3. Laura's Letters

Laura's Letters


  • A different room entirely - spartan cots in a small, but clean room with a pale stone slab floor. From outside, the faint bustle of a city waking up filters through the windowpanes, accompanied by the ever present sound of gulls. 206, or Jaxon as Laura calls him, lies curled up on his side on one of the cots, Ashla on the other, neatly tucked into her blanket. Both are still fast asleep, though Laura was just woken up by a cool cat's nose pressed to hers and the tickle of whiskers against her cheek. Nox is exploring with the typical wariness of cats in new surroundings, belly low to the ground, while a yawning Laura sits, reaches for her glasses and her stationary to write:

    "Dearest Barton,

    I'm coming! Wherever you are, however badly in trouble, I'm coming to find you. Though the revelation of the Zhentarim being the cause of your absence had me so shook up that Feowem stepped in to big-brother me, I feel like I can breathe now that I'm on my way. Don't be upset that he didn't keep your secret, please Barton - he held it in for as long as he could, but it's obvious to him too that you should've returned by now.

    He called you a bad brother, for making me cry like that. I would've been angry, except I could tell he really does care. About us both, really. I'm trying really hard not to think about all the ways in which you could be hurting, but when he told me, the second he told me, I revisited the scene we snuck past outside Norwick. That panicked young recruit, his head cracked against the wall. The cold, almost casual cruelty of it and the haunted familiarity in Jax's eyes.

    I'm still frightened, but after Feowem calmed me down, that sense of urgency that I've tried to push down, telling myself to be patient, returned ten-fold. I can't just wait - it's too late for that now, the opportunity to act was almost gone already. Night was falling as we parted ways at the crossroads, the ferry making ready to depart in the distance. Too late to tell anyone else I was leaving - a strong sense of now or never pounding in my veins and driving my steps forwards, as the moon rose to light my path.

    Farian waited by the gleamstones. He knew I was leaving, of course he did - but he didn't try to stop me. Rather, he seemed there only to wish me well. To tell me he was proud, to tell me goodbye in so many kind words that I struggled to find mine. Surely I'd soon be back? I can't just leave everything and everyone for good, without a proper goodbye! All my friends, the 'best' friends I've ever had, all my work, all the mysteries yet unexplored - but I have to admit that the future right now is fraught with uncertainty. Peltarch might be marching, and win or lose, nothing in the wake of such a war would ever be the same.

    Moonreach dwindled in the distance, a wraith, a dream that seemed to be fading with every step. I heard the bells toll as the ferry called out for the last passangers, and it sounded like mourning. But behind me, muffled by the fog, came hurried footsteps. Metal greaves, a figure clad in plate armour emerging. It was Ashla! She said she couldn't let me head into danger alone, and I was too thankful to try and dissuade her. After we'd already departed, more footsteps - someone or something approaching through the mist at breakneck speed, hurtling through the air, tumbling onto the deck with a thud that had the other passangers reaching for their blades. It was Jax! How he made that jump I'll never understand, but it's clear he didn't stop to think about it. And I'm very grateful for that, too.

    Looking at them now, asleep in this small room at the Lighthouse, my heart aches with affection. It aches, too, for those we left behind, without so much as a goodbye. But if all goes well, we'll be back in just three days, Barton. As luck or providance would have it, the ferry we caught was the last going out for the foreseeable future, but it will be returning too. I wish the brave Lord Stockley the best possible luck in his desperate errand to broker peace. We've offered our assistance, too - even if that should prove yet another risk, it's one worth taking for the worthiness of his mission and the kindness he's always shown us.

    I should finish on a bright note, Barton, and here it is: Henry's alive! The knights we spoke to disbelieved my claim of kinship, unsurprisingly. The mockery seemed uncalled for, but all that matters is that they believed me and of that, Ashla made sure. I couldn't have done it without her - now a raven's being sent to Henry and with any luck I'll meet my cousin for the first time before the three days are up. I really hope he knows where you are.

    Please, please, please be alive! Hang in there, wherever 'there' is, until I find you.

    Your desperately seeking sister, Laura"


  • A pale, hazy moonlight filters through the many-paned windows of L3 as Laura enters, dejected and weary. She slumps down on the bed, kicking her boots off a good minute or two later, then groans and twists around, shedding her jacket as well. Nox, for once, is nowhere to be seen, the cat having gone on its own mysterious cat business in the twilight hours of the day. Grumpily, Laura sits up after another couple of minutes and reaches for her stationary and quill, writing:

    "Every day, I'm waiting, Barton.

    Waiting for you, for word of your whereabouts, for news on Henry failing that. Every day, I wander the halls and hear hushed conversations, an anxious buzz, comings and goings with hasted steps through the library. The confrontation with Peltarch's imminent, says nearly all of this buzz - they'll soon march on Moonreach, and that, I feel, is the end of the window of opportunity you have to get back here safely. I'm worried about the threat of yet another war, too - of course I am, but somehow I cannot seem to feel like it's my problem. I have no say in it, no real stakes except that I would defend all those who live here if attackers stormed through the gates, regardless of who they were.

    Patrik's disappointed with mine and several of the others attitude to this state of affairs. 'But they took us in!', he insists, as though that would make us honour-bound to fealty. 'Caleb trusted us!' And it's true that the Cleimants have treated all of us well, but even Mara Stockley, the most vocal in preaching their claim's right, made it clear from the start that we were not obliged to fight their cause.

    And I won't.

    My fealty, if I have any such thing, is more to Moonreach itself. These near crumbling ruins, the mad layercake mystery of the whole area, that's what calls to me. It was here long before the Cleimants and will remain long after we have all become dusty footnotes in the annals of history or faded completely. Yet here and now, it feels mine. We fought so hard for it, risked our all.

    And now, after all these months of near isolation in a next to abandoned keep, the clamour of a crowd grates on my ears. That not a one of all the people arriving is you makes it worse, makes me feel more alone, somehow. Resentful, even. Outside adventurers are finding their way here, delving headlong into the below like it were any old dungeon, good for treasure and challenge alone. I feel oddly protective, chafing at their presence. I know it's silly - at every turn it's been evident we were not the first to explore, nor will we be the last. So why not be glad of the bustle, happy to show newcomers around?

    But I'm not. I'm pacing and waiting.

    Maybe I need to get out of here, even for a day - to go looking for you elsewhere would at least be doing something, taking the edge off this frustration? I don't doubt that Peltarch is full of the same buzzing anxiety as here, though it is where I might need to go next. I might even find Henry, if I ask around for Siamorphans. But I can't, can I? I won't repay the Cleimants kindness very well by risking being made a pawn of by their potential attackers.

    And so I'm stuck here, waiting.

    Your frustrated sister, Laura"


  • The gulls cry and a playful wind whips at Laura's hair, fluttering the pages of her book before she relocates to a more sheltered spot on the ledge garden overlooking the crashing waves below the Keep. Nox has climbed the weathered old tree in a bid to challenge the gulls, perched as high as he can get with a hopeful stare - little cat jaws making a too eager, chittering noise whenever a bird swoops teasingly close.

    Laura shakes her head and grins, though her expression softens to a thoughtful smile as her gaze drifts to one of the lower branches, where a few buds of green have begun to sprout. The tree has appeared dead for as long as she's been at Moonreach, with herself, Lokelani and Florian as the chief advocators against the woodsman's axe. That little verdant sign of life feels deeply symbolic, thinks Laura, who settles in to wrote anew:

    "Dearest Barton,

    I'm alive! We all are, somehow, despite what seemed at several times insurmountable odds. I know we couldn't have done it alone - not without the aid of everyone behind us, for one thing: Farian, Ereda, Feowem, the Cleimants and the Selunites, even Kzagoth. It felt right and just for our familiars and animal companions to take part in the celebrations afterwards too, for several amongst them played a role in seeing us through the ordeal. Some more actively than others, I'll admit - though Nox has kept me sane and comforted throughout many a night that might otherwise have been sleepless, which most definitely must count!

    But most of all, we owe our success to Elias Houl. Despite being consumed by the Cerebrelith, despite being incorporated into the motley crew of its collected minds, the Selunite Theurge proved a tougher meal to digest than the demon could handle when put to the test. His voice, deep and measured, was instantly recognizable.

    'Duck', he said and instinctively I did, sensing more than seeing the others follow suite. A huge, dark shadow crossed over my head, vicious claws cleaving the air where once my head had been. We stood face to face with the Cerebrelith and instantly I could feel the weight of its mind press against mine - the force of its psionic attack dropping several of my party members to their knees in agony. I'd prepared the right spells, I 'had' - but as expected several of them had time to fade by the time we reached the final show-down. But thanks to Lokelani's last minute addition to my research, the Mind Blank scroll was still intact. The ace in my pocket, which I hurried to read, as quickly as my trembling hands and lips allowed.

    Much of the fight that followed is a blur - I remember Jaxon's fearless approach, glowing golden - I saw Ashla's hammer shine bright with moonlight, held aloft as she followed, the light glinting off Octavia's axe already in full swing. The demon's otherworldly howl as Aen's arrows and Patrik's spear sank into its flesh reverberated inside my head, a dull ache in its wake. I recall Jhael's dash to coat Lokelani's blade with the devil's blood mix, Loke getting back to her feet with gritted teeth to fire off our second ace in the pocket scroll. The Powerword hit the demon, it hit and the Cerebrelith seemed stunned, unable to resist as I had feared - but elation was immediately replaced by fear. A barrage of spells was coming our way, four, five or seven, cast simultaneously and without time to counter even one.

    Summons, evocation, magic divine, arcane and downright deadly, all at once. Crystalline constructs, I can handle at range, but summoned right up in my face? I went down next to Florian, reaching in vain for his hand to channel an ounce of healing. By the skin of my teeth, I struggled up to my feet again, rejoining the chaotic fight only to find myself lashed by thunder and acid rain in the Storm of Vengeance another of the demon's collective had conjured. My friends cried out, some almost within reach, but I could not resist the storm for long enough to reach them.

    It was the end - if not now then soon, I knew it and grit my teeth against the inevitable. I sensed more spells building up, soon to be unleashed from within the demon. But bewilderingly, this magic was warding, countering, healing - and I saw my dying comrades begin rise, each chugging fresh potions, each clutching their weaponry. Each turning towards the still stunned demon's body with renewed intent.

    When it finally lay dying before us, we bound it - the collective voices revealing themselves first as though 'freed' souls, trying to trick us. All but Elias Houl, who gave the ruse away bluntly. As we chanted the words of binding collectively, past our rising voices I could hear them, the cacophany of protests, of promises of knowledge and secrets beyond our ken. But undercutting the din, a low and sonorous barytone, calm yet insistant, said clearly: 'Do it'.

    Elias Houl, knowing he would be trapped inside the demon, trapped with that din of corrupted voices and facing the same corruption over time himself. And still he insisted - calm and unafraid. 'Do it.'

    Can a soul be redeemed and condemned in one go? By all rights he should be the first, gone from a good man to a villain and back again, full circle. And yet, with the binding complete, he's trapped there with the rest of what remains of the Cerebrelith. I don't yet know if or what I can do to save him. But I swear, I will find out.

    Thank you, Elias. From me, from my friends, from all of Moonreach, thank you. You will not be forgotten.

    A day or two later, Mara Stockley rushed in, breathless and smiling. The war's over, the North has won, like us they defied the odds and the Zhentarim are retreating, their leader slain! While there may be some fallout remaining, and while the price payed is still to be revealed in full as the survivors come limping back to the Keep, it's still the best news anyone could hope for. Jaxon sagged in relief, then lifted me up and spun me around in joy! Nerrez disbelieved it at first, remaining cautious but I thought I saw a softening something in his eyes.

    The circle's closing on this, the first chapter of my Moonreach stay. The same seems true for many of my friends, but all is not yet concluded. Will you return with the bannermen and allies of this place, Barton? Will you limp in, arm in arm with cousin Henry? I can but hope, though a hollow little part of me warns against it.

    Please be alive, Barton. I managed to stay that way, so it's only fair! Please, please, find me.

    Your utterly spent sister, Laura"


  • Sleep eludes Laura as the time to confront the Cerebrelith approaches. She paces L3 at the small hours of the night, bumping into the corner of the desk with a muffled semi-curse, rousing Nox who's perched ontop of the tallest bookcase, golden eyes gleaming, then narrowing to mere slits again when it's evident she's okay. Laura abandons the pacing, for now, slumping into a mound of pillows to write.

    "Dearest Barton,

    If all goes badly, this is goodbye. You know I'm not one for dramatics, but the last failure has me set on leaving no such regrets behind. You are the most important person in my life, and though neither you nor I are the types to say mushy things out loud, here goes.

    I love you.

    There, it's down in black on white, okay? If you ever read this and I'm ~not~ dead, you're permitted to snort-laugh. But if it comes down to the worst, then maybe it'll be some kind of comfort. I don't know that words help, though. You already know how I feel, so maybe it's more about me wanting to give the sentiment permanence of a kind.

    I rarely feel confident, but this time it's worse. It's not just the Cerebrelith itself; ancient, cunning and cruel though it is - it's that our camraderie feels frayed at the edges, splintered like the gleaming moonstones. Everyone seems to have withdrawn to their own chambers, brooding or battling their own personal demons. I understand that we each deal with the preparations differently, but it's left me with way too much time to think. Over-think, Farian suggested, though in a not unkind way. He's not a man well versed in comfort, but I think he tried.

    Aen, too, seems to have dug himself a hole of solitude. He sent me a letter, riddled with remorse for acts that were never truly of his own free will's doing. I understand - he's afraid. Afraid to be shunned, afraid to be included only to hurt us again. But I'm not afraid. I only wish he'd trust himself more and see himself in the same light that we do.

    I 'am' afraid of the demon. Pep-talks ring hollow to me, because all I can think of is all those brilliant minds it already consumed. I compare myself to the likes of Houl and know that I'll come up short. Our solidarity is our one true strength, and until I feel that reinforced I'll not be confident in any plan we make.

    But we've got to take initiative anyway. We can't sit around waiting to react, not again. So, I guess here goes.

    Your nervous sister, Laura"


  • Laura, staring listlessly at the ceiling, lies sprawled on her back on the bed of room L3. Outside, the setting sun makes a valiant attempt to warm the heavy grey stones of Moonreach keep, filtering gently through the many-paned windows of the room. Nox, with the unerring instincts of a cat, has found the warmest spot of sunshine to bask in, ontop of Laura's paperwork in the middle of the desk. It seems she doesn't have the heart to shift him from it, or perhaps not the inclination. Instead, she reaches again for her stationary and quill, turning over to write:

    "Dearest Barton,

    The aches, pains and conflicts of recent events has taken a toll on all of us. I find myself unable to focus, and for once I don't think I can blame it on the Cerebrelith. I'm anxious but at the same time exhausted, to the point where I spent what feels like hours staring at the cracks on the ceiling, studying the pattern of the grain of rock, the cut from the chisel shaping it, the faint glint of crystalline gleaming here and there like a secret code.

    That near paralyzing sense of failure's left me, but a dull ache remains. Where's this sense of hurt coming from? Part of it is from the events of last letter, of course. From that sense of a wonderous gift, no sooner found than smashed mercilessly into bits. Aen's renewed lapse of control, deepening the shadows within his eyes. Patrik's inability to show remorse or insight of his error. It wasn't his fault that the Zhents came - and it's impossible to know whether it would still have come to blows regardless. But he can't decide for all of us, without agreement or warning. I'm no longer angry with him, that was all in the moment. I'm just sad now, wondering how and if the damage of trust can be restored.

    Other hurts are much smaller, trivial by comparison even. But somehow they linger all the same, churning around with the bigger fish like so much debris. Maybe if I write them down, I'll be able to put them aside for good? Maybe if you were here, you'd listen and say something cleverly insightful, to cut right through my convoluted woes. Would that you were.

    My friends and I don't see things in the same light, where Caldera Manor and particularily Kzagoth's concerned. That in itself isn't the rub, it's inescapable and often sound to have differences of opinions. Stimulating, even. The hurtful part is to have my view belittled as girlish fascination and romanticism. Like I'm some moon-eyed calf, so enamoured of Kzagoth for being handsome that I'm making up excuses for him. That just isn't true.

    I actually like to think I'm a fairly good observer. That my judgement is sound and based not on flights of fancy, but my observations, conversations and impressions from the places I've been and the people I've met. I've spent countless hours at Caldera Manor, more than most any of my friends. I've spoken at length to Marielle, to Mudein, to Feowem, Grolmor and at times Kzagoth himself to form these opinions. And while it's true that I enjoyed Caldera Manor for sentiment's sake in one sense (for you), it doesn't mean I'm blinded by emotion. There were things I didnt like, too - that callous uncaring of whatever went on beyond the Manor's walls always chafed at me. The idea that whomever wins did so by right of strength, and that this is as it should be.

    But those things were balanced by welcoming everyone in who agreed to the basic rules, even those who'd be shunned everywhere else. Moonreach tries, Mara Stockley really does see to that, but the sneers and judgemental stares are never far away. At Caldera Manor, the odd ones out aren't odd though. The shunned and misguided, the ones who took a dark path were still welcomed in, so long as they behaved. While for some that was only ever going to be a surface act, for others finding a place of acceptance changed everything. That's what I liked most.

    Kzagoth and his group of Underdark outcasts were instrumental in creating that feeling, that open door policy (alongside Marielle of course). Only those used to being scorned and ousted know just what it means to be welcomed into the warmth of a home.

    Adan Whisperwick's going to change all that, he said as much openly. He's the worst kind of wizard, Barton - the kind that makes me ashamed of my arcane leaning, ashamed to be human. I feel sickeningly complicit just by fitting the categories he deems as superior, and angry on behalf of all my friends who are in any way 'other'. Component parts, to the likes of Whisperwick - valuable for harvesting, but no more worthy of sentiment than a stick of incense or diamond dust.

    That's evil to me, more so than anything I ever saw Kzagoth do. Ashla almost died at his blade, after she'd grudgingly extended him a modicum of trust. I understand how she must feel, especially when her paladin senses and blood all scream that he's evil. I also understand that she wants to protect me. But change perspectives and try to imagine the scene from his side: returning to find us meddling behind his back, tampering with the ruby he forbade us touching and worse, much worse, finding Marielle slumped before it, senseless.

    I've never truly been afraid of Kzagoth, until that moment. Even his tempestuous rage at Whisperwick's betrayal didn't scare me, but as the scene above sank in, the Cambion grew very still. His voice was deathly cold, the kind of cold I'm trying to forget hearing in your voice too, recorded on that hidden crystal Houl sent me.

    'Out of the way or I will kill you', he said - though most of us had already shrunk back instinctively. Ashla, however, moved in the opposite direction. Towards him, fearless, trying to explain though it was not the time for words or reason.

    Ashla says Zamo Palewind's forgiven without hesitation for being possessed, but Kzagoth was not - his mind dulled similarily to ours though, through the ruby. 'We never tried to kill anyone in that state', she said when I argued the case. But isn't that just because we were never in Kzagoth's situation? Reverse the scene: I'm flat on the ground, seemingly dead, Kzagoth hovering over me with a guilty expression as my party storms into the room, a room he was specifically told to stay out of, near a magic device we were very protective of. With minds and wills frayed thin by the black moonstone, would this really be a moment of calm debate or would they take to arms in a rage, much like he did?

    It bothers me that I'm accused of 'making excuses' when I'm just trying to see the full picture. The jokes that I had a crush on Kzagoth were fine, because I thought they were just that - but if anyone really thinks I'm beguiled by a Cambion who never once turned his charm my way, then that rather makes me feel pathetic. He is handsome - of course he is, all sorcerors are - but that part only makes me feel uneasy.

    I thought I saw the real him, that time we met outside the Manor. His loneliness resonated in me. That obvious self-hatred that not even solitude (especially not solitude) can alleviate. Is it so stupid, so very naive of me to think that even if the world sees you as a monster, even if you yourself see you as a monster, you can still choose to act to the contrary? And that one day, with those repeated choices and the help of your friends, you'll no longer see a monster when you look yourself in the mirror.

    Isn't that what I hope for Aenhever too? We're all trying to support him, but I think that to Kzagoth, it's Marielle's acceptance that would mean the world. Restoring their relationship isn't about the politics or rulership of Caldera Manor, not when it comes right down to it. It's about that hope and I refuse to have it dismissed.

    Thanks for listening, Barton! Not that you had much choice - I'm going to keep writing until you find me you know. If you're cost-conscious, hurry up!

    Your wordy sister, Laura"


  • It's beyond late when Laura, exhausted, scratched and sootied, creaks the door open to L3. Nox immediately separates his sleek black shape from a cozily shadowed corner of the room, meowing anxiously and slinking around her feet as she makes her way towards the bed, each step a weary, defeated shuffle. She slumps onto the bed, while the cat insinuates itself into her arms, buffing her chin with its forehead and licking her jaw with a sandpaper tongue. Laura's lips tremble. As Nox begins a rumbling, soothing purr, she buries her face into his silky fur and cries.

    The next morning finds its occupants sleeping in late, Laura eventually and groggily waking to wash herself off, fetch a mug of tea and then sit staring at her notes blankly. While Nox sprawls out to a full sized panther, claiming the bed to himself, she abandons the attempt at studies to write:

    "Why does it have to be so difficult, Barton? Why so messy, so hurtful, so full of peril, fear and failure? Why, when calm and clarity of mind is so well needed against the Cerebrelith's many guiles, do I have to lose just that, time and time again. I want to be hopeful, but we've made so many mistakes, wrought ruin to every boon handed to us, or so it feels right now.

    The most pristine, clearly glowing moonstone, ruined! Didn't I swear I wouldn't let that happen again?

    The exciting fossil recovered from that same moonstone, ruined. The chance to study moonstone formed into crystalline beings, ruined, alongside the chance of setting a servicable trap for the demon. And that's not even the worst part.

    The Zhentarim's arrival was a cruel twist of fate, in itself no one's fault. I knew we had no business fighting them - even leaving aside the slim chances of surviving the immediate confrontation they'd been itching for a reason, it seemed to me, to strike at Moonreach with the forces gathered near. A contingent of 300 or so well trained soldiers, according to the particularily nasty envoys of last. Jaxon stiffened, seemed still as stone beside me as the soldiers stomped into the frost-coated, glittering moonstone chamber.

    Their very presence felt a mockery to the virginal beauty of that place. The threat was acute, a pressure in my chest that I struggled to swallow down. Think Laura, think! Talk. We had to talk, had to negotiate, to throw them off Jax and Nerrez' scent somehow, had to...

    ...had to fight.

    Patrik threw the firebomb without warning. I saw it happen from behind, in a sickly slow-motion that made my life practically flash before my eyes. I knew it - we were as good as dead and still there was nothing I could do but watch that small, round, sealed little object sail in a lazy arc through the air. I had time to regret not having written my goodbyes to you, Barton. Time, even, to hope you wouldn't spend the rest of your life in sorrow and vengeance over my fate. Just enough time to pray you wouldn't hate me for having come here - and then all hells broke loose.

    First, the contingencies blared like sirens to my arcane senses. Alarm, Whispering Wind, everything you don't want going off when you know there are hundreds more where those present are easily enough to kill you. Secondly, the mages fizzled into sight, already incanting their battle spells. Thirdly, steel flashed and the cries of my comrades filled the room.

    I don't understand how I'm still alive. I feel like I shouldn't be - that I'm just dreaming, deep in a coma and clinging to life by the barest thread. Everyone was dying and I was running, trying to get them up, trying to peel myself off the ground next. It was madness and chaos and in the midst of it all, Aen, slumped and bleeding out on the ground, transformed.

    The beast inside, clawing its way out when death loomed imminent, was fury incarnate, attacking friend and foe indiscriminately. There was broken moonstone everywhere, in the air and underfoot, making the bloody scene bizarrely fragmented and filled with a twisted beauty. I tried Clarity while the werewolf still tore through the Zhentarim ranks, but it was to no avail. Later, when my friends too had fallen like broken dolls, I simply ran. Perhaps I could circle around and get someone else on their feet before the inevitable, I thought, in as much as I thought anything.

    My spear had long since been disarmed, but in my hand I clutched a single piece of gleaming moonstone. When a shadow of dark fur leaped over my head, I stopped in my tracks, held it aloft. My hand trembled, my voice waivering. Did anything I tried really matter or was it just that I was last, the last still on my feet? A part of him, the part that lives in the far recesses beyond endless rage and hunger, must have known that if I went down, the others would die too. And Aen's ever trying to protect us. Even from himself. His lupine eyes were suddenly filled with terror, meeting mine. Then he turned and ran.

    I got the others to their feet with bandages and my remaining healing. And then the weight of it all came crashing down upon me. The loss of that wonderous chamber, the one Farian found for us, the one that I am sure is what brought his rare and somehow troubling sunny mood on. He looks a different man with his eyes so bright, without so much as a scowl on his face - it's troubling in the same way that stumbling upon him in the bath was; suddenly seeing a man, and not an unattractive one at that. Not so old as I once assumed either. (Yes I know, fancying your professor like ~that~ is the classic, cliché mistake - one I absolutely won't make. Again.)

    Still, it breaks my heart to have to tell him the gleaming bright moonstone's all ruined and the amazing fossil with it. He's been going down into the dungeon a 'lot' to find such a thing and here I even stupidly questioned his good cheer as falsehood and trickery by the demon. I feel like such a failure.

    Aenhever, we found a day and more later. Mudein's Sending came unexpectedly but to great relief, for despite Granthim's search the trail had been lost in the Moongazing grounds. As if he vanished into thin air, said the imp. Turns out, that's sort of true. Kzagoth, bloodied and torn, sat wearily near Aen's strung-up shape, tending to injuries clearly wrought by fang and vicious claw. He brushed questions and concern alike aside, limping off while Mudein stayed on, as per instructions.

    Aen was ... gods Barton, he was himself and at the same time not, caught in an agonizing inbetween state. Too tired to struggle, but still not reverting to human form. Not fully. Mudein was troubled, said this was very rare and suggested we look into his lineage for explanations. The beast's lineage, to be more precise.

    The shackles, heavy, iron-wrought and goblin crafted, were strong enough to hold him securely, but to get him into them must've been such a struggle. It was written all over Kzagoth's bloodied frame and added to by the mangled goblin corpses scattered across the hill. The Cambion must've somehow managed to have flown the hulking werewolf here, before their bout continued to this end, upon which they contacted us.

    Aen's eyes were filled with shame. He pleaded for us to go away, to not look upon him in that wretched state. Octavia, as gentle as I've seen her, gave him water. He drank with a reluctant whine as I approached. What can you say, at a time like that? What can you do, except just to be there in support? I put my arms around his side, trying to console him as best I could while the others spoke soft words. I wanted him to feel warmth, to know I wasn't afraid or revulsed, that I simply cared. Eventually, between all our efforts, it worked.

    Restored, Aen dropped out of the too-big shackles, slumping forwards. Exhausted beyond words, afraid to know but still compelled to ask what damage he had caused. He's resting now, as we all are. Licking our wounds when we should be using what time we have left to prepare for the fight that matters most. The Cerebrelith won't rest. But at least for now, it cannot enter the Keep itself, at least not directly.

    I wish I could say the same for the Zhentarim.

    I love you, Barton. If all of this goes very badly, remember that I made my own choices and don't ever blame yourself.

    ~Laura"


  • It's late at night by the time Laura enters her room. Nox's golden eyes gleam down from a high shelf, the black cat nestled in amongst a pair of thick tomes, meowing admonishingly at her til she lavishes him with the appropriate amount of pets. She drags her boots off and changes into a ridiculously oversized, frumpy nightgown and thick woolen socks, finally taking a seat on the bed, where Nox deigns to join her. Laura lights the bedside candle and plucks a muffin from her pack, carefully wrapped since that morning. She sticks a single raven's feather into its top and contemplates it in prolonged silence, her expression bittersweet. Nox buffs her hand and starts to purr loudly, shaking her from her thoughts. With a small smile, she takes a bite out of the muffin, reaches for her stationary and writes:

    "Dearest Barton,

    Today was my birthday. Technically, I suppose it still is, assuming I write this on the right side of midnight which is hard to know for certain. But be that as it may, you've officially missed it. Again.

    I'll admit, 19 is an age which holds no particular significance, neither an even 20 nor a coming of age number like 18. And I always hated my birthday anyway - which is why I'm sat here in the dark, with only Nox for company though I could have tried to make things festive and shared it with my friends. But I'm invariably maudlin when this day comes and not only because I so often spent it alone. It's the time of year when the absence of our mother and father suddenly grows acute and palpable. What I want most of all on my birthdays has always been to be too busy to give that absence room to grow in my thoughts.

    This year, however, I feel like I was given a gift, albeit shared with all the group. We found Doba and with heartfelt apologies back and forth, all is forgiven! Not only that, but we also found a hidden entrance into the Tarnished Fane - an area even more huge than I'd envisioned, wreathed in darkness and gleams of fool's gold.

    We explored but a single corridor of a darkened prison-wing of sorts before coming upon the Kenku's nest, alight with candles from the Abbey and a curious, large metal slab with warm, glowing embers embedded within. Oh, and naturally we nearly perished as is tradition in exploring new places - fighting a golden-armoured undead dragoon, on the way in 'and' out. It's decidedly similar to the one in the catacombs above, yet instead of darkness and cold rot, this one seems filled with liquid metal. The corruption of both has similar roots, of that I'm almost certain (which is as certain as I ever am, with insufficient data).

    It was astrologer Farian who sent us after Doba - he's been going down into the dungeons for days now, returning dusty and scratched, yet as ever acting aloof and indifferent as though he couldn't possibly care for anything but the components the Kenku trades him. I know differently though. I know he cares, and I suspect that same care is why he took the black candle out of my unwilling possession. To study it, he says, and while that may be true, I think he wishes to protect us in his own way. I'm grateful to be rid of it as the only measure I could think of to safeguard it was to place it in a lead-lined container.

    The sample we painstakingly dragged back is man-made, much to my initial disappointment. I was hoping to learn the spell Farian's given me clues towards, but it wasn't to be. At least not today. But it ~is~ a curious specimen, older than the area we found it in most likely and bedecked with runes of a younger date as though repurposed for some unknown function. Likely it's part of a greater whole, which may await our future discovery. It's all very exciting, minus the risk of having our brains devoured that is.

    The second astrologer of the day, Attelo as he calls himself, might be another figment of the Cerebrelith's. Then again he might very well not be and provided the most interesting information about the area in times of old - in fact he speaks as though he visited a long, long time ago and in returning, found many things different. Even his yellow key, which he possesses and we do not (yet), came from a source long since absent.

    Attelo is quite pleasant, yet there's something about some of his conversation which feels probing in that same way the woman with the staff did. When he too asked 'Wouldn't you agree?', I felt distinctly unsettled, as though he was having a secret laugh at my expense. There's no way of knowing for sure - not yet. And I'd never spurn a fellow scholar, for if I'm wrong it would be more than merely rude.

    It was Attelo who pointed us towards the hidden entrance, after all. We wouldn't have found Doba without him and so gratitude seems in order. Except, helping us along the way doesn't negate the possibility of the Cerebrelith's involvement. After all, does it not seek those who seek the book? What if it's just nurturing our minds for a more full-bodied meal? Still - I can't go around treating every stranger with accusation at the top of my mind, that's no way to live. I'll thank Attelo but part of me will stay wary too.

    Sensible Laura. Is it a sign of being all grown up or more like the same as ever, though?

    Lieutenant Rixx, who just had to bring my mood down to my ankles before bed, assured me you were certainly dead and lost, for meddling with the wrong people. He didn't make much sense as to why a small clique of influential Peltarchians should be more dangerous than a Cerebrelith and the Zhentarim combined, though his fear was no doubt real. I'll choose to disbelieve him on your fate though, because you know how to handle the wrong kind of people, far better than the likes of Rixx, I'm sure.

    He also thought I was 25. I'm not sure if I should be offended or flattered when several of my friends expressed a similar surprise at my actual age. Maybe flattered though? I was never very good at being young. I hate parties, after all. I hate dancing and flirting and playing giggling games of who likes who. Patrik thinks I don't know how to even have fun - but I think I'm probably just an old soul, who knows what it likes and doesn't too well to pretend otherwise. Give me a cup of tea and good conversation, any day. Give me a good book and a cat on my lap and how could I possibly be unhappy for long?

    I do wish you were here, though. Nox isn't much help with this muffin and I'm too tired to go get milk to wash it down with. You officially owe me another birthday gift, so don't you dare being dead, Barton. That's no way of weaselling out of finding me the perfect present.

    Your officially ancient sister, Laura"


  • Laura, wrapped in warm blankets and with Nox purring on her lap, sits in her bed to sip a large mug of tea. Stormwinds rattle the many small windowpanes, the sound of distant thunder rumbling lowly throughout the Keep. On the nearby desk, a multitude of candles are lit, fluttering faintly at another gust of wind outside, though the open book's faded pages are carefully weighed down with smooth crystal. Laura's progression in restoring the text is slow going, and the chill of evening's driven her into her cocoon of blankets instead. Fingers warmed from the tea, she reaches for her stationary on a nearby pillow, adjusting the limp cat in her lap as best she can to begin to write:

    "Was it ever this way for you at Moonreach too, Barton? Whenever elation over some small breakthrough or revelation hits me, the very next moment tempers it with a chill - of fright, of worry, frustration or downright sadness. I wasn't always this way - I thought I was adept at keeping a professionally detached attitude, a healthy mental distance between myself and my object of study. But it's different here, I suppose because the stakes are far beyond mere academic credit. Even the likes of a strict scientific mind like Farian's has at times let glimpse a personal concern. In a remote and dangerous place like this, each person is that much more precious. Both for our collective survival and on a personal basis.

    Doba's missing. I knew he'd be hugely upset at anyone taking his candles, but could never imagine that I would be one of those responsible for such an atrocity in the Kenku's eyes. It cuts my heart to see the empty spot where he'd keep such constant shop, cozily lit by a candle or three. If only Florian had been present, perhaps it wouldn't have come to such a drastic head - but I was unable to properly convey to him the danger the black candle represented, wreathed as it was in powerful necromancy. And worse still, perhaps only by a fraction, was the hand from which Doba's deft thieving had taken the candle (despite my desperate dash to prevent it happening). The Zhentarim came calling and my one tentative hope now, short of throwing the candle down the nearest ravine to an unknown fate, is that the officer who owned it might be keen on shielding his true allegiances from his collegues. I admit it's a slim chance, but Jaxon seemed certain that Ravenhead was a rival of Geroldine's. Ashla's suggestion to leave it hidden by the side of the road as though by accident may still be the more sensible, but I'm worried that it will be found by some hapless wanderer who'd end up in trouble or dead for it. So for now, much to my unease and I'm sure yours if you knew, it remains in my pack. Doba ran off, hurt and confused, and hasn't been seen since.

    He isn't the only one to up and leave, though - to a pang in my heart that I cannot explain as easily as Doba's absence, Kzagoth, Grolmor and Mudein have left Caldera Manor. Or perhaps I can explain it just fine - what I liked about the Manor was that it welcomed those that fit in nowhere else, in a way surpassing even Moonreach's hospitality. It's what you liked too, isn't it? That no one there judged you, they understood, even respected you for what others might shun. And for my part, spending time at Caldera Manor made me feel closer to you, even though I knew myself too soft to really stomach its callous disregard for whatever its members do outside the grounds. Even to each other.

    But with Marielle's awakening and the truth of Kzagoth's actions revealed to her, the Cambion and his closest allies have voluntarily left - to spare her the inevitable decision she seemed to be coming to, despite my vocal protests. Kzagoth broke the rules, and thus should be banished. It's a terrible decision on so many levels, personal and professional both - for shortly thereafter, Rheya's fungalmancers gained considerable ground in the hills outside. While her cure worked, I can't help but find her motives rather calculating as surely Marielle's rigid stance on house rules made the outcome entirely predictable.

    The only thing we could've done differently was to lie, which I felt would be wrong too, considering Ashla's grievous injuries. Actions ought to have consequences, too - but it seems so obvious to me that the whole outcome of that ill fated day was a combination of detrimental factors set in place by the demon: the ruby, with its many intricate enchantments clouding Kzagoth's mind and injuring Marielle's, and the blackened moonstone draining us of our better judgement. For surely we could have waited, could worked on convincing them both instead of going behind the Cambion's back.

    It seems painfully obvious to me that Kzagoth loves Marielle (is love too big a word I wonder even as I write this, but when I see his blind rage replay in my mind's eye, followed by his cradling of her slumped form, I feel no other word will fit) - though she in turn, ironically for being entirely human as far as I have been able to discern - is such a stickler for her rules that his devil blood pales by comparison. Even so, when he spared her the decision and declared his gratitude to her welcoming him there at all before leaving, I thought I saw her falter. He did break the rules, but he did it ~for~ her. As misguided an act as that was, as terrible as it hurt Ashla, I can still empathize. If someone hurts the one person you care most for in the world, rules are rarely the first thing on your mind.

    The Manor seems quiet and dimmed without them, as though part of its fire's gone out. I miss Grolmor's grouch and Mudein's bluntness, even the Malaugrym's strange preference to drift curious tentacles into one's hair or pack in that oddly gentle manner the elderly creature had. I even miss Kzagoth, for it seems his character, conflicted though it was, is responsible for most of the void left behind. As though something vital and vibrant was taken out of the heart of the Manor. The school of the arcane remains of course, but the nerve, the passion that set it apart from others seem faded.

    Meanwhile, the investigation into the Cerebrelith continues. A few days ago, I had an interesting encounter with a robed woman by the trickling waters by the stairway between level two and three of the dungeons under Moonreach. Only, in thinking back on the conversation and the woman, I seem to recall the former very clearly and the latter rather sketchily. More alarming still, in trying to fit together my memory of going from the dungeons to the Mycelium in the company of that same woman, I find the details foggier still, eluding my mind's grasp.

    I had been studying a smear of black ichor in the pool's water, when the woman came upon me quite soundlessly. She had dark hair and a robe, weilding a staff of some sort. Instinctively I knew her for a fellow scholar, but cannot in retrospect divine what gave me that impression, nor any of her robes details or insignia. The more I work at the details, the more they elude me, but our conversation remains clear and vivid like crystal. I shall record it here, for writing things down is a habit I believe wise to continue given our current adversary:

    She commented from behind, as I leaned down to study the ichor:

    Woman: A form of desecration, no doubt, and native to fiends.

    Me (minus the stutter of surprise): Yes, it does seem that way to me too. But does it affect only moonstone I wonder?

    Woman: Probably not. It just chooses to target moonstones, considering their potency. And the fact that they hide certain secrets. There is power in moonstones, like there's power in most of the deposits in this place. Moonstones shine with moonlight even in the dark. That alone is hint enough of their secrecy.

    Me: I'm theorizing that light might be a vunerability of this particular fiend, but that's only for its evident fondness for the dark...

    The woman pointed at a trace of black ichor lingering near the corner of the pool.

    Woman: You missed a spot. It was definitely here.

    I collected it with a vial, suppressing a shudder.

    Me: ... so it was. I think it's not too bothered with the traces it leaves.

    Woman: Could be. But this is a sort of fiend that collects safeguards against its own weaknesses. I think we both know that, don't we?

    Me: Yeah... it's daunting to imagine how much intellect it has collected over the years. And what skills alongside it, you know?

    Woman: Like a school of mages, collecting books and arcana that new students can then learn in a fraction of the time. A living library.

    Me: A friend of mine thought himself to be tracking a collective, in fact. And it does seem like it's both alone and not quite. It would be admirable if not for how... how cruel it is in applying all that knowledge.

    Woman: Can you blame it for adding to its collection? We seek scrolls and tomes. It seeks minds. Like skipping straight to eating the cow that eats grass, instead of eating grass first. Raw knowledge is one thing. Refined, structured, and organized knowledge is quite another.

    Me: Of course not, but it's .... it's such a cold and malicious mind. What would it do with a beautiful blossoming mind like say, a lovely bard friend of mine? How would it even stomach the concepts of beauty within? I keep thinking that's why it broke Houl down first. To avoid indigestion from concepts he held sacred.

    Woman: Everyone has a concept of beauty. No one is one singular thing. Those its devoured already had such a concept. The things considered beautiful can vary, but the concept remains.

    Tell me, is it not a beautiful thing to uncover a secret? A secret that has eluded you to date, which explains all the gaps, errors, and inconsistencies you've discovered and made so far? That feeling of cohesion and harmony, that the world actually makes sense -- the sense you feel when it's uncovered?

    Me: Yes, it's a wonderful feeling. But less so to my mind if you can't share it with others.

    Woman: Some would sooner burn you at the stake for the knowledge you study. They would kill you, for learning. Learning something that contradicts what they think they know . . . that is the true malice. The true ignorance. Are such people really worthy of a knowledge they despise?

    Me: The world has such misguided and narrow minds in it, but I believe once you open one door to their kind of mind, some of them will rethink. Perhaps not all, but... but as a collective we can move forwards despite the odd fanatical fool.

    Woman: That's right. As a collective, we can move forward, despite the odd fanatical fool. We're stronger together, working in harmony towards a common goal: progress of the mind, to learn the nature of the world, so that we can master and make it better. Wouldn't you agree?

    Me: That's why knowledge is best shared, you know? Because it's a collective effort to build and advance it.

    Woman: Shared with those who aren't the typical fanatical fools, for certain. What use is it to share truth with someone who would mock it?

    Me: Well those are the types more likely to bring a torch to a library than eager eyes and an open mind..

    Woman: That's right. They are. No point in trying to have a discussion with someone so keenly un-interested in actual discussion.

    Me: Really, they exclude themselves for the most part. But people are capable of learning, too. Not everyone's like that.

    Woman: On the other hand, and speaking of beauty, there is something quite beautiful in the art and practice of conversation. Is there not? With the right people . . . We all become much more enlightened for it.

    Me: A good conversation is an exchange of thoughts after all. What could be more enjoyable than that?

    Woman: Precious few things. Hm. The creature was definitely here.

    Me: I feel that way reading a good book too, in fact. That I'm conversing with a mind - even if the author's long dead, that's a form of immortality.

    Woman: It is a form, . . . yes, . . . even better, to read a whole library. If books are immortality, then libraries are the immortal afterlife. Aren't they?

    Me (with vivid recollection of a certain Tuigan's desecration of a library shelf): If only they were as sacred. You wouldn't believe what people do to books, in ignorance or just petty malice!

    Woman: Sharing is ideal, but only when done correctly. Share with the wrong people, and you end up with a torched library.

    Me: Perish the thought...! But - but I do think even those not naturally drawn to libraries should be encouraged to seek out knowledge that broadens their minds.

    Woman: Yes, . . . they should be, shouldn't they . . . ? Those who wouldn't be naturally drawn to libraries, should be encouraged to seek out knowledge, that broadens their minds.

    She was repeating my own words back to me, for the second time now. I found that strange and couldn't shake the feeling that we were talking about something far more than literal libraries, yet pressed on - for I do believe in bringing outside perspectives into research lest it becomes stale.

    Me: How else will we find fresh new angles, if not for those diamonds in the roughs?

    Woman: . . . After all, . . . a library is just a different way to learn. A different way to collect and share knowledge. . . . How true. Even novices can have a natural talent, . . . and potential - room to grow, capacity to think , . . . even if they have not yet learned all they could. You do not refuse an empty cabinet, simply beacuse it is empty, especially not if you have books to store in it. Provided it is built well, and has good capacity.

    That definitely gave me pause. Empty cabinet shelves is not at all what I meant, and I had the sinking feeling of having unwittingly encouraged a Cerebrelith to feast upon the uneducated masses. The strange woman had seemed oddly knowledgeable on the topic from the start, though I too had enjoyed the conversation and kept trying to keep that uneasy notion from my mind. It doesn't do to succumb to paranoia after all - and even now I was far from certain, trying instead to clarify my meaning.

    Me: What I mean is... sometimes you've got to nurture a mind to see it reach full potential. And libraries are such a nurturing ground, if not the only kind. It's the gift that keeps on giving.

    Woman: To nurture the mind is divine, in that I agree. There is no greater a thing for a scholar. It is why we must open the doors to the library, to those who are able to appreciate its contents. We must open the door, and invite them in. If they are a true scholar, they will accept the invitation. Don't you agree?

    She wanted me to agree again. I pushed aside the queasy feeling that I might be nodding along to a brain-eating demon's notions, trying to tackle the conversation with my full sincerity instead. And I do truly believe in the merits of an open library.

    Me: Of course! What use is a library that no one can access? The magic of a book is dormant and meaningless until it finds a reader.

    The woman veered off topic then, glancing back into the waters.

    Woman: It did something to the waters in the Mycelium, didn't it? Something similar to that which it did to the moonstones here, and the red gem at Caldera Manor.

    Me: I don't know what, yet. But the effect seems similar - poorer judgement, heightened aggression amongst it.

    Woman: The secret - its reasons why - must be observable within. This water must run from or to the Mycelium. We are, after all, only one level above.

    Me: I wonder about the demons that once ruled over the Mycelium. Was it one of them?

    As I turned my gaze up to her from the darkened waters, she began to speak - but here my memories blur. Time seems fragmented and hazy, til I stood at the Mycelium's waters and spied therein a similar smear of black. The woman, if there ever was a woman, was gone. And thinking back, I cannot quite shake the disturbing notion of having stood face to face with the demon itself, leading it blithely along to the Mycelium. Not along paths it didn't already know from Houl, I imagine. But just the thought of the ichor coming from it being 'right there' when we spoke, instead of an old trail I and the woman followed is deeply disconcerting. As is my unwitting encouragement for broadening its range of victims. Empty shelves with good capacity..! Dear Mystra, I hope I really am just paranoid, especially since I must admit that the conversation itself really was quite intriguing. At least until that niggling doubt began creeping down my spine.

    Again I wonder if the minds and souls the Cerebrelith consumes become wholly a part of it, or if they're somehow separate, hoarded like precious tomes in its living library. If so, can someone recently 'collected' like Houl reach out to the living? Was that woman one of those consumed, too - now a mental cloak to be worn to converse, if indeed that is its pleasure?

    As my friends arrived to the water's edge, I put the strange conversation behind me - that is until an elder Myconid echoed the words the woman had used, in speaking of the very same demon who had come to their realm an age ago to set a trap to lure victims in. 'A living library, devourer of knowledge more refined than text, book, or formulae, sought those who sought the grimoire.'

    Yes, that grimoire, Barton. The Lesser Key of Sullivan, same as the one Rheya desires and Wavesilver wants. Yet it isn't of the demon's making, but more likely hails back to the demonbinder era. My studies into its origins are far from complete yet, though.

    'The Catalyst of the Tarnished Fane, the Lesser Key of Sullivan and the lithic words of old', spoke the last of the elder Myconids we could find. 'Such was the attempt . . . it failed . . . seek not the older danger, . . . lest you wish it seek you.'

    The so callled 'Tarnished Fane' lies somewhere deep below, connected or so I believe to the areas past the Abbey which might run below the Mycelium too. A manner of temple area, past a yellow seal door. The Catalyst is a powerful artifact supposedly capable of great transformation - sought by many, found most likely by Lokelani's sister in her ill-fated quest to become a true fey. The ancient magic sparked a reaction in the poisoned seeds already planted by Houl, causing the present corruption within the Mycelium.

    All this is exciting progress in our search, but as ever it's a long way forwards, fraught with danger and riddled with uncertainty. Not least the very probable notion that it was the Cerebrelith who pointed us this way. Seeking, as it did before, the seekers of knowledge. And yet we must go on, for none of us can just abandon our quest, least of all Lokelani.

    Your up-and-down humoured sister, Laura"


  • The warm orange glow of the fireplace at Caldera Manor illuminates the slumped form of Laura, curled up in one of the big armchairs with her chin awkwardly perched ontop of her knees and a book pressed flat to her chest. Her ever present glasses reflect the gently shifting flames, half sliding down the length of her nose as she drifts between sleep and waking state - unwise, perhaps, to let her guard down so at the Manor in which everyone's looking out for their own, as Feowem put it. But then she might not be entirely alone - in fact her satchel, half-open, reveals two pointy black cat's ears, twitching at any sudden sound. Nox is awake, even if Laura is not.

    Some time later, her own snoring wakes her and Laura bolts upright, looking around in mild confusion til she realizes her whereabouts and relaxes, rubbing a no doubt sore neck. With a huge yawn, she settles back into the chair and plucks a fresh page from her stationary, dipping quill tip into ink to write:

    "Sometimes when I speak with Feowem, if achingly rarely since he shunned us for associating with the Mycelium, it's reminiscent of talking to you, Barton. I can see why you're friends, and though my own friends think him prickly and moody (at least of late), he's precious to me for that reason. When at last his frost thawed, I found myself both seeking his advice and quarralling with him without reservation, much like I would do with you. He is as blunt as you too, and not afraid to tell me when I'm being an idiot.

    I really do feel like one, too. We came to the manor to discuss our findings regarding the monster from below - a Cerebrelith, as it turns out, a powerful demon employing both cunning, psionics and if need be, raw physical force. The book had the right of it, as did Ashla with her gut instinct; it is a fiend, and as such will have a range of unfair, annoying immunities besides its obvious and powerful mental abilities. Add to that all the tricks and skills learned from the minds of those it consumed, and it's a very daunting task going after it. We're not ready for that yet, though chillingly the longer we wait, the stronger its influence might become.

    Over time such a creature can grow to dominate entire communities, and so our efforts of peacekeeping seem more than worthwhile. Divide, isolate and conquer is the demon's tried and so far too true tactics, which I suspect it will employ on communities as well as individuals. Rheya's olive branch is hovering in the air, Kzagoth and the rest of this place naturally suspicious of its validity. I remain hopeful, on that front. So long as as the proffered cure works on Zamo Palewind, it could then help Marielle and Mills too. From there doors might open towards actual communication and even potential collaboration.

    Given this hope and our recent progress, why then do I feel like an idiot, you may ask? And the answer is Caldwell Wavesilver. In speaking with Feowem on the matter, it became blatantly apparant that I haven't got a single clue what to do about that man's upcoming arrival. I naively assumed you would turn up - I'm still hoping that you will, but obviously that cannot be my one and only plan. Feowem told me Caldwell's looking for a rare book, which may or may not be real, and may or may not be but a lure at the end of your pole in fishing for this mud-lurking slime fish. I can imagine what it is you meant to do, but what would you have ~me~ do in your stead, Barton?

    And what do I want to do, myself?

    I feel so very ill equipped to tackle this on my own. I wish I had some form of rage to draw on, but in thinking of our parents and all that which is lost and denied to us, all I feel is a hollow space inside my chest. An intangible sadness that doesn't even have a face, for I have forgotten theirs but for the briefest, shattered shards of recollection. How you forge that into vengeful, decisive action, I am at a loss to say.

    Ashla, in her usual calm practicality, suggested we capture the man and make him confess, printing the details thereof to spread all across Waterdeep to clear my family name. I suspect such an aim would strike you as too little, too late, but I can't go for blood, not when I don't know the details, not when I can't even summon up the anger I know I should rightfully feel. I'm just not a killer. I'm not even sure that I can ask my friends to do what Ashla suggested - it feels selfish and wrong somehow, for my personal life to become their problem. On the other hand, wouldn't I gladly offer my help to them?

    But it definitely can't be anything that I wouldn't be prepared to do myself. Surely that's the limit. Maybe if I learn enough pertinent facts about Wavesilver, about this book he's after, I can think up a plan along Ashla's general line of reasoning. Is it time to put my Legend Lore to use at last? The more I know, the more tools I'll have to work with.

    Compared to the danger of a Cerebrelith on the loose, threatening entire communities, the man who branded our family traitors is a small and personal matter. But in considering that you, I and cousin Henry (shockingly in Narfell too, throwing himself into peril by the sounds of it) are all that remains of the whole family, it's also deeply important. About Henry; should I reach out to him? It's shameful to say that I don't even know what he looks like, when he is my only family aside from you. And he's at the front, too! It might be dangerous, but if I wait, he may no longer be alive for all I know.

    I'm afraid, Barton. Afraid that I've lost you, that I'll lose him before we even have a chance to meet. Without you, what does it even mean to be me? And without you, do I even care about Caldwell Wavesilver? Neither punishment nor redemption of the Cade name will bring back what's lost.

    I feel lost, inadequate and fumbling for answers, but I know one thing. I have to still try and do ~something~.

    Your stubborn idiot sister, Laura"


  • Seated by her desk, Laura peruses an ancient, rotted but carefully preserved tome with equal parts avid interest and deep concern. Sunlight filters in through the many squares of glass in the lead-lined window of room L3, illuminating the desk, the book and its reader as well as the black cat Nox who is sprawled out with his fuzzy belly up, languid paws almost nudging Laura's elbows. She gives the occasional distracted pet, the silence of the room interrupted only by the turning of a page and Nox's soft purring.

    Only later, when the warm sunshine has withdrawn from the room, does she rise, stretch and fetch a small snack. By candlelight, spilling crumbs across a fresh page of stationary, she writes:

    "My head is finally, ~finally~ clear and the truth of our troubles revealed. I wish I could say that eases my heart, Barton, but the hard fact is that we failed. Or rather, we failed in one very important part, but succeeded in another. I pray that clearing the moonstone will still matter, when it comes to dealing with the monstrosity that's broken free of the ancient temple. But the harsh reality is that everything we thought we knew of our enemy must now be revised.

    Even the blackening of moonstone, I now believe had more to do with convenience than religion or farflung plans to open a rift to the Shadow Realm. For one, it was there, readily available, the corrupted temple sealed away by moonstone. Secondly, the blackened stone holds potent properties to cloud minds and render them more vunerable. Proximity to it makes coherent thought an ordeal, fritters away at memory and sanity. The shadows we thought kept assailing us en route to the temple were all illusion, phantoms of the mind. Perhaps that's true of all of them, though it makes them not the least bit less harmful for it.

    There was never any curse - there was only the monster and its spiderweb spread of darkness through the moonstone deposit, influencing us all. Thin, near imperceptible strands of it reached as far up as the floor above the main hall - small wonder that the commoners were acting like a mob and that even the clergy fell foul of the so called curse. The corruptive properties of the blackened stone were all around us and through it, a fell manipulator worked. A tall and towering figure we only barely glimpsed as it flung open the doors to its former prison, stunning all of us in the process.

    Even Houl, at what should've been his moment of triumph, mid-sermon with his arms outstretched. He knew himself duped in a single, cold, horrified moment of clarity before the end. A grisly end I wouldn't have wished on my worst enemy, let alone a misguided priest whose initial intentions were no doubt good.

    It 'ate' his brain. Cracked the top of his skull open like an egg to feast on the insides.

    I can't help but think the cruelty of having Houl realize the truth entirely intended. Thinking back to the voice we've heard through the mouths of Houl, of Palewind and Mills, reflecting on its persistance to bring about pain and loss, and comparing that to the tome recovered from within the temple, I find myself wondering. Selunites sealed the temple with moonstone, trapping both the monster and the heretical cult who had made use of it inside. Quite obviously it drove them mad and ate their brains - but was there more to the writer's madness than that?

    He thought himself to be speaking to his friend Silas, to see him clearly. Was that all insanity or does this monstrosity retain aspects from the victims it consumes - their memories, emotions, perhaps even skills? Does it hold grudges - targetting Selunites for spite? There's no doubt that whatever this creature is, it possesses a cold and calculating intelligence. And it seems to me to have a certain preference, a 'type' of mind it finds more delicious than others. If it feeds on more than mere brain matter, that makes perfect sense.

    The question is how to figure out that preference, before the bodies with brains scooped out start piling up. Not to mention figuring out how to fight it, when every weakness we thought we knew might be but another veil pulled over our senses.

    Sorry, Barton - this all came out rather speculative and disjointed, but in summary we recently went after Houl, finding several obstacles in our path to slow our progress. Some of them dealt with by our allies, others by us personally - Mills and Palewind among those, whom our enemy had very diligently attempting to murder themselves lest we abandon mission. We managed to thwart that ambition twice over, but it may have all been a bid for time to complete the ritual that broke open the temple below, a maddeningly slanted building encased in moonstone, now completely blackened.

    Though thinking back, perhaps it had been too late for some time already. Either way, I find I cannot blame myself when the truth was so obfuscated and my mind at such obvious disadvantage going in. I'd suffered horrific flashes for the week or two leading up to the event. I'd see your body before my eyes, broken and lifeless. I'd feel the hot blood gush over my fingers as I rushed towards a stunned Ashla, Kzagoth's blade painting a crimson arc as it split her side open. That paralyzing feeling of shock, of sorrow and defeat left me as much of a sleepwalker as ever my comrades, as Mills who'd stood staring blankly into space.

    I was falling apart and I knew it. Simply having my faculties restored feels in a somewhat selfish way a win. The ritual we performed at the heart of that hidden temple really was a win, cleansing the entire moonstone deposit! But it won't be a true victory until we deal with the root of the problem. In the blackened temple, we found evidence of an ancient binding circle, once used to hold the creature captive. The rotting book shed more light on the how and why, though parts are entirely illedgible and others difficult to interpret for lacking context and archaic wording. It's all very exciting, but I find myself ashamed to say so with the very real danger still at large.

    It's clear to me that identifying the true nature of our assailant is the imperative next step. But I'm struggling to find any relevant source material in all of Moonreach Keep to shed light on it. What little I've scraped together points elsewhere - towards Rheya's gloaming tower at the Mycelium and Caldera Manor, where we still have an uphill struggle to deal with the fallout of Houl's actions under the creature's command.

    I still hope to intercept Wavesilver at Caldera Manor, too. And I still hope you will do the same.

    Your busy sister, Laura"


  • The sun is setting, turning the mist that seems an everlasting companion of Moonreach Keep tinged amber, peach and fiery red. Out on the small garden ledge, a lonesome female figure sits, head bent over her writing - although on second scrutiny she isn't entirely alone, for carefully sidled into her shadow sits a small black cat, watchful yellow eyes gleaming faintly. As day fades into night, Laura writes:

    "Most beloved brother,

    I hope you know that you are just that, Barton. Beloved.

    I mean it in a genuine and deep-rooted way, I mean love in that it's you and me against the world, should all the world ever turn against us. But never will I be on the side that's against you - you have to know that. You have to rely in that, even if you yourself feel like I'd be justified in taking such a stance.

    I am not saying I'll condone everything you do, by sheer virtue of being my brother. I'm saying, plain and simple, Barton, that I'm a thinking, feeling, responsible adult now - and that you should trust that my judgement is sound when I say you're not alone.

    Is it vengeance you want? That's not a sentiment with which I'm intimately familiar, but please don't think I won't empathize nor that I will shrink from helping you, if help is what you need. I know that name by now. Wavesilver. Will that person coming here be what reunites us? Or wiill your hand waver from striking him down, if I am present?

    If it does, I'll punch that man in the gut myself and while he gasps for breath, I will bid you explain to me. Explain, if you can, why death is the punishment of choice, rather than stinging disgrace, financial ruin, public humiliation or any number of other choices available. It seems when it comes down to it, it's always a life for a life - even in hypotheticals, like the one Ereda and Lokelani debated.

    For my part, dear brother, I would like my enemy to be alive to suffer my retribution. For a good, long time, at that. Ideally they'd have the good grace to find actual remorse in realizing their crime. More ideally still, they'd work to rectify it for the rest of their lives, thus sparing others a similar fate.

    I'm not sure if that makes me an idealist or simply crassly pragmatic. Maybe it's a little bit of both. Aen called me vengeful when I suggested there was a way to make the collective pay for a collectively poor decision. Not with loss of life, you see. But loss of community. I found that fair, while Aen thought it cruel.

    But the premise of the argument was that this community had caused the death of one's sibling. Meaning you. And I cannot think of a retribution suitable for such a terrible loss, unless it too felt like a terrible loss. I'd just want everyone involved alive to feel it. Perhaps that is cruel, after all.

    All this is to say, my dear brother, that Houl's attempt to hurt me, to cut me in such a way as to create an opening for his attempts to make a puppet of me too, have got to me, but perhaps not in the way that he anticipated. He showed me a recording of you at your worst - not just professional worst, but with a bitter, acidic edge glimpsing through. A you you never showed me - remorseless and harsh. Killing a man. But throughout it all, all I could think was how lonely you must be, to carry all this anger yourself.

    It isn't yours alone.

    Even if I don't remember them, they were my parents too. Please, Barton. I understand why you kept me in the dark before, but I'm no longer a child. It's my right to be involved. It's my duty to share the burden with you.

    Find me. Include me.

    Let it be you and I against the world.

    As it should be.

    ~Laura~"


  • In L3, the piles of books have shifted once more, migrating onto shelves and onto the floor besides the two desks that occupy the room. One desk holds a borderline neat array of paperwork, small piles of related subject matter held in place by stone or crystal paperweights. On the other desk, closer to the doorway, a sprawl of samples of various nature have been arranged. Some are minerals, like a small cluster of green, crystalline shards, others liquids within various vials with labels unreadable by anyone but Laura herself. Finally there's spore samples, pressed inbetween two sheets of thin glass next to a magnifyer device.

    For now though, Laura's abandoned the work in favour of her bed, where she's fashioned a makeshift recliner out of pillows as she writes:

    "There's so much to do and to learn, Barton - and while normally, this would only enthuse me, right now I'm fighting the fear that time will run out on us and render my mind a shallow ruin, unable to complete any of the exciting potential studies on my intellectual smorgasboard.

    Jhael's tears and the tremble I felt as she curled into my arm's embrace felt familiar, felt as though a mirror of my own. 'Without my mind, who am I even?', she murmured forlornly. That seems the question of the day, the question that keeps me up on too many nights when I should be at my rest, nagging away at all the sensible things I tell myself in the light of day. Much like the battle Aenhever and Nerrez wage against the beasts in their blood, reason alone won't cut it. Words felt futile, so instead I just held her close. I'm not really a hugger, but I know how she must feel - the same way I do, multiplied by ten.

    There are gaps in her memories and Ashlas - chunks of time unaccounted for, dreams and reality blurring. An all too familiar pattern that we're nonetheless unable to break, even knowing the recipy rendering the mind that much more vunerable. Dayweed. Nightweed. And then the curse, sinking merciless claws into each to make them do our opponent's work. Make them puppets. Still - using them so has proven a risky gambit. Is our opponent blinded by power, by the arrogant assumption that everything and everyone will inevitably see things 'their' way?

    Jhael may not remember it all, but she isn't alone. Nor is Ashla - and each are clever, capable and determined in their own right. Granthim took quite some coaxing, but eventually spilled the beans on his master's clandestine doings. His story matched that of Ashla's celestial steed's, quite closely. Each had carried a large, heavy box through hidden tunnels out to locations matching those on the map we recovered earlier. Obviously these were clues we soon followed, finding one of them lead us to a cavern with moonstone, smeared and blackened by the body of an unknown moonfey before it.

    Why involve Ashla and Jhael at all, I wondered along the path there, through the crags, following Zamo's trail. Why, when Zamo Palewind could move unseen through shadow and when Mills, fully possessed, had power it took all of us combined to contain. The note recovered even said so, 'Mills and Palewind are enough'. But ah, clearly not enough when one delights in twisting the knife. Our endeavours that day saw friend turned to enemy, first by Zamo's utilization of a crystal simulating the bright light of the moon.

    I saw terror in Aen's eyes before the flash of light had blinded me - terror, for he knew instinctively what was coming, before the convulsions of the change began. A low, hungry snarl as the light faded enough to reveal his hulking lycan form. Zamo, temporarily hidden, soon revealed himself anew and the fight that followed was all kinds of chaotic, defence and offence alternatively, crying out, pleading, praying that Aen would snap out of this spell he was under.

    I don't recall much besides the desperate desire not to see my friends hurt. Meanwhile the corrosion of the moonstones spread quickly - until Jhael, quick and sharpthinking Jhael, had sidled through the chaos to stand before them, incanting the beginnings of Combust. Fire to purify, to burn the blood away - it would work, if at the cost of some of the stone. Zamo's eyes narrowed dangerously.

    He slipped through shadow, abandoning whomever had born the brunt of his attacks and with a flash of his blade, went straight for Jhael. Again, Jhael, who had been nigh impaled upon that very blade before, even while begging him to come to his senses. It wasn't fair, it wasn't right, but I was too weak, too far away to do anything to stop him.

    But Aen, quick, strong, agile and furious, was not. Did someone's plea reach through in time? Did he react, perhaps on a primal level, to one of his pack being in peril? I thought I saw clarity wash over his bloodshot eyes, moments before the leap. A flash of dark fur, barrelling hard into Zamo's side.

    'Impossible!' cried the tiefling, who at the very real risk of immediate dismemberment by lycan, opted out through crushing a teleportation crystal. Aen slumped, shrank in on himself and turned anew - exhausted, frightened that he'd hurt any of us. I admire his determination in continuing from that point, for the day was far from over.

    Our challenges continued, at the nearby chapel, likewise corrupted. Here Mills awaited, with a twisted sermon and a dark, terrible revelation - for the moon, the hidden moon, seemed to glimpse through the mist in perverted mockery of itself - at first it struck my fearful eyes as corroded and black, but it was but a hollow circle outlined by the thick wreaths of white. As if to say it was nothing at all. No solace, no guidance and no mercy for the deluded flock of faithfuls.

    A sick sense of dread washed over me, but fighting hopelessness was a luxory in contrast to what awaited. For with the hollow 'moon' rising, so did the darkness' hold over Jhael and Ashla tighten to control. They both turned against us with hate in their eyes, and it was all I could do to hold my footing and my shield steady. But that would only buy us so much time. I had to burn the moonstone. I couldn't be as precise as Jhael, there wasn't enough time, Barton! A wall of fire and then Ashla was upon me, pummelling my shield with her hammer again and again.

    I didn't want to ruin yet another shrine, a cold, sinking feeling in my gut insisting there was something else, something smarter I could have tried. But has my dispel worked even once? All it does is trigger the contingency to pour shadows forth - and we were already hard pressed as it was. But around me, my friends urged, they pleaded, they spoke the right words to somehow reach through. First Jhael - to Mills obvious dismay. She turned the tide, and Mills retreated in haste. As the dust settled, Ashla too came to her senses. We stood in the ruins of yet another chapel, alive but with a bitter sense of defeat and abuse.

    The day could not be allowed to end there. No, it couldn't, no matter how rattled and spent we felt. Because we did in fact possess something capable of changing everything. A ritual, an ancient and powerful rite of cleansing with divine and arcane magic interwoven with the astrological. Enough components for three such rites, but would it work? Would Houl himself, now that Mills and Palewind were licking their wounds, step in to halt us?

    We approached the next shrine with little but sheer determination left. I won't let another one be destroyed - I've done little but, it feels like, in desperation and futility. My magic just isn't strong enough. Not alone, anyway.

    But between the three of us, it would be different. Ashla, with the Selunite prayers in the middle, myself facing Jhael on either side of her, weaving our arcana in unison. Is it possible two of us would have been enough? The cries of those behind us, who held the darkness back without our aid, tempted me to find out. But three felt right - it felt necessary, for the complexity of the weaving and the risk of someone momentarily faltering.

    The air grew cold and heavy with dread behind us. Shadows moved, poured forth like a dark wind. I heard Aen's bow twang, heard Jaxon's armrings jangle with each strike. Patrik hollered, Florian's voice soared til he too was hit, stumbling back. Cries of pain that I had to ignore. Darkness, alive with malice. Something solidified - I dared not turn to look, I couldn't afford to, but I knew that presence. We'd felt it at the first chapel and only the moonlight had saved us. But now, there would be no such grace.

    Florian twirled his Emberhold staff, bursts of fire jutting forth. I could sense those hit, the creature screeching and recoiling, but would it be enough? Again and again - while it swatted Patrik against the wall, raked vicious claws into Jaxon's side. Swiped at Florian, who stumbled back, his song caught in his throat. I saw Ashla reel as the creature attacked her, too - Jhael grunting but somehow standing firm. I steeled myself, feet placed just so to at least keep my balance.

    It hit me once, was it twice? And then someone thudded into it from behind. Arrows whizzed past in rapid succession, each hit a little burst of flame - and then Florian's voice resounded, hitting a high note that seemed to pierce the creature through and through. With that, it crumbled and the darkness, oh Barton! The darkness lifted, not only from the area around us but the stone itself brightened. The blackness receded, clear blue crystal once more and then glowing brighter, lighter, blinding white! The earth shook and cracked beneath our feet, and stumbling back, I saw moonstone beneath the thin crust of dirt - the bedrock itself gleaming crystal, the seam stretching for untold miles beneath and beyond the few parts sticking up.

    More work remains, and no doubt our enemy mobilizes even now, knowing just where we must go next. Question is, is there anything we can do but the same, hoping we'll be strong enough the second time around? Don't get me wrong, I'm proud of what we accomplished, but I still suspect the worst may lie ahead of us. Mystra grant me the insight I need to make the right choices.

    Your dogged sister, Laura"


  • Sunshine spills through the window of L3, creating a flickering display of light across the desk, though no one currently sits behind it to study the piles of books and scrolls that clutter its surface. Laura's sprawled out in bed instead, ontop of the covers, her oversized blue nightgown forming a pale puffy cloud around her skinny form. Nox is fast asleep ontop of the tallest bookshelf, a single paw dangling down. A sleepy quiet fills the room, til at long last Laura turns over, reaching for paper and quill to write:

    "Dearest Barton,

    I should be writing about recent events; about both our struggles and successes of late, but these are so recent that they remain a jumble in my worn out brain. I'll get to them next time I write, because inbetween those pivotal moments of despair and occasional triumph, life continues with its usual, more mundane challenges and comforts. I'm of a mind that the little things matter. So today's entry's devoted to the meaningfulness of the mundane.

    Do you remember, Barton, when I was around 13, 14 years old? I was thin as a reed, my recent growing spurt adding somewhat to my height, but very little to the shape of my body. All the same, those changes felt uncomfortable and alien to me - I wanted to cling to childhood, even whilst knowing that I'd been forced to leave that behind, alongside my latest school. I was angry with you - because who else was there that I could direct such irrational, unreasonable feelings towards? I needed you and hated you, because you weren't there. Because I couldn't talk to you about the things I needed to talk about, even when you were. Thinking back, I think I was really just lost and in a kind of mourning.

    We didn't speak much, during those trying years. But I remember this one time when you visited, two or three weeks later than you'd promised. I'd given you the sullen, silent treatment til at last I stormed out of the room, screaming 'It's as if I don't even exist!' or somesuch.

    I slammed the door behind me and then regretted it so bitterly that I could barely breathe. Of course I was too stubborn to open it all the same - but I sat with my back to the door and after a while, I could hear you get seated on the other side of it. We sat there silently for quite some time, til I felt the ice in my stomach begin to thaw. And then you spoke.

    "Being invisible isn't necessarily a drawback, Laura. It can be a sort of power, if you decide to own it. I've made my living on not being noticed. Not for anything but the results delivered. And what's wrong with that? It's kept us safe. But don't ever think that you're invisible to me."

    I felt my eyes water, something stinging my chest. A jumble of painful pinpricks left behind from careless comments and snide remarks by my so called peers. Fitting in was so tiresome back then that after a while, I stopped trying. I let myself fade into the background, and the only attention I would get was a jab at my appearance or lack of family and friends. I 'had' friends, though - when I was younger, at the school before this one, and I obviously had family even if you were -so late- in showing your face.

    I cracked the door open and reached my hand out for yours. You held it, and we sat there a little longer still.

    "Why does it hurt when someone calls you ugly?", I asked at last. "It's not like I even 'want' boys to notice me. I'm not interested in 'them', so what does it matter if they don't notice me? And the girls who comment are stupid brats, why do I care what they think with their stupid little minds?"

    "I guess you're a stupid brat too", you replied. We both broke out laughing after that and went down to the dorm to eat snacks and talk for hours about things I don't remember. Inconsequential little things that made me smile. And for the first time in months on end, I didn't feel alone.

    Here, at Moonreach, surrounded by a new group of friends and with a healthy couple of years added on for maturity, the question still remains. Why ~does~ it hurt, to be overlooked or automatically dismissed for not being attractive? I'm arguably noticed and valued for the very qualities I consider my best, after all - for my mind, my care and my work. And it's not like I have my eye on someone or even desire a romantic relationship. Why, then, does it still sting? Perhaps it's ghost pains carried over from the adolescent Laura - or perhaps it's simply human nature to compare ourselves to others, regardless of the why. Without rhyme or reason.

    I suppose we all, to some extent, want the opposite of what we have. The 'invisible' one wants to stand out, but equally I've found that my friends here, radiant Ashla, striking Jhaelryna and even the beautiful Lokelani have suffered for that reason. Being different, even in what seems to the outsider as a positive, often comes with envy, prejudice and resentment attached. You were right, Barton - going without notice is in many ways safer and when I compare myself with my new friends, I often feel the fortunate one.

    But still, a small, stupid brat side of me wishes I was pretty, too. That part thinks I'd be more confident, more successful, less afraid of life if I was. Come talk sense into me again, brother dearest. Clearly I still need it!

    Your loitering-the-day-away sister, Laura"


  • For once outside the cozy confines of L3, Laura sits on a bench by the wall, on the little garden ledge outside the L-corridor itself. Daylight's fading across the misty water, and the white noise of the waves far below creates a soothing backdrop to the wind and the faint scratch of quill upon paper. Nox, ever present at times like these, has climbed the dying tree at the opposite end of the garden, gleaming golden eyes fixed on the distant gulls flying overhead as Laura writes:

    "Today, I find myself slow and sluggish, as though gravity suddenly decided to double its stake. I keep trying to tire myself out physically, both to get in better shape and so that I'll find sleep less elusive, but it's as if the accumulated running, fighting and endless climbing of stairs and hillsides finally caught up with me. I'm weary and wishing it was enough just to stay in place, but my mind keeps wandering, aimlessly flitting from one thought to the next, without depth or focus.

    Too tired to think straight, but not tired enough to sleep.

    I miss you, Barton.

    Lokelani and I spoke of home, recently. Specifically, her home, which she's in the process of rebuilding after the Zhentarim attack that shattered both her village and her family. It got me thinking on what it is that makes a place home - on the very concept of home, actually, because does it necessarily have to be a place? To me, you're home, because the locations where I spent most of my life up til now are more or less interchangeable. Some I liked better than others, but the one constant, the one thing that was mine and no one else's, was you. With you, I always belong without needing to try. Isn't that kind of deep familiarity the essence of what home is?

    It's different with Loke though. Having grown up in one and the same spot means all your memories are rooted there - even if your family may be gone, it's as if a part of them still exist in that place. The flowers her mother planted, that spread and grow wild and free, the trees and bushes tended by her careful hand. The winding footpaths and hidden places where she and her sister played, the way the seasons change. That's a form of familiarity that can bring comfort, too.

    I can't very well miss what I never had, I reasoned out loud. Home, being somewhere to return to, a place not only safe but rooted, invested in with time, memory and emotion. Perhaps you remember ours? Perhaps you feel a pang of longing to the place that's lost to us both, to the house where we once lived? I feel it, too. But for me, it's simply longing without a destination attached. I've spent my life adrift like that, hesitant to truly connect to people or places. I learned it from you.

    Could you ever see us settling down somewhere, Barton? House, garden, perhaps a few animals, at the outskirts of some ridiculously idyllic, sleepy village. The thought feels alien to me - at best I dreamt of Candlekeep, of making a name for myself as a scholar. A room of my own, a room where I'd stay for any kind of long haul, that alone was a stretch. But a house? What would we even do, in this hypothetical village life? Lokelani offered it so freely, for us to live there, in the village she and a handful of other survivors plan to rebuild. I find I can't picture it, not for us, but the thought still lingers.

    The garden, especially. There's something tempting about planting something and seeing it grow. Planting something that takes a long, long time to grow - that's a luxory to me, an investment of the type we could never afford, no matter how flush with coin.

    Maybe not a cottage but a wizard's tower? A small, fat one, though - kind of a hybrid between the two? I prefer comfortable and cozy, but it pains me that I don't have the slightest idea what you would like. We never really talked about it. Come to think of it, did you ever stop to think about what you wanted, even once, after being landed with the responsibility of caring for me? It breaks my heart to think of all the things you opted out of your life, all the dreams and possibilities you had to give up.

    I want for you to have a second chance at them all, Barton. I'm all grown up now, I can pay the bills, this time around! Seriously, I'm perfectly able to and I don't mind doing it! You can choose where we live, big city apartment or country bumpkin cottage, a life of academia or hermits on a mountain - I don't care. So long as it's something you choose just for wanting it.

    I saw you, through the ruby as I inched close enough to study it in Kzagoth's temporary absence. I saw you and I embrace tearfully, reunited at Moonreach Keep. Despite my own better judgement, I found myself fervently wishing it was a prediction, a vision of something true and not merely desire given shape. Lokelani, who went as far as to touch the ruby, said that it felt entirely real, as though she was transported back home, where her sister awaited. So distraught was she afterwards that she decided to actually build the home herself. If it was not true, she means to make it so herself.

    And she's close, now. We recently learned her sister's nearby, at the Mycelium. Though Dorron Aster, the spore-clouded knight that was once a friend of Feowem's, was worrisomely peculiar with his phrasing, we are invited to travel there soon. I'm trying very hard not to think of Loke's sister's reaction to those same spores, especially with Feowem's staunch refusal of the mushroom knight being anything like the real Dorron. He considers his friend dead, perhaps even literally so.

    By Mystra, may the same not be true of Hokanoe.

    Your sluggish sister, Laura"


  • "Right - sorry about that, Barton - Nox is a wonderful companion, but a terror when bored! I believe I tired him out with play, for now. Back to the topic at hand, my very first casting of the astrological divine spell VIEW THE PAST. You'll have to suffer through a detailed account, because I need it stuck to paper in case I forget.

    The spell created a sheer, thin tear in the air; a screen of sorts, through which the party could look to observe past events occuring in that same room.

    [One year ago:]

    A tall masculine figure approaches the crystals, his robes bedecked in black and silver, with ornamental moons visible. He stares up at them in silence, while his knight companion speaks.

    Knight Companion: So it's true. This Keep's secret. The moonstone's secret, found here. Right here.

    Black Robed Figure: In a calm baritone . . . There is no truth to any of it. What we're seeing here is an aberration.

    Knight Companion: But sir. Don't you see what this could mean? For our order's tenets. An extension of the very theory.

    Black Robed Figure: You will speak nothing of it. To anyone. And we will research how to destroy it.

    Knight Companion: . . . I must disagree, sir. I know there's more to this. More that we must uncover. I will be informing the others. As soon as possible.

    Black Robed Figure: His words reveberating with power Stop.

    Knight Companion: Suddenly freezes.

    Black Robed Figure: . . . You will do no such thing.

    The scene dissipitates, slips through my fingers though I try to hold it to completion. Time speeds up, moving towards the present for each scene that follows.

    [Several months ago:]

    The same black robed figure is pacing before a large, dark mirror.

    Black Robed Figure: Come on. Come on then. Show me.
    . . . I know I've been losing time.
    I know it's you. I know you're in there.
    Come out. Confess.
    So that I can be free of my doubts and fears, once and for all.
    . . . I SAID TO COME OUT! Voice reveberating in anger as the scene suddenly vanishes

    [One month ago:]

    The black robed figure anew, but this time less frantic, more controlled, with a different pace, posture, and tenor. He softly writes on parchment, murmuring to himself.

    Black Robed Figure: . . . This place, . . . this Keep, . . . and our Hidden Moon, . . . hides something only our foregangers knew how to reveal to the world . . . an ancient alchemy, astrology, and arcane, . . . steeped in prayer, . . . to pull back the veil, . . . and show them the cracked foundations of our faith.
    . . . and you, . . . and I . . . will be the ones, . . . to carry it out.

    [The evening of the attack on the Keep:]

    The black robed figure staggers into the room, his hand bleeding, as he pries shards of glass loose from it, wincing and grimacing in pain.

    Black Robed Figure: What've you . . . what've you done, . . . you, . . . what've you . . .

    He limps and stumbles, shoulder against the wall, hood falling to reveal High Priest Elias Houl's visage. Shards of glass fall to the ground as he plucks them loose, his tired and frantic eyes flickering up at the black moonstones.

    Elias Houl, of the Hidden Moon: . . . So you see now, . . . In a different, controlled tenor

    Elias Houl, of the Hidden Moon: . . . just as you saw, in the throne room, . . .

    Elias Houl, of the Hidden Moon: . . . Whimpering and shaking his head . . . but I . . .

    Elias Houl, of the Hidden Moon: . . . Controlled and calm But I . . . ?

    Elias Houl, of the Hidden Moon: . . . The whimper slowly subsiding . . . but I know now, . . . what I am . . .

    Elias Houl, of the Hidden Moon: . . . the true meaning, . . . of a hidden moon, . . . and all that it entails, . . .

    Elias Houl, of the Hidden Moon: . . . and the weaknesses, . . . of my fellows, . . .

    Elias Houl, of the Hidden Moon: Stands straight, now, reaching for bandages for his hand as he looks up at the blackened moonstone.

    Elias Houl, of the Hidden Moon: . . . it wouldn't have been possible, without my own sentiments.

    Elias Houl, of the Hidden Moon: Deep down, I always knew. There is no greater truth, than the twilight line, and the midnight divide. Between those they all pretend to be. And what they really are.

    Elias Houl, of the Hidden Moon: . . . Eyes resting upon the moonstone, flickering and waiting.

    Elias Houl, of the Hidden Moon: . . . Calmly Durothil's beyond our reach; Palewind and Mills will be enough.

    Elias Houl, of the Hidden Moon: It is in motion now. Not so long until our work is complete.

    Elias Houl, of the Hidden Moon: And the Locus Operandi will be ever one cycle behind.

    So the face of our villain's revealed, yet it's clear that Elias Houl is also a victim, his presumably solitary ambition to research a means to cleanse or destroy the darkened moonroot warped; cruelly reversed through the attempt. Through prolonged exposure, perhaps, or communicating with some dark entity residing within it?

    Certainly his symptoms seem similar to the following victims, but I'd wager he was the first (at least in this age) and directly affected by whatever sinister force is behind this. I'm of a mind to think Mills and Palewind were afflicted by mimicking the process, to a less complete extent to allow temporary possession. If, like the Flamekeeper phrased it re: the ruby, we're dealing with a parasite, then Houl is the primary carrier. I wonder if he can yet be saved, and I most certainly wonder whether his arcane skills are a result of the same reversal that saw his morals twisted, or whether he was always an extraordinarily gifted Theurge. Does his shadow mirrored self possess the opposite skillset, perhaps? Does the arcane belong to the parasite itself, a creature apart from Houl entirely? Or is there no parasite, only the potent, ancient alchemy triggering these reactions?

    Your question spouting sister, Laura"


  • For once, next to all books have been cleared away from Laura's desk, replaced by a meticulous arrangement of paperwork by more than one hand, each one different to her own. Some pages are in obviously poor condition, while others seem more fresh and recent. There's a map, neatly pinned to the wall next to the window, as well, with smooth crystal paperweights keeping each item in check.

    Nox sashays across the desk, idly stroking a sinuous black tail across Laura's face as she studies it all. She gently ushers the black cat away, pre-empting his attempt to bat the paperweights out of place and finally scoops him onto a pillow on her lap - sneakily transferring that to the bed once the cat's gotten comfy. Finally free of distractions, Laura writes:

    "We're getting close to the heart of matters, Barton. I feel I must write, both to sort out my thoughts and to commit them to something more reliable than my memory, should the curse eat away at it. While part of me's afraid (and rightly so), another is also fascinated and excited at the unravelling, for finally we're beginning to glimpse the bigger picture. But let me back up to the start:

    Lokelani's secret letter lead us to the cliffside overhang, where a lithe figure dressed in black robes awaited at nightfall. His build, voice and mannerism all suggested a high born elf, and at my whispered description of the emblem I spied on the robes as the wind tugged them briefly, Florian recognized it as the symbol for house Durothil - an old and powerful line. Unlikely to deign to deal with non-elves in any way that mattered, but desperation makes for unexpected bedfellows, even for a Durothil.

    His request in sharing what he had gleaned about our current foe was two-fold: first, that we should impart any and all knowledge to him that we had about the name 'Nimesin'. A fellow elven family, I would hazard, though whether friend or foe I am less certain. Regardless, none of us knew a thing and so that was quite a simple demand to meet. The second, I daresay simple too, at least in theory - that we advocate mercy upon all those used by the real villain. I thought at first that his insistance was born from someone close to him being involved, but it's equally possible that he meant to protect himself - for was not room L10 the residence of a Lord Durothil, attacked some weeks past and since vanished?

    The intelligence shared, then: the one we seek is male and dressed in black and silver robes (this matches Granthim's eye witness report closely). He's also a caster of both divine and arcane magic. This part, although I've suspected it, was still a surprise to have verified. Not because what I do is all that unique, but rather because of the high level and obvious potency of his spells. To truly master both the divine and the arcane without sacrificing something in the process... that ~is~ rare and would take a very long time indeed.

    Lastly, our opponent had been steadily traversing the catacombs at level four of the dungeon - to there and no further, at the eastern-most point. We wasted little time in doing the same, the Locus Operandi gathered in near full numbers. I'm as ever at a loss on how to glean north from south or east from west, below ground, but after a few slugging bouts with the undead we came to a chamber that seemed unusually sparsly haunted. 'This is about as far east as it goes', said Aen, and with that we spread out to investigate.

    A long, smooth slab of stone covered a wall at the back of the chamber, drawing Jhael's attention. After a timely dispel by Florian's hand, the stone vanished, revealing an ornate hidden door in an ancient style. Jhael cautiously dispersed of the trap set into its frame and with that, we stepped through and into a chamber that reminded me of the Abbey below - finely ornamented sandstone. Like the door, they seemed restored to much of their former glory.

    A small chamber sat at the end of the hallway. It held a single alchemist's workbench, an angel statue of the same style as elsewhere, and a large round mat underneath both. A mortar and pestle sat upon the workbench, alongside a vial and some papers. The smell was familiar - Dayweed, the herb myself and countless students add to our teas to study all night before this exam or that - but the paperwork suggested various means of amplifying the effect. It was signed 'Myrin Durothil' - our informant himself, I wonder?

    The statue drew comments - why was it there, why still serene and not defaced like the one at the chapel? We theorized it had to do with keeping the undead out, but the subsequent finding proved the matter more complex than that. In searching the room, including rolling the mat away, we found a trap door leading down - though before we could open it, a shadow moved at the corner of the room, ever so faintly illuminated by moonlight seeping through a crack in the stone.

    A sense of dread fell over me and I froze, while the shadow took more distinct shape and form. That of a male, tall and with long hair, fingers weaving arcane patterns in the air. It felt like time stood still - and when I finally let out the caught breath in my chest, my friends were close to death's door. Horrid Wilting drained the air of all moisture and a Black Blade of Disaster flurried about, cutting with ease through Ashla's armour... but while I was panicking, Jhael managed somehow to dismiss the blade, likely saving us all from being sliced to chunks. I got Ashla to her feet and the fight continued, the shadow itself not nearly so tough as the magic channelled through it. (8th and 9th circle, Barton! I barely just got to fifth)

    Clearly, the jig was up. But no more shadows poured out, unlike previous occasions where we'd have been assailed in great numbers. Something about this one was different - it bore something familiar about it, too, and I couldn't help but feel it was as close as we'd yet gotten to the true face of our opponent.

    We entered the trap door to another chamber below - similiar in size and to some extent content, but this was clearly a more closely guarded secret. It too held an alchemical workbench, but contrary to the one above, this had Nightweed - a herb most efficient in putting people to sleep, often used by hypnotists for its ability to render the user susceptible to their arts. And coupled with sleep deprivation due to Dayweed... well, the result would be the exact kind of blur between dream and awakened state that Zamo Palewind described, blackouts and memory losses included. But why one workbench above and the other below?

    This one seemed more 'private' and I wonder if it was kept hidden from whomever worked at the one above - if the puppeteer sought to use his possessed vessels with care to not let any one know too much, it makes a certain sense. There were more notes down here, too - many more, but none that matched the one from upstairs. Could it be deliberate though? I find myself wondering whether Durothil got to be a thorn in our opponent's side and the only way they found to be rid of him was to make him believe himself complicit, using the upstairs as a staging area. It's one explanation, at least.

    The handwriting here was different and distinct, including a ledger with names and dates corresponding to attacks - chillingly, including Jhael's own, as well as Ashla's. There was also a map with the locations of moonstone deposits throughout the Moonreach area - intended, no doubt, for corruption and to magnify the effect of our culprit's ritual. Two belong to the outlying chapels, yet on our to-do list. Undoubtedly a higher priority than ever.

    The room also held a tall, shattered mirror with darkened glass. It held magic once, Florian established, strands of conjuration magic that could still be sensed. The shattering must be somewhat recent, then.

    Finally, and the most striking object in the room, were twin angel statues, back to back with an orb held over their heads, representing (presumably) the moon. These seemed restored with great care and somehow cherished, to my eyes. One angel shielded her eyes with one hand, while the other turned her gaze low. And while we studied the various clues scattered around the room, Ashla pondered the statues. 'Shouldn't she be facing the other way, towards the sunrise?' she said of the one shielding her eyes. Tentatively, Ashla pushed at the statues and found they swivelled on a pedistal. With that, moonlight was let into the room, illuminating one of the statues' faces and the orb. It was beautiful - but nothing happened. Not until the statues were turned in the opposite direction, leaving the room in darkness.

    Hidden moon, indeed. For now, pinpricks of light were visible where the statue's eyes would be, past the shielding hand - and their light fell on the ground, where yet another trap door became visible. Just then, I felt something curious - the moonstone I'd been handed, the one I'd been told acted strangely before, began to jitter. Drawn like a magnet to whatever lay behind that hidden door.

    Before we got that far, though, Jaxon called out in alarm. A shadow stirred at the corner of the room anew. Another attack by the same shape, but this time casting only clerical spells - still very powerful, but this time expected. We fared better, but largely for the warning and the shadow itself seeming frail.

    The moonstone in my hand was a clear blue, yet when we descended to the final chamber to lay eyes on the darkened root of the moonstone there, I found myself unsurprised. Of course it would be blackened, of course we'd be too late. Only... we were much, much, much too late. This stain was ~ancient~ and much unlike the others, whose spread had been so rapid, in this the rot seemed halted to a glacial pace. Held in check, I surmise, by the glow of the moonlight from above which spreads down through the crystal.

    But the moonstone in my hand twitched and jerked towards the darkened stone. Likewise, the stones in Ashla's pack began to vibrate and she couldn't help but to go closer, hoping to discover why. Soon thereafter she backed off again, pale and shaken. 'Vile.. vile magics' she stuttered, explaining how a cloud had seemed to descend over her better senses, enhancing baser instincts instead. Reversing them, more like? Mercy became judgement, protection turned to oppression - much like Houl's latest reasoning.

    Shards of glass, presumably from the mirror above, lay scattered at one end of the room, still stained with blood.

    Numerous sheets of papers, some very old and crumbling, others fresher and more recent, lay scattered like an overlapping jigsaw nearby. Jhael, who studied them closely, surmised they were hundreds of years apart but each revolving around the same matter - the blackened moonstone and the question of reversal of the stone's properties through a combination of divine, arcane and astrological means. Alchemy and magic of a high order - one note even suggested a High priest was necessary, while the other hand adamantly underlined the word 'never' beside it.

    It seems likely that our enemy's aim is to change the entire moonstone deposit's properties, allowing whatever that dark, unsettling stain is to spread throughout it all. Creating, we think from earlier studies, a huge rift to the Shadow Plane or somewhere adjacent. The root's connected to all of it, and is, I suspect, not easily destroyed or surely someone would have already tried. Likely it's set in a key location at that, where harming it might send cracks throughout the whole. None of us felt comfortable trying, nor even staying within close proximity to the darkened moonstone root.

    Lastly, I put Astrologer Farian's knowledge to good use in casting the spell he had granted me, to see the past. It's an astrological variant of a divine spell usually reserved to Selunites, and it seemed to me that the location, albeit tainted, would allow me some added success. I still struggled to push back in time, the layers and scattered images flurrying past my mind's eye in dizzying succession. But eventually I felt four distinct moments of significance and grasped for them, my focus sharpened by Florian's angelic song which echoed through the chamber.

    ...hang on, Nox is messing up my paperwork in a bid for attention. Brother, please be well. I'll continue this letter just as soon as I've dealt with this impossible familiar of mine!

    Your cat-wrangling sister, Laura"


  • The stink of burning zombie flesh still lingers in the great hall of Moonreach Keep, trickling into its various chambers and corridors beyond. In L3, the window's open, a gentle night breeze causing the handful of lit candles to flutter and the papers to rustle gently, before Laura closes it half-way. A wan moon plays hide-and-seek amongst the clouds drifting by as she writes, while a pair of golden cat's eyes peer down from atop the highest of the room's many bookshelves.

    "Dear Barton,

    The past two weeks have been packed with turmoil, both within and far beyond the Keep proper. War's broken out - not the war between Peltarch and Moonreach that most here expected, but instead the Zhentarim launched a devestating surprise attack on Norwick. Faced with the brutal reality of this threat, it seems the North has united, albeit temporarily, to try and fend off the invaders.

    With the Keep all but deserted by Lunar knights and Cleimant forces, the enemy hidden within also sought to strike, this time at the heart of our defence against the cold and dark - the heartfire, tended by Flamekeeper Ereda. Her alliance with Kzagoth at Caldera Manor - already known to parts of the Council - came under sudden and vicious attack by High Priest Houl, in the name of the Selunite clergy. Despite our protests she was bound, gagged and placed behind bars.

    Priestess Leilail, whom I had previously trusted, now showed an uglier, ignorant side in her obvious glee at putting out Ereda's flames. The reason? 'The fire has magic in it'. Mark well, Barton, the condemnation of the heartfire voiced not a single concern for what type of magic it held, its nature, role or properties - no, suddenly it was all witchcraft and heresy and the pitchfork-happy commoners didn't take long to join in.

    'She's a witch, burn her! (No, wait, fire's bad) stone her! What about the dark elf and that tiefling?! Banish all evil! Won't someone think of the children!!!'

    While I've come to expect this sort of fearmongering and superstitious nonsense from the uneducated masses, it was a chilling experience to hear it from the clergy - from the mouths of Selunites, typically more well aligned with the second chance policy of the Cleimant Council. The part of me that once felt drawn towards a priestess life was appalled to see faith used like a blunt instrument and reason thrown out the window. It felt like mass hysteria, like madness descending over the Keep.

    Only Farian seemed to keep a level head, though as ever did not intervene past a scoffed warning of the attack that was sure to follow the fire's extinction.

    I was so angry that I cried, frustrated at my inability to change matters, at the stupidity and wrongness of it, at the danger it would put us all in and at my own tears. Why, why can't I rage at things that deserve real anger, why does it always become a choked jumble in my chest, a whimper instead of a roar?

    Caldera Manor, despite a gnawing unease about the unknowns of the ruby within the grounds, seemed a more welcoming refuge in the days to follow - though to my slack-jawed amazement, one late afternoon the quiet of the lounge was rattled by shouts and stomps of a myriad goblin feet, mobilizing to meet some unseen threat. 'Moonreach is coming!' I heard, and in the main hall Kzagoth swept past us with a snarl, his mood seeing even seasoned visitors like Feowem back immediately out of it.

    I followed right in the Cambion's wake, still curiously unafraid of him. Despite my utter lack of success at swaying High Priest Houl, part of me still foolishly thought that whatever the conflict, I could calm things down, be the voice of reason. Kzagoth didn't seem to register my presence as he boomed a derisively sarcastic 'welcome' down at the Moonreach invading forces - who turned out to be Astrologer Farian, alongside Jaxon and a big, glimmering construct.

    Cold, aloof, uncaring Farian, now with worry creasing his brow as he searched for mine and Jhaelryna's figures amidst the crowd. 'Return my students at once!', he shouted back, to Kzagoth's sneering contempt. Cold, uncaring Farian - who had scried for us endlessly when the darkness swallowed us up out in the Moongazing grounds. Who had paused so tersely, before asking whether I was still intending to study the astrological arcane, despite my red key aquisition. Of course he cared. I'd always known that he did, even if the others doubted me, even if he told himself differently.

    This day, he seemed struck with that very insight, as though he had just realized that we mattered and that we'd been struggling. 'I'm sorry!', he shouted up, while I hurried in trying to reassure him we were fine, that no one threatened us at Caldera, that we'd chosen to go but would return soon. Kzagoth scoffed and the goblins milled about, looking surly at the lack of fighting - but the dust had settled. No blood would be spilled at the Manor's doorstep, surely to Proprietess Marielle's relief.

    We returned inside, with Jaxon but without Farian and his construct - clearly there's no love lost on either side between him and Kzagoth. Back in the lounge, talk turned towards the war, tidings of Norwick's fall having just come in. 'Even Spellweaver's Keep is gone', said Mudein. Jhael paled, stiff for a single breath before she swept her cloak on and headed for the locus door. I stopped her, just shy of reaching it.

    You always thought I was sensible like that, didn't you? What can anyone really do, against the Zhentarim empire? I had to stop Jhael from rushing off into the jaws of death, obviously. But I couldn't leave it at that, not when it's her one and only treasured home. It's different for you and me, Barton - we pack lightly and I'd leave most anywhere and anything behind but you. At least that's how I've always felt up until now.

    So, let's not rush in blind, I said. Mudein lent me a huge scrying orb, the biggest I've ever seen, and I carefully honed in on Spellweaver Keep's courtyard, past a blighted Norwick absolutely riddled with soldiers. There was a crater where the tower had stood, but no debris - and the site itself had been closed off, with guards and mages posted around it. 'They must've planeshifted' breathed Jhael, relaxing a fraction. Sweeping the vision around, we saw small search parties moving in the woods beyond, looking for something. Survivors?

    It was clear, without her needing to say it, that the chance of even a single survivor would be all the reason Jhael needed to intervene. Jaxon was pale as death, but nodded his quiet agreement to the plan layed out - to teleport to the outer edges of the woods and stealthily make our way towards the most likely refuge for any mage that missed the Keep's planeshift - the druid's grove. Aen's familiar with the woods and would take us there, ideally without being spotted.

    Oh, I know Barton. It was a fool's endeavour and were you actually here to read this, you'd be livid. I'm guessing this is exactly why you wanted me far away from Narfell, knowing war was on the horizon, and here I was walking willfully into the line of fire. But we did 'try' caution.

    We tried very hard. It's strange - though in the past tenday, I've fought scores of fiendish goblins, countless undead, even had a living shade in my image try to climb 'inside' me, the one scene that replays over and over, churning my stomach, is that of the young recruit being pummelled to death by his commanding officer while we crept silently past. His fear clings to me like a ghost, his frightened eyes and the sound of his skull cracking upon impact with the rock wall.

    I wanted to 'do' something. I wanted to, but terror took a grip over me and one look at Jaxon's face told me no, a thousand times over, to intervening. He 'knew' that man - the officer with the cold, cruel eyes. Afterwards, he insisted that the officer would never have fallen for a ploy and never let go of his object of torment. But I saw the same sick guilt in his eyes as in my own, multiplied by far too much personal experience.

    I wish I could get that scene out of my head. The terror of being so nearly caught by Quartermaster Hive, that otherworldly buzzing, biting swarm of disgusting flies, that's somehow easier to shake off. It feels like a nightmare, like it couldn't ~really~ have happened. We couldn't really have been so lucky as to have his attention diverted at the crucial time, could we? A bombardment of fire to the west, over Norwick - a figure in the skies, blazing hotly amidst the dark clouds of insects. Could it really have been Kzagoth? The arcane eye that had followed us raised no alarm, but nor did it seem to do anything but watch - and then such a timely diversion?

    Why would he, though? Why, unless perhaps I and the others were crickets to his mind, and Hive another loathesome vulture.

    We found the druid's grove at long last, cloaked through dryad magic. Within, a single Spellweaver mage had taken refuge, but not just any mage - Bingo Biggs, longtime custodian, had hunkered down and been unwilling to risk teleportation because of the creaking wagon-load of magical goods he'd taken with him - the same hoard the Zhentarim were seeking. But the mass teleportation scroll Mudein had provided us would extend even to the cargo, without the risk involved in multiple trips.

    I'm certain Bingo's presence at Moonreach, as Farian's guest, saved many lives during the attack that predictably followed - though it seems our foe coldly calculated his odds, waiting until Ereda's fate had been decided, but before she could relight the fire. Houl tried to pin everything on her and the fiend of Caldera Manor - the tainting of the moonstones, the murders, the living darkness. It wasn't until after Lord Caleb had ruled against him that I realized it - why it made so little sense, why it seemed like madness. Houl looked so confused, so lost - as though the disjointed story he'd tried to insist upon was entirely real to him.

    We'd speculated that Mills wasn't the only one affected, but now it seems clear. Houl is quite likely a victim of the same corrosive curse. In the attack that soon shook the Keep, he vanished, alongside the former victims Mills and Palewind. We held the undead off by the skin of our teeth, but it was Flamekeeper Ereda's fire that truly drove them back. A pulse of flame, like a heart jolting back to life, set them all ablaze. It was awe-inspiring to watch, despite the stench that still clings to my clothes, my hair, the inside of my nostrils.

    I'll sleep with my window open tonight. Nox is perched on the shelf opposite it, as though hoping a bird will fly through, straight into his waiting mouth. Silly cat.

    Your foolhardy sister, Laura"


  • A cold, grey and dreary rain falls outside, pitter-pattering against the window of the usual room at Moonreach Keep. Within, with a rapidly cooling mug of tea next to a nearly burnt out candle and the usual plethora of books, Laura sits at her desk, quill in ink-stained fingers. Nox squints a golden eye half-open, black ears flickering at some sound only cats can hear before he rests back down against a plush, if worn mound of pillows. The quill hovers in the air for a moment longer, before its tip is gently placed against paper to draw the first line of many.

    "Every time I come closer in my search, it seems you also slip further away from me, Barton. My elation at meeting the same persons you've met, seeing the same places you've seen, fades all too soon for the inexorable fact that you're no longer there. And even the you that did fill those spaces might not be the you that I carry in my heart. Or so Feowem tries repeatedly to caution me.

    I'm not yet convinced. Whatever role you've played here, whichever mask you wore or deeds you committed, that's only one part of the whole of you. The pieces of you that I keep, that only I have seen, feel all the more important for it, as though I hold a version of you in my head that you may have lost sight of. I need to remind you that it's every bit as real as whatever it is that (according to Feowem) has weighed you down with guilt. But how can I remind you of anything if my memories are lost? It's this which troubles me the most, of late.

    I'd be lying if I said Kzagoth had nothing to do with the current line of thought.

    When we first encountered the Cambion sorceror, I was lost for words, cowed perhaps less by his fiendish aspect than by the overwhelming masculinity of his presence. That sounds stupid, even as I write it. Shouldn't I be amply frightened and repulsed by the first quality alone, let alone the signs of fiendish influence on the goblinoids we fought throughout the long and harried path to the manor? But thinking back, I believe I must've also seen him as a man, an attractive one at that, and subsequently swallowed my tongue as I always do. (I blame the many all girls schools you sent me to, though the general awkwardness at first encounters is no doubt in my own nature.)

    Needless to say, I made no lasting impression that time, ultimately shaking out of my intimidated stupor only to help Ashla to her feet after their inevitable clash. The ruby towering behind Kzagoth pulsed but once, and she was stunned and helpless. The ruby or perhaps it's elusive houseguest? I wonder if it was already 'occupied', during your last stay.

    That darkly playful, sultry-voiced Kzagoth terrified me. Yet on our second encounter, I found my fear had deserted me. He was different there, outside the manor, wearing his solitude as openly as the thick cloak that covered his wings. Despite having seen me from a mile or more away, he remained standing there, at the edge of the chasm, staring down at something I could not yet see.

    Too tired for games, it seemed to me. Too lonely to rebuff even a near complete stranger who happened across his joyless break from routine. That impression is just another form of manipulation, Ashla might claim. And Kzagoth himself would agree, quick to commend the former bandit lords of Moonreach for their wisdom in rebuffing him and his. 'Or I would've surely corrupted them', he said, questioning my judgement in approaching him outside the non-violence rules of the manor proper.

    I don't recall just what I said to that, other than the simple truth - that I was sure he had remained in my path for simply wanting not to be alone. At that, Kzagoth was quiet. And then he pointed down, at the cliff's craggy ledges and walls where a large vulture with a broken wing screeched and clawed at lava crickets. Seems they were this bird of prey's favourite meal, but it had gotten too close and caught in the lava. Now the crickets had turned the table and begun to swarm around the bird, attempting to overwhelm it with numbers.

    The vulture wouldn't go down without a fight - it fought, beak and claw, swiping and biting at the crickets. And you know how I feel about insects, right Barton? Instinctively they revulse me, though it's still fair to say that it was the bird's fierce fighting spirit that had me rooting for it, much against Kzagoth's own preference. 'It's preyed upon the crickets - it's only fair that they have their turn now', spoke the Cambion as he leaned close to observe, dispassionate but for a weary bitterness etched deep into the lines of his face. Yet for all that, the vulture somehow broke free, laboriously taking to the air with its broken wing. I couldn't help but applaud it.

    There was nothing fair about Kzagoth's reaction. He watched it fly for but a moment - then his fingers moved and fire crackled through the air, hurtling the vulture down once more, now an easy meal for the ravenous crickets that soon covered it. I scolded him all the way up the stairs and into the manor, to Proprietess Marielle's mild vexation.

    I couldn't help it, Barton! Though it's clear to me that his act was born of self-loathing, and that he was not only bitter but tired enough to need to pause on the way up the stairs, it's no excuse for taking it out on the creatures around him, large or small. It wouldn't surprise me to learn he was why the bird had broken its wing in the first place, but either way it just felt so unfair - even as one of the 'crickets' in his little play I object to the ending. And by the by, I strongly and vehemently object to being cast as a cricket in the first place!

    And still.

    Still, the pity I felt for the bird, I also feel for Kzagoth in his seemingly self-imposed solitude. Leader of a group of outcasts who each seem loyal, but none of them close to him, under a roof where the rules are firmly set by someone else. I was told you felt at home there and I wonder, I can't help but wonder how much of this newfound sympathy for Kzagoth is born from that. From the thought that you, like him, have grown to detest yourself.

    If that's true, even in part Barton, then I need more than ever to find you. I need to remind you that you are loved and worthy of being loved. I need to show you those sides of you that I remember, if you by chance, time and grim occupation have forgotten them.

    I cannot be allowed to forget, until then.

    Your much determined sister, Laura"


  • Laura, once more in her oversized pyjamas and thick knitted socks, sits curled up amidst blankets and pillows on the bed. At the nearby desk, demonstratively sprawled across a pile of folded letters, Nox rests like a plush paperweight. The small black cat appears asleep, but any time Laura reaches out towards the letters, a tiny paw gently bats at her fingers as if to say "ah ah, that's enough".

    She pulls her hand back and sighs, rubbing at red-rimmed eyes past the rim of her glasses before putting quill to paper once more.

    "I should be sleeping, Barton.

    I told the others I wouldn't stay up late, not anymore. I sounded sensible and composed; ever the voice of reason in our group. And I tried. I did try, but I can't seem to stop my thoughts from spinning, feeling seasick whenever I closed my eyes and wishing there was someone or something I could hold onto. A steady anchor against this maelstrom of fear that swirls and whirls around the edges of my conscious mind, frittering away at self and sanity.

    I really died this time. I'd come close a few times before, really close, but this time I crossed the veil and found myself adrift in white mist. All was quiet and strangely peaceful, abruptly removed from the panic I'd left behind in a world filled with cinder and ashes. I waited, anxious at first that the souls of my companions would join me. Aen had been down but a brief moment ago, Jax and Florian were running and I - I'd been spilling half the contents of my pack across the sooty ground in a vain search for potions and balms that werent there.

    I hadn't come properly prepared. If you want to scold me, there's no need, I've done the maths already. But even the usual what-ifs and should'ves seemed to cool and dissipate in the soft white mist of the fugue. No one joined me, and with that I felt content, drifting instead til I felt a tug; a call to rejoin the living. Of course I heeded it. I can barely stomach the thought of you reading these words, but imagining that you'd have to face the fact of my permanent demise is too cruel. I'd never do that to you, not while I have an ounce of will left in me. You better feel the same way.

    Returning was a strange sensation; as though I took the mist and fog of the fugue with me and my head was filled with cotton. I heard Ashla's voice faintly, sensed the others hovering near. Just as my eyes began to make out shapes, outlined against warm firelight, I felt a different kind of tug drag me under. I sank, not back into white haze but instead a cold, dark hole. My world went black and in the darkness shadows moved, snaking, leaching tendrils reaching for me. I sank and kept sinking, til at last I felt a warm hand around mine. Voices, distant at first, a whispery echo, grew gradually firmer, took on familiar shape and timbre.

    "...afflicting all of you, Laura's just the first to exhibit symptoms for being weakened by death..." The elven priestess' voice, followed by a worried murmurous choir of others, of my friends gathered near.

    My eyelids seemed like tombstones, gravelly and heavy stone, til at last I opened my eyes. Instinctively searching for my glasses, finding them miraculously intact and still on. Ashla held my hand, the first to notice I was awake. I rose groggily to my seat, managing to spill open my satchel while the talk of a curse continued.

    "...will eat away at your memories... no known way of breaking it... our original plan was to strain the caster til they were no longer able to maintain the curse."

    I picked the letters up, staring at my own handwriting, my usual badgering of you to return, and my telling you of.. of... of things and events that found no match in my mind's eye. I couldn't recall writing this letter, nor that.. and as I rifled through them my panic grew. I know you haven't read them, I know it's not like losing you - but at the far end of this curse, it will be. I'll forget about you and then forget about me. Because how can I be me if there is no you, not even the memory of you?

    That feels like a worse kind of dying. I won't let that happen Barton, but I wish, I wish so desperately that you were here now. That I could see your face, hear the sound of your voice and store it somewhere safe forever more. The letters will remain, but the essence of you already feels fleeting. "He might not be the man you remember", said Feowem. "Some criminal Motley Grey sprang from a cell", chirped Herald Stockley. "He was always very 'professional'...". The last from Ava Brokenblade, who seemed to watch me like a serpent does the mouse. I feel I must be ironclad, the next we meet. She seems the type to exploit a weakness and I'm riddled with them.

    The one real strength I always took comfort in having was my mind. But what if I can't rely on that either?

    I'm scared, Barton. I'm frightened past the point where tears can bring relief. And still, because this curse has its hooks sunk into all of my friends, I feel like I have to bear it with a stiff upper lip. The others have enough weight on their shoulders already and if I'm first to suffer this curse's ill effects, I should demonstrate that it's bearable, so that they won't lose hope.

    I wish you were here, though. I wish I could cling to you, like I always did. Never mind all my brave talk of being the strong one, the one you could rely on for a change! But wishing won't make it so.

    I have to take my own advice and get some rest. Sleep well, eat well, maintaining my strength and resiliance. What happened to Palewind was made simpler for disrupting his sleep, rendering his mind more vunerable. Knight Mills, too, looked like he hadn't slept in days when we found him so confused and lost in the hallway, a gaping hole in his memories where his most important clue had been.

    Nox has begun to purr, finally reliquishing his guardian of the correspondance pose. Just one more mug of calming herbal tea and I'll be ready. I hope.

    Your deflated sister, Laura"


  • Shards of a greenish-tinged crystal clutter Laura's desk, some larger and others ground to a fine powder underneath a thick lens for close analysis. The black cat, seemingly adjusting at will and whim to fill any given space it desires, is sprawled all across the large bed, fuzzy belly up. Laura herself, rather than insisting on a fair share of the bed, has opted to take a seat at the desk to write, despite the hour being late. A pale moon shines in through the window, mingling with the warmer glow of a plethora of candles in various stages of runniness.

    "Did you miss me, Barton?

    Your friend Feowem adviced patience, and with my busy schedule of late it's been a while since my last letter. I feel like we haven't talked in forever - even if by talk, I mean me spilling words out onto a page you may never read. Still, it feels like talking since I can picture your expression and all but hear your voice at times when I write. I know it's wishful thinking to imagine that you've longed for my next letter, but still - wait no more!

    Since last, we've found not one, but ~two~ new locus points - each with a harrowing, near-death path before it. The first, we kept chipping away at, kept hoping was there, as foolhardy insistance and our investigation both lead back to the catacombs. Barton, you must've found a safer path than ours - I know that it's there, but I am not quite so certain even you could bypass all the undead infesting that forsaken crypt. There were so many of them that I've literally climbed over piles of their fallen bodies, uneasily stepping on cold, clammy decomposing flesh and bone.

    Our multiple treks through those catacombs all bleed together into one single, dark and desperate nightmare. However many zombies, undead giants, colossal ogre skeletons or undead champions and cursed priests we put down, the next bend and the next after that was filled with the same. More and more, wave upon wave, while the air grew oppressive with cold and the iron-tinged taste of negative energies. I thought it would never end. Of course we all hoped, but I found myself secretly despairing when the path was so thoroughly blocked and our supplies dwindling to near naught.

    The dark awaited its prize, shadows materializing to further drain our life force and resolve. Whomever had gone before us had left a vital clue, however, and upon the very brink of resorting to Recall, we found it - an opening at knee height, a small but traversable passage to a safe corridor leading down - away from the omnious rumble of something large and terrifying. The quakes of that yet unseen creature filled my heart with dread, and each thump seemed to scream no, no, no. I was almost happier about evading the source of those shakes than I was to find the first signs of the terrain shifting around me, in that exhausted state.

    The blackened, tainted dirt and stone gave way to golden bricks, crumbling but once fine. Walls, stairways, faded carvings and niches where once fine statues might've stood. The air, incongruently since we were going deeper down into the earth, suddenly felt fresh and clear as though a summer wind had swept the decay away. My steps grew lighter, too and I could feel the relief coursing through my weary body. Hallowed ground.

    We stepped through a vaulted archway beyond which came the soft golden glow of candlelight and entered a room, once finely furnished with tall shelves lining the walls, enchanted glass windows and a statue at an altar at the far end. But few of these things registered at first. Before us, dusty and dim, yet as functional as the one far above our heads, was the next locus. That we werent the first to come here was obvious from the notes left behind, yet I felt such a deep thrill of discovery that it seemed mine were the first set of eyes to see this place in a thousand years.

    The feel of the place was so quiet and serene, so beautiful even in its crumbling state, exuding a sense of something sacred. But to whom is a more open-ended question. Lathander, Kossuth, perhaps ancient Amaunator or some unknown aspect of faiths neighbouring theirs? The statue's finer details were too deteriorated to be certain of anything, but the real revelation came from outside. Through the dusty, still intact glass of the small arched windows, I saw a great gaping chasm stretch out below and in the far distance, a glow of golden light. A fallen star, somehow still burning, giving rise to a faith centered around it? Jhael's sharp eyes found a clue amongst the withering debris of the former library, hinting of something to this effect; at the idea that the 'sun' would one day rise again.

    The chamber is but the first of a sprawling set of sandstone buildings and walls, forming what appears at this first glance to be the remnants of a large abbey with adjoining buildings. The one small peek we took beyond the locus room suggests caution's needed in going forwards. Bugs. Giant, creepy, crawly, chittering bugs, Barton. You know I've worked with my fears, but did it really have to be bugs? I'm still crossing my fingers for six legs being the maximum out there. No spiders please, sweet Mystra!

    It's a testament to the group's growing bonds and the depths of our collective excitement that we have since brought both Jaxon and Lokelani down through the crypts on a second and third, each equally harrowing crawl. Each time with exaggerated hopes that this time, it'll all go smoothly, because aren't we stronger now? And each time, we're humbled and in an equal state of panic, at near death's door.

    That's why I've yet to open that door, Barton. Please, please, please tell me you didn't. You wouldn't be so foolish or accept any job with such stakes right? An undead dragon or something similar, past the skull doors... There's no way, right? And yet it nags at me. That insiduous what if that I cannot shake in the small hours of the night when it seems only me and my doubts are awake. What if you're there, what if I passed you by out of cowardice? What if I left you to rot, to rise as undead?

    When morning comes, I'll have convinced myself you're smarter than that again. I'll take fresh courage in recalling you're always prepared for any eventuality. I've so much more to tell you, but it's best I wrap this up now and try to sleep.

    Your weary sister, Laura"