus, but then he, too, plummeted off the ledge. The fourth stubbornly refused to cooperate, however, and Olmas had to deal with him personally.

I actually saved the third one by stopping his fall. It occurred to me it’d be easier to interrogate him if he was still alive. Don’t judge me. It was one of my simplest spells. I could afford to splurge.

Pharast 28, 4713 (morning, beneath the House of Withered Blossoms)

I had strange dreams last night. They were fragments of our memories jumbled together into an incoherent, shifting narrative. That’s not much different from dreams in general, of course, but it felt like we were I was trying to make sense of two, conflicting histories.

There were moments of clarity; scenes from our lives that stood out in sharp focus. These are the only parts of my dreams that I remember well, though even they were incomplete. I know, for example, that Yuka was a monk and I saw the dojo where she was trained, but I don’t have a sense for when or where she lived. Similarly, there were memories of me in Niswan as a young girl, an older me studying in Magnimar, and so on, but they were all disconnected from my past somehow, like ships adrift at sea. It’s hard to explain.

As I sifted through these vignettes, though, it occurred to me that I still didn’t know what Munasukaru looked like. That’s when another of Yuka’s memories came to me. An elderly Tian woman with wrinkled skin was looking down at me—at her—and smiling, only it wasn’t out of kindness: it was the satisfaction that comes from toying with your prey. Her form shifted then, stretching and elongating, her skin reddening, as monstrous features emerged. When it stopped, she resembled the hobgoblins that served her. I was looking at a kind of oni we hadn’t seen before.

This explains a lot. The prisoners we rescued said the hobgoblins both worshipped and feared her, and this is almost certainly why: to them she must look like some sort of god, and from what we know of the oni I doubt Munasukaru would correct the error (much like Kikonu and his corbies, only I am having trouble picturing her as a budding playwright). It suggests we may encounter more fervant devotees than just the soldiers and guards we’ve seen so far.

We’re told there are lower levels to this dungeon, and if she holds to convention she’s probably at the very bottom. Why does everyone do that? What is this fascination with burying yourself underground? Kikonu may have been unhinged, but at least he chose to live on the top floor. (Though maybe Munasukaru’s war with the aranea left her with few options.)

Zosi spent the morning fiddling with his alchemy equipment. It was fascinating to watch, though more than a little unnerving when he stuck a giant needle in one of the hill giant corpses and it stood up. Animating the dead is a sure-fire way to get our collective attention. Both Qatana and I watched with trepidation, but there was no necromancy involved and what he created wasn’t undead. He’d made a sort of construct, powered through alchemy.

Though it was still pretty creepy.

(later)

The Swine Shogun was kind of a let-down. I don’t think I’m ever going to see a hobgoblin riding a pig.

Pharast 27, 4713 (midmorning, House of Withered Blossoms)

We’ve rescued two people who were being held prisoner here. The aranea placed them in iron cages and left them hanging inside a maze of lacquered screens, guarded—or perhaps tormented—by pairs of mohrgs.

Mohrgs. What kind of arrangement Akinosa had with these creatures is anyone’s guess. They are foul things: intelligent, malevolent undead that exist only to kill the living, much as they did in life. Maybe asking what kind of bargain was struck is the wrong question. A better one would be, what kind of person would agree to one? This, I believe, says all there is to be said about the aranea, or at least this little clutter of them. I think back to earlier, how we tried to parley with them, to avoid killing them just because they were here and an inconvenience, and it makes me sick. What if we had come to some agreement? What if we had allied with them against the oni down below? Would we have learned what was happening here? What would that say about us?

It reminds me of Zaiobe. I mean, the parallels are pretty obvious, right? Only we did strike a bargain with her, and look how it turned out.

It’s tempting to compromise on principles out of necessity—or worse, desperation—but the thing is, the enemy of my enemy may just be my enemy. What I’ve learned is that you don’t casually form alliances of convenience; that there are consequences and repercussions to willful ignorance. Even if your life depends on it. What is the point in living if you can’t live with your decisions?

One of the freed captives, Junzo, says they were ambushed on the main road several weeks ago. The two of them escaped into the forest and quickly became lost, and it was the aranea that found them. They were captured and have been held here ever since. To what aim? We’ll never know. Probably for food, though I suppose another explanation would be for entertainment. Assuming that human suffering is what passed for entertainment among the aranea. I am sure that is a safe bet.

They were able to confirm that Akinosa really was fighting the hobgoblins for control of the House. The war has raged for years, apparently, and has recently been stuck in a kind of stalemate. Given their elaborate setup and meager numbers, I imagine the aranea were relying on deterrence more than anything else. I’d be shocked if they were doing much more than picking off the occasional hobgoblin that came and went.

Given what we’ve learned, though, I am kind of surprised this has gone on so long. Maybe the hobgoblins lack the numbers to cross the threshold (and more importantly, to hold it afterwards). Maybe the status quo has been the status quo for so long that no one thinks it can change. Or, maybe they just don’t know the sad state to which Akinosa’s opium-addicted army had fallen.

(late morning)

There were so many traps on the lower floors that it was faster and easier to just set them off as we went. It’s a little more clear how the hobgoblins were being kept at bay: the aranea turned the ascent into a withering gauntlet of poison, murder holes, and flying blades. The hobgoblins apparently lacked either the means or the imagination for something other than a frontal assault, and a frontal assault would have been deadly.

Unfortunately, our talent and imagination are only going to get us so far with the complex down below. There’s only one way in and that’s through the front doors. Which is, I suppose, the big advantage of subterranean living: if guests come calling, you pretty much know where they are going to be.

I hate going in through the front door. We’ve done it a couple of times and it’s always kicking a hornets’ nest. These things go much better when we can be discreet.

Worse, these are hobgoblins which means this is going to be a grind. Assuming we don’t end up facing the entire army all at once—that is not a given—they’ll contest every inch of ground. And we can’t just burn the place out like we did here: we’re supposed to be rescuing a bonsai tree—I am not making that up—and learning what we can about the Five Storms. And, I guess it would be nice to be able to breathe, too.

I got a good look at where we are headed and it’s a gods-be-damned fortress. They built an actual stone wall complete with battlements in that cavern, from floor to ceiling (I guess they took this war with the aranea pretty seriously). I was staring up at Brinewall all over again, only, you know, there was no sky. So, we just have to get through that. Without raising an alarm. Of course, we’re a lot more capable than we were back then, too, so we have some ideas.

Normally we’d take the time to plan this out more carefully, but there is some urgency. It looked like they had two human or humanoid people stuck to the front gate. I don’t know if they were impaled or tied or hung or what, but at least one of them may be alive. We’re taking just a few minutes to get organized and then we go. Yes, perhaps it’s a bit reckless, but we’re motivated by the novelty of saving lives instead of just taking them.

OK. We’re going.

(afternoon)

We were right about the people I saw. Two Tian men had been impaled on spikes set into the gate and they were barely clinging to life. Every time I think I have seen the worst thing there is to see, something even more horrible comes along. Like there’s some sort of award for it. This wasn’t a unique event, either. It’s something the hobgoblins do regularly here, having mastered the grotesque art of spiking people without killing them outright.

Once Qatana had healed them up it was time for the interrogation, being the kind and compassionate people that we are. This started out okay—It’s how we learned that there are (or, perhaps, were) others here who were captured in the forest and forced to work before turned into door hangings—but it fell apart shortly after. They said one of the doors leads to “her domain”, so naturally we asked who “her” was. That’s when the panic swelled in both of them; to the point where I thought they might die of fright, right in front of us. They were terrified—petrified—and refused to speak her name, or of anything else.

We let Dasi talk to them, alone, and he was able to calm them down. I don’t know how. But whatever he said, it obviously worked. They said she’s a demon called Munasukaru, and the hobgoblins both fear and worship her. She lives somewhere below, at the bottom of a bottomless pit or something. Obviously the details there are a bit sketchy, and, um, probably of questionable accuracy.

This level is ruled by one called Buto, who—and I swear I am also not making this up—calls himself “The Swine Shogun”. He also—and I swear I am not making this up, either—rides around on a giant pig.  I have got to see that for myself. How can you pass up a sight like that?

We shouldn’t have any trouble finding him as we were given clear directions: first, we go through the Torture Chamber to the Hall of Pillars, which will take us to The Agonies that is just above The Great Ledge. Seriously. I swear I am not making any of those up, either.

Good gods. Who comes up with these names?

Pharast 27, 4713 (morning, House of Withered Blossoms)

We’ve taken the top tier of the pagoda, though we had to torch it until it was a blackened, hollow shell to do it. I am ashamed to admit that I was almost no help at all. I just could not make myself go into that hole knowing what was in there. That may have saved my life. These weren’t just giant spiders and they weren’t in there alone: shadows descended on my friends as soon as they entered. The poison they were ready for, but the life-draining touch of the shades took them by surprise and they were forced to retreat back to the roof. Olmas and Radella looked particularly shaken up. What if I had been down there? Would I even have made it out?

This thing I have—you can call it a fear or a phobia or a repulsion, as all of those fit—it goes back to when we still visited my grandparents in Korvosa. Their home is on the slope in Midland and it overlooks the docks and this strip of the Shingles that runs along the waterfront towards High Bridge. The shanties are a haven for spiders. Sometimes I would see them scuttling from rooftop to rooftop, darting in and out of the shacks people up there used as crude homes. One night when we were out just a little too late, a little too separated from the main crowds, two of them dropped in front of us. Mom skewered one and a city guard who just happened to be in the right place at the right time drove off the other, but not before dad was bitten. I completely froze in terror. That sort of thing sticks with you when you’re only ten years old.

We actually have worse—much worse—in Magnimar. Three-eyed, and three feet tall, the shriezyx are nasty, mean, and aggressive, which, given what I know about the runelords that supposedly created them was probably the whole point. It makes me shudder when I think about it, but fortunately they don’t make it up to the surface very often so, out of sight, out of mind, right? Also, the guard has had plenty of experience dealing with them so those that do make it up are handily dispatched (though the real trick is not burning the city down in the process).

A quick search through one of our tomes told us a little more about what we were dealing with here: aranea, a sort of half-human, half-spider hybrid that can assume the form of either one. They have quickly risen to the top of my list of most disgusting creatures. We’ve seen a lot of vile creatures, of course, but there’s something about a human/spider shapeshifter that just isn’t right. I mean, this shouldn’t even be a thing. Who thought this was a good idea?

And we’re still not done here. There’s—

(later)

If you want to have nightmares, try watching someone slowly burn to death. Not in flames, but blackening like a roast in an oven. Gods. Spiders or not, it’s a terrible thing.

We drove the surviving aranea to the floor below. Qatana and Ivan lit the webs underneath us; I hovered over the hole in the floor, draping it in a spell that suppressed magic  in order to limit their options. That’s when I saw they were grouped just a little too tightly.

I had to keep the opening covered with my spell, which meant I was staring down at them. It was my decision to encircle them with a curtain of fire. Mine. Trapped in a furnace that they couldn’t escape, and unable to penetrate the suppression field, they were helpless to do anything but be picked off and turn to ash.

Gods.

The man I saw the night before was the only one of them left. He put up quite a fight, but from what we can tell he was so high on opium that he didn’t really have a good grasp of what was happening. We tried to get him—and the other aranea before they burned—to surrender, but apparently we said the wrong thing because he became convinced we were allied with the hobgoblins and oni “down below”. We haven’t even seen a down below, but we also haven’t seen any hobgoblins so maybe that’s the why. From his semi-coherent ramblings we got a view of the larger picture of this place: the spider things hold the towers and the hobgoblins and oni dwell underneath.

Held the towers.

That may be premature. We aren’t done. Dasi senses more sentience in the floors below us. He says some feel like the minds of people who are trapped here, while the others exude a malevolence that suggests they’re the captors. And almost certainly more spiders.

There is ash everywhere. We have completely burned out the top half of the pagoda. I’d feel bad about that but the aranea were not exactly kind to it, themselves. They tore out floors, stripped the walls and rebuilt the interior as a gauntlet leading up to their den. I can’t imagine trying to take this place from the ground floor. But I guess that was the whole point. The oni can’t leave, and the hobgoblins can’t fly, so it was an effective defense.

Obviously, they never anticipated an assault from above.

Pharast 12, 4713 (evening, Forest of Spirits)

We’ve added both a traveler and a wagon to the caravan. It’s like there’s some conspiracy out there to keep me locked in a perpetual cycle of travel planning.

I haven’t seen very many armored wagons in my life. You would think mom and dad would have used them a lot but that’s not the case at all. As dad explained to me once, an armored wagon really draws attention to the fact that you’re transporting something valuable. And while they are certainly harder to break into (and steal from), they are just as easy to disable as any other wagon: you only have to kill the horses. That means they’re best for transporting dangerous cargo, where the armor helps keep something in rather than others out, or  important passengers or items that everyone already knows are inside but might need an extra deterrent to keep them honest.

This wagon falls into that first category. Our new addition is a gnome named Zosimus, and he is traveling with an alchemy lab the likes of which I have never seen.

I’m no stranger to gnomes. There are quite a few in Magnimar, and I spent enough time down in Ordellia that I got to know a few fairly well. In fact, I purchased a lot of my sarees from Grahaethelwin and Kyla. He’s obsessed with fabrics, especially those from south of the Inner Sea, and Kyla’s astonishingly talented as a clothes designer and tailor. Their shop is just this side of claustrophobic but what it lacks in space and room to breathe it makes up for in color and texture, it’s walls thick with bolts of fabric and the floor a maze of clothing racks (all Kyla’s tailoring). I think the only reason it isn’t more popular with human folk is the difficulty of getting in and out. And I suppose the vertigo.

Zosi is one of those rare gnomes with blue skin. I have to wonder if it’s natural or a result of experimentation with his lab equipment? No, I am not going to ask him.

He was traveling with a small group of people who apparently hadn’t gotten the memo that they shouldn’t be in here, and they were attacked by hobgoblins that the giants hadn’t already killed and eaten. We came along just in time to be too late to help them; Zosi was the only survivor.

He seems eager to join us. Apparently, he was just hired help and had no real connection to his companions except as a source of income (indeed, his primary concern was not that they had died, but rather that he’s now unemployed). He seems particularly eager to be going southeast. Obviously there’s a story there, but it’s not our business. As long as no one comes calling for him, anyway.

Tomorrow morning I’ll use a spell to create the parts we’ll need to strengthen the wagon’s undercarriage so that it doesn’t slow us down. We’ve pooled the weapons and armor from the hobgoblins and the dead men for use as materials.

That sounds rather cold, doesn’t it?

Pharast 16, 4713 (night, Forest of Spirits)

Zosi asked me about my family tonight. I told them that I grew up in Sandpoint, that we currently live in Magnimar, and that they run a merchant business there and have for most of my life. That got us to talking about all the traveling we did when I was younger.

Then, out of the blue, he asked, “Do they know what you are doing out here? What do they think about it?”

I didn’t answer for a while. What do they think about it? For sure, it’s complicated. They’re proud, but obviously scared and worried. And of course it didn’t get off to a great start. How to explain that?

“They know. When this all began, we had a … big argument. Actually, I should just call it a fight. There was a lot of yelling. I … It doesn’t matter. Things are better now. They are … supportive. But they worry. A lot.”

I spoke with them a few nights ago. I conveniently left out the whole mess with Prince Batsiakhar and I feel guilty about it because I promised them I would … that I wouldn’t hide anything from them. But that’s exactly what I did, right? I don’t know why. Habits are hard to break, I guess.

“Did you work in your family’s business at all?”

“Yes, sort of. I did some of the passage planning for a while. I can tell you don’t know what that is. It’s all about the logistics of how a ship goes form one place to another: the stops en route, customs forms at the destination, and similar logistics.” I smiled. “I was pretty good at it.”

“So why did you leave it?”

“I wanted a change.”

There was an uncomfortable pause as he just sort of looked at me. I knew what he was thinking but I wasn’t up for a conversation about it. “Yes, I am aware of the irony.”

He let it drop.

Pharast 21, 4713 (morning, Forest of Spirits)

We’ve encountered three spirits so far. The latest one was last night and he felt significantly more malevolent than the first, and from what Qatana described, the one they encountered while tracking the tiger as well. Fortunately, our plan to use positive energy seems to work and as long as you can hold them at bay they don’t seem to be a significant threat. But maybe the deeper in we go the worse it gets.

Pharast 25, 4713 (early afternoon)

We’re sitting in a small clearing in some of the densest forest I have ever seen. The trees are so close together that the canopy blots out the sky. Who would have thought that we’d be needing the caravan lights during the day again?

This clearing is a sacred place for the kami and I guess I can understand that. It must be beautiful here in the summer when the sun climbs higher in the sky, but even now we can see the light on the tops of the trees above and it’s a lovely sight. Or maybe I just miss the sky that much.

We’re waiting now for … something. I don’t know what. The other kami, I think. I get the feeling that Miyaro is not really sure herself.

I guess it wasn’t obvious why we’re here or what we’re doing in spite Miyaro’s claim to be working as their agent. We were challenged by what I assume is the guardian spirit of this clearing before being allowed to enter. He asked us why we were traveling through the forest, and pointed out that we aren’t supposed to be here. “There’s a better road,” he kept saying. Yeah, there is, but it will get us all killed.

Finally, Qatana just came out and said what we we’re doing and those seemed to be the magic words.

“You specifically seek to undo the oni of the Five Storms?” he asked, somewhat incredulously.

“Yes, we do.”

“Then you may enter.”

I guess we should have opened with that.

(evening)

Kami and small forest animals began arriving around twilight. It was just a few at first, peeking at us from around the trees but as the night settled in their numbers swelled until we were quite literally surrounded. Mostly they were, and I suppose still are, both cautious and curious. A few have risked coming close to us, but for the most part they have stayed back at what they probably feel is a safe distance.

Then one of them approached Miyaro. She translated as he spoke to us.

As usual, the price of admission is doing a favor for someone. I have this feeling that this is what the future holds for us and for Ameiko. Want to earn my trust? Great. Prove your intentions by doing this one thing. Said thing is never easy. If it was, it would already be done.

We are headed to a place called The House of Withered Blossoms. The kami of the Forest had sworn an oath to keep the oni of the Five Storms imprisoned there, but because these are divine bargains the rules of it were needlessly complicated and ultimately self-defeating. The kami weren’t allowed to enter this prison while the oni were within, and that meant they couldn’t keep an eye on what was happening.

Prisons, whether mundane or magical, are not foolproof. Escaping is really just a function of time, and the goal is to make that as difficult as possible through physical and social barriers so that the prisoner dies (or is released) before they find their own way out. And this is the fundamental flaw in imprisoning someone for eternity: they have infinite time. When you aren’t allowed to even look in on the prisoners, then you have also given them free reign to plot and scheme, and that just makes their job easier.

The kami can’t enter to investigate which means at least one oni remains inside. I know how this sort of thing goes. It only takes one oni to keep the kami out, and it doesn’t matter who that oni is or what their capabilities are so essentially they just needed a warm body to stay behind. If I were in the Five Storms’ position, I would choose the oni they are least likely to miss or need. So that is good news for us. The bad news is, these aren’t just random oni: they are what passes as leadership of the Five Storms. So even the loser is probably going to be a hard fight.

The kami can’t enter the House but they can go look at it, and so we asked them what we should expect to find there, other than an oni.

“Hobgoblins,” he said. “And spiders.”

…

Why did it have be spiders?

Pharast 26, 4713 (late night, House of Withered Blossoms)

The House sits in the center of a depression, and we’ve made our camp on the slope leading up to the rim. It’s basically a big pagoda, which would be unremarkable if it wasn’t encased in vines and wrapped with spider webs.

I used a spell to scout the towers from the comfort of our campsite, and I learned there’s a hole in the roof that we can use to gain entry without having to walk in the front door because why would we be so stupid as to walk in the front door?

Inside the tower are more spider webs and, in case there was any question about that, a bunch of spiders, though some of them appear to be spider-human hybrids of some sort. Because of course they are. A couple of levels down there is this filthy, grotesque and very large man. As the eye passed I saw him eat a spider that was scurrying across his face, so, point in his favor, but I am betting that’s all he’s got going for him.

Unfortunately I couldn’t get the eye into all of the building, but we have learned enough to know that we shouldn’t try to go in through the front door. Which we knew already, but it’s always nice to be validated. The plan tomorrow is to drop in through the roof.

The vines around the building have been treating us to a show. At sunset, these giant purple blossoms opened up, and as the night wore on they fell away into a snowfall of petals. That was followed by fruit that are growing at an impossible pace. It is eerie, beautiful, fascinating, and alien. And also filled with spiders.

Some people think the man I saw was the oni, but I am not convinced. The kami said their were both spiders and hobgoblins here, and I didn’t see any trace of the latter. Granted, there are parts of the tower I couldn’t get into, but I get this feeling there is more to this place than what we can see. A lot more.

Pharast 8 (evening, Forest of Spirits)

We’ve been in the Forest of Spirits for a couple of days now and it’s already been astonishing. I can only imagine what the next two months are going to be like if this is how it starts.

There really are spirits in here so it’s more than just a name. They aren’t ghosts, exactly—or at least, the one we encountered yesterday wasn’t—though they seem to be something similar. The one last night sort of … melded with Sandru. It wasn’t possession. Not like with Katiyana’s ghost. It was … different.

She was the spirit of a poet who had, apparently, died over a century ago (amazingly, Dasi had heard of her, or knew one of the poems or songs she had written) and didn’t know she was dead. Sandru was still Sandru, but he also had her memories. He could speak Tien, and was telling us her stories as though they were his own.

So what are they? They seem to straddle that line between true ghosts and manifestations—the sort that lead people to say a place is haunted. This gave us ideas on what we could do to keep them away, as well as forcibly expel them. The latter actually worked. I … was not expecting Ivan to try it out on the spot like that, but I didn’t exactly make that clear, either. It was the right thing to do, though. We don’t know anything about these spirits, including what might happen if they are allowed to stay in their host.

We also saw? met? our first kami yesterday. Miyaro explained that virtually everything in the Forest has a guardian kami of some sort: trees, animals, special structures, even geographical features. This one belonged to? was responsible for? a waymarker. The stone pillar had toppled over so we righted it. Miyaro suggested we leave a gift, and when we did the kami showed himself. Miyaro spoke with him (it?) for a moment, and then we went on our way.

The forest itself is kind of supernatural on its own, even without the kami and the spirits. The trees are enormous firs and pines that tower overhead, filtering the sunlight through their canopy. Unlike the forests around Sandpoint and Magnimar, we are hundreds of miles from anything even remotely resembling civilization. It’s still and quiet with just the occasional rustling in the underbrush from an animal foraging for food. There’s not a lot of snow on the ground, but there’s enough to dampen even the sounds of the wagons and our horses.

It’s beautiful.

But it’s also isolating.

Pharast 10 (evening, Forest of Spirits)

Today, we were very rudely apprised that more than just animals make their home in the Forest.

I am kind of pissed off. All the warnings and stories about the Forest “not being a place for people”, and that we have respect the land and the spirits within, and on and on, and yet a group of stone giants is allowed to make a home—a literal, gods-be-damned home—here in order to waylay travelers. Really? We’re not allowed to just pass through, but they can move in and just kill and eat whoever and whatever wanders by? Makes perfect sense to me.

I guess I shouldn’t be surprised.

Pharast 11 (late morning, Forest of Spirits)

Personally, I would not follow a tiger back to its den. But I guess that’s a thing we’re doing now because I don’t know why. Radella, Qatana and Ivan took off after it about an hour ago and I’m just hoping they come back.

Dasi used a spell; he said the tiger was grieving. I don’t profess to know anything about tigers, but I can recognize “not typical behavior” when I see it. I thought for sure it was going to tear into us. And that we’d have to kill it. And that we’d be blamed for it. But it stopped short and just sort of sniffed the air around us.

Why chase off after it? To find out what’s wrong, I guess.

I mean, I get it. I understand what Radella is doing. It’s just … it’s a tiger. I may understand her intentions, but the tiger doesn’t.

OK. I need to stop worrying. They can take care of themselves.

Pharast 5, 4713 (late night, Spirit Road)

I feel naked without my hair.

Dasi and I are making the trip to Muliwan tomorrow, and that means I spent hours tonight working on my disguise with Ameiko, Radella and Dasi. The easy part is looking like a monk of Irori: we almost always visited the temple when we traveled to Magnimar, and of course the time we spent in Jalmeray would qualify as “immersive”. The hard part is acting like one.

My clumsy attempts at being someone I wasn’t back in Kalsgard weighed heavily on me as I practiced, over and over, under the rising Rebirth Moon. I could hear Sandru’s voice in my head: it isn’t enough to know Irori’s faith. I’m not going to be quizzed on his tenets. I need to be someone that meets peoples’ expectations. This includes everything from attitude to speech patterns to gods-be-damned posture.

“Normally, when creating a disguise, you don’t want to stand out. You want to be forgettable,” Ameiko explained as I dressed in the outfit I’d fabricated. “In your case, however, you can’t not stand out, so you have to become someone that stands out for a completely different reason. It’s … a lot harder to pull off.” And that was the problem. Absolutely nothing about me had to be like me.

Dasi and I constructed a simple story for why we were traveling together. This is harder than it sounds because we had to be able to talk about where we were from, how we met, what we were doing together, and on and on. It took a half an hour to develop our “history” to the point where we could answer any questions the others in our group threw at us.

We are as ready as we’ll ever be.

I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t nervous. But, good news, thanks to the ring I can fret about it virtually all night long.

Pharast 6, 4713 (evening, Spirit Road)

Amazingly, we made it down to Muliwan and back without incident.

Miyaro came up to me in the morning and asked me why I had cut off all of my hair. I know she hasn’t exactly spent a lot of time around humanoid settlements, but … I thought what we were doing was pretty obvious. It’s the sort of question that makes me just a little worried about having her as our guide through the Forest. What else is she oblivious to?

“I need to not be recognizable in Muliwan, just in case agents of the Five Storms or Prince Batsaikhar are watching for us. My long hair would give me away.”

This seemed to excite her. “Subterfuge. Trickery!” she said with this huge grin.

Ooookay.

She also pointed out her hair, which now had streaks of white and orange in it. Streaks that weren’t there the night before. “What do you think?” she asked.

“It’s lovely!” I said. Though I am a little confused about how she did it.

I didn’t have time to get into a discussion, though, as Dasi and I were getting ready to leave. We wanted to be back by dinner time.

Dasi and I talked a lot on the way down. Or rather, he asked me a lot of questions, and I answered them. I learned that Dasi doesn’t like to talk about himself, though he’ll happily talk your ear off about what he does, which is write music, write poems and research the nobility of Tian Xa in general and Minkai specifically. The most I got about his background was that his mother is an elven performer of some sort, and his father is a warrior or samurai or something. He was raised by his father, which was clearly the only personal information he was willing to share.

Honestly, I don’t really mind the secrecy. He’s still not quite sure what he’s gotten into. You don’t just open up to strangers.

Most of his questions at first were around Varisia and Varisian culture. He wanted to know how Shelyn is worshipped along the Inner Sea, and how it differs from worship in Tian Xia (the answer to which can be summed up as “not much”). He also asked what I knew of the Minkai nobility (the answer to which can be summed up as “not much”). Eventually, though, he got around to what I knew about Ameiko.

“I grew up with her,” I said. “We were close friends, maybe even best friends, for several years.”

His entire demeanor seemed to change right then. “What was that like? What was she like?” he asked, clearly excited.

So I told him.

My family moved to Sandpoint when I was six. It’s a small town in Varisia, the kind where everyone knows everyone, you know? Except of course I didn’t know anyone when we first got there.

Ameiko and I … we just sort of gravitated towards one another. I was obviously a foreigner, and she was a foreigner, too, and we were both girls, and about the same age. It seemed natural that we’d hang out together. Over time we became pretty close friends. And she was a good friend. Much better than I was to her.

Let me explain. Have you ever been bullied, Dasi? I mean, really bullied, not just picked on, or provoked into a fight because you made someone mad. The kind that is relentless, day after day, as punishment for the crime of being seen.

I didn’t think so. I was. You see, I was a small child. Much smaller than other girls my age. I fell seriously ill when I was a toddler and that illness, as a physicker would say, stunted my growth. Magic can heal injuries, cure diseases, even raise the dead, but there are things it can’t undo. So I was small, a foreigner, a girl, not particularly sociable, and not at all intimidating. Just the opposite, really. And that made me an easy target. And on top of that I had a temper, which made their job that much easier.

Ameiko stood beside me through those years. She was there to listen, to help, to offer solace, and when things turned violent, to teach me how to protect myself. And the thing is … I didn’t really deserve it.

No, of course I didn’t deserve to be harassed and beaten, either. No one does. But my friends didn’t deserve how I treated them. Especially Ameiko. When you are bruised enough you lash out at people, including those you love. Yet, as awful as I could be to Ameiko, she still stood beside me. But it’s not just that she helped: it’s how she helped. I wanted to fight back, to hurt the people that were hurting me. But Ameiko wouldn’t have that. She taught me to avoid fights, not to win them.

Yes, I know. I wasn’t big enough or strong enough to do the latter. It’s easy to blow off the significance of it like that. But that’s not why she did what she did. She wasn’t afraid I couldn’t fight back: she wanted me to be a better person than they were. That’s just who Ameiko is: she encourages the best in people.

Her family? No, Dasi, she didn’t learn compassion and human decency from her family. Well, perhaps from her mom, though even that was … complicated.

No. No one knows for sure how she died. The official story, the one told by her father, Lonjiku—which immediately makes it suspect, by the way—is that she fell from the cliffs behind their home. A tragic accident, they say. No one disputes that it was the fall that killed her, but how and why she went over that edge? That was a source of endless speculation for years.

How much has she told you about her family?

Of course not. Ameiko doesn’t talk about her family or her personal life. Don’t worry, though. Most of what I’m sharing with you now was widely known in Sandpoint, or at the very least an open secret, and the rest we reconstructed from the pieces Lonjiku left behind and what we have learned since all of this began.

Her father … Lonjiku was a bitter, angry and controlling man. We have since learned some of why that was, but at the same time, I firmly believe that personal tragedy only brings out more of what you are. Rarely does it cause a transformation in character. Lonjiku was a victim of the Five Storms, yes, but that didn’t make him a good person and he lived long enough to visit his pain on others, particularly to those that were closest to him.

When he exposed the Amatatsu Seal many years ago he was unaware of his heritage, his family’s true name, and his role as heir to Minkai. I suppose that’s Rokuro’s fault, in a way, for keeping that all hidden. Lonjiku was, like anyone would be, endlessly curious about this thing he was forbidden to see and a past his parents wouldn’t discuss. Regardless, the deed was done, and his father sent him south to the family’s holdings in Magnimar, fearing they wouldn’t be safe in Brinewall. But the ships were caught in the fierce storms near Sandpoint and they never reached their destination. Meanwhile, in Brinewall, the agents of the Five Storms were faster than even Rokuro had expected, and they used that same storm as cover to attack the outpost at Brinewall and kill everyone there.

Lonjiku’s mother, who had been living in Magnimar at this time, learned that the ships had been lost and feared that her entirely family had perished at sea. The grief overwhelmed her, and she committed suicide. Atsuii, Linjiku’s wife (and Ameiko’s mother, though this was before Ameiko was born), also believed her husband had died, but instead of suicide she sought comfort in an old, elven lover. But unknown to them both, Lonjiku had survived, floating on debris in the Varisian Gulf for who knows how long—we just know it was weeks, not days—before finally washing ashore. He limped to Sandpoint, starving and dehydrated, where he was reunited with his wife.

Atsuii gave birth to their first child, Tsuto. eight months later, only to everyone’s surprise (except perhaps Atsuii) the boy was a half-elf. A half-breed child—if you’ll pardon the expression—was humiliating proof of Atsuii’s affair, one that was illicit in Lonjiku’s eyes. Of course, she thought him dead at the time along with everyone else, but that did not matter to Lonjiku and the boyt was a constant reminder of his wife’s unfaithfulness and dishonor. Lonjiku refused to even have Tsuto in his home so he was sent to an orphanage of sorts in Sandpoint, where of course everyone knew who he was. Tsuto harbored rage and hostility towards his step-father for years, and eventually came to blame him for his Atsuii’s death.

Ameiko was born a year after Tsuto. Make of that timing what you will. Of course, in time Lonjiku would drive her away, too, because driving people away is what Lonjiku was good at.

It’s rumored that Lonjiku had an affair or two during his many business travels. Probably as a sort of retribution. There was even talk that he had fathered a child in Cheliax, though if Ameiko knows anything about that she won’t say.

Do I believe them? I was ten or eleven the first time I was invited to Ameiko’s home for dinner. That was actually a rare event, Ameiko being allowed to have friends over. Lonjiku … I don’t think I’d go so far as to say he liked me—I don’t believe he truly liked anyone—but he certainly didn’t dislike me. Anyway, he spent much of the evening sniping at Ameiko and Atsuii. Ameiko was mortified. Atsuii was painfully silent. I was really uncomfortable and just wanted to leave. So, yes, I believe them. He all but hated his family. Sometimes I think I was invited to dinner that night just so he’d have an audience.

Anyway, Ameiko, of course, knew her half-brother. She tried on several occasions to reconcile the bad blood between Tsuto and her father. Her heart was always in the right place, of course, but Lonjiku didn’t have one and Tsuto? He would rather be hated than loved. When Ameiko was thirteen, one of those attempts to clear the air ended disastrously. Tsuto actually struck her. She ran away to Magnimar the next day.

Oh, yes, she ran away from home. Twice, in fact. This was the first time, and the second came a couple of years later.

She was only gone for a few months then … but it was long enough to not be home when her mother died. She returned for the funeral, of course, but everything came to a head right then and there. Lonjiku couldn’t even keep the peace at a burial. There was this enormous fight between Ameiko, her father, and Tsuto. I think that’s when Tsuto outright accused Lonjiku of murdering Atsuii.

Ameiko lived at home with her father for the next couple of years out of a sense of … what? Family? Honor? duty? But it didn’t last. Ameiko left again she couldn’t take it anymore, this time to start an adventuring career.

No. Well, yes and no. It didn’t last long: she and Sandru were gone barely more than a year. Something … happened out there. Something she doesn’t talk about. It made her … distant, even to me. So, no, I wouldn’t exactly call it a success, but she did earn enough money to buy an inn in Sandpoint, renovate it, and start her own business. So, that is something, right?

No, Lonjiku did not take this well. He saw it as a deliberate humiliation, and he did not even try to hide his feelings. He literally walked into her bar one night and—right in front of a room full of patrons—very loudly issued an ultimatum to her: come home with him or be cut out of the family. Guess which one she chose?

How did he die? Horribly. It was Tsuto that did it, that murdered him. He had gotten mixed up in a plot against the town and saw his chance to kill Lonjiku as part of it. So he did. He tried to kill Ameiko, too.

What happened to Tsuto?

Ameiko executed him.

We rode in silence for a half hour or so as he absorbed what he’d learned about Ameiko’s history. I don’t know what he was expecting, but it clearly wasn’t tragedy, betrayal and familicide.

Kali Nassim: conversation killer. Thank you. I’ll be here all day.

I finally broke the silence. “She’s a good person, Dasi. Better than most.”

Muliwan was, as I said, uneventful. We sold the items that needed selling, bought what needed buying, and teleported back courtesy of yours truly. The only unexpected stop was to pick up a slab of pork belly.

“Ivan sent to me,” he said when I looked at him quizzically. “He wants bacon.”

I did my best to put on my “disgusted” face. I was playing a part, after all.

That was harder than it sounds. I really like bacon.