Glittering Dark

Week 162 – Bosc, Plague Doctor

I feel as if I slept once, and three months vanished.

The work! I haven't known my work to consume me like this since my days at the university. It is a delicious obsession, not that any of the officious fools who shunned me will ever feel anything like it.

The sisters at the Sanitarium must be missing me. None of them knows how to make a tonic properly unpleasant. The healing's one thing, but it's just as important to teach the patient not to make the same damn fool decisions a second time, and there's nothing so good for that as vile medicine.

It also works better. They expect it to taste bad, and it helps the healing process if they feel it's working.

There is something very, very different about the Farmstead now. I wrote before that it was as if different laws were at work. That, I believe, is the difference between the blasted heath with its crop of diseases and strange growth, and the Courtyard with its vampires and Curse. Those seemed to follow no law at all. The crystal infection, now – that follows laws that I can study properly!

I've begun work on a new distillation, a concoction of extraordinary potency that will be ready for its first testing in a matter of days.

My fingers are tingling with anticipation.

Bosc, Dr. Md., physician.

Week 163 – Thorel, Abomination

There are no unmixed blessings. I of all people know that. No light without shadow, no joy without suffering.

The crystals are spreading. I am physically powerful, even in my own body, and I go with the work crews and hack them to pieces and cart them back to the Farmstead. Have to make sure the men are careful about the shards and splinters. There is something otherwordly about them. They are not healthy.

Dr. Bosc could be an ally, but she is consumed with her experiments and I believe she does not see the danger in the crystals. But the Heiress does, and so we work.

I haven't had to let it out in almost a year. That is indeed a blessing, but a hard one. There is a kind of release in it.

Nothing is ever easy.

Licinius Thorel, Dr. Theol., Dr. Md.

Week 164 – Somneri, Vestal

We are not the children of the Light. We are not its chosen people.

I am dead and alive. I died. I was torn to pieces by beasts in the wood. I remember blood gushing from my throat. I remember Raoullin's sword slashing through them too late.

I am alive. I saw a strange light in my mind's eye, glittering between the stars. I saw it slice through sunlight and down into the world, brighter than a hundred clustered stars, sickening and exhilarating, and I saw it plunge like a spear into the planet.

We are not the children of the Light. There are no gods of Light, only a thousand thousand thousand unhuman things moving in the void between vision and invisibility.

The Light is real, and its power rests in my hand and heart. The thing on the scroll is real, and it courses through my blood and makes my insides quiver and pulse. The thing beneath the manor is real. The deadly Sleeper in the comet is real.

I was dead, and I am alive. What am I to do now? Who gave me this new breath? Was it just a whim?

Raoullin is dead. I must find the profane scroll and read its secrets. I must know.

Somneri.

Week 165 – Dacre, Vestal

Dacre's Daybook

I am being punished for my heresy, I know. My brothers and sisters, the fellow acolytes of the great, dark Thing beneath the earth – they have sensed my faltering, they know my crimes against our god, and they have sent this red evil to scourge me.

Let them! I can withstand this curse, the crimson obscenity in my veins, the craving and madness! I will write still.

Blood drops from my lips onto the pages of my book, smearing the heretical passages I have penned, but the great truth shines through. There is a light that burns brighter than the Light and harsher than the infinite harshness of the Thing. Ever-changing and unchangeable, ever-growing and ever-living, an eternal glory and a luscious lustrous majesty.

The crystals gave me truth and visions, and how can I do other than write them down?

I will let them cure me. I will submit to the bleeding and tinctures and I will spit in the eye of my cultic companions.

Dacre.

Week 166 – Corbière, Man-at-Arms

Corbière's Journal

I wonder what the things in the Warrens are, really. Where they're from.

You hear stories about the old lord and his debaucheries and magical experiments, but I don't know. It seems like they've been down there an awfully long time.

There's a lot about this place that I don't understand. Some of it reminds me of the crusades, fighting alongside the holy warriors against the armies of the East. There were strange things in those lands, too. Cities of serpent-worshippers, nests of demonologists and secret caves inhabited by cults I can put no name to.

I should write a book about that. Maybe Bardiche will help me get started.

Corbière