Arodus 16, 4712 (night, Kalsgard)

I pulled Lute aside this morning for the conversation that we’d all been somewhat dreading but knew would have to happen. The problem here was that we just didn’t know how he was going to react or what questions he would have about our involvement. We were able to more or less hide the fact that we spent much of the evening quite literally looting Kimandatsu’s treasury down below, a treasury filled with coins and bullion that had been embezzled from the Rimerunners Guild that he was still a representative of, but any reasonable person would certainly suspect that we were not being entirely forthcoming about why were here or what we were doing.

It was too late in the day to head back to Kalsgard, so we spent the night in the living quarters on the main level. The ninja’s former bunk rooms were nicely laid out, and even the others were comfortable if a little sparse. Not as inviting as home, but several steps up from the caravan and the coat closet.

The rooms all adjoined the main entry hall, and the latter was as good a place as anywhere for us to talk.

“You realize the guild is in trouble here, right?”

Luke practically laughed in my face. “Oh, the Guild is in more than just trouble. You have no idea. I’m taking this to the King.”

I nodded at this, and then asked, “And how about you? Are you going to be OK, financially, when the Guild collapses? I suppose you are technically owed a weregild, but I don’t see one coming out of this.”

“Oh, I’ll get by,” he said. “I have my own business. My finances were not completely tied up here.”

This was about what we wanted to hear. It meant Lute was not going to try and claim everything we found in Ravenscraeg as a Guild asset, or try and help them recover from this debacle. More importantly, it meant he probably didn’t care what we did so long as we were discreet about it. Discreet, we could manage.

Lute expected all the assets of the Guild to be seized by the Crown, including Ravenscraeg, just as I suspected. That seemed to satisfy Qatana. What she really wanted was to make sure the Guild got nothing out of this, ever (trying to claim the place as ours and then sell it was more of a secondary goal, I guess). In a lot of ways, leaving the copper down there worked to everyone’s advantage, as it left physical proof that Guild money was used to finance the Frozen Shadows.

Our motives for doing that were hardly altruistic, though. We counted five crates filled with copper trade bars, and the main reason we left them behind was because, logistically, it would have been a ridiculous amount of work to remove some two thousand pounds of metal that barely totaled a thousand gold in value. We could easily have spent half that just getting the damned things out of there—not to mention the time—and we’d still have to deal with the Guild marks after we were done.

“What do you need to help sell the story of what happened here?” I asked. The head of Kimandatsu was certainly shocking, but ultimately it proved nothing. We talked about this briefly, then Etayne blurted out, “What about the journals?”

I made a mental sigh right as Lute asked, “What journals?”

I was planning on turning them over, of course, but I wanted just a little more control over the narrative. But the cat was out of the bag now. “We have the Rimerunners Guild’s business ledgers and they show numerous transfers of large sums of money, all marked as ‘development expenses’ for Ravenscraeg.”

“Yes! That! That is exactly what I need!”

It turns out Lute is a pretty shrewd businessman, which I guess should come as a surprise to no one. I made it clear we weren’t going to tell the story of how we got it, and that in general we didn’t want our involvement in this to be widely known. He turned that thought on it’s ear. “Once I get back and show them what I’ve accomplished here, you won’t have to worry about that.”

And here we were concerned we might have to buy him off.

It was a brilliant idea, really. We quickly crafted a nice little story about his investigation into the Guild’s misdeeds and their ties to the Frozen Shadows. We were his anonymous agents, hired to help uncover the evidence so that he could bring them down from the inside, and he had set himself up as bait. I wish I had thought of it myself. None of us wanted or needed the glory, and Lute really did deserve to be a hero here. Despite threats and intimidation he had stood up to Silverskorr, and he did it without anyone to look out for him.

To complete the picture, and also keep him safe just in case, Radella and I escorted him to his home when we got back to Kalsgard. He had been gone for several weeks so it was quite a shock when he returned. Even more so that he was accompanied by two young, foreigner women, one of whom radiated an aura of do-not-fuck-with-us. This story will likely last him a lifetime.

The repercussions from this will apparently be huge. According to Lute, the Guild was closely tied to the Linnorm King of the Thanelands, Sveinn Blood-Eagle, and of course Silverskorr was well-connected in Kalsgard society in general. This won’t be a simple matter of just shutting down the Guild operations: it will be a scandal that is talked about for years to come. We’ll be here for at least a week as we prepare for the trip north, which means we’ll get to watch the start of it unfold.

Other changes are on the horizon for us, too.

Tonight, Etayne announced that she’ll be accompanying us as far as Turvik and then taking her leave. Apparently, she has been having troubling dreams for the past few days and is concerned about what they might be telling her. I know very little about witchcraft, and even less about interpreting dreams, but I do know Etayne: her journey with us began with dreams much like the ones she is having now, and that they are back is something to take seriously. Another change is coming for her life, one that will take her on a different path than ours.

Regardless of the reason, this was hard to hear. We’ve only been together for a few months, but it has been an intensely personal experience. I have told my friends here things about me that I never thought I would tell anyone, and the abruptness of this feels like a physical piece of me is being cut away.

And in another of life’s strange twists, though we are losing a friend we seem to be gaining a winter wolf.

I was not happy about this and I don’t know how it happened. When I left to check on Lute, the others were working on a plan to safely deal with what was behind that door—the aforementioned winter wolf—and when I came down they had gone from giving it a clear escape route and negotiating a truce to practically inviting it to come with us. They are out of their damned minds.

OK, I am lying. I know how this happened. Skygin hated Kimandatsu. And I do mean hated. She captured him and was trying to train him as a pet, apparently, because I guess she was an idiot. I mean, can you imagine? And, how humiliating would that be to be treated as just some simple animal? When he learned that we had killed her the whole tone of the conversation shifted. Then Qatana starts chatting with him as if doing that was somehow normal and the next thing I knew he was all, “It may amuse me to travel with you for a while.”

My stomach sank. Skygni is scary. A wolf the size of a damned bear, snow-white with what looks like a layer of frost around his muzzle. I get that feeling he could kill any one of us and not give it a second thought. It’s not that I don’t see the value in having him allied with us for a while—there are certainly advantages to that considering where we are headed—but he isn’t going to place the same value on life that we do. You also don’t just show up in someone’s fishing village with a giant, man-eating carnivore as part of your greeting party, particularly one of the variety that likely terrorizes them in the first place. What kind of reception are we going to get when we stop to resupply?

And besides, this meant traveling with a gruff, arrogant wisenheimer, insulting us and pointing out all the flaws, faults, and weaknesses of humanity. Doesn’t Suishen already have that job?

Helgarvel had more immediate objections. This sort of arrangement was in direct conflict with his very nature. Qatana and Olmas countered that Skygni would be unwittingly serving a higher purpose while traveling with us. And they did have a point, one which Helgarvel seemed to accept at least for the time being. But I can’t help but see this argument as a thin veneer.

I don’t know. Maybe I’ll come around.

Or maybe I’m just in a mood. Here’s the thing: the last few days have been hard. We certainly have a great deal to celebrate here, and I don’t want to take away from that, but there have been all these crappy moments. Watching Shelyn’s temple reduced to rubble. Seeing Runecaster just sort of…slump over and die, alone. Weighing down bodies in the freezing darkness and then dumping them in the river, one by one. Etayne, telling us she’s leaving. Asvig choking on blood in front of his wife. Finding Ameiko’s samisen in that trunk.

This morning we ran into a pair of spider eaters as we descended the rickety stairs from the front entrance of Ravenscraeg. Lute was more than a little frightened so I took him on the express to the ground while the others dealt with them. When they finally came down I could immediately tell something was wrong. Radella and Qatana looked positively grim.

“What happened?” I asked.

For a while no one said anything, but eventually I got the story. Spider eaters, you see, lay their eggs inside of living hosts, kept paralyzed by their venom. When the eggs hatch, the young eat their way out. The two we fought had created a nest out of a fissure in the cliff face. The elf that Qatana found inside was technically still alive.

We get front row seats to all of this.

On the return trip Olmas and Ameiko had what I would consider an argument. At issue was Ameiko’s status as the heir to the kingdom of Minkai, and to our knowledge, the only surviving member of the original royal families. The Seal may have granted eight of us the divine right to inherit that position, but that is quite obviously Plan B (and I am pretty sure that none of us want that job, anyway). Coming to terms with this has not been easy—how could it be?—but also largely irrelevant.

Her literally unique position is by nature a fragile one. The commitment we made to take her to her homeland is also a commitment to get her there safely and do everything in our power to retake her kingdom from the oni that have usurped it. To accomplish the latter we must first do the former. That was the point Olmas was trying to make.

Ameiko is my friend, though, and this put me in an uncomfortable position. This all started because Ameiko had been growing restless in Sandpoint, looking for some excuse—any excuse, really—to adventure, explore, test her wits and skills, and hone them both. She still thirsts for that. And I get it. But the thing is, Olmas is right. I just couldn’t say it, because my role is to support my friend, not gang up on her.

There’s also counter point to be made, and it’s this: we can’t lock her away from the world (that’s what my grandmother wanted to do with me, and thank the gods mom and dad had more sense than that). As a corollary, we can’t permit her to grow soft, either. Everything she and I have learned about Minkai suggests there is growing unrest among the people there, and the regent that currently occupies the throne is deeply unpopular. Given what we know now about the Five Storms, that illegitimate government is a puppet of their making. When Ameiko gets there, she will have to be equal parts princess, leader, and warrior to take her rightful position as ruler. And I think that is the point she was trying to make, just not in those words.

In the end, they agreed that she would not take needless risks with her life. I think that’s fair.

I actually don’t envy Olmas’s position here, as he has to both answer to Suishen (who is acerbic at the best of times) and take all manner of shit from Ameiko. She can be merciless.

To: Mme Helva Longthews,
Kalsgard, Thanelands

Madame Helva,

I apologize for resorting to an advocate as an intermediary instead of personally delivering this package to you, but though we have never met I still feel I am bound by a promise that was made to you and I intend to keep it.

I know that this has been a difficult time. At the risk of salting fresh wounds, I felt it important for you to learn the full history of the events that led to your husband’s death. You may not find much solace in this, but you will at least find some answers both to questions you have, and to questions you didn’t know to ask.

There are two parts to this story. The first, you may think you know because it begins with your ring-giver, Snorri Stone-Eye.

Snorri was, of course, a rather famous Ulfen warrior, widely renowned and feared for his successful raids on the soft lands to the south. Of course, mounting such raids is, itself, an expensive undertaking as one must pay for provisions, equipment, men, and the time to train the latter with the former, with no guarantees of the returns. In his early years, Snorri’s prowess as a warrior with strong leadership skills and a keen eye for strategy was enough to convince investors to provide him with financial backing, and one of the earliest of these was an up-and-coming trade group named the Rimerunners Guild.

For years, the Rimerunners Guild financed Snorri’s increasingly successful raids, lining both their coffers and his, and allowing the Guild to expand their operations in the Thanelands and eventually beyond the Kingdoms across the Crown of the World into Tian Xia. As Snorri’s fame and fortune grew, so did his ambition for even more spectacular raids and more exotic returns. Unfortunately for Snorri, this constant drive to top his earlier successes took a heavy tool on both his body and his mind.

I know that this may be difficult to hear. Or maybe it’s not, and you had suspected this all along but did not say anything publicly out of respect for your lord. I don’t know. But this toll on Snorri Stone-Eye was punishing. He traveled to the farthest reaches of the Steaming Sea, into some of the most extreme and exotic locations in this part of the world, and the stresses of these endeavors proved too great even for him. I don’t expect you to take my word on this, which is in part why I have enclosed his personal diaries (the other part is because his immediately family hid his condition from the world, and sending these diaries to them would serve no purpose other than to suppress truths that you have earned the right to know). My intent is not to disparage Snorri’s reputation, but rather place the evidence of this in your care.

Snorri Stone-Eye believed that his false eye gave him the power to see across time, both into the past and the future. As he grew older, so did his obsession with his mystic, prophetic powers. He had visions of the end times, and in his diary he wrote this: “In the winter of the world, the gods will come down to fight, and the rough beast will be released”. Fearing that all civilization would be destroyed, he made increasingly desperate voyages to remote and dangerous corners of the Steaming Sea, searching for artifacts that would help him survive the fall and the period of desolation that would follow. His final voyage ended in an illness so foul that it would corrupt his soul.

You probably noticed Snorri’s decline in health over the last year. This disease was supernatural in origin. Afflicted with some unusual form of zombie rot, Snorri Stone-Eye died a slow death, gradually wasting away until he rose as a draugr: the walking corpse of a seafarer doomed forever to unlife.

You may find this difficult to believe, and once again I do not expect you to take me at my word. I will offer proof, or at least evidence that you can follow up on, to confirm my claims.

His immediate family and servants hid this condition from the public for obvious reasons, not the least of which was that it would taint the image of the legendary man who had earned the nickname The Mad Reaver. They went to great lengths to ensure his secret would not be discovered, even at his wake. His funeral ship, a longboat of otherwise unremarkable design, was modified to create a deck above the rowing positions and the draugr that was formerly Snorri Stone-Eye was chained inside the makeshift hold. To complete the illusion, a manikin was covered with a shroud and placed on the deck next to the funeral pyre. This would accomplish the task of destroying the undead abomination he had become while still maintaining the illusion of an ordinary funeral. The boat itself was heavily guarded not just to protect the grave goods from ambitious thieves, but also to protect his secret from public exposure. I am sure if you ask the right questions at the docks, you will find dock hands that could hear the faint sounds of dragging and rattling chains coming from the hull of his boat.

As I said earlier, there is a second part to this story. This part begins in Tian Xia, and the repercussions of it will soon be made very public. I can’t predict the accuracy and completeness of what will be said and what you will hear, so I will tell you what I know to be the truth.

Some years ago, a young Tian woman by the name of Kimandatsu came over the Crown of the World and into Kalsgard. She found her way to the Jade Quarter, and eventually into the auspices of the Rimerunners Guild. Over the years, Kimandatsu would grow to become a trusted friend and adviser of Ms. Thorborg Silverskorr. As Silverskorr’s influence in the Guild grew, Kimandatsu’s grew with it and when Silverskorr was eventually elected as chairman of the board, leading the operations of the Guild, Kimandatsu sat at her side.

On a fateful trading voyage at sea roughly one year ago, Silverskorr’s ship ran into severe storms and Kimandatsu was lost. Silverskorr was, of course, devastated by the death of her friend, and it forever changed her as a person, and as a leader of the Guild.

That is the story you have heard. This is the real story.

Kimandatsu was not human. She was, in fact, an ogre mage, one with deep maroon skin. Her reasons for coming to Kalsgard were to establish an organization of assassins backed by magic in order to increase her power and influence in the Thanelands and beyond.

As an ogre mage, Kimandatsu also had the power to alter her form. It was not Kimandatsu that perished at sea, but rather Thorborg Silverskorr. It is believed, though not proven, that Kimandatsu murdered the real Silverskorr and used the storms as a convenient cover for her action. She then assumed Silverskorr’s identity and returned to Kalsgard to take control of the Rimerunners Guild, and used it as a front for her underground operations.

It is here that Snorri Stone-Eye’s, Kimandatsu’s, and Asvig’s lives converge.

With his health failing, Silverskorr was now in need of a capable henchman, troubleshooter, and lieutenant. Snorri Stone-Eye’s most trusted subject was your late husband. When Silverskorr needed work done that neither she, nor the Guild by association, should be directly involved in, she turned to Asvig.

Unfortunately for your husband, Silverskorr made a demand of her trusted followers. In exchange for the rewards in both money and influence they would receive in her service, she used her magic to place each of them under a unique form of geas, a spell that bound willing subjects to certain actions and extracted a price in blood should its terms be broken. I would be remiss if I did not emphasize that Asvig agreed to this condition.

While the specifics of Asvig’s terms with Silverskorr may never be known, the penalty of the geas was triggered on the night of Arodus 11th, 4712, and it cost him his life.

Again, I do not expect you to take me at my word. As I said earlier, this information on Kimandatsu and the Rimerunners Guild will soon become public (if it has not already). I cannot offer proof of everything that I have written here, but you will be able to confirm much of this with the right investigations. Whether or not you choose to do so is, of course, up to you.

Shelyn teaches us that love is the greatest of all things. Nothing can ever replace your loss. But the coming months will offer a number of opportunities for a woman of your stature, particularly one that has the advantage of being armed with the truth. I can’t say that you and I would ever see eye to eye on certain matters, or that we would have ever called one another friends even before your husband was taken from you. I can say, however, that you have suffered because of a force outside your control, one whose sole purpose in life was to rain misery and hate on others, including those who supported and helped her. You have been taken advantage of and wronged.

No weregild has been offered as compensation for your husband’s death at Kimandatsu’s hand, and in accordance with your customs you are entitled to blood vengeance. Interested parties have saved you the trouble. Enclosed is a piece of her remains.

I will hang a prism for you and your husband on Crystalhue. May your heart, eyes, and mind be filled with the beauty of the world.

Respectfully yours,
K.

Tindertwigs. Chain shirt. Sword. Furs. Snow shoes. We knew, we knew, these were Ulf’s things and we knew he was here. We picked through the trunk some more, just to be sure. Axes. Climber’s kit. Check. Check check check. And then. Gods, and then. Leather armor. Rapier. Samisen. I felt like I’d been kicked in the gut. Hollowed out inside. Ameiko. I thought I was going to be sick right there.

I’ve felt real panic before. Dread. Fear. I mean, I thought I had. I grew up in Sandpoint after all. When I was eighteen we were trapped in our home when giants raided the town. We had heard the rumors for days, and were preparing that morning to leave but we weren’t fast enough getting out. And, BOOM. From the north gate, just a stone’s throw from our house, they were there. We weren’t ready. We hunkered down in the center of the house for what felt like hours, mom and dad lying to each other and to me that everything would be OK.

It’s one thing to feel fear and panic because your life is in danger, because you don’t have control over events around you. It’s another to know that you had basically one job, one gods-damned job, and you blew it. We hadn’t kept Ameiko safe. I hadn’t kept her safe.

My head spun. What had we done wrong? A thousand things. We left her with very little protection. She didn’t have Radella’s ring. The caravan was no secret. We’d been spied on for days. They probably knew what she looked like. The list goes on. What hadn’t we done wrong?

Of course she would go out on her own. We should have known. She just wanted more information about what lay ahead. About what should be her kingdom. And she’d been cooped up since we got here. Wouldn’t I have done the same? Hadn’t we both done this countless times when we were kids? At the very least we should have left her the ring. Stupid. Stupid! But maybe it wouldn’t have made a difference. I don’t know.

Is this what mom and dad felt? Every time I came home with a bruise on my face, or a tear in my clothes? That they had failed me somehow?

They grabbed her they day we left. The very morning. She must have been brought here in the middle of the night while we were holed up in the cloak room. We had no idea. (Yet another failing. Why hadn’t we purchased a few scrolls so we could stay in touch with the caravan?) It explained how reinforcements had gotten here so quickly: they were already on the way, just a few hours behind us. They just didn’t realize that’s what they were when they left.

We got lucky. Ameiko wasn’t here long enough for Kimandatsu to do anything more with her than just throw her in a cell, more or less. I imagine just having the heir was not enough. Kimandatsu probably needed the Seal, too, as well as the scions. Us.

Well, she got us, just not in the way she was expecting. And now Kimandatsu is dead, and Ameiko is safe, and the Frozen Shadows are finished.

To get to Kimandatsu we had to push our way through Runecaster. He resisted. Violently. He put up quite the fight, too, despite being outnumbered. With some well-placed spells and quick thinking he was able to spread us out, taking us on just a couple at a time, but in the end it only delayed the inevitable. We caught up to him before he could get help, and that was that.

Runecaster was an odd creature, a half-troll of some sort. I’ve seen a number of breeds over the years, but nothing like him. The troll half was obvious, but the other? Not so much. I can’t help but feel saddened by how this turned out. I mean, the circumstances of his birth were probably not great (how could they be?) and I doubt he was a popular figure here or anywhere just by the nature of what he was. His life was probably difficult. The Frozen Shadows was likely one of only a handful of options for him, all of them bad. How much of this life had he chosen for himself? How much had been chosen for him, just by limiting what he could choose? Did that leave this place as the best of his options?

Kimandatsu I have less sympathy for. And by less I mean none. As Lute had claimed, Silverskorr was indeed the purple ogre–her skin was a dark maroon and two large tusks stuck up from her jaw–and as we had suspected she was an ogre mage and oni from Minkai who had come to Kalsgard for reasons unknown (almost certainly in pursuit of Ameiko’s grandfather), worked her way into the inner spheres of the Rimerunners Guild, and taken Silverskorr’s identity. We don’t have proof that she murdered the real Silverskorr at sea, but what other conclusions are there to draw?

She was surrounded by over a half dozen of her Tian ninjas, having some absurd social gathering, and we cut through them like paper. Kimandatsu, herself, was the bigger challenge, first figuratively and then literally as she reverted to her true form, but Olmas had Suishen and I had my spells and enough of the others were able to hound her until she fell. She tried to hide using invisibility, but Suishen granted Olmas the power to see, and of course we had spent far too much time around these Frozen Shadows vaunters to not have learned that they only have two tricks. I had purposely prepared the same spell multiple times, and unleashed bursts of glittering dust into the room, coating her form each time Olmas called out her position. I exhausted all of my spells, bringing in a giant bat, and even drawing upon my own élan vital to manipulate a scroll to a more advanced summons, just as I had done at Brinewall. This last part was, I suppose, overkill but I felt like being thorough.

Ulf and Ameiko were held captive in a stinking cell filled with stagnant water, guarded in a manner of speaking by giant frogs with glowing eyes that nearly blinded us just as they had blinded their charges. Ulf looked particularly bad having been here for several days. We’ve given them healing and food, but only time will restore their vision.

While we wait, we’ve been discussing the future: both ours, and the Rimerunners Guild’s. The latter will almost certainly cease to exist. Once Lute returns and tells his story, backed by the physical evidence we will take from this place, they will either collapse on their own, or be crushed by the Crown. What little legitimate business they had will be overshadowed by the organization of assassins they had been unwittingly fronting (and I suspect the “unwitting” part will earn them very little sympathy).

As for our part, we are taking the money. That vote was almost unanimous, and though there were some objections raised about the money belonging to the Guild, it will almost certainly be seized if we don’t seize it first. When the objections continued, Suishen actually spoke up.

“You humans are terrible at managing your finances. I languished in a collector’s hoard instead of defending my family for decades because some idiot didn’t have enough money with him! I say get enough money to accomplish your mission this time.”

This did put an end to the brewing argument, I’ll grant it that. But. Fuck you, too. I manage my finances just fine, thank-you-very-much.

More problematic is the matter of  Ravenscraeg itself. Qatana insists on selling it as if it were our property just because we are standing in it. There was a legal sale, title transfer, and so on, making it formally property of the Rimerunners Guild. There is no skirting this. If the Crown does step in, which I am sure they will, there will be no finders-keepers rule. I’ve tried to explain that multiple times but she won’t hear it.

I eventually just dropped the subject. The realities of what we can and cannot do will become clear in due course.

(Ravenscraeg, noon)

Hard day, indeed. My hearing is returning, albeit very slowly. Everything is muffled and it feels like my ears have been filled with cotton. I can barely hear the others’ voices through it, and even when I do I can’t recognize who is speaking unless I am looking directly at them. Still, this is an improvement from half an hour ago when I couldn’t hear anything at all.

We learned about these stupid thunderstones during my studies but of course I never gave them much thought. The idea of exploring the remote corners of the world as part of some grand gest, facing off against man and monster, alike, seemed so ridiculous back when I thought the worst I would contend with in life would be the vagrants and vagabonds of the city, and yet here we are. Eudonius had said that arcane power is as much practice and experience as it is study, and that those who break from the solitude of the library, and the security and stability of civilization, will find themselves rewarded with power that flows faster and freer than they could imagine. He was certainly not wrong about that. But he was also quick to point out that the price of this path could be severe; that “countless numbers have paid it with their bodies, their lives, or their souls” and he does not appear to be wrong about that, either. I am making good progress on the first.

The others are not wasting the time it is taking for Etayne and I to recover. The pile of items to be analyzed and identified continues to grow as they search the numerous living quarters attached to the dojo. Between what they are turning up now and what we have found since last night, she and I will be busy for some time. I have taken a cue from their efficiency and given Lute parchment and quill, and he is busy scribbling down some history of the Rimerunners Guild. This isn’t strictly necessary but the distraction and focus seems to be calming his nerves. He said he wanted to stay with us, but it’s obvious we can’t keep him completely out of harm’s way, formidable though we are. As soon as I can engage in conversation again, I’m going to suggest that we use the eggs to hide him somewhere secluded until we are finished here.

I’m also going to suggest that we distribute the remaining stones among us, and turn them against our adversaries. As we weaken them, we strengthen ourselves. Why shouldn’t we put our gains to use?

When we are out of this place I think I am going to learn to speak some Giant. Not that Sparna didn’t do well bluffing our way past the trolls with some prompting (I thought suggesting he ask “Do you need more coal?” was a delightful touch), it’s just that I hate almost being able to do something. As much as I complain about mom’s insistence that I learn Thassilonian, it is either an ancestor to or component of Giant, Varisian, and Shoanti. Speak it and any one of its descendants and you can more or less follow what someone is saying in the others, though of course there are gaps. It’s those gaps that are frustrating, and they are the largest with Giant. That, and it just keeps coming up. As we head north towards the mountains, I suspect it will continue to come up, and perhaps at a faster pace.

It’s a shame the bluff didn’t hold. Well, I suppose it did hold, it was just spoiled when the monks in here called out for help. When the first troll burst into the room—literally bursting in by destroying the door—I thought we might be in trouble, but I was able to use a water orb to keep the others from following suit. Only fighting one at a time was still dangerous, but it was more of a battle of attrition than anything else and we had more resources at our disposal. I also learned that my little acid darts stops them from regenerating, which meant that I could contribute more directly to the effort.

I am not sure what to make of the Tian woman. She apparently stayed in her quarters, despite the loud and obvious skirmish happening on the other side of her door. If she had joined in we would have had a far more difficult time, but instead she bode her time, waiting for an opportunity to escape. It was obviously a miscalculation, but more importantly I think it is a sign of these peoples’ true loyalties, which are first and foremost to themselves. I am hardly surprised.

(Ravenscraeg, mid-afternoon)

We have found Suishen! And the raven with the red feathers is dead! For the first time I feel as though we have regained the upper hand here, and I am growing more optimistic that we will finish this before nightfall. We are closing in.

Lute is hidden away with a small stash of eggshells and a potion to render him invisible. When the former are expended, he will use the latter to escape out the front door. It is risky, but on the other hand there is no one left here to challenge him. That we know of.  I am not entirely comfortable with the situation, but it was the best we could do under the circumstances. But if our momentum holds, it won’t come to that.

His history of the Guild has been invaluable and it has fueled the speculation about Silverskorr. Though he was elected to the board fairly recently, he had known or at least been familiar with her for as long as she has been the head of the guild. About a year ago, she and one of her close friends and advisers, a Tian woman by the name of Kimandatsu, were on a trading voyage somewhere to the south. Their ship ran into a series of powerful storms and Kimandatsu perished at sea. Silverskorr was very shaken up by the experience, and after a long period of mourning she slowly became, in Lute’s words, more focused and driven. He describes her as a formidable opponent.

This is too many coincidences for me. On its own this story sounds perfectly reasonable, but when added to purple ogres or ogre magi, shape-shifting oni, Tian strangers, and everything else that has happened to us, we can make a good case that it was not Kimandatsu that died on that voyage, but rather the real Silverskorr. There is no way to prove this (not yet, anyway), but what other explanation makes sense?

You would think that we would have learned by now not to walk into the same ambush twice, but that is exactly what we did. This time, as we emerged from the cloak room we noticed a large number of ravens and crows gathering among the rafters in the main hall. I felt my hair standing up along the back of my neck and before we could react we were struck by a brilliant arc of electricity. Olmas spotted the bloodfeather raven among the flock and called it out. Ivan pulled out the slaying arrow we had found in the armory here, the one keyed to magical beasts, and nocked it while asking me, “Is that it?”

“Yes,” I replied. And he let it fly. Seconds later, the raven was lying dead on the floor below. The ravens and crows scattered through the smoke holes in the roof. And that was that.

It seemed so anticlimactic. After all that creature had done to us, after all the grief and misery it had caused, it died before the fight had even begun. Don’t get me wrong: I am not complaining. If anything, I see that arrow as a gift that was given to us to use. To use here. We’ll never know what circumstances brought it into the armory, but this sort of luck goes beyond coincidence. Desna’s hand, perhaps?

What especially caught my attention afterwards was that the raven was still a raven even after it had died. My (albeit limited) understanding of shape-shifting spells and abilities is that they expire when you do. Our prevailing theory had been that the raven was really a druid in animal form, but now we had proof, more or less, that this was not the case. I was troubled, enough that Nihali could feel it and she came to me in the hall.

“What do you make of this bird?” I asked her after she settled on my shoulder.

She looked it over and replied, “There is something not right about it. It’s a raven, but it’s wrong.”

“‘Wrong’ how? Other than its size?”

“It just feels inherently wrong.”

I don’t know what this means. Yet another mystery we’ll probably never solve.

Back when Uksahkka was kidnapped, Helgarval had floated the theory that the raven was Runecaster’s familiar. I am not convinced of it, though. Wouldn’t Nihali have been able to tell? I think so, but I don’t know for sure.

I am more confident in my belief that Runecaster is a sorcerer and not a wizard, and I mean that in the literal sense (to the common person, the terms are colloquial and interchangeable). We found his living quarters, and neither they nor his research lab said “wizard” to me. There are just certain items you need when you have to research and memorize spells, and such things were conspicuous in their absence: no spell books, no research tomes, no library at all in fact. It just had that feel of someone who has an innate connection to magic, and is working out spells through trial and error.

And this brings me back to the “raven is his familiar” theory: most sorcerers do not have familiars. It’s not unheard of but it’s rare, and those that do usually come from families with a legacy of traditional, arcane magic. It’s not impossible that Runecaster had a giant, innately wrong raven as a familiar, but it just doesn’t seem likely.

What Runecaster does have is hands. Giant, disembodied hands. As pets, or something. Gods, these people. They were apparently hiding under his bed, and scampered out to attack when the first of us entered the room. The smell was disgusting and it made several people ill. At one point someone said “blunt weapons only” so I brought in a small earth elemental to help. Blunt is more or less their whole thing.

When the skirmish was over I used the elemental to settle a disagreement I had with Qatana earlier. I wanted to return to the water room, but she insisted on looking for a back way in. In the end I relented. In part it was because her reasoning made more sense even if it meant putting an unopened door at our backs, but I also didn’t want to cause a problem. I feel like the others sometimes get irritated with me. When even Qatana is getting frustrated maybe that says I need to do a better job of picking my battles.

In the end, the elemental reported there was only one way in and that was the one we already knew. Behind that door was a narrow well, and lodged deep down in that well was an item that radiated powerful, powerful magic: Suishen. Silverskorr had apparently found herself at a loss for what to do with a sword she could neither use nor destroy, and settled on “toss it in a hole and hope no one finds it” as the answer. Her impatience may end up being a costly error.

As soon as it had cleared the top of the well, carried up by the force summoned by my spell, a booming voice echoed in our heads: “I SENSE AMATATSU SCIONS AT LAST.”

Just as our visions had implied, Suishen is an intelligent sword. Ecstatic to learn that an Amatatsu still lives, it announced that it considers us Ameiko’s protectors and will allow us to wield it (I remember Fynn saying that the sword “never felt right” to him, and according to the others Helva had said something similar). Assuming Ameiko doesn’t wish to carry it herself, Olmas has stepped forward.

One more thing. We asked who threw it down in the well. The answer? “The oni.”

I just had to know. “A purple ogre?” I asked.

“Yes.”

Too many coincidences.