Fish

"Sleep in the golden sheets of familiarity and your mettle will crash into the ground" - Filis Harmino in Resentments
 
Dear journal,
 
It is a beautiful autumn morning in Faen. I'm alone by the pier.. Bart went back to sleep a little more. We just finished a very long talk with a very... intriguing character. I will start from the back, though.
 
So, after the battle of Metherol and after we rested and... took time to understand what we just found out... we discussed our next plans. We were to follow up on our victory here with an attempt to save Faen as well, in order to make Faen a safe place for Elves in the South in general (including those who were left alive in Metherol). From there, we would go north to Legondol, on our own. We wanted to reach the capital of Vaneolin as fast as possible in order to save the Primordial Beech.
 
I remember Tallion saying we had to choose between saving the world and saving the Elves (?), which confused me a lot. Indeed, there were other options we had: go to the Nine Tomes, a holy place central to the defense of Arodil Forest from nightgaunts. But why put it as saving the world as opposed to just saving Elves? The Primordial Beech is a symbol for Life and the blessings of the Almighty just like the Marion hill is. One speaks to Elves, one to humans, but both come from the Almighty. That's how I understood it, at least.
 
So, it's not really a question of saving Elfdom versus saving the world. Also, even if the Beech only matters to Elves, I would still not postpone it in order to go to places where we might not be as needed. I'm willing to fight and die defending the Beech if only because it's sacred for Elves, whom we swore to also protect. And for our captain, Nixie. Going to the Nine Tomes might be an idea, too, but as far as we understood the urgency may be smaller there.
 
As for the Continent... we sent our Marshlander charm-boy Marv to swoon the Continent and convince them of the impending invasion. So, for now, we are tackling all fronts as well as we can. Having decided that, we left for Faen, in the same evening. Tiring, I know. But there really is little time. Or no time, to be even more exact.
 
I kind of followed them automatically, but I couldn't help feeling down. I have lost a lot, without even knowing. Now that I know, late as it is, it hurts even more. I spend my nights hugging Bart now rather than the other way. I don't want to lose him. I have nightmares, of late. Dreams of destruction. Even more destruction than there already is. The skies were dark, cloudy, glowing sometimes in reddish nuances, from distant lightnings. The earth was scorched, but not hot. Cold, cold as death. Legions of undead marched all around in circles, and patterns, and kept chanting "Antyar, antyar, antyar" with coarse, shrieking voices, akin to metal sheets banged together.
 
But what scares me most in these dreams is that I always seem to expect to recognise Bart among these skeletons. I never truly see him there, but I keep expecting him to show up. It's even worse than seeing him. Damn demons! They know how to play with my soul!
 
Well, I'm trying to improve my meek existence. I have recently found out fighting is not my forte, right? I need to find a purpose to help Bart and Nixie and the party. I've been speaking to Elder Aosthen, who is a being of incredible wiles and patience. The Elders are truly something else. They don't speak very much, but each word is as relevant as a gem in a crown. And you need to really pay attention as a result. He was very open to help me find my way. He said I have a hard time knowing what to do because I'm not balancing my feelings and magical power. Not balancing as in mixing the good with the bad or keeping moderation. Balancing as in stabilizing, actually. Yes, stabilizing would be the better word. Elvish has a way with words that common tongues don't. Advantage of living longer and existing for so many hundreds of gazillions of years as Elves did. hm. Good point, how long were the Elves around?
 
Wait, if the Elves were born before the 9 worlds, does this mean that the Elves are older than plants and animals living in our dimension now? Wow. For some reason, it kind of terrifies me.
 
Nevertheless, the wise Elder Aosthen told me about the link between life and magic that I've been missing: that inexplicable, insurmountable and unrepeatable (by us) miracle of ordering, which triggers around this magical aura. The gift of life is the gift of ordering magical essence, in a way. Reinforcing life is reinforcing this magic. It is a simplification, but grasping this base level concept can help, in the long term.
 
There was a lot of confusion in our camp. We met with an Elven village on our way, and they were rather confused as to what happened in Metherol. It was good to see Elves being alive, at least. But we weren't sure what we should do now. Or maybe it was just me. I mean, it's obvious the undead couldn't have just wiped out everyone in the space of... what is it now? Little more than two weeks? It's impossible. They obviously targeted the big cities first. If those don't fall, then most of the country can be saved. So maybe we should prioritize Legondol, like really prioritize it. But then? And if Xantinya holds the reins in Worania, with a huge orcish and undead army by her side, can't she send a portion of this huge force to Vaneolin to help destroy it? For now, we don't even know exactly whom we're fighting. They can't be Xantinya's undead, those fought in the north and then came to Worania. These ones came from all around Vaneolin and have been hanging out here for the last weeks. So, they are other undead forces. So Xantinya CAN send more here with ease, but she hans't done so yet, probably because she didn't need to.
 
Are we winning now only to see even bigger armies come from the east and destroy Vaneolin anyway?
 
But then again, destroying Vormiol and Rascodia and even Cavaconda will take time. It's far from over for these countries. They must still be struggling to live. We need some overarching plan, a way to help them as well. And if we save Vaneolin now, we need to find a way to keep it saved. Xantinya has too many resources, otherwise. We need allies. Quickly.
 
Dear journal, I must confess I'm not very comfortable speaking about these issues anymore. I feel the odd one now. I'm not really useful in this war, I'm no Tallion breaker of undead armies, or Nixie who demolishes siege towers and pulverises legions with white fire. Or Verfy who holds the line like a thousand men. I heal here, I purge an undead from the Earth there, but that's about it. I'm a mopey poppy who has a streak of face-first charging into problems, so I'm not really an authority on anything. Granted, I've tried to contribute, but it seems to not be enough.... Maybe I should speak more? But then, wasn't it the problem in the first place? Well anyway tensions are high on the whole "what do we do" thing so maybe we should talk some more once we at least save Faen.
 
When we finally arrived near Faen, things took a familiar turn. We would fly above the undead army and Bart would stay behind. But this time we needed some better plan. The idea was that we shouldn't waste all the Elvish soldiers. We had to save them. Metherol was too close a shave. We had no Woranian miracle awaiting us either. So... Verfy proposed that we should trick the necromancers into expecting an attack from us, but how could we pull that off? Then Dillen elaborated on the idea and proposed a distraction by Bart (who would've stayed behind lines anyway) by posing as a fellow necromancers and distracting them. Both Verfy and Dillen wanted a sally. In the end, they settled on a sally. Bart would pose as a powerful necromancer using a staff with a goat's skull which Xixi retrieved from the chief necromancer at Metherol. They even had a name: Meknol, it seems he is a necromancer of the Council. Convenient.
 
But then Bart had to find a way to distract the necromancers. He planned to sing to them, in that he would transmit the terror he and we had felt from the demon, from the battles and such. It was a dangerous thing to do, but it would fall in line with a powerful necromancer's experiments, I guess. Bart tried it on us. At first, he sang a weary, eerie line, which sounded like nothing he tried before. It felt... unsettling, coming from my shiny happy Bart... but it wasn't all necromancer-like.
 
Hehe.... When he tried again, though.... I was shocked. I could feel his notes scrape at my skin like flaying knives, and I actually felt that damn demon's claws on my shoulders. I freaked out a bit. When he stopped, I had the instinct to run away, but controlled myself and just went to hug him. I know it hurts him to do this. It's not easy. It has to be done, I guess. I was scared by him. I really was. I hugged him and buried my head in his shoulder, but I feared him. I didn't like it. That feeling. How could you fear the one you love? What kind of sick mind would want that? Not mine. I wish never to feel this feeling again.
 
When we finally went our separate ways, I once again had to say goodbye to Bart. I was more worried now than before. He was going in their midst, posing as one of them... I prayed to the Almighty more fervently than ever.
 
The battle itself was... exhausting. I'll spare you the details, dear journal, because, truthfully, the others will know better than me what the hell happened. I was useless half the time, walking from place to place. The Elves did accept our plan and that night they sallied out. We led the charge up the northern gate. Bart's plan succeeded, because the undead were slow to greet us and their lines were not fully formed. They were still formidable, but we broke them. However, more came from the west and the battle very quickly turned against us. At one point, I saw Nixie melt the earth into some sort of water, like Miremis used to be able to do. Again, Elvish magic is intimidating.... I saw poor Verfys basically swim her way out of a regiment of undead halebardiers (!?!) and I grabbed her hand and healed her battered body. Soon after, though, The Elder Aosthen and Tallion and Bart (whom I saw dangling by a floating Tallion's foot...) destroyed a powerful necromancer, who incidentally also raised most of the undead, so the battle was one from there on.
 
Oh, I almost forgot.... A big reason why we won the battle was that halfway through a strange creature burst out of the glyph Gilders gave us and attacked the undead by throwing fireballs all around. He announced himself as our "overlord". He's..... some sort of.... lizard... guy? I don't know. He looks like some kind of lizard, with a long neck and slender body and strong hind legs good for running and slimmer and slightly shorter hands, with claws and alll.... also covered in feathers (!?). But he speaks (almost) like a human. His name is... get this.... Ghighi.
 
Quite a lot to take in. He's apparently one of Tallion's cross-dimensional friends. In any case, this Ghighi creature was very, very strong, and didn't seem bothered by enemies attacking. I saw an undead swing an axe at his foot and the axe went straight through but the foot remained there as if it was just air the axe went through.
 
The battle was over after the necromancer was killed and the undead scattered. It took a while for the undead to finally be destroyed, because many still fought us. Well, once that was settled, we could see that, thankfully, many Elves survived. Also, all of us were still alive, including Elder Aosthen. I heard the Enneth Elves fought bravely in the West but lost their last sorceress, Idynia. Elyra is still alive, though. The druid who gets birds which fly us above walls.
 
I was content to finally rest. I may be useless, but I still somehow get tired in these fights. Anywhoo, our list of wonders was far from over. After stopping a big undead army, AGAIN, and meeting a bird-lizard thingie, we were met with more: two other people appeared out of the glyph, followed by Gilders. He came back quickly!
 
The two people are Lullaby and Bajid, those two friends from the dimension of Spirit that Tallion told us about. They are queen and king, you see, in this dimension, and quite powerful. Dear journal, I have to say I was very curious to get a feeling of how people from other dimensions are like, think, speak etc. They don't seem that different, at first glance, but there are many interesting details.
 
Well, these two certainly are worth a talk, well, Gilders too, in fact. My first glance of this queen with the power to manipulate the very fabric of reality was quite earth-shattering for me, to be honest. I kind of expected some sort of Great Ordinator-like force and demeanour, only... more! Because, you know, even more power, right? And she ruled over what I understood was a nation of tenths of millions. Tenths!!! But there she was, this nice young girl with blonde hair (again? There's a pattern) and bright green eyes and some simple woolen blouse, pregnant and having a slight limp in her right leg when moving, with a very intimidated figure. As for her husband, he reminded me a little of the tales of southern traders. He had very curly black hair, a darkened complexion and very hawkish eyes. He was actually the most intimidating one of them. Still, he looked like an adventurer and not a king, also tossing around a small round ball, for some reason.
 
As for Gilders, now seeing him near these two, he looked like the most foreign of them if only because of his gun, which at least he took care to hide in front of the Elves. But I knew he had it somewhere. But Gilders is clearly no king, nor can he manipulate the planes of reality, so....
 
We greeted each other but decided to go to the castle to avoid standing in front of a bewildered army of Elves. The Elves actually didn't pose too many questions, they had a rough night as it was, after all...
 
On the road, I saw a weird interaction with Kelly, who kind of decided to avoid the situation and hide away. There's history between Kelly and Lullaby, it seems... The world is small. Even if it's made of 9 dimensions, who would've thought.
 
I must say, poor Kelly had another one of her nasty moments when her body just loses control and she falls down. This one was longer and scarier, she got all tense then went fully limp, and couldn't control her actions or words. She did mention something about missing a piece of her brain.... Horrible. Whoever desfigured her like that and did all this to her... Cruel. Very, very cruel. Lullaby actually went to visit Kelly after Vas tended to her in the only way he knew how (giving her one of his weird leaves), and the two discussed a bit about some uprising Lullaby made against Kelly, who used to rule over two whole dimensions... Neither seemed to feel enmity towards the other, so that was good. It felt strange. Kelly seems so lost in her own powers, I mean she has many great talents and is capable of many things, but she doesn't seem to want to do anything in particular. She was almost glad she lost all that power, actually. As for Lullaby, she said she doesn't believe Kelly to be a bad person, or a good one at that; she didn't know her enough and wouldn't emit a strict judgement on the matter. She did fight her as an institution of tyranny in these 2 dimensions she ruled over. I found that fitting. Kelly the tyrant was not necessarily Kelly the person. That's because Kelly is barely anyone, really. Maybe she's just a collection of masks. I'm a little afraid of that.
 
In any case, we had a nice dinner with Lullaby and Bajid and Gilders and Ghighi, during which we found out more about our new friends. So, why did they come? Well, they came to help us, obviously, as stated by Gilders, and they came as soon as Gilders told them about the undead in Metherol and the such. They did come VERY soon, so much appreciated... I was shocked to find out they basically abandoned their country to come there. I didn't think about it, but they were queen and king and both are now.... poof! Disappeared! Huh... And it escaped my mind that Lullaby was pregnant! And still she came.
 
Lullaby says she's guilty for opening the door to the dimension of magic, which kind of triggered all this, but that's false. I mean, yes, she might've opened the door (which begs the question: why can she do that!? The dimension of magic was closed since the fall of the initial world of the Elves... WAIT) I'll come back to that later, but now let's see: so she did open the gate, but this Change Xantinya is doing was happening anyway, so... Now at least we have a gateway to new possibilities, including new friends like them. So it's not that much of a negative. OF course there are negatives, but... I think this Change concerns all dimensions, so we should stick together. I expect my opinion to be controversial, so I won't say a word haha.
 
It was a rather weird talk, all in all, to be honest. Lullaby and Bajid were kind, and they came to help, but they are strangers to us, and we to them. We knew rationally we could trust each other, but it's all so quick and... Did I say that Xixi is for some reason obsessed with Lullaby? Since she saw that Lullaby carries a sword with a fish crated as its pummel. Wait, FISH!? Yes, dear journal, fish! Of course she's obsessed! I'm obsssesed! Did I hide it till now? It's because I'm trying to keep a semblance of order in this journal!!! Damn
 
So, I have two main issues here: why does Lullaby carry a fish-pummel sword and why can she open the gate to the dimension that was closed since... basically since the dimensions were created in the first place. And we SAW that the dimension of magic and that of death were specifically sealed!
 
I instinctively looked at Drenizek a couple of times during that dinner, and also during the whole Xixi-obsessed-with-sword-scene, and we both kind of smiled. Why, I wonder. I bet it's for the same reason. I can't put my finger on it yet, but.... No, I won't say something that might end up being wrong or exaggerated.
 
I'll keep looking at this situation. So, we talked to Lullaby and I'm trying even now to understand this person before us, because I KNOW for a fact there is a lot here to understand. She does seem to have a strange way with people. She's unusually timid for an almighty queen and reality-bender, but behind that she has a strong will to act on defending good. It seems she talked a lot with Tallion's non-friend Zarkuz, another of Damaschini's old group, the one who told Lullaby about our perils in the first place, and she's trying to get to him so she could at least convince him that he has a soul. Strange. Why would anyone think they have no soul. If you pose that question, if you're able to... Then you already know the answer, dummy! Anyway, I kind of saw after that (we had a discussion earlier this morning) that the girls, Verfy and Nixie, are unconvinced by these efforts.
 
To me, after digesting it all... It boils down to this. Whatever just happened in our lives yesterday, one thing is clear: Lullaby is of a different mettle. I won't put my finger on it on exactly how.
 
In any case, the line of surprises is not over, dear journal! Because early this morning... Zarkuz showed up! What? No, I'm not drunk, thank you very much! Zarkuz showed up. I'm running out of paper and ink and I still haven't written about the hairy four-eyed white monster that randomly (?) appeared in Faen port in a rowing boat with one tiny sail.
 
Zarkuz, t'seems, came by sea after leaving Lullaby's place two days or so after Gilders left to find us. In any case, this beautiful monster wants to join us and help us in our mission. I wasn't there when he came, but I found out about his arrival and went with Bart to see what was going on.
 
Zarkuz is this weird shaman-type person who believes has ultimate wisdoms but probably just smokes too much dubious leaves. That was my initial assessment. But they all took him so seriously I had to, too. I'm so quick to dismiss things! Truth be told, after I listened some more, and after hearing what Lullaby understood from his beliefs, it started to sound a lot more... well, serious. Ominous, even. This Zarkuz may be a jester, but an Ikain jester is not funny. He's... dark. I'm not sure what his ultimate designs are. A world were death is an arbiter for justice is a world where virtues are replaced with inevitability, and the scales are tipped to favour nothing else but levelness. Plains. I hear Ikains like plains. Makes sense.
 
Zarkuz is the proponent of a Great Change. He must love the New Order Xantinya is making, then. Why would he help? Well, probably to avoid others from becoming too powerful. I get it. But... A few months back, I would've challenged this God-forsaking madman to a duel. Now... I learned better.
 
The net catches many types of fish. I'll try to learn this lesson. Drenizek, I bet you felt it too, you rascal. Now it's not the time to be simpletons. Hehe. I make no sense. I love this entry. Serves you right, journal, for asking me to be consistent. Me, Nutcase-wondergirl! Bow before your overlord!
 
Oh, I didn't mention. The girls were very happy to take me aside and ask me why I was quiet. I had to spill the beans on my many maniacal issues and they corrected me. Nixie told me that she was upset on me for a little while but then it was gone and I stood there thinking she no longer considered me her friend! Can you believe how dumb I have become? Thank the Almighty that Nixie and Verfy sometimes remember to check up on the wild animal they carry around with them! I was so glad to hear this I almost burst into tears, if not for the absolute pathetic nature of this whole interaction. I mean, poor NIxie... She must think I'm not just mad, but delusional and stupid, too! They also told me to express myself more, to be there, because I'm not useless.
 
You know what, dear journal? Nixie and Verfy are right. I know they are. It's easy to shield myself with this "useless" thingie. No more. I'll not sleep in Filis' golden sheets. I'll... hm. Jump like a fish.
 
May the Almighty guide us through this war and have mercy on all those fallen.