I am a little confused.

Sometimes I seem to remember some other time of hunting dragons, of struggles against the sacrilegious unnatural and journeys to towns and other strange places. Perhaps it was the last time my body was born from the Mother. But still it taints every time I set a foot forward; it feels like an echo, and I can feel past times my body moved forward or back, as if I exist at all times simultaneously, and I am not living, but in a trance... I cannot tell, but something about this feels wrong. It is right to feel the influence of your foresires and foredames. That is bloodlines, the right flow of the natural world. But when can any creature feel his past spirit's memories? ... This feels like an omen...

Kas comforts me constantly, hugging against my body. His day-to-day actions are a simple magick that speechlessly returns me to the real state of things: that I live, and struggle, and one day will return to the soil from which I came. This is eating: this is drinking: this is hunting and traveling: this is thinking: this is sleeping: this is existence, which I come to, and leave, in harmony with the right way of things.

But when I see Kas crawl among my newfound companions, that are so awkward and out of balance in their manner of living, I am confused again. Everything I knew as a child is thrown against this strange manner of things, where the dead walk, dragons hunt the towns where men normally hunt animals, where blood means nothing and the bonds between us are those of causes handed to us by people we do not know. It all seems as a strange dream.

What happened to the days when elves and men and dwarves were the balance of the force of nature? Now everything with a face, normally opposed, huddles together and fears the marching bands of zombies and vampires, of gods come to upset the balance with their quests for ultimate reign, and of the appearing beings not of this plane...

I am reminded of my brother. And I wonder... I wonder how he reconciles his life in the complex, graceless city with the calm and purity of the forest... I wonder how he came to like these things that I cannot fathom, these things that cause me malaise... no, these things that make me sick. I can feel the wrongness in my stomach.

I have not been among the villages for long, but already I feel how things are not... right.

Perhaps, if I cleanse the place of these unnatural things and their unnatural acts, I can come to feel at peace again...

It is strange. The more winters I see, the more I think of my mother and father so long gone, our family when we lived in happiness in the purity and hard comforts of the trees and the rock and our fellow beasts... and I long for these times that were not corrupted by complexity, and not haunted by ghosts... perhaps the nostalgia is a sign that I do not belong where I am, doing what I am doing. But perhaps it is a sign that I must use the powers of myself, my friend Kas and the Earth herself to return things to grace... to save even these newfound companions of mine from the evil and the awkwardness that afflicts everything these days.

I must find a way to our salvation. I must find a way to peace.

Apparently strange company means dangerous company.

After dispatching a dark prince, we were teleported from a stony tomb in the nick of time. In unison, we recited the words; but when we came to, we weren't in unity anymore.

We were wandering the paths of the dead indecisively: a dwarf, a druid, a monk and a magic buffoon. I should have known that the situation was dire enough when we emerged from the temple with half a party, but when we began to be followed, it became clear that I didn't know the whole of the matter.

There was an evil buzzing outside as we spent the night in the earth. I sent a swarm to drive it away, but the next day proved that they hadn't been driven far. Once again, we were pursued...

In the end, our pursuers were more than a mere scouting party. We faced some strange gnomes that looked as if they were from a strange plane... and nearly died. But what was stranger still was that it was nearly the monk and dwarf that killed us. Every blow was returned in multiples to us. We fled with our lives, but only after the dwarf succumbed to our enemy's demands for the prince's blade. What powers this may give those fiends, we cannot know... may the gods protect us...

The priests of the area are not exactly kindly, but they are fair. Their stone walls were more yielding than their sentinel, but once I gained entry, we found a good respite from the trials we'd endured. Rest, and sparring with Gustav, and singing... The magic fool worked his wonders, that's for sure. What a performance! Never had I seen a human with the displays of a peacock. I've talked with Kas a bit... he's agreed to find food elsewhere, food that's not entertainment. Of course, he appreciates the opportunity to be treated without suspicion, as well. Auhron's been eyeing Kas with a prejudicial eye, but Kas prefers food that doesn't taste of magic and satin...

I can almost forget the things waiting for us outside...

But why are they after us? It seems a more hard pursuit than something of routine predation... I suspect I haven't been told everything. What have I been trapped into? This is no mere dragon hunt, if there is such a thing. Did the priest know when he sent me?

As hard as these temple priests are, I at least feel they can be trusted...

They knew what they were doing. They knew damn well.

The trees had bloodlines cut around their necks. They were oozing their life's fluids onto the scorched and poisoned earth. I could feel their tissues creak as the leaves and branches desiccated themselves helplessly.

The wet rags of fur had been wolves. They smelled of salt and soot, blood and fire. Their claws had been pulled out of their paws. Their teeth had been crushed, their tongues cut.

The clothes attempted to knit themselves back around the slashed limbs of the druid; its supporting flesh, however, rotted and seeped underneath, soaking the mending fibres of the garment with dark, yellow-red fluids. Glistening gut peeked out from under the robe.

All swung from the groaning trees in the dull wafts of stale air.

But nowhere were the insects cleaning the bodies of the dead. No carrion beasts took the flesh back to the realm of the living. They knew what they were doing, because they had defiled the dead in every way: they hung limply from the circle of trees, flesh shredded, out of reach, coated with foul, sticky poison, covered with mocking glyphs. They hung there pathetically, because no beast could touch them without ingesting the poison which coated the bodies, cursing any being which would attempt to bring them back to the earth.

And they should have known I would be coming after them.

I am not going to stop until I have slaughtered every living one of them, cursed their bloody orc corpses, and am crushing the throat of their leader with my boot. And then, I will stomp it flat. Repeatedly. And then I will remove my boots, and stomp in the lumpy pile of blood. I will squish it between my toes. I will rub it over my skin. I will lick it from my hands, and then I will rub it over my skin again.

The longer I am away from the forest, the more I come to hate everything these places hold... I hate the priest who sent me. I hate the undead who plague the Paths of the Dead. I hate the orcs who defile the area. Do I hate the fools that drag me to the lair of the dragon? I don't know. I can't even think now. I am sick with hatred. I am sick with defilement.

I want to go home.

But there is no longer a home I can go to where I will not remember these things, even in my dreams... There is nothing left for me today but killing.

I've been talking to my friend Greogh, the boar I met many days ago. He's given me some ideas -- apparently the boar of the area make much use of bone. Kas has generously agreed to donate what I need, as well. It will take some time to craft, but the giant's death will be even more of a boon than I imagined...

The Oak Father heals everything, returning everything to its natural place, both body and mind... The vision that came to me returned my peace in exchange for the bits of giant-bone I had been fashioning into weapons, and blessed me with a silver sword that glows with the light of the moon. Just looking at the gleam on the edge is enough to entrance me... The polished metal sinews look like living tendrils rather than support for an instrument of destruction. This must be His way of reminding me to balance destruction with birth...

I don't know why my god should wish me to release my anger. Did they not deserve any kind of slaughter I could give them?!? Or so I thought... The wisdom of Obad'Hai knew that the vengeance had poisoned me, as much as their acts had befouled the land. I could not let go, but the incredible Wisdom saw fit to restore the balance I couldn't return to by my own weak powers... Tonight, I am blessed.

One thing remains a little puzzling. The visions... were they that real? Or were the strange lands I saw merely metaphor for the words of my god? Waves of trees and grass undulating in the wind as I flew over them, receding into endless waves of rock-adorned sand, swallowed by waves of water... I don't know how to interpret them... There did seem something in the rapid shimmering of it all before my eyes... Although, perhaps I am a little child-like for not treating them as dreams: fanciful, ephemeral wrappings for the seeds of truth, and nothing more.

How strange to finally see clearly ahead, now that I've been blinded! I'm a suspicious type by nature, I suppose, but never did I suspect how deeply I've been tricked, and for how long...

It was immediate that I suspected the priest's lack of information. But I had no idea what kid of troubles this would lead me to... That I had been lead into a group that had managed to anger gods and men alike.

To hunt a dragon is one thing. To be hunted by bands of greedy thieves for silly pieces of dragon gold, to be prominent enough that I should be sought out by evil-working rivals, to be trapped in the politics of groups I had scarcely ever heard of... it is all entirely beyond what I had expected. It smells of the contrivances of dragons and men.

And now, because I was naïve enough to believe that the situation was a straightforward dragon-slaying, I sit in the dark. My sight is gone. Curse the blade of that halber.... my eyes still burn and throb. Hot tears come unbid from my eyes, but the water does nothing to help. I know. The magic won't stop its work until it is undone. I would kill that bastard... I would have, if he wouldn't have teleported himself. I would have killed him if he hadn't killed me. But he wasn't interested in clean death... only the same sick kind of crippling and curses his kind stoop to. May my poison take him. I hope it rots his veins, as he tried to do to Auhron; as he tried to do to Bellum's soul; as even now it does my eyes.

But what can I do now? I am no shape to deliver justice. And my companions -- how strange it is, but after all this time, there isn't one I have any connections to -- have other goals, and are no help.

My pig friend and Kas are right; I don't belong here. This much I should have trusted my instincts on from the beginning. I don't know what my brother sees in cities and humans, but they're not for me. It's time to go back to the forest, where things make sense, where I can think clearly. Perhaps I can find a way to heal my eyes. Or perhaps I can train, find a way to track that cursed sight-stealer. But whatever I am looking for, I know I won't find it with these people, on their journey to nowheres unknown.

At least my lack of ties makes it easy to depart my own way. Greogh and Kss... I am grateful to have their company, their brotherhood. Their rhythms remind me of what I have almost forgotten: nature. I must find a way to repay them... some service or goods to reward their kindness. Maybe I can make use of Kissenth's hide, for some kind of armor or clothes; or maybe I can awaken Greogh, and give him the power to shape his own destiny and help his pack. Especially I am grateful now, when they are my only guides in a cold, barren dark that doesn't end...

The night's weather is crisp and breezy... if only I could see the stars. But it is perfect for a new beginning. Sleep well, strange travellers, and may you find whatever it is that spurs you to the end of the world; may you find freedom from your compulsions, as I finally will tonight.