User blog:Sabbal/Sabbal's Journal 2

My head feels better now that we are out of the city. We made camp in the forested wilderness, away from the crumbling walls of Alexandria...

We had run down to the docks. I arrogantly headed toward the danger, full of fury, ready to burn the entire fleet myself. In the end, cooler heads and different priorities prevailed. I followed Meline, the woman from the marketplace, to a brothel in the dockside district. She said she had worked there, but I doubt it was in the... capacity that one might initially suspect.

When we arrived, we found that all the sailors and the women had been b͍͛͆̚͜ͅǔ͍̻͚͒̏ṭ̭̮̅̊͌c̙̯̻̄̐̓h̢͕͕̾̏̋e̢̜̙̽́̋r̬̠̪͐̀͘ȩ̫͎́̓͝d̤͉̲̉́̚. The floors were slick with blood, and I saw the corpses, mouths hanging open, gazing at me, calling me...

A military man, an officer, came down the stairs with his underlings. They were looking for something, and I checked both my book and my necklace out of fearful habit. But they had not come for objects, mine or otherwise; they had come for her. Meline conjured a spell and threw flames at the soldiers, which seemed to confirm the captain's suspicions about her. We would have to fight our way out...

I rent the mind of a man in twain, and sent him cowering under a bed. The guardian statue seemed to be responding to me as I pleaded with it to strike the soldiers, and it was able to smash through the wall and grab hold of the captain. He was strong and clever, and got free once, but was not so lucky the second time the guardian took hold of him. With fire raging around us, with the city burning in the thunderous siege, we slayed Captain Ragar.

When he fell to the ground, a madness took hold of me, and I leapt upon him, thrusting my sword into his chest. The flames of the city were echoed by the burning rage in my forsaken soul, and I screamed into his empty skull for his stupidity and ignorance. As the libraries and books burned, so too burned countless secrets, endless knowledge. So too burned my hope.

In r̛͔̫͎͛͠ǫ̬̠̈́͛͗b̟̯̆̈̀ͅb̟̥̺̆̅͝i̹̟̯͆́̚n̪̗͍͒̍̔ǵ̢̬̑͜͠ ̞͚͉͛̀̕m̻̥̺͗̎̆e̢̙̰͛̓̆ of my opportunity to learn about the book, this Captain Ragar blinded me, left me in the dark, left me lost and despondent. I channeled my pain and fury and repaid the good captain: I tore his helmet from his head and gouged his rotten eyes out of his thick and heavy skull.

One of the men survived, and was willing to speak to us after some negotiation. Meline was at first fearful that someone might leave with knowledge of her face, of her heritage and her power, but for a brief moment, we both considered letting the man go. Guardian, it seemed, had other ideas. I doubt the man landed on anything soft.

Before we left, I relieved the good captain of his sword and his signet ring, so that no one can ever dispute that it was we who defeated him. We made our way to the city walls, because at this point I had come to my senses and realized that escape by sea was not an option. Meline, especially, needed to escape and hide, and with the soldiers indiscriminately slaughtering civilians, I would not likely fair well if I had stayed.

Not that I had any reason to stay, what with the libraries burned down. I look forward to the day that I can burn the empire's fleet and repay them for this abhorrent injustice.

The guardian statue smashed through the outer wall, cracked as it was in places from the flaming stones. We made it out alive, and escaped into the forest. Tomorrow morning we set out to find Aspen Hollow, an ancient elven city within the vast forest. For Meline, it is a refuge. I had not previously considered it, so set I was on Alexandria, but Aspen Hollow must have the collected knowledge of thousands of years. Perhaps there I will find s͙̠̩͕̖̥͔ǫ̠̮̖̫͎͈m͓̲̜͇̣̟̱ḙ͓̤̲̙͕͔ a̢̡͔̖͈̭̩ṋ̢̨̳̘͚̥s͕͇̖̱̟̭̪w̘͕̩̹̞̭̱e͎̻̰͓̗̱͜r̨̡͍̣͉̳̹s̨̩̲̘̟͉̞....