The Sleeper Stirs
Week 181 – Thorel, Abomination
Went to the Farmstead again. Rache was going with Dacre and Iris. Don't really trust either of them and I wanted to be there to keep her steady.
I do not know if it is really wise. Dacre is missing. There was something big moving in the lights, something I couldn't really see. It stirred and watched and there were waves of strange radiance and strange sensations. I felt like it was. . . sleeping, or something like it.
Dacre just walked off into the shifting colors. We couldn't stay after that. Sleeping gods are not healthy for mortals.
I'm going to talk with Dr. Bosc again. She's been too hard at work not to know something. We need to figure some of this out.
Maybe Couer, too. He's a learned man and I know he's studying the comet.
I don't know what I can do to help.
Licinius Thorel, Dr. Theol., Dr. Md.
Week 182a – Fitzrolf, Musketeer
The Diary of Emmanuelle Fitzrolf
I haven't been able to hunt down that strange monster in the purple void again. I've been told that some of the others found it a few weeks ago. While I am passionately jealous, I have been able to console myself with my other hunts.
I am not used to seeking sea-beasts, with the exception of one journey far to the north to harpoon the great whales, but the creatures of the Cove are different. They don't lurk under the waves, breaching occasionally. No, they come up and have at you! I have collected a new scar across my belly, just above my right hipbone, from a great crab-thing dangling with rotting ropes and ship-tackle – I presume from ships it had destroyed in the past.
I cannot describe the sweet clarity of that moment, the exhilaration and crystallizing terror. It was delicious.
I am well enough to leave, and there is an expedition to the Warrens planned to hunt down the dreadful thing from the stars that has been spreading the comet's contagion throughout the Hamlet's surrounds. I am going with them. I cannot wait.
Fitzrolf
Week 182b – Aljarhaa, Shieldbreaker
There is truly no end to the creatures that infest this land.
It is fascinating, in its way. I have long been used to the spawn of sorcery and to the demons of the desert, but there is a profusion of evil life here that baffles me. How could such a small land bear so much wicked fruit?
We delved into the Warrens to hunt down the thing from the stars and put an end to its crystal-sowing. We succeeded, but it was a close thing. I think it is getting stronger.
And there was the stranger in yellow. That tall, tall thing with its caged skull and its ghastly body of severed heads. There's something pathetically human about him that sickens me. It is as if he is subject to an awful compulsion, the plaything of horrible gods.
I wonder, if we could nail him to this plane and cut away all those heads, if we would find his true body? I wonder if he dreams, if he was drawn here just as I was in the hopes of his curse being lifted?
Halim Aljarhaa.
Week 183 – Pettiloup, Falconer
Gods above and sinners here below, I'm tired of this.
I counted it up, and I've been here for two years. Two years of killing monsters for gold and thinking about the Vvulf and being infected by vampires and killing more monsters.
What is the point? What really is the point? I'm getting less young every day. I'm scarred and sharp-faced and I like birds better than people, and I'm never going to have a happy little home. Not that I really wanted one, I guess.
I've been talking with Jean a lot, that wild woman who lives in a tent outside the city. She seems mostly happy. Trains people, hunts, does whatever she does with Bellecote when she isn't training or hunting, doesn't get into trouble or have to go fight beasts in tunnels.
Maybe there's another Hamlet out there that needs a Survivalist.
Pettiloup.
Week 184 – Fortier, Raven Fiend Abomination
The Hamlet is growing sick again.
It's like the Crimson Curse. People go out and are touched by some strange evil; they return, and it spreads like tainted water poured on cloth.
I suppose it is the same as me. Something changed me and now I am here, drawn as if there was a fishhook in my heart pulling me.
Bosc will never cure me. The tonics and salves derived from the comet do nothing. The Light hides itself from me. Can I be at peace with all this?
My mouth hurts. My eyes feel wrong.
Rache is not well. But her body is strong and she is not indulging in the shard dust, not like some of the others.
I wish I could comfort her, but there is no medicine for the injury she has taken.
My name is Fortier. I am a woman. I am human.
