23.The monster

So, we would stay here in Enneth for 7 more days until everybody is ready for departure. We took this time to train and read and brew and whatever. Drenizek was recovering well. Eve took him and Xi’Xi for lessons on common. She was trying to teach Drenizek how to write and read, and Xi’Xi, well basic common. It’s a hard start, given the fact that she know nothing. I’m sure she will do an incredible job. I remember the times she was teaching me gavan. We would power through like a perfect team. Of course there were some distractions too. Hehe. Talion, I think resumed some sort of training to better understand the way higher arcane works. Verfy, Dillen and most of our muscle man were training towards, well, muscle. But I decided to join in and try to learn a thing or two about nimbleness. I want to be quicker on my feet, who knows when that might come in handy. It was interesting, and easy. I still had a lot of time on my hand while I wasn’t running away like crazy, or doing weird stepping techniques Dillen told me to do. I admit they worked. Since I was alone anyway, I decided to start rereading my diary. I know how that sounds. Why, would I? We’ve been through a lot, and in the moment you often miss stuff, sometimes important stuff, due to the natural chaos and way of things. So yeah, I’ll read. I’ll try and remember everything we’ve been through, again and again, so I can learn as much as I can from my own actions. I somehow have to detach myself from this diary, and read it as an outsider.
 
The week has passed. People told me Nixie went into the Glaston forest with some kind of crazy elf teacher of elemental magic. I am glad she could keep Nixie safe from all those nighthaunts. I do wonder how the curse of Fordel is affecting the mind, but I wasn’t going to find out about this here either.
 
We embarked and went on with our journey. We decided to go south this time. We had a debate and a vote for it. I remember even fought about it. I don’t remember what I’ve voted for. Oh, never mind. I wanted to go back from where we came and I was quite confident in the decision and brought up good points for it. But actually I voted for the south. If you ask me why, it was because I had a weird feeling. I remembered Talion told us a lot about the peoples from the west, and I figured this would be a great way for us to learn some more and gather more allies and tell people what we knew. Actually we had this conversation before we even knew if Drenizek was to survive or not, or was it after…?. Ugh, I’m a mess… I don’t know. We are going south.
 
I finished reading my diary a couple of times. I made quick and short notes on the more important stuff and I added things I remembered I missed. It’s funny how things happened. We, some random people, were approached by an angel because of someone we recently met and had a drink with, and went on a journey through the Great Western Desolation on a boat, that wasn’t even ours, matter of fact it is Damaschini’s boat, a person of such importance for a lot of people and of many good deeds that never heard of us, and we actually managed to survive, some of us, and we reached the place where the world was born. Beat that. Some would say it’s destiny or fate, some would say it was just a matter of very convenient coincidences. I’d say this happened because we… wanted it to happen. Yeah. Just that. We actually wanted something to happen. We continued the work of Pullius’ old party, that also wanted something to happen, until… maybe they didn’t want anymore. But I think this Damaschini still wants, otherwise he wouldn’t have given us his ship. I mean it’s a glorious ship, nobody in their mind would give out free ships like that. And crewed too.
Yeah.
I see that I’ve been obsessed with Eve long before I even realised. I do like to lie to myself. I’m always a little happier when I think of her.
 
On the ship, Nixie gathered us to tell us the tale of her and Miremis, her crazy teacher, in Galaston. She started off with saying how she met Miremis, and the tests she put her through before they went in the forest. It was interesting to listen. Getting to know more about elemental magic opens a lot of doors. I don’t think I’ll be able to do any of it, but it’s nice to imagine the ways of manipulating nature’s power to your likeness. I do wonder if nature can refuse you. Or if it likes being manipulated. But I think I should ask a druid about that. Not a sorcerer. Anyway, I remember Pullius telling us he wanted to go too, but was rejected by Miremis. Which was even funnier, for me, because we later learned they went in there naked. No armour, no weapons, no supplies. Nothing. Completely naked. I felt Nixie’s relief and Pullius’ regret right then. Haha. So, Nixie started telling her story. I do wander though. Why is she lying to us? She hid stuff in her story I am sure. That was not the Nixie I know. Maybe she fooled the crew, but they’ve only seen one side of Nixie. So yeah, at some point I wasn’t really listening to her story anymore, I just kept making remarks at the fact that she was naked there and did all of that. It was entertaining for us all. And I do wonder. I’ve never seen a naked elf. For some reasons I thought they don’t do that. But that’s what the human, uneducated mind can do. Eve got a little mad at some point and squeezed my hand to make me stop. But it was way to funny, I was just teasing her a little. Testing the ground. It’s not like I was going to strip Nixie right then and there.
I slept alone that night. I took the time to focus more on my training so I wiped out my diary and started to focus on that. I still haven’t felt any different from when we left Enneth. What did I miss? Where am I mistaking? What happened?..
 
I didn’t sleep much.I read a lot. I remember the next day, the first thing that snapped me out of it was Nixie leaving for Galaston late in the day and the crew fighting over a bottle of wine. I tried to focus, but as they were right above me I gave up and took a break. I was alone, in our room when it happened. Looked like Nixie left Dillen in charge for the time she was gone. A logical decision I suppose. But why not Verfy, or me? Since, you know we were the other 2 candidates. I guess I wasn’t reachable, so why not Verfy then? Eh, that doesn’t matter though. What happened is that the crew were getting bored and wanted to liven up the spirits a bit, somehow. And word of Drenizek holding alcohol reached their ears, so obviously they charged towards him to ask him to give them some. He refused. So Dillen insisted, given his position, Drenizek should have given him what bottles he had hidden away. Unless he was tasked with keeping it safe. Captains orders. But, well, he didn’t say that. So I am not sure if that were the case. The others started calling each other names and all, and tried making deals and promises to get some of the wine. Dillen at some point started saying some really rude stuff towards Drenizek, calling him a liability and complaining about him getting preferential treatment. I agreed with Drenizek, but not with his approach, or words. There was more than just that that fuelled his hateful mouth. Yes Drenizek was a liability and he was getting special treatment, but of course that was happening! He was just about to die from the inside out, he needs time to recover. There was no need of calling him that. I’m sure he knew and hated it too. As for the alcohol situation Dillen was in the right to ask him to give it to him. He was now the captain of the ship. In any case. It was a hell of a fight. Verfy and Dillen were the main belligerents of it. I think Drenizek eventually gave Dillen the alcohol and everybody shared it. More or less equally. In the morning, when Nixie finally arrived back on the ship, we gathered to talk about what happened there and about Pullius’ dreams. He dreamt of his old party, more particular about Cato, who came to him, in the night, atop the main mast, with a black-reddish sword, throwing each and every one of his former party’s heads on the floor before him. It was a dreadful dream and we concluded that maybe still had some unsolved issues with them. So we talked about it and tried to help him. It seems like he felt abandoned. I hope we helped him. While he was trying to speak his mind, Eve kept on interrupting him with remarks. I told her to just let him speak, but she insisted on continuing. I don’t know if she was teasing me or genuinely mad at Tallion, again, but I slapped her to make myself clear. She stopped for a bit, and looked at me telling me she’s sorry. I took her hand and we continued talking. I caught her trying to say something mean again so I squeezed her hand, quite hard at some point, I’m sorry love, to stop her. I really wanted this to be about Pullius. She was looking at me, with her cheeky eyes. I was so mad and so in love. Nixie on the other hand dreamt of Marcel. She went on the beach and looked for Miremis, but she wasn’t there. In her dream Marcel would draw the Primordial Tree I the sand and then cut it in half and dissipate it. We tried to help her recover and not despair. I am not sure how much we succeeded. She did seem a little bit better, but she was still in shock. At some point Verfy brough up the incident from last night and I was already all done with that conflict and all conflict in general. I took Eve by the hand and went in our room to just forget about all of that and feel whole again. I was glad she came with me. I thought she would still be mad with me. We actually haven’t spoken since the Naked Nixie event.
 
When we returned everybody was gathered on the ship and Nixie was admonishing them for quarrelling in her absence. I couldn’t agree with her on this. She kept on insisting on the crew’s problem with alcohol like she only left for one day, and their poor, little, weak, baby souls couldn’t hold on knowing there is alcohol on the ship. She got very Heron about the situation, shaming them for what happened. When, in fact the problem was: Dillen was in charge, Drenizek refused to follow his orders and Verfy got in between and pretty much gave Dillen a hard time being in charge and opposed him. So, yeah. That’s what started all the bad mouthing and shaming everybody was now throwing around at each other. It was terrible. I felt like we should’ve talked about how to stop this from happening again, rather than discussing whether or not Drenizek is the most alcoholic man on the ship… I was kind of on the Dillen side of the argument. I was against his way of shaming Drenizek because of his state, but I agreed with the facts he presented. He was in charge, he wanted to give to crew alcohol once they found out there was some, and people didn’t respect his word. Verfy and Eve were on Drenizek’s side. During this discussion Drenizek rose up and acknowledged the before mentioned things and admitted now that he believes in the Almighty, that he is in love with Nixie and that he understood the importance of this journey we are undergoing. And the fact that more hardships will come and that he is going to take the fall for everything that happened. Now it was captain Nixie’s turn to give out punishments. She decided to punish both Dillen and Verfy. Dillen for misuse of captain privileges and causing tantrum on the ship, while Verfy was punished for disobedience towards, the then in charge, Dillen. And Drenizek would be tasked extra work, which funnily enough he was already doing, but nobody knew that… Dillen and Verfy’s punishment was: drum roll………… To entertain us in the following night… I’ve never felt so distraught. Not only the main problem wasn’t even addressed, and punishment given for what seems both sides of the argument, which I find stupid. Why are you punishing Verfy for holding Drenizek’s side, even if the orders he was supposed to follow weren’t right and shouldn’t’ve been followed. That’s why you are punishing Dillen right? He shouldn’t gave given out those orders. I couldn’t understand. I tried telling them that and I even supported Dillen’s points openly. I don’t know. Also, spoiler alert. There was no entertainment from those punished… Yeah, why even bother…
 
We resumed our work and sailed until we reached an elvish village, close to a human settlement, right before the Road of Storms. A place where nature’s wrath ravages everything in it’s path, unchained and untamed. We stopped to resupply and prepare for the, most probably, a continuous storm ahead of us. At noon some riders came and asked for our help. They were from the human village nearby, having heard of our arrival, and came to ask us to beat some sort of abomination, lurking in a temple nearby. We agreed and rode towards said location. I still don’t know how to ride a horse so I rode with Eve. When this is all done I’d like to learn to ride, and maybe even buy two horses, one for me and one for Eve. And we would ride them here and there, through the wind, exploring the more hidden aspect of the kindgoms that surround us. Everybody has heard of Weldyn and can imagine long, tall, never ending walls. But the true people and spirit of a people lies in the villages that surround those tall and wide cities.
 
We reached the temple and started searching around and inside it. It was dark and tight. It must be one of those very old Singularist temple, back when humans didn’t know about the Almighty. Inside we found the altar, broken down with dark arcane marks and leftovers all over it and above it was… well, the abomination. I cannot describe it with words. It was a mess. A mess of dark arcane energy, distorting and eating away at anything it touched. It quickly latched to Pullius with a tendril through which he would transfer a part the force received from our attacks. Eventually Heron would get himself one of those too. We tried hitting it, but it was very hard to actually hit something inside and our hits would get absorbed and distorted back through those tentacles towards us. I decided to support the others and try and distract it from latching onto more people. I managed to get it’s attention by, well, mocking it with the power and voice of everybody that died fighting it!!!! It was only just me, and I wasn’t thinking it would actually work, but it did. It jumped on me and bit me with… something then it latched onto me as well. Now my main objective was to survive what the others threw at it. Verfy lost a sword to the abomination, one of those beautiful black-steel swords from Damaschini’s workshop, back in Ionolia. But she wouldn’t stop hitting it. Heron was trying to hit as many tendrils and the abomination at the same time, seeing it worked at hurting it better. Nixie threw white fire bursts at it through her staff in which she channeled all her strength to multiply the number of bursts she could conjure, therefore hitting the abomination like no tomorrow. And Talion kept us, but mostly me and himself alive with the arcanic and healing power of the soul. He would concentrate and send out a bright flare that would pass through us and hit the abomination, returning a fraction of the damage it did as healing power to us, therefore nullifying the abominations power somewhat. Eve took advantage of our little bracelets and shielded me from some of the force coming towards myself while also tendering to my wounds through her magical touch. We eventually brought down the abomination, only to reveal the rapidly dissolving body of the priest that preached here.. He was trapped in that abomination, fuelling it with his essence. Corrupted and trapped. A dreadful way to die. Nothing was left of his pour soul…
 
We were all tired and after searching the temple and houses nearby we found a small button and a symbol which we’ll need to find more about. Eve went to pray at the altar, while I prepared a room for us to sleep in. Everybody else was sleeping in the main room of the temple. I felt somewhat, safe there, away with Eve. In the morning I noticed Eve seemed troubled. I didn’t bother to ask, as I found the reason obvious. We slept away from everybody. And I too felt.. bad about that. Even then, when they started fighting I ran away with her. Now too, I ran away from them. I didn’t even realize it. I used Eve as some sort of safe place for myself. I just wanted to leave the others and stay with her, because I can’t stand them anymore.. I bet she feels terrible.. Fuck.. Am I the problem? I thought we were on the same page.
Why isn't anyone listening to me?
 
I need to read again. It must be something. It must be.
 
M..