diary

[cellio]

September 5 (Thursday)

Hrolf and I are continuing to get to know each other. It's so great to have someone to talk to who understands about magic and loneliness and stuff! I guess Liandra does too, at least some, but Hrolf is different.

Yesterday I received a letter from Brion back home. The rat-kin are getting along well. I'm glad that worked out! Mom apparently freaked out after I left, and Brion and Dad are trying to keep her calm. Poor Brion. Poor Dad too, but he had more choice in the matter. I left letters for both Brion and Mom and Dad this morning before we left, so I hope someone will carry them to Shepford before too long.

We left this morning for Covanion, which is several days' travel.

September 7 (Saturday)

I'm scared. Last night as we were getting ready to go to sleep, we were attacked by a monster like nothing we've ever seen before. Big fangs, big claws, and it came straight at us. Kind of like that Bjorn bully who disappeared from Shepford a few years ago, only better groomed.

So we did what you would expect if something big is attacking you: we fought back. We knocked it down, and then we hit it some more to make sure it was dead.

And then it turned into a human boy! How did that happen? I feel awful.

Hrolf is very practical, and says we didn't kill a boy but a beast and it's not our fault. I agree that it's not our fault, but I still feel horrible. After breakfast (not that I really feel like eating) we're going to follow its trail and see what we can find out.

September 8 (Sunday)

Treefall is not a good place to be. I hope I never set foot in the place again.

Yesterday we tracked the monster/boy to Treefall, not far away. This isn't the first news of monsters coming out at night and attacking people there. They always seem to disappear come morning. Well, it turned out it's not creatures from outside attacking them and turning them into more monsters (like the vampires in those stories Dad used to read to us at bed time). The monsters *are* the townspeople. The whole place was under a curse of sorts. And we walked right into the middle of it, and now they hate us because we accidentally killed some of their people (who were monsters attacking us at the time). And we tried really hard to avoid killing any of the monsters once we figured that out, but no one seems to believe us. So the farther we get away from this place, the better.

I'm starting to miss having Brion around. This town had a cleric (named Duval), but he just didn't seem like someone I could talk to. I used to think Brion was kind of irritating sometimes, making us listen to his stories of Pelor all the time and everything, but in the last couple years, as my magic powers really began to come out and I had all those problems with my parents, I found that he really was someone I could talk to and get help from. I didn't realize just how much this mattered until we left.

So Treefall was under a curse. The place was founded by a wizard named Geremond, and he left behind a statue of himself (how tacky) holding a magic glowing gem. This gem protected the town from the monster curse, until a week or so ago when someone stole it. We found the bandits who stole it and got it back, but a few monster-people died in the process even though we tried to avoid encounters with them. In the process of getting it back we ended up at Geremond's old tower, and we took some of the magic-related stuff when we left. No one else was using it, after all, and we *did* help the town out a lot. We haven't taken a real close look yet; we were in a hurry. Prolix found a spell book and I took some other books and lab equipment. It'll be nice to have a chemistry set again.

We were up all night dodging monster-people and chasing bandits, so as soon as we put some distance between us and this town I hope we'll stop for an early night. Colm got some sleep, so he can drive and some of the rest of us can sleep in the wagons, maybe.

A weird thing happened this morning. Maybe it'll make more sense after I've slept. While we were gathering up stuff at the tower Hrolf went hunting, and he brought me something. (He still doesn't understand, poor guy.) As he dropped a mouse into my hand, I felt a tingling in my hand and suddenly the mouse was smoking. Cooked, on closer inspection. How strange.