Part 13 - The Brink

Week 189 – Bosc, Plague Doctor

I fear for the Heiress's health.

She traveled to the Farmstead recently, which I strongly advised against. But patients are patients, and in that capacity they are all headstrong fools.

Another one disappeared, wandered off into the mists. Perhaps she'll return half-mad, like Rache or Dacre.

I fear for this land if that should happen to the Heiress. She seems to be the only thing holding us all together, and she is fraying at the edges.

I know her sleep has been disturbed of late. For months, even. The laudanum I prescribed her is helping, but not enough.

Perhaps investigating the comet is indeed the answer. I should turn my attention from its malign potentialities to its healing properties.

Bosc, Dr. Md., physician.

Week 190a – Fitzrolf, Musketeer

The Diary of Emmanuelle Fitzrolf

I almost died again.

I feel like it should be a sobering experience to almost die. It seems like the kind of thing that would make one ponder one's own mortality, the inevitability of death, things of that sort. But I simply feel drunk.

It's not just the lightheadedness that comes with loss of blood, either. Heaven knows I lost enough, though. I'll never forget those severed heads dangling in the air, the ghostly lines forming bodies as they slashed me to pieces. I could feel the blood running down my skin inside my coat, and it was almost ecstatic.

Roussel's magic kept me alive however much they cut into me, and when I put a bullet through the skull of that many-headed eldritch nightmare I think I had an hysterical paroxysm.

I must go out again, as soon as I am well.

Fitzrolf

Week 190b – Medley, Vestal

Light, hear my prayers. Wrap in in your warmth. Cure the ache in my heart.

I preach, I sing, I give everything I can, I walk into darkness and danger in your holy name, I try to tell them about your truth.

I know you hear me. Why does it feel like you don't? Why do the others, those who deny your personhood, bear your power?

I read, and my eyes slide over the words.

Am I under attack from the darkness? Is it this place?

You gave me life and you give me strength. I stand in the palm of your hand and I will prevail with your aid.

Please heal my heart.

Medley, in service to the True Light and Her Glory.

Week 191 – Mathan, Houndmaster

Feels like everything's ground to a halt.

Things happen. We work, we fight, we hunt, but it's all died into a routine that feels like a bad dream. Hallway that won't end, that kind of dream.

Things are happening in circles. We went out and fought the Shrieker again, and it was like walking into a room I'd seen a hundred times. Just a chore.

We've been here for almost four years, which means Lulubelle's fourteen years old.

No dog could be as spry as her at fourteen.

I don't understand this place. But at least my girl's still alive. And if it's something in the air here that's keeping her healthy, we're not leaving.

Mathan.

Week 192 – Loucelles, Leper

I find that my bitterness has diminished, almost against my will.

I've been reading my old journal entries, and it is like reading the words of another person. It has been months, days stretching into weeks into months. The sky changes like nothing I have ever seen, and when I close my eyes I see colors like nothing I have ever experienced.

Where has my anger gone? Where is my hope? Where is Loucelles? He has buried his heart in the earth and left it, with all his grief and rage and every part of him.

My sword arm raises and falls. I breathe, I bleed, I wrap up my wounds like a dead thing moving.

I lack the strength to even think of leaving. I will never be cured. I am dead and alive and I cannot remember what it was like to be a man.

Loucelles.