Of Crows and Journals
Banded together for a common goal, twelve scholars set out from the college of Nydds some two hundred years ago and headed deep into the ruins of the Ziristal Empire. Their research guided their steps across the mountain ranges to the resting place of the antiquated scrolls that they would need to fuel a legendary talisman which promised eternal life. However, fate was unkind and the talisman was fueled by more darker things than any of them imagined. Their tale unfolds upon the wrinkled pages of a worn leather journal, and the crows cry out for the price that they have wrought.
'Ware the mist that creeps at night, Stealing the children without a fight 'Ware the deep black crows on the poles, Watching the Soul Harvester reap his souls 'Ware the talisman bright, strong, and green, And 'ware the sound of a demon’s keen -- a Velathae children's rhyme
In recent days, strange feathers have been discovered scattered all across the continent of Elanith. When touched, they transform into ethereal crows that take to the skies, cawing for help... cawing for someone to "Save them." These crows have returned, and with them they've brought pieces of parchment from an old, forgotten journal.
It is in this journal that answers lie... for the Soul Harvester has returned, that you can't deny.
Journal
Part 1
There are only two of us left, myself and Nigrimi. He thinks I do not see the way that he watches my every move, but I do and soon I think there will be only he. Our party was twelve when we set out from Nydds the first time; who could have guessed it would have brought us full circle? This accursed task has cost us too much. I can feel it in my skin and in my ears, calling to me, taunting me with its relief. If only I could find it, find the answer and be rid of the decay. Nigrimi brings me supper and I watch him shuffle through our meager camp. He reminds me of Asull, who was the first to go...
Asull was determined to make the rope bridge work. It filled him with a deep passion that none of us had seen in him before. The want of the bridge began to cause him to twist and turn in his sleep. There were times, on our trek to the northern mountains, that we would wake to find his hands curled into perverted knots and his back bowed at an impossible, agonizing angle. He would reach for the sky in his sleep and his body would stay in the mangled position until we found him that way in the morning. Many times we thought him dead, many more times we wished him to be. But as soon as one of us would touch him, he would come alive. The howl that ripped from his lips was nothing compared to the hollow moans he made during his death.
The bridge he'd been dreaming of, that had haunted his waking and sleeping moments, was found five months into the journey. It spanned the Great Valley of the Northern Mountains. We could see it for days, and this only strove to draw Asull deeper into the growing madness. He began to cut boards long before we could see its details with our own eyes, long before it stopped being a smudge on the horizon. Asull dragged more than his weight in boards and fought off any that would try to help him or ease his torment. We did not understand that our pact had assigned our fates, how could we have known what it would cost us?
We camped as we always had, but the bridge was too close. We did not hear him leave in the mist-filled night, but his screams would echo with us for hours after his departing. I think it was those screams that caused Vefmur to begin to crack, or maybe it was that Asull had finally had his moment with the bridge that he'd dreamed about. I do not know exactly what caused Vefmur to cry in the night, and I do not know what caused Asull to obsess the way he did, but if it hadn't been for him we'd have never made it across that bridge.
Once we started across it, Vefmur began to despair. The distance was incredible, its length beyond imagining. We walked hand over hand over that rope and plank bridge, stepping on the boards that Asull had replaced. It took us fully two days. Vefmur panicked on that first night when he could see neither ahead nor behind us. During the second night, as we gazed tiredly at the distance, Vefmur could stand the strain of it no more and ran ahead of us towards our destination. The mist swallowed him. When we found him in the morning he was frozen solid, his body clutching the bare rock facing of the wall. At his feet we found Asull, his face split into a twisted grin of pure joy or agony. There are times in a man's life when one expression can be confused for the other. This was one of those times. Asull was bent over with that expression that is neither and both upon his face, fitting the last board onto the bridge. He was forever frozen with the bridge he adored.
Part 2
Meinri was the next of us to go. She had been hurt deep in her spirit by the sights she had seen and the cries of the men who lay frozen above us. She cried most of the way down the face on crooked steps carved by some enormous hand. The wind tore at her, tore at us, and tossed us into the mountain as if we were rag-dolls. Halfway down the snows started, and their icy tendrils lashed out our faces as if they were nothing. For eight days we traveled down that mountain and by the time we reached the bottom our faces were nothing but raw meat, bloody and torn.
We were giddy when we saw something other then grey and white -- giddy to see the green meadow spread before us. The last bit of the climb was more run than walk and our bodies cried from the effort even as our minds cried at the relief to see that warm spot. Meinri took the lead, for the first time in days seeming more like her old self. How could we have known that the traps would start this soon? Or maybe, we were naive to think that the traps hadn't started the day we left Nydds. The ground opened up and swallowed her. One moment she was crying for joy, and then next the cry was cut off and lost to utter silence.
It was Nigrimi that found the clever contraption, and it was Nigrimi that would keep track of the traps. I wonder if it was for that reason that Gnymr began to watch him. Or maybe, it was after we lost Baeclen. Beaclen, who had never wanted to join this expedition and had only come because his brother was going, maybe it was his own guilt that drove him to attack Nigrimi once we were in the caves. Either way, whatever the answer is, it was clear that through the tunnels there would only be six of us. It would have been seven, but Heapleni would not heed our caution and cried out for help in the darkness that stood before the yawning mouth of the cave. She did not fall to a trap or an obsession, nor the dark or jealousy. Heapleni fell to the yeti. Nothing we could do could save her, nothing.
We six, now half of what had set out from Nydds, roamed through the caverns of Ziristal certain that our losses and efforts would bear fruit. Nigrimi kept us safe, his ever-vigilant eye upon the walls and ceilings, the floors and the very air. He knew the signs now and his keen sight kept us from falling to any more of the traps that Heglaenmri had assigned to this place some thousands of years past.
You can imagine our disappointment when we found the center and the scrolls were gone. We slept in that empty tomb of a library, the weight of our defeat sinking deep into our souls. It filled us with a cold so deep that our minds began to play tricks on us. We saw Assul, saw him climbing his bridge and arranging his boards. We saw Gnymer attacking us, not just Nigrimi as had happened, but each of us in turn. It was as we watched Heapleni mauled by a yeti that we knew was long dead at the top of the cave that the green mist began to surround us.
Cold and damp, the mist had a mind of its own, it had a taste of its own, and it had voices of its own. Many voices, some familiar and some not, called to us asking us what it was we sought, what it was that drove us. I dared not speak the truth of my desire to it, I dared not tell it, "I am mortal and human and wish to live as long as the gods." But I could feel the words in my throat threatening to come out, threatening to rip their way up my esophagus and past my swollen tongue. I tasted blood and knew that I had physically stopped the cry from leaving me. Around me similar groans proved that others had done the same.