Session 12 - Chapter 5: Blackout pt. IV Report

Is this your doing Father?

  Is this your doing Father? I feel a change coming, something I cannot control or comprehend but I must succumb to if I am to remain dutiful. My fingers tingle with the pricks of a thousand pins but they are not my own, or perhaps, the pain is not my own; is this suffering the belonging of another or is this sensation a consequence of my own doing? The gauntlet, if it could be called that, acts like a being of its own volition but feeds from my own psyche, my own energy and will but heeds not to my desire or demand. It's not pain, it's discomfort; it's not fighting me, it's controlling me; it's not unwanted, it's unnerving. It's stiff but soft; rigid and firm yet flexible and resilient, like I should have more control but no control all at the same time.   Is this your doing Father? Is the price of my purpose fulfilled the cost I'm paying now? Or is this a product of the pact Brothers make when their unsupervised children carelessly play in the dark? Cousin is gone again, traveling with the Asharian to an arms trader who will offer them devices for protection in exchange for paper. She is strange the Asharian, I could never comprehend their infatuation for the material tools that inflict pain under the guise of self preservation. Such pleasures infect Beaus too, driving them to imbue Komana's natural protection into tangible objects that inflict only harm and protect naught.   Is this your doing Father? The house of safety is empty now, her contents have been relocated into the abdomen of a metal cockroach. The Eladrin are more familiar than I remembered, they too name their bugs with endearing call-names. Gidget calls this one Cindy, [incomprehensible] used Komanan magic to enhance her cockroach traits. I've learned she will be nearly impossible to spot, harder still to stop and can burden the weight of an entire home -including its inhabitants- with no detriment to herself. She carries your children and the children of others safely on her back, she carries food not just for herself but for others and complains not about the burden, not even a whisper. Cousin and the Asharian are back with tools of death. The Asharian seems far more comfortable with them than cousin does. I will hold Uncle's hand for strength once more, perhaps the pain will go away from both of us. For now -perhaps forever- we leave the house of safety to venture into danger, death and obliteration.   Is this your doing Father? The Cindy roach must return for sleep and another cousin joins us for our night journey: Payatier. She reminds me of cousin Xhoya. Both keep to shadows with eyes turned toward Uncle's map, both burden weight far heavier than either should and neither complain a word about their duty. Meanwhile the metal bugs of the Beaus stick to their gray paths polluting the night with glows of red and white, going nowhere because of their accursed round feet. Payatier carries us forward however over mountain, cliff and valley alike. The tropical man harnesses chains of Komanan light for warmth and stability and one by one, these people trail off into blissful slumber. Few of us remain awake but my eyes close to hide the prickling pain belonging to the gauntlet without a hand; the echoless one known as Echo remains sentry and the Asharian and the tropical man sit back-to-back quietly chattering.   Is this your doing Father? The Eladrin Gidget injured herself with her own creation, is she confused? She and the rest of the group wish to experiment with alternate dosages of magic and the effects that she succumbed to were telling of Beau's weakness to Komanan magic. The less she used the more she hurt herself and the pain she felt, the teeth marks of frost nibbling on her fingers - were you trying to tell me something? Was I to know this would happen and failed to speak up? The parallels Father, they are too easy to consider coincidental but I know with You that is never the case. I will do better to warn them next time. And the Asharian, she too suffered pain from her reduced use of magic and nearly joined nature as Her newest breed of flower. Lucky for her the tropical man and his Komanan magic is as studious as he is practical and reverted her predicament. Strangely the Fey was unaffected, perhaps even enhanced by the magical choke placed on the mana box but the side-effects did little to hide what she spent her entire life trying to hide from. Piece by piece she began to turn more wolf than woman - was I supposed to see this too? When I look at myself I recognize only a small part of me anymore, did I explore too enthusiastically with magic and lose sight of who I was? Echo the echoless focused on his magic coming from the choked box and somehow the box always found him even when it was buried in the snow, like how smoke from a fire always finds the face of a nearby occupant. The tropical man wishes to study this phenomenon more and a school of learning has just breached our horizon, answers will await us I'm certain of it!   Cousin thinks this means something more, that magic put into these boxes is not a force but a being; that it is alive and seeks a source or being to attach to so it can feed. I cannot say I disagree with her understanding, smoke too was once living, perhaps smoke is the spirit of fire finding the living to remind them of the price organic matter paid for their temporary warmth. I ask again with different context Father: is this your doing?