Dream Journal
4:03, October 14, In the 74th year of the reign of Lotor II
I am on the path. I’m going. From behind me, to in front of me. I can look back and see where I’ve been. I can look forward and see where I want to get to. Everything else is dark. Shadowed. Dull like someone has turned down the lights in the room. Some places are brighter than others, as if a campfire had been lit far off my path and spread it’s flickering light toward me. But those are far away and where I’m going is so much brighter that when I turn away I have spots in my eyes. I don’t need to stop for those little points. I need to get to the bright place. I need to hurry because I’m not the only one trying to get there. I need to get there before somebody else does. I noticed what was happening before the others, so I managed to leave first. I’m not sure if I’m faster though. I can’t really tell if I’m getting closer to where I’m going, but where I’m coming from is fading. When I turn around and look, it is becoming distinctly reddish, as if it is being replaced by red hot coals, but instead of emitting light, it is consuming it. I do not know what causes this, but I know that it is why I left. I know when I get to where I need to be, I will know more.

After a long time, I can see that I am close. I am almost where I am going. But I can hear those others traveling my path. They are getting close. They have nearly caught me. I had friends who should be following me, but far more enemies. My enemies may have found and overwhelmed my friends. I hope it is not so, but I cannot take the time to check.--

Dream Journal
Dusk, Fall, In the 70th year of the reign of Lotor II
I am on the path. I am moving forward. A shadow passes me. I can only see it because there is a bright place is on my left and for a moment it is shrouded. A hideous reddish fog covers the light for a moment, and then passes it by. This happens again. And again. It happens many times. Then there no longer are breaks in the redness, but only in the intensity. Sometimes it is as if many shadows cover the light and I can barely see it. Sometimes it is almost as bright as it should be. I do not think the shadows can see the lights off of my path. They were only following me, but by now they can tell where I am going, and have left off tracking me. I have failed. I meant to escape, to warn them, but instead I have led the predators to them.

I smell a sulfurous stench only moments before I am struck from behind. Somehow I know this should not be possible. I cannot be hit in this place. But they have been studying me, they have found a way. They do not hit me again, but they do not need to. It is enough. I can see I will not make it to the bright place. I had friends with me, but did not know where they went. Now I do. They have fallen, just as I am falling. As I fall I can feel myself changing. I am not sure what the change means, but it is happening. Things are becoming brighter. The bright place I was going is becoming dimmer. In the Place Between, I realize something I did not know before. In the place I left, I had meant to run somewhere else. I had meant to run to help. To somewhere strong that could help me save my home. But I had reached out blindly and found a place, a place strong enough to help and I had gone to it. Only it was not a place, it was a time. I had jumped toward the future. The shadows had pushed me out of my time trip, I was falling too early. They were going to the future and were going to destroy it.--

Dream Journal
Dusk, Summer, In the 68th year of the reign of Lotor II
I am not on the path. I have fallen. I have been knocked off the path. I am sinking below the path. If I keep falling, I am going to die. It doesn’t matter though, I’ve already failed. I wish I could get back onto the path, but I know that can’t happen. There is a bright spot to my left. I can’t help anyone, but I still don’t want to die. I can probably make it to the bright place. It is a new path. It is not the right path, but it is a path I can move on. I am moving forward. Those who have sought to kill me will not have that. I will survive.

I can see time spreading out beneath me. I was so close to where I needed to be. I can see those who meant me harm digging into where I meant to go. I can see that they are in the future. I grin with ironic hope. They have placed me in their past. They will arrive in a place I have already been. I know them. I know what they will do. Everywhere they place their feet, I will already have set a trap. Everywhere they reach to steal, I will drop a sword. By knocking me from the path, they have set a noose around their necks.--

 

I was born in a small woods cottage near Jeel 27 years before King Lotor II took the crown. Eleven years before he was born. My mother died during the birth, so I never got to know her. Her name was Aise, but my father rarely talked about her. We didn’t have any pictures of her, so I’m not sure what she looked like. My mother had a sister who lived in Vrethpool, and apparently they looked a lot alike, but she died during an orc raid when I was 9. I had only seen her twice in that many years. My father’s name was Gil. He was a good man. He liked to talk and work and tell stories. He was a woodsman mostly, living on what he hunted, and maintaining our home on his skills. We traded a bit with people in Jeel for what we couldn’t make. When I was 16 he got a deep cut in his leg from a trapped boar. It got infected and nothing either of us did helped. When he lost consciousness and I could not wake him, I walked to Jeel to seek the herbsman. When we returned to my home, it had obviously been attacked. The door was bashed in; the single room was a mess. I found my father dead on his bead, his throat had been slit. I pray he died painlessly.

It wasn’t that weird for a 16 year old to be living on his own then. Certainly no one in Jeel ever suggested that I needed an adult to watch over me. I think a few of them expected me to crawl into town some day, begging for help, looking for handouts. Most definitely were glad that I managed to keep myself fed. There were at least four other orphans living in the woods near Jeel, and probably twice that many in town. I saw some of them from time to time, setting traps, checking wild berries, or just sitting in a field doing something boring. The others were definitely younger than me, so they sort of looked to me as a leader. I only ever talked to two of them, a girl about 15 named Sara, and a boy about 13 named Mark, but let it be known that I had food and any who needed it could take some. Truth be told, I really enjoyed hunting, but wasn’t going to kill an animal just for my entertainment, so if someone needed some food, I was glad to share. Usually I sold hides to the tanner in town, lumber and kindling to the carpenter, gems or anything I could find to the jeweler. The smith in Jeel was an unusually surely sort and after I talked to him once he suggested that if I ever set my head inside his door again, he’d smash it with his 10 pound hammer.

Things were good for a while. I was a bit lonely at times, in the house by myself, but I had friends in Jeel that I kept in touch with. I honed what skills I had at trapping and tracking. I added a cellar to the house to store things in. A lot of my dad’s stuff went down there. I wasn’t going to throw it away, but it hurt to be reminded daily that he was gone.

They elected a new major in Jeel named Fisbold Pence when I was 17. Very shortly after that another isolated cabin was ransacked. No one survived, so they were really unsure when it happened. Mayor Pence was very concerned. He thought bandits might be in the area. So he worked to increase the number of guards and the size of their patrols. The citizens were concerned about becoming something like Hothbra; what the people called a “fortress town.” The mayor brought most of the orphans into town, placing in one home or another. The two that I knew came and stayed with me since neither of them had an actual building to live in. It was nice having people around again. We weren’t like a family or anything, but at least I didn’t go for weeks without talking to anyone.

The attacks didn’t stop though, and two more farms were raided that summer. We weren’t particularly afraid at my house, but we enlarged the cellar and started sleeping down there. Not only was there only one way in, but it was cooler in the summer.

The mayor had been raising taxes to pay for the guards. After a while, they came by my place. Now I didn’t know where some of the men he hired came from, but they were a far rougher sort than the friendly folk of Jeel, especially the tax collectors. My dad had saved a bit of silver stored away, but I didn’t exactly bring in materials that the people in town were going to give me enough coin to pay taxes with. Of course, they weren’t interested, so I gave them the silver, but I told them I wouldn’t be able to get any more for at least a year, if not quite a bit longer than that.

Mayor Pence began to speak in town about people not paying the taxes, or about complaints he had received from people about how much money it was costing to keep the guards around. He said some of the guards had quit because there was not enough money to pay them. About a week later another farm was razed and he took the opportunity to point out the dangers of not having enough guards. He said collectors would be coming by yet again to raise funds to bring back the men who had quit. He said he knew it was hard on everyone, that he himself had forfeited any of his pay as mayor beyond what he needed for the bare necessities. I could tell people were worried about this, but I took it all in stride. The men knew I had no more silver, so I did not think they would bother coming by just to hassle three orphans.

I was coming back from Jeel with some tools that I had traded for. We had decided to start tanning our own leather, which would hopefully be tradable for more than just the raw skins were.

It was near dusk and as I came around a hill, I could see men with torches by my front door. I thought it was a patrol. Sometimes they came by to check on the farms, see if anyone needed anything, and to suggest that we move into town for greater safety. When I got closer still, I could hear loud voices. The men were in a semi-circle in front of my house. I was surprised to see that about half were on horses. All of them were well armed and dangerous looking. Mark and Sara were out front. I couldn’t make out what they said, but Mark was plainly yelling. One man stepped forward, yelled something back and with a quick step, lifted Mark and tossed him backwards. Somehow Mark turned in the air and landed on his feet, knife in hand. He turned and made a quick thrust at the man’s outstretched arm. The man was plainly surprised and attempted to step back, but stumbled. He fell toward Mark and then went down in a heap. I heard a shout and a sharp twang that I knew well, followed by another. Mark fell to his knees, staring in shock, not at the arrows sticking out of his chest, but at his dagger, stuck hilt deep into a man, now lying still on the ground, the glaze of death already coating his eye.

Mark collapsed backwards and Sara shrieked. She threw something at one of the men who had shot the bow, but I couldn’t tell if she hit them. She took a step toward where Mark lay and two men ran forward to grab her. A man wearing gleaming armor and sitting on a huge horse dismounted and stepped up to Mark. He leaned down and it looked like he was whispering to him. Then with a malevolent gleam in his eye, he took a heavy hammer from his belt and brought it down in two quick strokes. I was close enough to hear Mark scream. I couldn’t see it, but I had no doubt that the man had broken Mark’s legs, probably his knees. Even if he miraculously survived the arrows, Mark would be a cripple for the rest of his life.

The man gave a shout and a wave and remounted. Men ran forward. Some tossed torches onto and into my house, while others grabbed the body of their fallen comrade. They tied Sarah to one of the horses and started onto the pat, heading right toward me. I quickly dropped what I was carrying and ran into the brush on the side of the road. I don’t think they were expecting to see anyone else, so they didn’t look very hard as they passed by me. I could have tripped some of them men; they passed so close to me.

When they had gone, I got up and ran to Mark. Both arrows went into his left side, one in his chest, the other in his abdomen. Somehow he was still awake, but his breath was coming in short ragged gasps. He saw me and as tears ran from his eyes he said “I didn’t mean to. I didn’t mean to. I only…only—” he coughed as his body tried to expel the blood filling his lungs. I checked his heart rate and immediately knew only powerful magic could heal him.

“Shh,” I said, “Be calm. Be at peace.” With bitter tears, I lifted his knife from where the men had thrown it. Though terrified, my hands did not shake as I drove it into his heart. One look at my house showed that it too was lost. We had no well and there was no way for one person to haul enough water from the nearest stream to save it from the flames. I rolled over and lay on the grass next to the still warm body of my best friend and cried as I watched my father’s house burn.

In the morning, I placed wood on the coals and put my friend upon the makeshift cairn. I fanned the coals and fed the fire until nothing was left. When the sun was almost straight up, I stumbled to a stream and washed Mark’s blood off myself. I then set out on the path back to Jeel. I easily could have tracked them for a ways; they made no efforts to hide the horse’s tracks. I was sure the skilled men in town could find the base and lead a party to wipe the bandits out.

The carpenter saw me as I walked in to Jeel and said it was good, if odd, to see me twice in as many days. I nodded listlessly and went into the town hall. The Mayor was there and was most distressed by my story. He said that while he wanted to help, his resources were stretched thin. He obviously couldn’t take guards away from town, and the rest could only cover so much ground in a day. He said he’d have someone go by as soon as they could, but explained that there was not much that he could do. He said that if we had moved into town it might have been safer. He suggested that I consider the welfare of other people before I do anything, or before I buy anything else for my own selfish profit.

It took a moment, but I realized he was talking about the equipment for treating leather I had bought the day before. I explained that we had given an entire year’s worth of income and were only poor orphans. If we were looking to make more, then we would only have more to give in the future.

He said that was true, but if we were truly concerned about giving more, we would have moved into town and taken up a trade or sought apprenticeship, or found some work to do at one of the nearer farms. Instead we insisted on staying on our own, stretching the resources of the town and providing a tempting target. He said they would definitely look for Sara, but did not hope for much. “Hopefully,” he said, “Others will see the real danger. See the truth of their selfish actions and move closer to Jeel where they can be safe and benefit everyone.”

I was shocked. I didn’t know what to do or say. We had given everything we had to help pay for guards and now were being denied their help. Nothing was going to be done. The men who had killed my friend, who had killed my father and burned his house, the men who had kidnapped somebody, were going to remain free and unpunished.

The door opened and heavy footfalls announced a man walking toward us. I turned and looked, only to see the impossible. The man who had broken Mark’s knees was walking across the town hall. Mayor Pence smiled and said, “Kagham, I would like you to meet Captain James Bryer. He is the leader of an elite unit I have hired to turn this bandit problem around. Specifically problems like the one have. He is tasked not with defending, but with offense. His job is to hunt out and destroy this raider menace. If there is hope of finding your friend, it lies with him. Perhaps you should tell him what you have said to me.”

With numbness spreading through my mind, I explained what I had found, expecting the man to lash out and slay me any moment. Instead, the man flourished his hand and pulled back his cape. With grave sincerity, he said, “This tragedy is unacceptable. I declare now, I will take no pay until justice is served. We will pursue these brigands to the ends of the island if need be.”

I then doubted myself. I had only seen some men at dusk by the inconsistent flicker of torchlight. Perhaps this was not the man I had seen there. Perhaps I had been wrong. In truth I did want to believe him. Then he said “If the girl lives, though with this sort of bandit I imagine she would rather not, then we will rescue her. Peace will be returned to Jeel, this I so swear.” He cut his hand with a knife to seal his oath and my heart burst. In my despair I had not mentioned Sara to him. Unless he already knew, there was no way for him to have said such a thing.

I mumbled my thanks and tried to stand. The world spun and I struggled to stay upright. I saw a wicked gleam flash across the captain’s eyes. I saw Mayor Pence stand and grin at my weakness. As I lay on the ground, sounds faded and color dulled to black.--

Dream Journal
May 14, In the 44th year of the reign of King Lotor II
I am rage. I am pain. I am a vision of destruction. Those who rise against me are struck down. Their crimes demand justice. The blood of the innocent cries out for revenge. I paint the walls with their penance. I am the judicator of the wronged. I am the protector of those on whom the wicked seek to prey. In me a shield is found. Here stops the horror. None of their evil breed may pass. They are not even chaff to be burned for warmth. They are sandy soil in which no good thing grows. They must be cleansed.--

Dream Journal
December 2, In the 32nd year of the reign of King Lotor II
I am standing. I am in a room. It is the town hall in Jeel. I am in the office of the mayor. The bodies of men are around me. I know that if I go into other rooms, more bodies will greet me. They look like men, but I know they are not. They are beasts. They are vile creatures. They prey upon people; they are parasites upon peace and civilization. As evil beasts they seek to destroy or consume all that is good. As evil beasts they deserve only death.

A lamb lies at my feet. The beasts meant to feast on the lamb. It is for the lamb that I have slain the beasts. The lamb trembles before me. The lamb recognizes me, but is afraid. I am not the shepherd, but the shepherd is dead. It is also for the shepherd that I have slain the beasts. I can hear men outside. I know they are true men. They will care for the sheep, but they will be upset with me. They thought the beasts were men. The lamb is my proof though. The lamb knows they were beasts. It will tell them.

They will still be upset. They do not understand what must be done with beasts. I do not blame them, I only learned recently. The beasts showed me, but they are now dead, and so cannot show anyone else. This is a good thing though; it is not to anyone’s benefit to learn from a beast. The people may want to hurt me. They are very upset. I do not want to hurt them, but I cannot let them harm me.

The sheep is speaking to them. It says one beast lives. One of the head beasts in fact. The fat, weak one. This is good I say. He can tell them. He knows about the beasts. The fat one would say he is a man like them, but I tell them it is a lie. They will see. I can show them that he is a beast.

The sheep begs me not to, so I don’t. I explain that he is only a beast and I will have to kill him anyway, but it would be better if the fat one explained about beasts first. They say he is a man as well. They say they will not let me kill him. I find this amusing. They cannot stop me, but I do not tell them that. I do not want to scare them.

The sheep tells them. The sheep explains that the fat one is certainly a beast and not a man, but sheep are only sheep and do not know what to do with beasts. The sheep says to drive the beast away and to never let it come back. This is the way of sheep. Sheep understand running and chasing, so I am not mad at its suggestion, but I tell it that this will not work. It is a beast. If they chase it away, it will not run for its life, but will find more beasts and return. I tell them that if they want to chase it away though, that will work for now. I will stay and kill the beasts when they come back.

The men are not happy at my offer. They say if he is a beast, how do they know if I am a beast or a man? I wonder about this. Certainly a beast can spot the differences between man and beast. And of course a beast would kill another beast if it were convenient. They are men, and men cannot tell the difference between beast and man. The sheep can though; the sheep knows.

I ask the sheep, but the sheep is afraid of me. The sheep says that I was a man, but does not know what I am not. I tell them if they think I am a beast then they should kill me too. Once I kill the fat one, I will not stop them from doing so. If I am a man I should live. That is what men do. If I am a beast, I should be killed, because beasts only live to destroy and be destroyed. They say that is not the attitude of a man, but of a beast.

I say they are right.

They say they will neither kill me, nor the fat one. They say they will drive us both away and we must never return. I tell them that this will not work. If they drive us both off, he will come back and there will be no one to kill his beasts when he returns. I tell them it is right that I leave though. If I may be a man, it is best to let me live. I wish them no harm and will not come back. But they must kill the fat one. It is not right for beasts to live among men. The very best choice is for both me and the fat one to die.

They do not listen. They say that I must leave. They say that the fat one must leave. They say we must never come back. I tell them a beast will always come back. It is their nature. However, they are men, and I may be a beast. It is not the place of a beast to argue with man, so I leave.

The sheep says it is sorry.

I tell the sheep that a sheep is never wrong with regards to a beast. Sheep do not know better. Men know even worse. It is not their fault that their nature is not meant to deal with beasts. I tell the sheep that it is wrong for a sheep to feel sorry for a beast. Even such a poor beast as me that could not kill a fat weak beast when it needed to be killed.

The fat beast insults me. I remove his hand. This makes the men very angry. They tell me to go right at that moment and never return.

I left Jeel.  It wasn’t hard to do since everything I cared about was gone.  I tried to live to the north east of Jeel, but found the forest creatures becoming increasingly hostile.  No matter where I tried to stay for the night I would be awakened by the sounds of hunting animals.  It was as if they knew I was not a native to the forest and were seeking to drive me out.

I found myself on the road to Hothbra one day and decided it wasn’t a bad plan to follow it.  I wasn’t meant for forests or wilderness.  Even when I’d lived on the outskirts of Jeel, I was dependent upon the city for many things that I simply did not know how to make.  I thought I would get a job with the blacksmith or perhaps at the tannery.  I had dealt a fair bit with skins and it seemed likely that they could, at least sometimes, use an extra hand with some skill.  As it turned out, a local carpenter needed someone to chop wood for him.  He’d pay by the log and even offered to buy my first axe for me.  I didn’t know much about being a lumberjack, but I could tell most trees apart.

Seven days passed in exhausting labor.  I worked with a few other more experienced woodsmen who showed me how to get the most out of my effort.  Even with their help, at the end of each day, when we camped down for the night I fell asleep within seconds of my head hitting the pillow.  Apparently the woods were slightly safer near Hothbra, and tenting in a larger group seemed to help as well, but they told me the local wildlife had indeed been acting strangely.

The woodsmen went to town once a week to bring the carpenter the lumber they had chopped, sharpen their axes, and get any other supplies they needed.  When we approached the gates though, the guards pulled me aside into one of the gate houses and put me into a holding cell.  Sometime later, maybe a few hours, a wooden slat on the door opened and a pair of eyes looked in that I would have recognized anywhere.  I heard Mayor Pence’s voice say “That’s him.  That’s the murderer.”

The trial was very fast.  Apparently I had been seen killing a variety of people near Lotor’s Castle and New Korelth over the last few weeks.  They told me I was a fool for thinking I could hide in Hothbra.  However, instead of killing me outright as they did with most murderers, Mayor Pence stood and spoke.  “While certainly this boy is guilty of murder, he is but a child.  I knew his father when I was mayor of Jeel and he was a good man.  If it pleases the court, I would beg that he not be hanged, but instead given a sentence of labor.”  I don’t know if the entire thing had been set up by the ex-mayor of Jeel, but it didn’t seem beyond possibility.

A carriage took me to New Korelth where I was to be a prison-laborer in the mines under the city.  Mayor Pence had put on a good show of arguing on my behalf, but the mines were little better than a delayed death sentence.  Even in Jeel we knew that everyone who went into those mines died there.

We worked on a rotation, the other prisoners and I.  We didn’t have clocks or anything, but the rotation was three men to a bed, one sleeping, two working, so it seemed likely that it was 16 hours on, 8 hours off.  We got 4 breaks a day for water and food.  They fed us surprisingly well as long as we worked hard.  Even so, I was always hungry.  It was hard, but it was prison and I didn’t expect it to be anything other than back breaking.  The work wasn’t terribly interesting and most of the time I was incredibly bored.

I learned a fair bit about stone and ore and a little about gems.  I learned a lot about people.  The sort of things someone learns when he has to depend on others for everything.  How to deal with people who are so filled with hate that even though they’ve been sentenced to a long slow death in the mines will try to take it out on anyone smaller than they are.  I learned how to make a weapon out of almost anything and how to use my bare hands to hurt a person badly.

They’d let us celebrate the New Year twice, so I’d been in the mines at least a year.  As far as the New Korelth mines go, I was an old time veteran.  The people who had been bullies when I arrived were now dead and cold.  People who tried to make life hard for new people met the sharp end of my pick, or one of the few who I’d gathered around me.  I enforced a type of martial law on the prisoners and the guards didn’t mind.  As long as we produced the ore, they didn’t care much what happened to the prisoners.  Things didn’t get better, but at least they didn’t get worse.

You quickly lose track of time and days under the ground.  I’m not sure exactly what day it was, but I’d guess it was a couple months before my 20th birthday.  We were digging in one of the deep shafts looking for thrallenite.  The guy to my right swung his pick the same way he’d done a thousand times before and the same way he would go on to do a thousand times more.  But that one time, one quarter of the pick shattered sending shrapnel everywhere.  Most of it only caused cuts.  A guy behind us took a piece in the butt and couldn’t sit properly for two weeks.  My luck was slightly different.

We had been doing well recently and I had managed to trade for some light weight linen instead of the durable burlap we normally wore.  It was lighter, spread heat better, and wicked sweat away more effectively.  Unlike cotton, it remained tough enough that it lasted almost as well as the burlap too.  A thumb sized shard of hot flying axe flew across my inner left thigh and completely severed the femoral artery as it passes close to the surface.  Maybe the burlap would have been heavy enough to matter.  Maybe not.  The linen was no help at all.  I could feel my blood pressure drop so quickly it felt like all my weight had liquefied and was draining out the bottom of my feet.

The pain alone would have made it difficult to stand, but beyond that, I didn’t have the strength to stay on my feet.  I leaned against the rock wall and slowly set myself onto the ground.  People were yelling, but were growing remarkably quiet.  They were running around.  People jostled me.  Before everything faded away entirely, a face looked down at mind.  He was saying something, but I never found out what. 

Dream Journal

March 29, year 20

I had found a place.  Now I can’t stay there.  I’m n9ot sure why or even what that means. I am not on a path, but I am not falling.  I am somewhere between paths.  Memories of my youth rush by me.  There seem to be two sets.  One of me in Jeel, but another set very different from the other.  I can see it is a different life.  A life I somehow know.  A life I am moving towards.  I can see differently into lives now.  They are patterns like a masterfully woven rug.  I can add or take away from them, but I must be careful or they would unravel.

I look at my life in Jeel.  I see that it helped, but it was not enough.  Not nearly enough.  If I somehow lived one thousand thousand lives and only made changes as small as I did in Jeel, they would not add up to enough.  “I must know more when I am alive,” I think.  I arrange it in the pattern so I will have more of my knowing when I live again.  I must be quick, for I am accelerating toward daylight…