Third Letter to Nysali

A rough sketch of a ball of flesh and feathers that could be a halfling turning into a peacock or a peacock turning into a halfling.
 
Your Grace,
 
I probably shouldn’t have smoked more of those drugs. I forget what they’re called already. Bloodweed? Goremoss? Pretty potent, whatever the name. Thought they might allow me to penetrate the visible with my third eye to solve this riddle but nope. So I stared at the faun and the mini-elf for a while instead, grinding my teeth with a blank face, to see if I could break them that way. No reaction. Cool as cucumbers in winter. On the Elemental Plane of Ice. If there is such a plane. Hang on, just gonna try to pierce the veil between worlds with my third eye to see if there’s an Elemental Plane of Ice….
 
Back. There isn’t. Although, surprisingly, love is an element. It’s all hearts and naked halflings with widdle wings shooting arrows and bouncing on clouds on the Elemental Plane of Love. But then the clouds, like, the way the sun sorta caught their contours, their edges became wires of light that restructured to form your face, brilliant and smiling but also dripping blood cuz of all the widdle winged halflings that got snared in your trapface…. No offence. Shit is weird on the Elemental Plane of Love, is what I’m saying.
 
Shouted some profanities across the lake to break the spell that my Dread Wisdom of Extraplanar Activity had woven, and also to primal scream the toxins out of my system. Gotta be sharp for this Knavac guy. The others have been giving me weird looks lately. Especially Ulric. Glass houses, guy! But I might not be my best self at the moment. Okay, so I’ve been high for… two days straight now. Assuming that time even works the same in these wild magic zones, which I’m pretty sure it doesn’t. Maybe it’s been two months! Not my most epic bender, but still, not bad.
 
Obviously, the third eye thing was just a smokescreen. In truth, coming down is the worst. The worst, your Grace! THE FUCKING WORST! Your heart feels like it’s vibrating instead of pumping and every vein in your body is fluttering to catch its breath. Unpleasant, your Grace! And even worse, all the shit that for a few blessed moments you didn’t have to think about, suddenly it all crashes in on you at once and your defences are down, you’ve forgotten how you usually deal with it, so you flail around until the steps come back to you and you can hear the sarge’s voice again. And I like this place. You never know what’s coming next. Keeps you tuned in. Alive. I could live here, I think. You ever been to this part of the world, your Grace? What do you think? A little cottage by a purple brook, maybe raise some peacocks and kids could come round to pet them…. We’d have to muzzle the peacocks, of course, because great goat-buggering Grennan! Annoying. But it’d be no problem, I’d fashion the muzzles, I’m getting better at that sort of thing in my spare time. Did I show you the grapple gun? I forget. Just a sec, need to scream something over this lake….
 
The Elemental Plane of Love (henceforth the EPL for short) was encroaching on our reality but no fear, I drove it off. Anyway, it seems like a waste of psychedelic woods to be coming down while you’re travelling through them. I mean, granted, I didn’t have to smoke drugs the first time, but the second time was kind of a necessity.
 
What are your thoughts on the fashion sense of horses? Do they have one? I say no. Agreed? Agreed. So you can stop looking at me like that with those big liquid eyes, Biscuit. You’re not fooling anyone.
 
I feel bad for running her into a tree but oh man, your Grace, if you could see her hair….
 
They’re pretty excited over there. Davynn’s cracked the code, I think. Should be nicer to him. Future Davynn was cool.
 
These aren’t bad people, really. Kern expressed concern for me last night. Totally unnecessary, and I deflected it and kind of teased him, but it caught me off-guard. I know I gave Annie shit for not relying on the others in the group, for trying to do everything herself… but maybe I could stand to learn that lesson too. Maybe I don’t have to have my sword at the ready all the time. Maybe it’s okay, once in a while – occasionally – to sleep.
 
Oh shit, here comes the EPL again. Be right back.