8. Visions of a Broken Verse

There are snatches of images I remember from before, but only that.

A village is caught up in flame. The people call my name, but I do not hear them. I turn my back on them, and face the incoming wind. It is a wind that smells of corpses and lamentation. The laments fill me as if I were a sac that were beckoning them to enter me and take me away. There is a small child crying on the steppes outside the village, and a shadow overcomes her. She has a face I think I recognize, and then the flash ends.

In another image, I am standing on the peak. I am naked and crying for the world beneath me. An endless forest stretches below, a forest that covers the entire earth. The trees are writhing, moving, singing hideously; a wail of death. But I know something: this is all of my fault. I am the bringer of death on the world, or this strange place I find myself in distant flashes of memory.

When we were on the ship, I had dreams. They troubled me and I woke, and I found myself on the deck of the ship, listening to the waves. They were soothing to me. The seas were calm. I heard the thrumming from beneath the ship, as the huge engine moved us through the waves as if in a magical tale. Every few moments, she came from beneath the water with those big eyes and turned her head, but she did not see me. The giant sea serpent drags us to an unknown destiny; I only have my nightmares.

The pirate, as beautiful as he is, is a fierce fiend. He reminds me of myself when I was a young boy, determined to take on the world. And yet today, I have no idea who that is; only the name I bear, which to me means nothing. I find myself, far too often, filling the void of my sadness with more primordial lusts, though it seems to cause pain to those around me. I pay them no mind - perhaps it is in my personality, to approach things without considering the consequences, and find the beauty and joy in it immediately. The lady Lenna is a gorgeous woman, but she does not appreciate my sense of aesthetics. She shall soon; else I shall grow bored of her and find another way to find peace from this mad world.

As we approached the tower, I grew apprehensive. A huge swath of woods surrounding it, surrounded by fierce men with twisted faces and sharp scimitars, and unspeakable horrors that hide in the shadows of the trees and jump on your face like a leech. The most dangerous beast to attack us as we approached the tower was a small creature who lives in the hollows of the trees and rather than eating nuts or berries (as most forest creatures should), they eat the flesh of their victims and keep it simmering in a sack beneath their vicious teeth, where it turns viscous, which they either swallow or spit back at their victims like a poison.

We have grown accustomed to the savagery of this world, though. It seems that as the earth slowly fails, the evils that are present grow ever stronger.

As I said, the tower. Immaculately designed, beautiful in construction, the lady Lenna has told us that it is the home of the King's Cult, a group of sorcerers who guard and protect the Crystal of the Wind, an artifact that she says regulates the flow of the wind. A preposterous idea, but she claims it is so. If I have deigned to ride a boat tugged by a tamed sea serpent, then I might as well believe that a rock can control the wind. The naivety of these people astounds me.

Inside the tower, however, we found that beautiful Lenna's dreams of meeting with the Cult were naught to be found. It appears that the Cult has disappeared, and the tower left in darkness. The remainder of the king's men we found in an ante-chamber near the bottom level of the tower, cowering in fear and guarding a pot of holy water they claimed could drive the madness away.

I am relating this now, after having fled from the heights of the tower in fear. For in the levels above us, not only do the dead walk, but the Cult has been driven mad, just as the forest outside was. They have taken to killing each other, bringing themselves back to life, and drawing energy out, murdering anyone who approaches them. My answers are to be found here, but I only sense the dread and decay of life.

I find myself sipping the holy water, letting it drip down inside me, and push the madness away. Where this madness comes from, why the sorcerers were driven to insanity and this necromancy, we will soon find out. The pirate captain has decided to join us on this rendezvous, most likely to find the treasure that has been abandoned at the top of the tower, and he pushes us forward to our demise.

Bartz, our ranger and hunter, seems to be going along with the pirate only out of charity to watch over the lady Lenna. He has had numerous chances to leave, but seems unwilling, even though nothing is holding him here.

-Galuf