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.

Calistril 20, 4713 (Spirit Road, evening)

My problem with Prince Batsaikhar has been solved for me. Part of me is … disappointed, I guess. I was so worried. I spent all this time trying to think my way out of it, preparing for as many contingencies as I could. And then I come up with a plan to pull it off and outwit everybody here, one that my friends would finally agree to, and it gets taken from me. I mean, what’s the point? Why set this up but not be permitted to see it through? It feels like I’m being tested but not given the test. I don’t understand.

On the other hand, it did mean a lot less risk (well, maybe a little less). I don’t have to worry about being held against my will, having my things confiscated, or someone attempting to suppress my spells. I don’t have to worry about having made a bad judgement call, or making a mistake in the days ahead. I don’t have to sit and fret for two weeks, dodging the Prince’s advances, worrying about when is the right (or wrong) time to just disappear. And, I suppose, most importantly I don’t have to explain any of this to mom or dad or even bring it up at all. I didn’t want to have that conversation.

And all it took was a threat to my life. Ironically, this actually was one of the ideas we came up with at dinner last night, only the plan was to be more in control of events. All that time strategizing and arguing, and it never occurred to us that the Five Storms would beat us to it. And of course it happened during something I actually wanted to see. I was finally enjoying myself but I was to be denied that, too. I do have to hand it to them, though: on just a few days notice, they found enough ninja not only skilled enough to pull off an ambush, but also to put on a passable street performance as dragon dancers. I mean, there can’t be many of those, right? You can’t just pick up one of those things and call yourself a dragon dancer. Unless that’s part of the ninja recruitment process. Can you imagine that interview? “Are you experienced with the use of poisons? Can you lurk in shadows without being seen? Do you have experience in dragon dance teams?”

I don’t think any of us was really surprised that this happened, as it is not really possible to keep a low profile when the ruler of the city is throwing feasts in your honor. Maybe it was naive to think we’d be able to get out of here before the Five Storms screwed up the courage enough to stage a very public attack in the Prince’s city. Still, they have across as more than a little desperate. At least in Ul-Angorn they managed to pull out an ogre mage, and they had less time to do it. We’d been in this city for four days and the best they could do was a violent theater troupe.

I suppose there’s another possible explanation: that’s what they thought they could get away with. Maybe sending an oni wasn’t practical. Ordu-Aganhei may seem small by most standards but it’s rather severely governed and that means it has resources. Maybe getting an oni in here undetected was the larger problem.

Whatever the reasons, though ultimately unsuccessful the attack was effective: we went from honored guests to ostracized in a matter of minutes. Chua was beside himself trying to eject us from the city without being rude while simultaneously apologizing for the same. I didn’t really give him much of a chance to explain. I had no idea just how much I had been wanting to revile this place until I was slamming the door in his face. Repeatedly. Seriously, the man just could not take a hint.  (Radella didn’t look too pleased about this but her feelings are not my responsibility.)

As parting gifts, they gave us eight of the famed Hongali horses. “Gift” might be the wrong term here, actually. I think they were not-so-subtly encouraging us to leave quickly. They knew the caravan had already left and must have assumed we were going to walk the rest of the way to wherever it was we were going.Please go.  And here’s something to help you go faster.

It was also kind of a thumb in the eye, though obviously they didn’t know it. I’d spent hours—hours—with Sandru doing some caravan planning for the road ahead, reviewing the merits of various options. How many wagons would we need? How much food? What could we sell? What should we sell? Do we tailor it for the forest, or for the grasslands we’d need to cross to get there? All that time and all that work only to have someone ruin it by imposing eight more mouths to feed on us as we are walking out the door. Literally walking out. It was too late to turn back for more provisions, not that we had room for them, or buy back one of the extra wagons, or even figure out if the latter was the right thing to do. So now I have to do this work all over again. Thank you for visiting Ordu-Aganhei, where even the gifts are a burden.

And then there’s Miyaro. Her first words to Radella were, “We need to talk.” Ya think? Normally I’d be pretty irate with someone with a talent for stating the obvious as if it were news (“We need to get off the streets”, “You’re in great danger”, and my personal favorite, “You need to leave immediately. Tomorrow, if possible.”) But, she did actually come to our aid, and she claims to be an agent of the kami in the Forest of Spirits. So I’ll just interpret the advice as her being thorough rather than patronizing us because she assumes we’re completely stupid.

She says she can guide us through the Forest. If true, that solves one of our previously-unsolvable problems. It does mean putting a lot of trust in her, but I think she’s earned it after today. She’s also warned us to stay off the roads and away from Muliwan. Hongal is too xenophobic to accept strangers anywhere but the main road, so we compromised by traveling within (distant) sight of it. The second one, though, is more problematic: we left Ordu-Aganhei in a hurry and that means we may need a supply run. I’m going to talk this over with the others.

(night)

We have a ridiculously complicated guard schedule. I don’t remember the shifts being so short or so many. But we also have fewer people and more enemies, so I’m just going along with it. I am not an expert on these matters, anyway. The others know what’s best.

Miyaro doesn’t spend a lot of time around people. She more or less said as much tonight. After we had finished eating and were just killing time, she came up to me and asked, “Are you a princess? I don’t know your culture …” She just kind of trailed off there. I wasn’t sure how to respond. Me? A princess? I should be so lucky. Well, OK, maybe I almost was, but not by choice.

Anyway, I figured the chicanery with Prince Batsaikhar had been more than a little confusing for her since she wasn’t in on the conspiracy. I tried to explain but I don’t think it came out right. I probably left her more confused than ever. So, good job there, Kali. It occurs to me now that maybe it’s just my long hair and clothing combined with too many fairy tales.

Later, she came up to me and said, “You’re colorful.” It was kind of like being in a conversation with Qatana. Just a random statement of fact. I wasn’t sure how to answer. After an awkward silence she added, “I like colors.” This seemed like a good time to try and make a connection, so we talked about color, nature, and art for a bit. She knew of Shelyn, though only by her domains and not her name. I offered to put color in her hair using the same spell that I use for my own. She said she’d think about it. I’ve learned that “I’ll think about it” is almost always a polite “no”, but she didn’t grow up in the human lands, so maybe it’s just honesty. Which would be refreshing.

I took out some paper and folded her some flowers while we talked. That got an interesting response. “My mother did this when I was young.” How did she come to be associated with the kami? She said her parents “gave her to them” to be raised, which spawned a number of questions that she wasn’t ready to answer. Which I understand. You don’t spill your life story and secrets to total strangers.

Calistril 23, 4713 (Spirit Road, evening)

Dull routine has returned. Not that I am complaining: right now, boring is good. After the madness of the last few days I am thrilled to be back in a dull routine.

I’ve got a couple of items to enchant for Olmas and Radella—his is nearly done—and as time allows I’ve been writing spells into my spellbook from some scrolls I picked up in Ordu-Aganhei. We didn’t have a lot of time there, and the more complicated spells take several hours to transcribe so there were only so many I could do as a direct trade. Scrolls were the only practical solution to the time problem. An expensive solution, to be sure, but I almost certainly won’t have time for this in Muliwan (assuming we end up going) so I had little choice.

There’s no time to work on the talismans, so I decided to cheat: I used a new spell to finish them. It was actually pretty astonishing. I laid out the scale, chain, and gem fragments, and a few seconds later a talisman sat in their place. It took me over two weeks to make one by hand. I could get used to this! Though I should point out that, while it was easy, it wasn’t exactly trivial. I was essentially making jewelry, so I had to concentrate and keep a clear picture in my head of what I wanted. But it obviously worked.

I suppose one could use this spell to make a decent living in the custom manufacturing business. Assuming you didn’t die of boredom first.

Calistril 26, 4713 (Spirit Road, late night)

Our camp was attacked earlier tonight by a dozen ninjas. Qatana saw them crawling along to ground to get as close to us as they could. It would have been a good plan if most of us weren’t sporting those rings: I think only three or four people were asleep.

The fight was chaotic, but heavily one-sided. Since I am writing about it I am sure you can guess which side. We burned their bodies to ash blackened bone inside a ring of fire. Ivan likes to be thorough that way.

Once again, it came across as a kind of desperate gambit that was hastily-arranged. But while we were never really in significant danger, it has forced me to rethink how we bivouac. Let’s face it: we were lucky. One well-placed spell with even a modest blast radius could easily kill half our horses and probably wreck one or two of the wagons. It will cost me a couple of spells, but my idea here is to conjure two small buildings each night that we can use as shelter. We’ll dedicate one as a stable, and the other for our more vulnerable companions. Arrange them and the wagons properly, and we can severely limit just how much damage a single spell can do.

Of course, now that I’m about to go through all this work, nothing will actually happen, right?

It does look like we’re going to make a small supply run into Muliwan. In a concession to Miyaro, the caravan will stay a good 50 miles to the north while Dasi and I race to the town on a pair of phantom horses that I’ll summon. Once we get close we can either walk in or switch to real horses (again, summoned) in order to maintain a low profile. We’ll conduct our business and then teleport back.

The catch is that we’re trying to avoid drawing attention to ourselves, so I’m going to have to leave a few things behind. And I’m going to have to cut off my hair. All of it (it’s fine: I can grow it back in a day or two using a spell). I’ll be posing as a monk of Irori—which I am pretty sure I can pull off, certainly the Irori part of that—since I am pretty recognizable otherwise. But in general Vudrani are not that unusual here, especially ones who are students of Irori’s church.

Why Dasi? He’s a local, he speaks the language, he knows the area, and he’s new so not likely to be associated with us. Why me? Someone has to get us in and out faster than we can be followed. Also, I speak the language, too.

The others are a little nervous about it, but they understand that we to be discreet and that’s not possible if we all roll in on a caravan with a bunch of extra horses. Sending more than two people makes it more difficult to protect the caravan, and to get in and out. So this is how it has to be. Though it’s still over a week away, so there is more than enough time for us to talk it to death.

Calistril 20, 4713 (Ordu-Aganhei, small hours)

Nihali helped calm my anxiety. I wish I’d had her when I was young. Much of what got me into trouble, or rather more trouble than I should have been in, was my lack of self-control. Outbursts, flashes of anger, saying things I’d later regret (or should have regretted a lot sooner), and so on. It wasn’t until I began seriously studying Irori that this really changed, but of course by then it was too late: I had already acquired enough bruises for a lifetime.

Nihali is, in a way, a tiny reflection of myself. She knows me better than anyone, perhaps even better than I know me. And that means she knows why I get into these mental loops, and more importantly how to break them.

All this is a verbose way of saying: I’m ready to get the rest of this out.

I suppose I should start with: the food tonight did not disappoint. Caviar, suckling pig, poached apples, fried potatoes … Qatana and Amieko have cooked for us for months now, but this was the first time they’ve been able to pull out all the stops. What we had tonight was truly gourmet. We needed to make an impact, and make an impact they did. But the enjoyment of it, for me anyway, was dampened heavily by the dinner conversation. Including what followed our little debate on how best to get me away from here.

I may have been stuck in my room all morning and with the Prince all afternoon, but the others weren’t and they made good use of their time. We learned quite a bit more about the situation we’ll be facing in Minkai as well as the road leading there.

The big news was that there really is talk of a nascent rebellion, but the problem is that it is still just talk. The Jade Regent is definitely unpopular, but that doesn’t mean we can just walk in there and rally the people behind us. Are they just going to take Ameiko at her word? Somehow, I doubt they are going to be as accepting as Dasi. More than likely, they’ll be as trusting of her as we are of him and that means we’re going to have to prove her claim. No one knows quite how to do that.

There is also the problem of getting there. The only road between Hongal and Minkai skirts the Forest of Spirits, and it is patrolled by the Jade Regent’s troops. Assuming we could even travel that way without being recognized, the general impression we were left with is that the soldiers are as likely to kill you as they are to protect you. People and wagons simply vanish from that road. Some believe it is the spirits of the forest that are responsible, but most lay the blame at the Jade Regent’s doorstep.

The Forest of Spirits is equally—if not more—problematic. According to the locals, it is not a place for people to go. Most, in fact, believe it to be haunted (hence the name). Exactly how it’s haunted is not clear but there is agreement on one point: if you go in, you are lucky to return. This implies that whatever is in there is not going to take kindly to trespassers. Namely, us.

So, we can’t go through the Forest, and we can’t take the main road around it. Which doesn’t really leave us with a lot of options.

Not that we had a lot of time to figure it out. We still had the performances to deal with, and though we didn’t know it at the time, Dasi, too.

The play was, I suppose, as good as it could have been. It looked beautiful, and the actors gave it their all, but of course they were limited by the source material. That, and plays that are not based in religious text or doctrine just aren’t a thing here, so it was a lot for our audience to take in. The actors, too. One of them even asked me what it was supposed to be teaching us. I didn’t really know how to answer that since there really wasn’t a moral or lesson, except maybe “don’t hire oni to write your plays.” In spite of these limitations I was satisfied with the performance, though that was slightly undercut when one of the actors muttered “I guess we’ll get to keep our heads tonight” under his breath. It was a stark reminder that we had gambled with other peoples’ lives.

As for the dance, we gave the Prince and his court a performance that they will remember for a very long time. Seriously. It was that good.

It was also just a bit subversive. Flamenco is structured improvisation. The music and song are never done the same way, and they serve as inspiration for the dance which means it isn’t, either. They evoke an emotional response which the dancer uses to create a unique performance. Ameiko surprised me by putting to music an old folk tale from Varisia about a young girl who befriends a winter wolf that has wandered south, away from the ice and snow. Varisian is a difficult language in many respects: it’s a mishmash of Giant, Orc, Thassilonean and Taldan, and it’s ripe with double meanings and innuendo. Magic may help you understand what’s being said, but it won’t grant any insights into double entendres, insinuations and hidden meanings. I’d be shocked if anyone there understood that the story and dance were a metaphor for my situation, and ultimately a mockery of the Prince. I like to think that Shelyn would be pleased.

The evening should have ended on this note, but then we met Dasi.

We were completely blindsided. We’ve always assumed that we’d be bringing Ameiko into a country that doesn’t know her, and that we’d need to prove her heritage and her claim. It never occurred to us that someone from Minkai might come to us. And, assuming Dasi is telling the truth, that is exactly what happened.

Of course, the rub there is, how do we know he’s telling the truth? We don’t. Sure, there are spells that can supposedly help, but they are fallible and thus ultimately untrustworthy. We have to figure it out for ourselves. We have to take everything he’s said, dissect it, analyze it, and then make the judgement call.

So, which is it? Scholar and researcher from Minkai, desperately seeking the only royal family known to survive the purge in the desperate hope that he will find an heir to the throne? Or agent of the Five Storms, hunting down the sole remaining heir that is, literally, right in front of him?

These are rhetorical questions.

OK, fine. It was less obvious at the time. When he just came out and asked if we knew anything about the Amatatsu family, I thought we were going to be taking down another oni right then and there. In my room. But, later it occurred to me that neither of the oni we have confronted to date (I don’t count Kikonu, who was deranged and clueless) have been so brazenly direct. Literally walking up to us and asking, “Hey, do you know of an heir?” is about as far from subtle as you can get. And to what aim? I mean, the Five Storms knows she’s here. They even know what she looks like. What’s the point in pretending otherwise? What would be gained by alerting us? If you’re going to be that bold, wouldn’t it make more sense to just ambush us and get it over with?

I was more or less convinced already, and then something truly astonishing happened: Suishen spoke to him, and he was polite. Yeah, I know. I’m as shocked as everyone else.

(Ordu-Aganhei, early morning)

My room was, once again, the retreat of choice for our morning cross-examination of Dasi. Maybe I should consider renting it out for meetings while Radella and I are stuck here. I could even charge for extras, like the coded language spell and such. I am sure Prince Batsaikhar will appreciate my entrepreneurial spirit.

Qatana cast her spell and we asked a bunch of pointless questions. What do you want me to say here? We are walking in circles. Either we trust him or we don’t. At this point, if he is anything other than what he says he is it’s too late to be suspicious. Come on.

Eventually Qatana decided to go the direct route (finally!) and just outright said that Ameiko was the heir. You might call that a “tense moment”. Of course, it was fine. Dasi wants nothing more than to bring the rightful heir back to Minkai. He even swore loyalty to Ameiko right there on the spot. I think we have enough. We’ve had enough since last night. No other answer makes sense. Yet, some of them are still a little suspicious. Get over it.

This trust-you-but-don’t-trust-you thing is going to get old. Worse, it may drive him off. And we’re going to need his help.

I am getting irritated again. Honestly, I think it’s just the stress of the day. We’re getting the caravan out of the city this morning, and then we are going with my Plan B: they leave, I stay, and stick it out until they reach Muliwan. Radella kindly offered to stay behind, too, to keep an eye on me. I accepted. She knows how to be discreet and I may end up needing her help. And, most importantly, she won’t treat me like I’m made of glass.

I also have to reach out to mom and dad and I really don’t want to go through with it. That conversation is actually what I am most anxious about. The Prince, this place, the deception–those things, I can handle. Talking to my parents is another matter: I actually care about what they think.

Speaking of the Prince, Chua interrupted our summit to deliver a present: a jade necklace. It’s lovely, but … I don’t know. It’s so generic. Like some afterthought. It feels like he has a stash of them, and he gives one to all of his brides-to-be. I don’t care, but I guess my pride does.

He’s also assigned two guards to me. They, too, are generic. They’ll keep honest people honest, but that’s about it. I didn’t point out that anyone or anything that is capable of making me feel threatened will crush them without even knowing they are there. I kind of feel bad about thinking that, but it’s true.

Well. I am all sorts of lovely company today.

Calistril 19, 4713 (Ordu-Aganhei, small hours)

I spent a good portion of the night coming to terms with this. In the course of a few hours I’ve felt alone and scared, victimized and helpless, overwhelmed and anxious, and hollowed out and numb. Now? Now I am just angry: angry at being put in this position, at being trapped, at being fetishized because I am a foreigner, at being labeled as “exotic”. Here’s a hint for you: “exotic” is not a compliment. It translates to, “You’re attractive, for a <blank>“, where you fill in the blank with anything that’s inferior in your eyes. That little backhand speaks volumes.

We can’t just leave. It would be perceived as an insult to Prince Batsaikhar, which is something he is not likely to take well. From what we have seen and heard, the people here live in a constant state of low-grade fear that they’ll disappoint, anger, or even just fail to please him. It explains why the attendants here are so enthusiastic to carry out his requests. Most people, given the option, prefer to live. Making him angry gets people killed. That’s the sort of person we are dealing with.

Ameiko is pretty sure that we’re safe as long as we are his guests, but this position is tenuous at best. Our status can be revoked at any time, and if he really needed a justification to turn on us without breaking the protocol he values, I am sure he can find one. We can’t travel across Hongal with a hostile government at our back.

That means we are stuck here until the last Feast, and that means I have to see this through. I have to keep him happy, too, even if it means enduring more … of that. If I slip up, if he doesn’t get what he wants from me, will this be taken out on my friends? Will this be taken out on his subjects?

I can’t do anything about the latter, of course. We’re not here to overthrow a government. Well, okay, we are, but not this government. In Minkai, Ameiko at least has a divine mandate to rule and that is supposed to mean something to the people there. Here? We’re nobody, and nobodies don’t start revolutions. This isn’t a fight we can even start, much less win. We’re just going to have to move on.

Ensuring we can move on is now my job. Whatever the Prince wants from me, personally, I have to find a way to give it to him. If it’s something he can’t have (for example, me) I need to refuse without refusing. To give the impression of accepting without accepting. Ameiko and I spent a lot of time tonight practicing, role-playing various scenarios. At first it just felt like a desperate exercise, but by the end … I have to admit it was a little empowering. I walked away feeling like I could actually exert some control over these events. That I could spin convincing half-truths, and use his assumptions to my advantage.

What does it say about my friendship with Ameiko that it has made me a better liar?

The point to all of this is to buy time so that we can get away safely.

And what if I’m right? What if what he wants from me really is me? My biggest fear there would be a marriage proposal (no doubt I’d be added to what I am sure is a long list of wives with whom he quickly grew bored and possibly beheaded), but it could be any number of things which are nearly as bad,  from joining his concubine to becoming a permanent fixture at the palace for him to beckon and paw. If it comes to this, my best diversion is my Vudrani heritage and customs.

I think this would actually qualify as irony.

Vudrani have a fairly structured society: it’s a caste system, marriages are often arranged, and going outside your caste for anything is, while not unheard of, fairly rare. Though I’ve never lived in a traditional Vudrani society—the closest I have come is visiting dadi and dada in Niswan—I know the broad strokes. It sounds awful and I want nothing to do with it. I am lucky to have grown up in Varisia.

Dad doesn’t care about any of those traditions. I mean, look who he married, right? And he’s not some black sheep in the family: dadi and dada aren’t much for these norms, either. It’s not generally known, but dada is half Keleshite. My aljidu al’akbar was from Katheer, and he met my paradadi in, of all places, Sothis. They were married in Absalom. It’s always been a kind of international family.

Technically, that makes me only three-eights Vudrani. I haven’t exactly tried to hide it, of course, it’s just that it doesn’t come up, and it’s easier to say “half” and skip the details. I am actually kind of surprised that no one has ever asked. I mean, it’s obvious from both dad’s name and our family name that there is more than just Vudrani behind him, but I guess that these subtleties get lost north of the Inner Sea, even among the well-traveled.

My grandparents on mom’s side are pretty progressive, too, especially for Korvosans. It’s almost two cities in one: there are those who long for the days of Chelish rule, and those who recognize Cheliax for the literal hellhole that it is and bask in Korvosa’s independence. Grandma and grandpa fall into the latter category. They are quite proud of mom’s marriage. It reinforces their view of Korvosa as a cosmopolitan city, and their contributions to it.

But for the Prince, I need to be half of Vudrani with an orthodox heritage. For anything beyond courtship, I require permission from my father (though, technically, I needed it even before that). Ignoring cultural protocol and norms will bring shame to me and my family. Protocol and honor seem to be concepts the Prince understands and respects. And of course, this conveniently and retroactively explains why I’ve needed an escort on both of our “dates”. The best lies are the ones that are founded in truth.

Unfortunately, this would only buy time for my friends to leave. If it comes to this, they’ll take the caravan out of the city and once they’re safely away I’ll escape and catch up. That sounds deceptively simple, but for once it really is that simple. A day’s head start is sufficient for the caravan. I can teleport short distances and that’s enough to get out. Then I can summon a horse—or better yet, conjure a phantom one—and race after them. Time it right, and it will be hours before anyone in the palace notices I am gone. Especially if I repair those little peep holes Radella told us about using magic. We already did that in this room.

Worst-case scenario is that I end up being held against my will, and they take my spell book. But the thing is, they can’t take the spells out of my head. I will memorize what I need to get away, and regardless, I don’t need my spells for dimensional hops. They cannot hold me here.

(early morning)

We need to prepare the food and entertainment for tonight. Traditional food and entertainment from our native land. Qatana got a little excited about this and put together a meal plan that is … a little over the top, so Ameiko offered some suggestions to tone it down. I am actually not too worried either way. As long as it tastes good, we’ll be fine. Those two know what they’re doing, and they’ll have an enormous, professional kitchen and a small army of sous-chefs, chefs, cooks and bakers at their disposal. I’d be pretty stunned if the dinner came out anything less than spectacular.

For the entertainment part of the evening we need two performances of something. So far, the Prince has treated us to a mix of arts and sporting events so I suggested we do one of each. More than one person remarked that the Prince wants to see me dance again. Preferably in something with less coverage than I normally wear. Yeah, I figured that one out already, thanks. And, fuck you, too.

My suggestion for an artistic performance was a flamenco dance. I said, “Ameiko can play strings, though we’ll need to procure a lute or something like it.” Flamenco is an emotionally intense form of dance, with expressive arm gestures and precise footwork that rivals tap for speed. It’s breathtakingly beautiful, and when done right it leaves an impression. Flamenco is a whole experience. And it’s roots are Varisian.

For a sporting event, I thought a mock gladiatorial battle, with heavy weaponry and armor, would play well. What we’ve seen of the people in Hongal so far is what Sparna and Olmas call “light cavalry”. Weapons are thin and sharp, and armor is thin. Lightly armed, but very mobile. While I’m no expert on martial weapons, I’ve learned enough through osmosis over the last few months to know that our fighting styles in Avistan are vastly different. A heavy flail crashing against plate armor both looks and sounds terrifying, and that also leaves an impression. And it’s something these people have probably never seen.

But the idea was vetoed because I don’t know why, and then we bickered for a while over alternatives that ranged from the impractical to the ridiculous. I don’t know why this needs to be so difficult.

At one point Sparna asked, “What about Kikonu’s play?”

I should have said “no”. I should have, but I didn’t. Now I am stuck here for the next few hours. so I can work with the actors once they get here. We can’t do the whole thing, of course, but we can do this one scene where … Never mind. It’s terrible, just like the rest of the thing, only it’s terrible in a way that is almost so bad it’s good. Koya was excited about putting together abstract crow costumes, so this thing is either going to be spectacularly bizarre, or a memorable failure. I count either as a win.

I think what all of this says is, while I should have said “no”, a big pert of me really wants to do it.

Chua knocked on the door a little after sunrise to extend an invitation from the Prince to join him for lunch and a tour of the city. Of course I said yes because I don’t want my friends, or half the servants attending to us, to be executed. But, having empowered myself to take an active role in events, I put this place to work so that we didn’t lose precious time on a glorified scavenger hunt. I sent Chua off in search of a lute-like string instrument—Ameiko helped here, showing him what she needed, and how it differed from the traditional instruments in Hongal—and some local actors who were comfortable with a little improvisation.

The latter was actually kind of surreal. Asking about finding actors slipped my mind, and I didn’t remember until after he had left so I had to go find him. As soon as I called out after him, nearly two dozen servants swarmed into the hallway ahead of me, hollering his name in a clamor of “Chua!”‘s. They practically tackled him in their enthusiasm to help out. This place is just one absurd scene after another.

(early evening)

Merely images and shadows, my ass. Prince Batsaikhar asked me to marry him.

Gods! I don’t even know where to start. I can barely think straight.

If I hadn’t spent all that time last night preparing for this possibility I’d probably be in a panic right now. A worse panic, that is. It’s not like I am taking this in stride.

He led up to it with compliments, and promises about how the city could be mine, and how much it’s been graced by my beauty, how I will always be safe here, and other over-the-top nonsense. Oh, I am sure he meant it all, but so what? We’ve only been here three days. He’s infatuated and nothing more. If I were so naive as to believe this was somehow real, I’m sure I’d be tossed aside and forgotten in time.

Just as I worked out with Ameiko, I stalled. I feigned nervous excitement—this wasn’t all that hard because the “nervous” part came naturally—and went on about needing to get my father’s permission, with what I hope was a sufficiently frenzied tone. All without ever answering ‘yes’. He just assumed that I meant to, and more or less accepted the delay as a mere formality. That part went flawlessly.

Less flawless? He wants an answer as soon as possible because we have a wedding to plan! How exciting! Just writing that makes me gag. I said, truthfully, that the soonest I could talk to my parents would be tomorrow because I (intentionally) don’t have the right spells prepared. It will be done in a public ceremony right after the Feast of the Dragon. How dramatic!

I’ll actually have to talk to mom and dad twice. The first time will be from the privacy of my room so that I can prepare them for what’s about to happen. That should be a lively discussion. Frame it right, and they might not even disown me.

Having to do this tomorrow buys us less time than I was hoping, but it will have to do. What choice do we have?

OK, this is as much as I can afford to think about it right now. We still have to get through tonight.

The actors Chua found are as ready as they’ll ever be. Once they got over the fear that this might get them killed, they got down to the business of rehearsing with consummate professionalism, and even spent much of the day practicing on their own. They’re good. And Koya’s crow costumes are a literal work of art. Each is a simple black outfit or dress, adorned with strips of fabric that is reminiscent of feathers, torn in places to give them a tattered look. They are positively spooky. It’s amazing what she was able to accomplish in so little time.

The instrument that Chua turned up is not a lute, but it has the right sound so it’s good enough. Ameiko is satisfied and that’s what matters. He didn’t let me pay for it, though, which means it was probably “appropriated” from the owner. I made a big deal of writing a thank you note to them, complete with an origami rose and a blessing to Shelyn. Hopefully they are still alive to receive it.

(late night)

Gods, what a night. I would not think it possible to have this much upheaval in just a single day. I am wrung out.

Sparna is leaving us. He didn’t even come to dinner. Ivan said he’s leaving because he has, in his words, lost his nerve. The constant threats to our lives, the poisonings, the paranoia—basically the entirety of the past seven months—has gotten to him. I had no idea. None. I guess it hit him hard enough that the only person he was able to face was Ivan.

He’s been a guard with Sandru’s caravan for as long as I’ve known him, possibly even going back to when it started. He wasn’t much of a talker back in those early days, but I think that’s part of the image. Who wants a chatty guard, right? I’ve been kind of hard on him about his gruff manor. I should have toned it down.

This news is going to be hard on Sandru. His employees are more than just hired workers: they are his friends, too. This has to sting.

There were eight of us when this began. Now we’re down to five. The Five Storms have a significant advantage over us in this way. We have to force them out of Minkai, almost certainly at the point of a sword, but their task is much easier: they just have to stop us. Whether they kill us all or demoralize us into abandoning the quest, the result is the same: they win. They’re well on their way.

This more or less set the tone for our dinner conversation.

I used that spell I got from Thadeus so that we could speak freely, and told them about the Prince. Most of them looked concerned or worried, but a couple of people were downright angry. Qatana, especially, looked like she wanted to kill someone (and I had a pretty good idea who that would be).

The pressing issue was, how was I going to escape?

“I have a plan,” I said. “You get the caravan out of the city tomorrow morning. Then, after the Feast of the Dragon, you leave and I stay here. It would make sense that you would continue on without me.

“I’ll find a time after you have left to slip away. I can jump outside of the city walls so I can’t be followed, conjure a phantom horse, and then come to you.”

The short version is: everyone hated it. Olmas, in particular, pointed out the big flaw in my thinking; a one day lead is not going to be sufficient in a country renowned for its horsemanship (and, I might add, notorious for its xenophobia).

“How about we stage your death?” he asked. “It’d give a reason for you to disappear.”

Radella and I looked at each other. We had the exact same thought: he could get angry enough to kill a whole bunch of innocent people, thinking they had failed at their job of keeping an eye on me. No. No way. I was not going to pay for my escape in executions.

But Olmas persisted. “I don’t like the idea of you running away from the Prince.” Presumably because it would make him angry.

Ivan chimed in, too. “We can’t get away fast enough.”

These were good points. After a long silence, I finally said, “All right. If you want to do that, then we should make it convincing and stage an attack. We can take the seal out of the box.”

There was stunned silence, followed by nervous laughter. “I’m serious,” I said.

I mean, this would do it, right? The Five Storms almost certainly know we’re here. How could they not? There’s been nothing subtle about our time here. Having a couple of oni come at us in the middle of the palace would probably change the equation significantly. The Prince would either evict us, or we’d have good cover for my disappearance.

Obviously, it was a terrible idea, but I was so frustrated at that point that I didn’t care how reckless it was. I just wanted to be done with it. But, of course, there’s never a “done” with us, is there? As soon as it seemed like we were in agreement, Olmas and Ivan objected: If the Prince was even indifferent towards the Jade Regent, an attack from the Five Storms might just cause him to turn on us.

And we were back to the same problem: the caravan can’t get away fast enough.

That’s when Ivan suggested, “Instead of faking your death, let’s make it a real one.”

He was being completely serious. He was seriously suggesting that I kill myself, and that they stage it as a murder or something. This is what it’s come to. I didn’t even bother saying anything as I am sure they could see it on my face. This was insane, and the answer was “no”. No fucking way.

After a long silence, a good idea finally came to me. Shut up. It’s been known to happen.

“It will take two weeks for the caravan to reach the eastern border,” I said. “I’ll stay here, then find you by scrying and teleport to you. I should be able to manage the spell on my own, but I’ll get a pair of scrolls just in case.”

The short version is: they hated only a little bit. It would still infuriate the Prince, but it would give the caravan a huge head start.

Most of the objections centered around leaving me here by myself, the fact that I’d probably be married at that point (as if I cared), and a long string of what-if’s. What if they take away my spell books? What if they lock me away somewhere? And on and on. It was like listening to my grandmother. We traveled halfway around the world to end up where I started.

I lost my temper. “I am a fucking adult! This is my decision!” I realized that I was standing, and that lots and lots of people were silently staring at me. I sat down and said, quietly, “Even if they take away my spell book, even if they take my things, I can get out of here. They. Can’t. Hold me.”

Was that strictly true? Maybe not in the way that I said it, but effectively? Yes. They can slow me down, but unless they plan on keeping me in some anti-magic bubble for the rest of my life, I can and will get away. That’s a promise.

Damnit! This is making me upset again. I can’t do this right now.

Calistril 18, 4713 (Ordu-Aganhei, late night)

My memory of this is still clear because we just finished the reading, but … memories fade, and those that don’t? They often get muddled. Memory is just so unreliable, and it only gets worse with time. The details are important here so I need to get them down while I can. While I still have it right.

I should back up first, though, because I didn’t have time to do that earlier. That, and I felt like I was on the verge of an anxiety attack or something. I had really worked myself (perhaps unnecessarily?) into a panic. How was I even able to talk to anyone? I suppose it could be that I am remembering it as worse than it really was. Maybe. I am not exactly doing well right now. Far from it, really. But I don’t know. See above.

After talking to Radella on the walk back from dinner, I asked Ameiko if she would stay with me tonight. “I don’t want to be alone right now,” I said. “I need someone with me. I … can’t really explain it.” I still can’t

“As if you need to even ask. I can tell you’re troubled. Of course I’ll stay with you,” she said with a smile. Probably so that I wouldn’t think I was being a burden to her, she added, “It would be nice to have the company, anyway. The feather beds here are comfortable, but after all these months of being crammed in the wagons? Nights alone in a room are both a luxury and … a bit unfamiliar.”

I was kind of feeling just the opposite. Or I had, until this morning.

“Thank you,” I said. “I don’t think anything will happen, at least not directly, but …” I didn’t have to add that I could be coerced or manipulated, and no one would be the wiser. And of course, everyone here seems to live in fear of him. Even if I am safe, the people here may not be. I could easily get someone killed, I thought. Lots of someones. I shuddered at that.

Ameiko thought about this for a moment. “I—I don’t think the Prince would kidnap you or … probably … outright force anything. He does seem to value honor and etiquette—to a fault, if you ask me—but I still don’t trust him or know how far he can be pushed before he drops the facade.”

“I need to ask. Is there anything you can do or provide that can help me? In case I have to talk my way out of trouble, or slip away if I can’t teleport.” I hesitated, not exactly sure how to phrase the rest of it. “The catch is, I don’t know when it would be needed, so I can’t completely rely on spells.” This is why I was borrowing Radella’s circlet. Every little bit helped.

It didn’t matter, though. All she had to offer was advice. But. It was good advice. “I would not outright refuse him, especially in front of others. Find a way to string him along, perhaps, until we know we can make our escape or find out what his true motives are.”

“In other words, stall,” I said.

“Yes. Stall. It’s a delicate and dangerous line to walk.” She sighed, then said, “I never imagined you would get entangled in the political intrigues of court when we started this journey. But, such are the perils of court.” She spoke as if she knew how these things worked. Exactly when was she an expert on political intrigue? I bounced that around in my head. Has Ameiko been holding out on me?

I’d have plenty of time to ask her later, and I snapped back to the present. Stay focused, Kali. “I … I think I need Koya’s help on this, too,” I said. “I am rudderless here.”

Ameiko got Koya’s attention with a small wave and then gestured for her to join us. When she did, I explained what that I intended to do and why I needed her there. “I can manage the spell, but I still need help with interpreting the cards.”

Koya looked lost in thought briefly. “Well, it’s not usual to combine the spell with a reading, but I think that’s because most people don’t take the time to learn both. There’s certainly no reason why you can’t do it.”

I said, “It will take me some time to prepare the spell, but I’ll start as soon as I get back to my room.”

Ameiko interjected, “As soon as we get back. We’ll wait with you until you are ready to cast. Though I believe Radella has suggested a ladies’ night in your room, so it might get a little crowded there.” The more the merrier.

The rooms weren’t far. While they settled in, I hastily wrote what I wrote earlier, got down to memorizing the spell, and then announced, “I’m ready.”

Koya came over to sit next to me. She handed my her deck (mine is not yet finished), and waited for me to start. I pulled out the nine Crown cards for the Choosing, and then I just stared at them. Are you sure you want to do this? I remember thinking. I must have been like that for a while, because I felt Koya’s hand touch mine, gently. I snapped out of the reverie, spoke the words to the spell, and drew the first card.

I was looking at a dragon. It was The Tyrant.

My heart sank and Koya sighed heavily. “That is … not a pleasant card. It indicates one who rules but who does harm to those over whom he holds sway.”

It meant my role in this was linked to the Prince. It was confirming my fears. I stared at it for a while. I’d not studied the art on this one yet. Is it … eating its own egg? I shuddered.

I shuffled the Crown cards back in the deck, and laid out the Tapestry, face down. Starting with the Past, I revealed The Eclipse, misaligned.

“The Eclipse. A hidden place revealed, or an unheralded ability. The necropolis? Shelyn’s gift of Hon-La?” I asked.

“Possibly. Both brought us here in some fashion. Though I have learned not to be too certain in Harrowings.”

The next card was The Snakebite. “A weapon used against us. Any of the oni or ninja could fit here.”

“Less certain is this one, but your interpretation is as good as any,” she replied.

A wave of dread washed over me when I turned over the third card. “The Rabbit Prince,” I said quietly.

“Our host is the younger brother of the Khan, is he not? This hints that he is slippery and clever as an adversary.” Well that’s just great.

It got worse on the next column, which represented the present. Much worse. I turned over the first card and immediately thought I was going to be sick. I could barely speak, but managed to croak out, “The Marriage. Oh, gods, Koya …”

“Now, child, don’t take the cards too literally; these are merely … images and shadows. In this case it means that something will change in a permanent way, but what that change is we cannot be certain.”

But I couldn’t get past the literal image. It was like I was being sent a personal warning. I could hear and feel my heart pounding in my head. I fought to keep the world from fading into the distance.

My hand was shaking as I turned over the next card.

I wouldn’t have thought I could feel any worse, but then I was staring at The Beating. I sniffed and wiped away the start of tears, then said out loud what I was thinking. My voice weak and hoarse. “I—I shouldn’t have done this.”

“The seasons change whether we read the cards or not,” she replied. Well, sure, but logic is a cold comfort. “In this position, though, I think it represents how you are feeling now. A dissolution of self.” I admit that this actually made sense, and the thought helped me compose myself. I nodded and moved on.

“The Unicorn, misaligned. A false friend. I think I know who this is.”

“You are probably right.”

The slow approach was killing me so I turned over the cards in the last column, representing the future, in rapid succession.

Koya let out another sigh, and that feeling of almost being sick reasserted itself. The top right card was The Courtesan. I knew what it represented, but I just sat there shaking my head slowly in denial so she took the liberty of explaining. Maybe for Ameiko’s benefit more than mine.

“I think it’s telling you that your future requires you to continue in this role. You must navigate the politics of this place, and there’s some peril if you slip or falter.”

I still didn’t say anything. I just sat there and stared. Koya added, “I’m sorry, child, this is a heavy burden to place on you.

“The Sickness is difficult to interpret,” she continued, though with less certainty. “It could mean the moral decay of a place, or the corruption of an individual of importance in your life.”

I waved my hand dismissively, blowing that card off. It didn’t feel like it had anything to contribute here. Honestly, I just didn’t care. But the last one …

I took a long, deep breath and said, “The Inquisitor. I can’t cheat my way out of it. I have to face it head on.”

“With the help of your friends,” Ameiko added. She’d been watching the reading quietly this whole time. “Don’t forget that.”

Other than a hint of a smile, Koya ignored the interruption. “Normally we only interpret a few, key cards in the Tapestry. But in this case, most of them had something to say. What is the spell telling you?”

I could feel its effects now, and was trying to characterize them. “I am being … encouraged … to use my wits.”

A long silence followed. I could feel them watching me. “We have to tell the others,” I said. “Any information we need to get, about the road ahead, Minkai, the Forest … We need to do it tomorrow. Just in case.”

Calistril 3, 4713 (morning, Uqtaal necropolis)

We are leaving today. I can’t say that I am sorry to go, and if we could have left yesterday we would have. We never intended to come here, we certainly didn’t want to come here, and pretty much everything about this place has been horrible. Making peace with the yeti was a welcome change from how we started, but it doesn’t bring Bevelek back to life. And while the chief is grateful to us, I worry that not all of his tribe is on board with that. Katiyana may have been the catalyst, but several of them still died at our hands. I am anxious to put all of it behind us.

I spent hours and hours yesterday cleansing this place with Ivan and Koya, removing all traces of Fumiyoshi and restoring as much of the Desnan iconography as our spells could handle. Even that was unsatisfying. It feels like a job half finished, but there is just no way we are backtracking 30-some miles to remove all of those skulls. That, and no one understands, much less knows how to deal with, the pool with the tree. Other than using the specters for target practice, which I doubt was the original intent.

I am tired. I didn’t sleep well. And I hate it here.

Calistril 6, 4713 (Path of Aganhei, Wall of Heaven, evening)

We rejoined the Path of Aganhei around mid-day today after over three days of winding through the mountains. We’ve begun our descent to Ordu-Aganhei, though according to Ulf (and our maps) that is still over a week away.

We finally have pleasant weather. The sun is on a reasonable schedule, the skies are clear, and while it’s still cold we aren’t anywhere near the sub-freezing temperatures of the arctic.  I should be happy about all of this, but I’m not. I promised mom and dad that I’d check in once we got this far and I have been putting it off because I don’t know what to say to them. There’s no way for me to tell them that Bevelek’s dead without confirming their worst fears about our journey, but I can’t not tell, them, either. So, the mature adult that I am, I’ve been avoiding it.

Calistril 8, 4713 (Path of Aganhei, Wall of Heaven, evening)

Ivan has been making small repairs to the caravan using magic as we go. The wagons took quite a beating in the storms, and then again under the mountains. As we learned in Ul-Angorn we don’t want to look like we’ve been through…well, all that stuff we just went through, I guess. Of course there’s no avoiding the obvious, which is that we are coming down from the Crown in late winter. At best, people will think we have lost our minds, but with the wagons beat to the Abyss and back, we’ll look like fools who didn’t know better and are lucky to be alive.

These mountains go on for hundreds of miles inland. They call it the Wall of Heaven. The coastal range stretches from the divide between Tian Xia and the Crown all the way down to the equator. At every point it’s at least a hundred miles across—in most it’s at least twice that—with peaks towering to 30,000 feet and beyond. Except at Goka, the only port city on the west coast, at the only break in the range. It’s no coincidence that it is also one of the largest cities in the world.

It’s said that there’s a lost valley somewhere in the northern expanse of the Wall, maybe a thousand miles or so from where we are now, where the people live an idyllic life, isolated in, and by, the mountains. It’s a Nirvana on Golarion, with no rulers, no war, no evil, and no sin. It sounds like any one of a dozen other legends we have back in the Inner Sea. I don’t believe any of them, either, but who’s to say? Maybe there really is a paradise out there, and humanity is just too jaded to accept it.

Calistril 10, 4713 (Path of Aganhei, Wall of Heaven, small hours)

I finally talked to mom and dad. It could have gone a lot worse.

“Bevelek? By the gods, Kali…what—”

I cut him off. “It was our fault. We…we made an assumption that…it was a terrible mistake. I—I don’t know how else to…”

I had to stop to wipe my eyes.

“It didn’t have to happen. We could have prevented it. I…”

Another long silence. Then mom spoke.

“Do you want us to tell someone? Do you know where their family lives?”

“Give us…give us a week,” I said, sniffing, and wiping my eyes dry again. “Qatana says she can…bring him back.”

A much longer silence this time.

“You don’t approve.”

This time, dad spoke. “That is not it at all. We are just…surprised. Qatana? Your friend, Qatana. Qatana Marchand.” he asked, clearly incredulous.

“Yes.”

Another long silence.

“Now I do not know what to say.”

Calistril 14, 4713 (Path of Aganhei, Hongal, evening)

We spotted a hunting party not far from the road today. They didn’t approach us, and we didn’t approach them. Ulf suggested that was for the best. He explained that the people of Hongal are suspicious of foreigners, and accept the trade route, and the travellers on it, as a kind of necessary evil. As long as we stay on the road and keep to our business, they’ll leave us alone. Stray too far from it and we’ll be trespassing, and around here that is like asking to be executed without the added burden of having to ask.

They are mostly a nomadic people; even their king lives in a sort of traveling tent city. They are famed for their horsemanship, and live in a land that is equally famous for the quality of its horses. The city we are headed for, Ordu-Aganhei, is one of only two permanent settlements in the entire nation. Unsurprisingly, the other one lies along the trade route as well, on the border with the Forest of Spirits.

Calistril 16, 4713 (Ordu-Aganhei, late afternoon)

Prince Batsaikhar, the brother of the Khan, has made us his honored guests in the palace. In less than two hours, we have gone from living like vagrants and transients—literally living off the land by our wits and skills for months—to luxury the likes of which I have not seen since Niswan. And back then, I only saw it. As the Prince’s guests, we are living in it, and I lack the words to properly describe the contrast between where we were and where we are. Less than three weeks ago, I was in a frozen wasteland isolated from humanity. Now there are servants attending to my every need, following me like a cloud of gnats.

They don’t seem eager to please so much as terrified to not. Or, perhaps more accurately, terrified of not satisfying their ruler’s demands. The Prince makes me uneasy; he’s always smiling and overly polite. I think Ulf summed it up pretty well: “The Prince can be a powerful ally, but he is also known to be ruthless. So be careful.” A point that is underscored by the severed heads adorning the walls of the city. Chua said that “they were robbers, preying on traders along the Path of Aganhei.”

Still, our situation now is something of an improvement over our arrival. Because I couldn’t keep my temper under control. Yes, the guards at the gate were not just rude, but belligerent, accusing us of everything from being smugglers to spies to assassins. When they started climbing all over the caravan like rats in search of food, I let it get to me. Challenging their authority was, perhaps, not the right decision. Fortunately, Chua intervened before weapons were drawn.

Chua is the…well, I am not really sure what he is. Perhaps a chancellor or vizier or whatever title they give here to the one who is closest to the Prince and responsible for making things happen. He interrupted the guards and extended the royal invitations to us. Naturally, I accepted on everyone’s behalf without consulting them because it didn’t seem wise to refuse or even put the matter up for debate. It was Chua that gave us our first hints of what the Prince might be like: he handed a black rose to each of the ladies in our party, and uttered some artificial and demeaning remark about the beauty of foreign women. (A black rose is, of course, a terrible insult to a Shelynite, but Nihali takes the form of a black raven and that earns me my own share of stares. So, I guess I am not in a position to complain.)

After listening to the highlights of our travels across the Ice in the dead of winter (Radella says he was bored by them, but good at hiding it) Prince Batsaikhar declared he would be hosting the Five Feasts of Hongal in our honor. So I guess our little stunt isn’t pulled very often. Arriving in mid-Calistril was something of a red-letter day.

The first dinner is in a couple of hours. I asked Chua for advice on not accidentally offending our host. He said, “Be polite. Speak your own language, because he prides himself on his expertise in Common. And use chopsticks.”

Ameiko and I will be giving everyone a crash course on the latter.

I already screwed up the second one by speaking to him in Hon-La. I am not sure what Shelyn has in mind for me, but apparently it involves drawing attention to myself, good or bad.

(late night)

Dinner was, in a word, disgusting. I have a little cantrip that covers up a lot of sins, and I got plenty of use out of it tonight. Look, I pride myself on having a wide palate, OK? You can’t travel like we did when I was young without adapting to the local culture’s food. I’m not even a vegetarian for gods’ sake (I’d practically be a pariah in Vudra for that, alone). But every culture has some bizarre “gourmet” dish that is truly foul, and the chefshere  went all out to ensure that was all we ate.

It also doesn’t bode well for the next four nights: if bird brains and chicken feet aren’t off limits, then there is a lot of ground that they can cover.

To make up for the food, we were treated to cultural entertainment. It was actually pretty impressive: the Prince’s royal guards performed an exhibition of what they called the “Three Games of Hongal”: mounted archery, bareback horse racing, and wrestling. It’s pretty obvious that their reputations as horse masters has been earned.

The big surprise of the night was the Prince asking us if we could do these same things. Like, literally, the same games. After we picked our jaws up off the floor, we actually put on a pretty good showing. Ivan says he got lucky, but I’ve seen him shoot and you make luck like that. Two arrows struck their target, dead center. Sparna was challenged to wrestle their champion, and he managed to pin the guy to the floor. It was a close match—I don’t know the rules of wrestling, but it was pretty obvious they were somewhat equally matched and it went back and forth a couple of times—but Sparna got the upper hand and that was that. I remember saying, quietly, “He probably just executed that guy.” Which was not intended as a joke, but rather a factual observation. Olmas, for his part, almost pulled of the horse racing with Kasimir, but Kasimir is a warhorse and I guess he just didn’t see the point of it.

Still, two out of three wasn’t bad for people who were put on the spot like that. The Prince obviously agreed and—

There was a knock at my door just now. When I answered there was no one there: just a gift box sitting in the hall. An ornate gift box tied with silk ribbons. I opened it, and inside was an absolutely stunning, Tien-style evening gown. One that is, shall we say, fairly revealing. It was accompanied by a note from Prince Batsaikhar saying, and I am quoting this, “Your exotic beauty graces his palace and will shine all the brighter in this fine gown,” signed “with his humble compliments”.

OK. I’ve been sitting here for several minutes, dumbfounded. I don’t know what to write. I can’t process this.

Calistril 17, 4713 (Ordu-Aganhei, morning)

I am pushing all thoughts about dinner tonight and that gown out of my head for now. That is the plan for today, anyway. Shalelu says she found a suitable shop where we can purchase the diamond Qatana needs to raise Bevelek, and we have all agreed to meet at roughly 5 o’clock tonight to get it done. Until then, we are going to be unloading this collection of crap we’ve been carrying since the Storm Tower and then use the money to do some shopping. It’s just the sort of distraction I need.

I did come to one decision, though: I am wearing the gown tonight. I decided it would not be in our best interest to refuse a gift from the Prince. At least, one that is, aside from the modesty (or lack of it), fairly innocuous. We need more time here, and we need to keep him on our good side if we are going to remain here as royal guests. I intend to do my part.

Last night after dinner, the Prince announced what tonight’s feast would be (The Feast of the Ancients), and as soon as Chua came to escort us back to our rooms I asked him what the entertainment would be (because we are not going to be caught off guard like that a second time).

“Theatrical performances with story-telling,” he said.

With Ameiko’s help, I think we can have that covered.

(evening)

Bevelek breathes again.

It’s hard to fathom that one among us possesses the power to raise the dead. It’s even harder to fathom that it’s a Cleric of Groetus, and harder still that she willingly used it. I mean, it seems like a contradiction, but then again so is Qatana.

Besides, she points out that Groetus is the god of the end times, not the god of death. The latter is Pharasma’s job.

Touché.

Not that Groetus has an opinion on what she’s done. Among theologians it is widely believed that Groetus does’t intend to create followers, and either doesn’t know he has them or doesn’t care. In short, Qatana is given divine power with no guidance on its use; immense power that flows freely, unhindered responsibility.

Vankor was especially grateful to have his brother back. And of course Sandru and Koya were almost equally emotional. The brothers have been with Sandru’s caravan since it’s beginning. I’ve known them nearly as long, but what I felt was quite different. I felt the weight of guilt lifting off of me. Just a bit.

(late night)

My predictions about dinner were, unfortunately, spot-on. The assault on our senses resumed with such delicacies as goose stomach, fish lips, and solidified blood. I consider not throwing up to be a major victory.

The entertainment was a play whose title translated to “Why the Marmot Doesn’t Have Thumbs”, told through shadow puppetry and accompanied by throat singing to music on the horsehead fiddle. As expected, Prince Batsaikhar asked us if we could put on a performance to match, and this time, we were ready.

Ameiko told the story of the white dragon, through music and song. Ivan and I opened her performance with a few special effects courtesy of our spells, and as she got underway I began interpretive dance, interacting with imagery from Ivan’s illusions.

The accolades we received were enough for me, but the Prince already had two things in mind. First, we were gifted one of the Hongal performers’ fiddles (and I suspect we have executed her, too). Second, he thanked us all personally, but me especially, and then he asked me to join him for breakfast in the morning. I am not really fond of the idea, but refusing the Prince in front of a couple hundred of his nobles and subjects seemed like an extraordinarily bad idea at the time. So I said yes.

Note that I said, “at the time”. As Chua was escorting us to our rooms, Olmas struck up a conversation with him, and he asked a few questions about the Prince that have me regretting that answer.

Among the stories Chua told us was this gem: “Once he stacked seven people on top of one another, just to see if he could sever their heads with a single stroke of his katana. Which, of course, he did!”

“We’re they prisoners being executed or something?” Olmas asked.

“I don’t know. I suppose they might have been. But whoever they were, they weren’t important. Should that matter?”

Chua will come by at seven o’clock in the morning to take me to breakfast. Sparna volunteered to escort me.

Calistril 18, 4713 (Ordu-Aganhei, morning)

Gods, I feel sick. I’m still trembling. I managed to keep myself together until I got back here but then I started shaking and I couldn’t stop. Even Nihali couldn’t help me. I’ve calmed down since then but I can still see the tremors in my hands and my stomach won’t stop aching.

On the way out, as I was about to walk through that door, I felt him run his hands through my hair. I was not OK with that. Not in the least. I didn’t ask for it, and I didn’t want it, but I could at least ignore it.

And then his hand continued down to my back, to my skin, and I was back on that beach with Jeffy Theern looming over me. I could feel the wind against my face, smell the ocean air, and count the grains of sand against my palms.

Nihali tells me I froze for just a second. I don’t remember, and the Prince didn’t let on that anything had happened, but I have no reason to doubt her.

On the way back, I whispered to Sparna using one of my spells, and told him what happened. Told him I’m worried what the Prince might try next. Then we met with the others when it was safe to talk.

We’re getting the caravan ready to move. I can get out with magic, but the caravan can’t and if my hand is forced it could put everyone in danger.

I have no problem admitting this: I am scared.

(late night)

I am writing this hastily as the girls are waiting for me to begin. But I need to get this down while I can still hold myself together.

Tonight was the Feast of Fire. I barely remember any of it, just the part where I was, once again, asked to perform. Dancing on burning coals (under the protection of fire resistance, of course) in a not-at-all-revealing dress of fiery reds and golds that I had chosen. Once again, we were rewarded with gifts from the Prince. I played my part.

He announced the next two feasts. Tomorrow is the Feast of the Honored Visitors, and we are expected to help his kitchen staff prepare a traditional Varisian meal, and provide all the entertainment. Because of course we are. The last is the Feast of the Dragon, a city-wide celebration with food, music and dragon-dancing.

It struck me on the walk back to our rooms. The Feast of the Honored Visitors. None of us has been “honored” more than I have, and we won’t be dining in the palace the night after. Whatever he’s planning? It’s going to happen tomorrow.

But just in case I am wrong, the other girls and are staying with me tonight. I don’t want to be alone.

Calistril 1, 4713 (Uqtaal Necropolis, evening)

The counter-attack I was expecting never materialized, though we did get the next best thing, I suppose: several yeti emerged from the pool room and stood shoulder-to-shoulder in the cavern, forming a living wall between us and the necropolis. Why did they take a defensive position instead of making an assault? I don’t know, but I can speculate: they didn’t want to fight us on our terms. A theme that has emerged with them is “come see our king”, followed by some variation of “so he can kill you”. And if we were to be surrounded by yeti deep in their territory I have no doubt that they could follow through on that.

Obviously, they plan to ambush us when and if we do as they ask. We figured that one out even before they explicitly said so. They are not very subtle, nor are they particularly skilled at intrigue,

According to the others, the yeti just stood there watching us. After a while, Sparna and Ivan got bored and started a ridiculous pissing contest with them. It began with tossing pebbles at each other and then escalated to whatever was on hand, including the revenant’s corpse and Katiyana’s head. Because of course it did.

I think Sparna was trying to intimidate them into leaving, or going to get their chief, or something. Whatever his intention, this was making them agitated. I wasn’t sure this was the best use of our time or resources—we were supposed to be resting, healing, and planning, not starting another fight—but I didn’t want to be accused of not being a team player again. So I participated in the silly game until it stopped being silly. That would be when Olmas actually took a shot at one of them, burying an arrow in a yeti’s chest.

For all Olmas’s and Sparna’s talk about a discipline and order, it all comes down to the pot and the kettle both being black. I may have my moments of immaturity, but at least I don’t shoot people because I am bored and out of ideas. Desna was with us, however, and the yeti retreated before anyone died. On either side. Yours truly may have had some influence over that.

I was not in a good mood. I am still not. My wonderful theory about the Yeti chief? I couldn’t convince anyone at all, and after talking to Koya I was beginning to doubt it myself. It took the wind out of my sails.

It all came down to what the yeti meant by “two moons ago”. She suggested that the spirits they worship may be connected to the moon, or that they might find the moon sacred in some fashion. How they count days is still a mystery, but the suspicion was that their chief ventures outside from time to time for whatever passes as worship or ritual.

This is where the idea that the chief was not possessed, but rather replaced, started to take root. The Five Storms knew, more or less, where we were and where we were headed. It would not be unreasonable for there to be oni waiting for us at the pass. Faced with the same storm, said oni might have turned to the Path of Spirits as we did, only from the Tian Xia side where he or she encountered the chief. We know an ogre mage can assume a human form, but there’s no reason to believe that it must be strictly human. They could just as easily take the form of a large humanoid, like, oh, say, a yeti.

An oni in the chief’s place would be just as reasonable, if not more likely, than my theory of Katiyana’s ghost. It all makes perfect sense.

Except it doesn’t explain the storm, and there is this big hole in the logic. I get that the others believe this oni theory. I get that they want to believe it. But we all heard that voice on the wind. We all saw the storm expand behind us as if it were following us. That, and Sithhud and the Five Storms working together just does not make sense. How would they even make such an agreement? How would that even work? What bargain could they possibly make with one another? Demonic beings working together is a stretch on its own, especially when they don’t have common goals.

So I wasn’t ready to give up yet. And I made a proposal: that we test the theories.

They think I am out of my mind. They … may be right. What I suggested we do—that I do—is unbelievably dangerous and bordering on suicidal. It is an idea even worse than my plan for the white dragon.

“I can fly in under invisibility, and use a spell to mask my scent. The wand will give me the ability to see in the dark. I’ll have a protective spell up that will prevent mental control over me. And I’ll use another spell that will let us exchange whispered messages, if needed. I can get in to the chief’s throne room completely undetected.”

To what purpose? To find the yeti chief, and see what spells, if any, were on or around him. I would be able to tell the difference between mental control and shapeshifting. It would give us valuable information.

Sparna didn’t like it. Neither did Olmas. What if I was discovered? What if I was hurt? I’d be surrounded, with no real hope of rescue. I could be facing the chief, who is able to cast spells, and the entire yeti tribe. The objections kept coming.

“I can always teleport away. That’s my escape plan.” And it was a pretty good one, too. It was enough to get them to agree to it.

The problem, of course, is that it wasn’t foolproof. Meet a yeti’s gaze, and I might be overcome by the magical fear it instills in you. Alone and paralyzed, I would not be able to do anything except fall to the ground. I didn’t point this out. Because they’d never let me do it if they knew it could fail. But “certain” can be an impossible standard. You could waste your entire life waiting for “certain”. That, and, I am not some gods-be-damned fragile child! I wasn’t then, and I sure as hell am not now.

Don’t get me wrong: I don’t want to do this. I mean, I do, but I don’t. But the thing is, I don’t want us to have to kill every living thing here in order for us to leave (am I the only one?). This may be our best shot at that.

Calistril 2, 4713 (Uqtaal Necropolis, morning)

Nothing happened over night. I was worried they’d come after us while most of us were asleep, but it seems they are confident we’ll come to them eventually. Where they assume they’ll have the upper hand. They are right about the first part; the second remains to be seen.

I am more than a little nervous. One unpleasant side effect of these rings is that you have lots of time at night to fret and worry. I spent what felt like hours thinking of all the ways this plan could go wrong and what to do about it, which was nowhere near as productive or helpful as it sounds. I used to be able to break these mental loops through meditation, but…that was a long time ago.

We’ll stay together until we reach the anti-life shell inside the necropolis. Then I am on my own. The plan is for them to give me time to enter the throne room, then they’ll launch a raid to provide a distraction while I figure out what, if anything, has happened to the chief. I’ll have very little time to do this. If l screw it up, if I am discovered, or if our theories are just outright wrong, then we’ll be completely surrounded and fighting the entire Yeti tribe.

Please, Shelyn, let this work.

(afternoon)

I am still in shock. It worked. It worked! My muscles still ache, I was so tense, but it worked! And it’s over.

Panic almost set in when I reached the chief’s throne room and he wasn’t there. I knew what he looked like because I had seen him before, and there was no sign of him at all. But, if we was invisible or shape-shifted or hiding through magic, it was only a matter of time before I found him.

The yeti knew we were coming and they were waiting for us in absolute silence. It was unnerving. The tension was so thick it felt like I was swimming through it. I couldn’t so much as whisper without giving myself away and that meant that I couldn’t warn the others, either; couldn’t tell them I needed just a little more time, that there were more than we thought, or that a group of them could make a run at the caravan if they felt so inclined. I just couldn’t risk being heard. The yeti didn’t know I was there, and I was not about to lose that advantage and make myself a target.

In the end though none of that mattered. I was still sweeping the room when the others came in. It was too soon, which meant that they had been able to just walk in. I guess we should have expected that; this was supposed to be a trap after all. As the saying goes, we had them right where they want us.

I didn’t see where the chief came from or how he had remained hidden, but I saw the first spell go off and then I knew, I knew, it was Katiyana. She’d used that lightning strike on us before, and the chief was using it now. What were the odds? And then Olmas called out where he was and I turned around and saw him.

The start of the skirmish, though a ways away, made just enough noise that I could risk a whisper. I messaged to them that I was sure it was Katiyana as I flew to the yeti chief’s position, still under the cover of invisibility. I stopped directly above him, letting the protective ward that was surrounding me envelop him.

And then chaos erupted.

The chief stumbled back, almost falling over, then cried out “Stop fight! Stop fight! Bad spirit! Friends, if you help me!” He was struggling against something that we couldn’t see. It was Katiyana, of course, fighting to regain control. But as long as the ward was up she couldn’t do it.

I reached down and placed a similar ward directly on him, so he wouldn’t be dependent on me being so close. I saw that Sparna had the nine-ring sword out, intent on exorcising her spirit. “This sword can force her out,” he said, “but I have to strike you with it.” This seemed like a bad idea to me, but the chief not only consented, he pleaded to Sparna to do it. “It’s trying! It can’t take me! I give you magic rock if you get rid of bad, bad spirit!”

Lightning kept striking around us. That spell she had cast was still active, and she didn’t need the yeti’s body. It took only her will to unleash each bolt.

Sparna struck, but to no avail. “Oh!” the chief cried out as the blow landed. “It’s hanging on!”

Spells were going off everywhere now: I remember seeing at least one to protect Sparna from lightning, and another to dispel the protections Katiyana had cast on him.

Sparna struck again, and finally it worked. Katiyana’s ghost was literally flung from the yeti’s body. Then more spells went off as we tried to take her down. I fired blasts of pure force, and two spiritual entities appeared next to her and pressed the attacked. Some of these bounced off her harmlessly, and some struck true. A lightning elemental materialized and came to her aid, but just as quickly it was banished from the material plane. I lost track of what was happening until Radella moved in and struck the ghost down. Katiyana cried out something about being the Avatar of Sithhud, and then she was gone.

And it was over.

The yeti chief or king—I am still not sure which is correct—was true to his word. He thanked us for what we had done, for expelling the spirit that had forced him to confront us, and offered his ioun stone to Sparna in thanks. We forged a welcome, if awkward, truce. Several yeti were dead. Bevelek was dead. It was not their fault or ours, but that doesn’t undo what was done.

It’s some 700 or 800 miles to Ordu-Aganhei. It will be two weeks before we can raise Bevelek. But at least we’ll be moving again. We won’t be able to leave until tomorrow morning, though—it will take a few spells we don’t normally prepare to get across the chasm and out of the Necropolis—so I’m going to spend some time with Koya and see if we can’t remove the stain of Fumeiyoshi from this place. The necropolis was originally built to venerate Desna, after all. We shouldn’t leave it like this.

Abadius 31, 4713 (Uqtaal Necropolis, night)

I spent some time pouring through the books I brought with me, looking for every scrap of information I could find about yeti. I really wish Etayne was still with us. What took me close to an hour she probably could have done from memory, and maybe she could have given us something we hadn’t already learned from personal experience.

They are well adapted to the cold, obviously, as well as the dark. As we’ve learned, their bodies actually radiate a bitter cold, and if you are unlucky enough to meet their gaze you are hit with a paralyzing fear. On top of that is their incredible strength, rivaling that of even dire apes, and a ferocity to match. They don’t really have any weaknesses, either, except perhaps to fire. They are, in a word, dangerous—extremely dangerous—and there are dozens of them here.

They’re also intelligent, or rather, intelligent enough. One of the books I have suggests they speak aklo, a language of the darklands. In theory we would try and talk to them, but of course none of us understands it.

I have an idea about that.

Calistril 1, 4713 (Uqtaal Necropolis, early morning)

In my dream, I was standing on a hill at the feet of the Wall of Heaven, staring out at the expanse of Tian Xia below. The Path of Aganhei faded into the rocky plains in the distance, and a chill wind whipped around me. The caravan was behind me, silently waiting, the animals still in the cold air. I would find the way. The Path was important here. Stray too far from it, and the horse riders would no longer be bound by the traditions that protected us.

We had to stay on the road, but we couldn’t follow what we couldn’t see. I approached the two figures that were up ahead. I hadn’t noticed the tents making up the small village just beyond them. The Tian-La are a nomadic people, and move their villages with the winds and the seasons, following the wild horses that they would capture for breeding with their own.

The woman looked up at me. I skipped the introductions and pleasantries, and got to the matter at hand. In Tien, I asked, “How do we follow the Path from here?”

She looked up at me, smiling, and answered, “Chi bol gadaadyn khün shüü dee.” I didn’t know what it meant, and didn’t have the right spell prepared.

I tried again. “I’m sorry, I don’t understand. How do we follow the Path from here?”

Still smiling, she said, “Tanyg tusalj chadakh khün bii. Namaig daga,” and then gestured with her arms as she turned around and began walking away. I still didn’t understand, but she obviously wanted me to follow her, so I did. She occasionally turned her head back to check on me, to make sure I was keeping up. “Ireerei! Namaig daga!”

An enormous field of flowers spread out around us. There was no sign of the village or the caravan, just flowers as far as I could see in all directions. We were walking in between low hedges of flowers and thorns, and up ahead was a tall woman tending to her prizes. I was alone now, and she looked up and beckoned me towards her.

She had long, black hair, curly like the others I had met, but different somehow. It was much longer than I realized: it hung down around her ankles, and I thought I could see hints of red, green, and gold there out of the corner of my eye. When I looked directly it, though, there was just black.

“Bi tand beleg ögdög,” she said. I still didn’t understand, but she held out a flower to me and I knew that she wanted me to take it, so I did.

“Ene beleg tany ayalald tuslakh bolno.” This gift will aid you on your journey.

It was a delicate, red rose, the most beautiful rose I had ever seen.

“Bayarlalaa,” I replied. Thank you.

It needed a vase so I reached for one of the tall, empty glasses on the table in front of me. The glass was made from a lead crystal, extravagant for drinking but perfect for this. The table stretched nearly the width of the hall. It was a lavishly decorated palace, and also immaculately clean. The white table cloth that covered it looked as though it had been made just for this occasion, but I knew that it had been used many times, and fastidiously cleaned to return it to this state. There was not a speck of dirt anywhere. Not on the table, not on the people seated with us, or even on those we had met since entering the city.

“Tavtai morilno uu!” boomed a voice from one end of the hall. Welcome, travelers! I didn’t recognize the speaker, but everyone stopped talking and turned to face at me. I couldn’t see my friends anywhere, just hundreds of apprehensive faces.

I rose from my seat, and replied, “Urikhad bayarlalaa. Bid tantai uulzakhdaa bayartai baina.“ Thank you for inviting us. We are pleased to meet you.

Their expressions turned to smiles as the dream faded.

Our travels will takes us through Ordu-Aganhei in Hongal, and Hon-La is Shelyn’s gift to me.

Now we just have to live long enough to use it.

It was a long night. We faced threats from both ahead and behind, and the shadows and mummies had taken their toll on us. Qatana used the last of her spells to block the rear, while I conjured a stone building to partially block the passage a ways ahead of us. It’s normally used for shelter in the wilderness, but we needed a wall that we wouldn’t have to break through later and this fit the bill, especially since it lasts for several hours. Of course the yeti can just climb over it, but it was still useful as a bottleneck.

From what we can tell, a few of the yeti did, indeed, spend part of the night on top of the structure but stopped short of approaching us. They simply sat on the roof line, watching us as we watched them. Eventually, they got bored and left. Amateurs. Keeping a night-long watch is kind of a whole thing for us.

(Uqtaal Necropolis, morning)

People are upset with me. I get it. I changed tactics in the middle of that fight, and didn’t really have time to explain what I was doing while I was casting spells. We can’t function effectively as a team if we aren’t communicating with one another. The problems didn’t end there, either: afterwards, when I explained what I had done and why, it seemed as though they still weren’t hearing me. I was not trying to press an attack, nor did I think it wise to do so, but somehow that is the message that was received.

I don’t know how to fix this. I am not a tactician, and I don’t really understand the finer points of combat save for what I have learned from watching Sparna and Olmas. It’s difficult for me to explain my thinking in the heat of battle, especially when I’m reacting to a situation that no one else can see, and I don’t know when I am causing alarm or confusion.

All I was trying to do was stop those two yeti from getting away. If they could make it back to the rest of their tribe, they could rally a counterattack with more force than we were prepared to handle. I tried, but they were too fast and the caverns were too difficult to navigate. And then I found myself in the middle of a conjured storm of ice and sleet. I recognized the spell immediately—I actually know it, myself—and it was hardly dangerous, but it meant that a spell caster of some sort was coming. It meant the counterattack may be coming.

I did the only thing I could think of: I summoned a small cadre of fire elementals and sent them running amok through the caverns. My idea was to get the rest of the yeti tribe panicking so that the warriors and the spell caster would be forced to deal with it. I wanted their attention on the chaos, not on us. Qatana was up near me at this point and had a spell running so she could understand their language, and from what she told me this hasty, desperate plan was working. There were definitely panicked screams of “Fire!” and “Get water!” along with the unmistakable sounds of battle.

The others, though, seemed to think this was a waste of time and resources. I didn’t, and still don’t, understand. There was also this tense moment where they wanted to go on an offensive to take advantage of the chaos. Again, I didn’t understand. There were still far, far more of them than there were of us, and we could very easily be surrounded in caves which the yeti knew and we didn’t. But, eventually, Qatana and I were able to convince everyone to withdraw while we could, and use the time to prepare for retaliation.

I am not sure how I could have done things differently, how I could have prevented this confusion. But I need to figure it out; our lives are at stake.

Obviously, having had a skirmish with the yet more or less implies that our attempts to parley with them were not successful. Not entirely, anyway.

We were able to solve the communication issue with that spell Thadeus taught me, the one that creates a shared language among the participants. It’s the same one I used with mom and dad back when all of this began. But communicating turned out to be the easy problem: the hard one was making any sense of what was going on.

Qatana and I sat opposite two of the large creatures, separated by one of the necropolis’s anti-life barriers. The conversation, if you can call it that, was mostly a mix of threats and bravado, all of it directed at us. It was not a waste of time, however: we learned that their chief insisted on destroying the caravan and killing the people that he called “the outsiders”—that would be us—and that his subjects fully intended to carry out his orders. Negotiation was clearly not in the cards. This bothers me. There’s no reason to have to fight our way through here.

Two more things came out of the exchange. The first is that the chief normally did not talk like this, and that even the members of the tribe found this to be unusual. The second is that this whole change started “two moons ago” when the chief was “blessed by the gods”.

What does that mean, “blessed by the gods”? I don’t know, but I can’t help but wonder about all the little coincidences that are piling up.

Back at Dead Man’s Dome, I know, I know, I heard a voice laughing out in the darkness, almost as if it were the wind itself. That laughter turned to rage when the last of the frozen dead had fallen. More recently, we had that massive winter storm—we may as well call it a morozoku—parked over the only mountain pass into Tian Xia, and doing things that storms just did not do. Like, staying in one place for days. And following us. And that laughter; the same voice we heard at the Dome.

I admit that this sounds crazy, but I have a suspicion that we are still dealing with Katiyana here. Look, I know she’s dead—we have her corpse, for gods’ sake!—but maybe what we’re up against here is her spirit. It would explain the laughter. It would explain why all of this seems personally directed at us. It would explain the chief’s recent change in attitude if he was possessed (and, to the yeti, that might look an awful lot like “being touched by the gods”).

It’s not a perfect fit, admittedly. I can’t explain the storm, nor the timing of “two moons”. But I’m not an expert, and the one person in our group that should be an expert knows even less than I do and has no interest in changing that. The basics line up, though.

And remember that this place used to be a shrine to Desna. In one of the chambers we found armor and a sword that were made to destroy spirits, as well as exorcise them from the bodies they possess. What if the exact things we needed were sitting right in front of us? Wouldn’t that be some amazing stroke of good fortune? The odds of that must be astronomically small. If only there was a goddess of luck…

The others are skeptical. Ivan sees Oni and Five Storms everywhere. Olmas is on board with the possession idea, but is pretty sure it’s not Katiyana because she’s dead and he doesn’t understand how ghosts work. I don’t even know where to begin with that. I’m afraid to ask Qatana’s opinion because she’ll give it to me. Maybe I should work up the courage to talk to Koya.

I hate this place.

Abadius 31, 4713 (evening, Uqtaal necropolis)

The Hidden Truth symbolizes the ability to see past the obvious and the banal to a greater truth within. Sometimes this discovery is an esoteric one, sometimes it is a literal find, such as an item revealed within a room. Regardless, it is a card with the power to reveal secrets.

Misaligned, it can mean a secret being revealed to the subject’s detriment.

Seven months. Seven months, we’ve been traveling together. We’ve watched over one each other, cared for one other, broken bread together, and when it was called for, fought together to protect ourselves and our charges. For seven months, across some sixty-nine hundred miles, we’ve done all of that, sometimes in the face of seemingly unbeatable odds, and not one of us had fallen. And then, today.

Not Olmas (in spite of his best efforts to do otherwise) or Qatana (who we can’t seem to keep from wandering off) or even Ameiko, but Bevelek. Bevelek.

This is not his fight. He and his brother have no quarrel with anyone. They are just here to do a job: to help get us from where we were to where we’re going. They’re not involved. Nothing was supposed to happen to them. It’s not right.

And it’s pretty much our fault. We thought the passage behind us was safe. We had every reason to think it was safe. Obviously we were wrong. Did we miss a side passage? A secret entrance somewhere? Were we being followed without realizing it? I guess it doesn’t matter. Those are just excuses, and they don’t change the fact I am staring at a funeral shroud. We’re supposed to keep these things from happening.

I feel sick.

I’ve known him (and his brother) since I was, what, seventeen? They’ve worked as drivers for Sandru’s caravan since the beginning, and I met them in mom and dad’s warehouse that spring when Sandru finally returned to Sandpoint. I’ve always liked them, the little I saw of them. They were friendly, kind of talkative—Bevelek more so than his younger brother—and always made a point to say hello when I was around. Bevelek was especially good at working with the horses, and he’d invite me to come pet them or even help groom them as we were waiting for the wagons to load. This is how I repay that?

I didn’t get to know him or Vankor very well back then, but in the past several months a lot has come out. Their dad used to run a small courier service of some sort back in Magnimar, but he ran in to hard times and that was that. I’ve actually met their sister—I didn’t know who she was at the time—at the Old Fang. They’re still in Magnimar, all of them. Every now and then I see Bevelek writing to them.

What else is there to say? Bevelek in particular just seemed to like people, much like Sandru does. He loved being around them, talking to them, hearing their stories. He was so quintessentially Varisian that way. And he loved to travel. This trip was exciting! Dangerous, sure, but that’s why we’re here, right? And now we’re talking about him in the past tense.

Vankor was distraught, practically in shock. Honestly, I could barely face him. Sandru was unreadable. It’s just as well. I don’t know what to say to him.

At least we can do something about this. I am determined to, anyway. This journey has been a trial for everyone, in all senses of the word, but there’s also no denying that we have enriched ourselves in the process. We have taken the lion’s share of the spoils since this began. Yes, we have also taken most of the risks, too, but we are not the only ones here. We need everyone, and we can’t just turn our backs on those who are supporting us and making this trip possible. We can’t just put Bevelek to the earth like he doesn’t matter.

It would be wrong to assume, though, so I broached the subject with Vankor.

“I am sorry about what happened to your brother. We…we may be able to bring him back. But, we don’t want to do this against his wishes or yours. I need to know. Is that something you want us to try?”

This took him aback. He looked up at me hopefully.

“If you can bring him back…Yes. Yes! Please! This was…it’s too soon.”

I nodded, solemnly. “We can’t do it right away, but—we can do it. We do have to know, though…people get a choice when you try to call them back. It’s a difficult and costly spell. Before we commit to it, do you know…would he want to come back?”

He didn’t even hesitate. “Yes! I am sure he would. He loved life.”

We don’t have the money. Or rather, we do, just not in the right form. According to Qatana, the spell consumes a single, valuable diamond and ours our too meager fill that role. There are no gem exchanges or diamond deposits here, obviously, which means we will have to wait until we reach Tian Xia. Koya has agreed to preserve his body using a spell. This will give us the time that we need.

The more pressing issue is, however, is preventing today’s disaster from playing out again. We can’t be in two places at once, nor can we fight a battle on three fronts. We need to be able to explore ahead and secure our passage through here without worrying about the safety of our camp.

The necropolis seems to be guarded by undead. The headless mummies we’ve encountered both along the Path of Spirits and here in the burial chambers seem to be the resident hall monitors, attacking any living thing that enters. What makes them especially dangerous is the aura of paralyzing fear that surrounds them. Get caught off guard, or worn down by the relentless assault on your psyche, and you are overwhelmed by terror and magically rooted to the spot. This is what happened to Olmas two nights ago, to me and several of the others today, and probably to Bevelek before he fell.

Our first priority is keeping more of them from coming up from behind us like they did today. Qatana and I have some ideas, but the best ones can’t be acted on until tomorrow so we’re in for another tense night.

Next on the list are the yeti. Obviously, they did not build this place, but they’re here now. The truth of it is that they are squatters as much as we are trespassers, but from their viewpoint we are invading their home and they’ve been rather aggressive about delivering that message. Not that they’ve actually said anything to us, but nothing communicates intent quite like an ambush.

The necropolis and the Path of Spirits were carved out of the mountain, and the latter occasionally intersected with naturally formed caverns to form those side passages I spoke of. A rather extensive network of caverns and fissures adjoins the catacombs, proper, and the former is where they’ve made their home. They seem to move back and forth between the two. The Uqtaal excavators apparently didn’t care if their necropolis simply opened up to the caverns in places—they may have used the voids in the rock to save time and labor, for all I know—probably because there weren’t yeti living there at the time, and the residents were not alive to complain about the decor.

I used one of my newest spells to project my sight and was able to explore much of it, albeit sloppily, until the magic expired. That is how I know all of this. Yes, it was an invasion of their privacy, and yet another trespass to add to our list of sins (one that is much worse than the first, if we are keeping track, since it was intentional). I am sure it won’t be the last, either.

This actually bothers me. There are wizards who specialize in these sorts of divinations and I am not comfortable around any of them. There is more to the school than what I am doing here, of course, but my problem with it is that there isn’t much more. It is a field that is ripe for abuse. All it takes is something you owned—even just a piece, really—and someone can spy on you from a distance with a reasonable expectation of success. Possess even the smallest piece of their person, such a bit of hair or even a nail clipping, and you can nearly do so with impunity. It’s distasteful.

And of course I am doing something much like it now. I can argue it, justify it, point out that we were attacked first, but I am still crossing that line. It’s a struggle at first, but each time it gets just a little easier. Mom, and probably dad, would say that the world isn’t so absolute; that it’s a messy place, and circumstances matter. That the stakes matter. Sometimes doing the right thing is not the same as doing the right thing. This…is probably true. But, sometimes I wonder. What if there really is an absolute right and wrong, and all this talk of nuance is just something people use to excuse their own moral failings? Or worse, to justify them. Maybe the world isn’t messy; maybe just people are.

But, we need more information about the yeti here, and we need to get it without risking our lives. I’d also like to not risk theirs. Where this falls on the axis of right and wrong, I don’t know, but it’s the best idea I have on a very short list of ideas. So, excuse or justification, I’ll probably be doing this again.

Before that, however, we need to stop them from raiding us as we explore the pool room. Much like the mummies we need to block them off, only whatever we put up we need to be able to pass through in the future. That limits our options. I have some ideas here, too, but none of them are particularly good.

The pool room is the real mystery here, and we need time to uncover it. The revenant…whoever it was in life was almost certainly slain here. A revenant is born out of hatred and a single-minded purpose: avenge their own death. It’s said they can’t be destroyed until their killer is slain, and we can thank Qatana for validating at least the first half of that theory. (I have to wonder what would happen if you were killed by a revenant and became one yourself. Would the two of you be trapped in an eternal battle, neither of you able to destroy the other?)

We don’t know how it (he? she?) died originally. We only know it wasn’t the spectres: the body is too far from the water, and the spectres don’t seem to be able to cross beyond the edge of the pool. So, whatever did this is obviously still alive (or given where we are, still undead), and able to move around. Which leaves three things we have to worry about tonight: mummies, yeti, and something else that we haven’t seen yet.

Because what we need after today is another challenge.