Some days have passed since the...event. I see the trenches which we had laboured to dig, and think of death. I see this entire venture, this digging for guardians, as it truly is. A fool's errand. We have come here to die, when we should have stayed at home and made ourselves worthy of the title “Protector.” No good comes from pinning hope on an old tale, which is probably just a legend.
And yet Tsiru believed.
It is for this reason that we must continue. I feel that resolution building within me, and though the temptation to either abandon my post or order everyone to go rises also, I fight it. Tsiru believed, and my first act after his death will not be to undermine the work he has already done. We may die, but at least we will die with that much more honour.
The Fortifications rise ever higher, and yet with each block added, my suspicion of Apiks increases. Her men seem shadows, Arx seems more threatening. That frenzied passion which she displayed when she split her power seems to have vanished, replaced by a calm which erupts in bouts of anger and violence. All too often, Arx is the one who feels her wrath. He can only dodge or evade so many blows before he is hit, and whilst it would be within my power to intervene, Arx does not complain. He suffers through it, slightly grimmer about the eyes, but determined to defend Apiks to the last. His dedication is either great bravery or immense stupidity. Something like our staying here in this green confusion, I suspect, but Apiks does need to calm down… I am no longer certain whether the blood on her clothes is hers any more. Imic is the only one who seems to have escaped the sour mood of the soldiers, instead seeking out Quill for long talks. Their relationship…. Confuses me. Imic is a ferocious and renowned soldier, big on brawn and by no means small in brains, but whenever he attends these “lessons” he suddenly adopts the personality of a puppy. It is strange – not least because after his meetings, odd things happen. One time, his pockets began puffing perfect rings of smoke much like those from a pipe, and at another red lights circled his head before vanishing with small pops and leaving an acrid smoke in my newly-designed and created dining room. I begin to think Quill is a bad influence on him.
Flame, meanwhile, has begun working with increased frenzy. Masterwork after masterwork slips from his fingertips and decorates our poorly constructed but now richly furnished fortress, and he begins to murmur about… other things. Peculiar things. I wonder how much our place in the site of Necrothreat effects these odd things I have been observing, but if so Flame seems to have been impacted more than others. He handed me a masterwork wooden axe and told me he'd been told to pass it on to Apiks, to “give him something safe to play with instead of metal.” His tone was vague and his eyes, I noticed, slightly out of focus. I asked him if he wanted to visit the sick bay, but he jumped as if he'd been stung, shouted something about someone called the “Mad Doctor,” and slammed his workshop door in my face. I walked away confused and angry, but decided not to make a big issue of it. Flame was only trying to stop tension with Apiks, he doesn't deserve anger.
As I stand at the front of the Fortress, I tell the Forumites who bustle around me to lay a wooden floor on our encampment “and never mind that the Hippies will be angry! I want their delegate to remember the power of the people they visit as they walk over the one thing they truly love to visit us!” This rebellion against nature gives me some comfort, so I am irritated when I spot someone lazing about on the finished barricade, seemingly talking to himself. I go up to confront him.
“You, there! Get back to work. These walls don't make themselves.” The only response I get is an indifferent stare, and I look at him in outrage before walking towards him with all the authority I can muster on the blustery wall. “Get. To. Work.” My beard whips about my face and makes me feel foolish, but I know I am still an intimidating sight.
“He's talking to us, ducky. Who do you think he is? He looks silly. Maybe we should tell him how his muscles work…. The blood pumps…. Brain strains against his skull. That would be funny. But no… he's beneath us, ducky. He'll die some day, like that book man. He fell… and fell… and died. Oh, do you remember how interesting it was? The wall was cold that day, a lot of win….”
I interrupt him quickly. “Book man? Tsiru? You saw him die?” Was this at last a witness, someone who could tell me what really happened?
“He fell, ducky. Fell and fell. Blood man made him fall.” Suddenly, the man looked directly in my eyes, and as he did so I noticed a small movement. Clutched protectively in the man's arms, sheltered from the wind, was a small duckling. It, too, disconcertingly, was looking at me. The wind blew harder around my face. “Down...down...dead.”
Later I discovered that this man's name was 4maskwolf. His name was well known throughout the fortress, as when he originally arrived he never spoke a word. He simply did his job, that of a butcher, as well as anybody could, and with more dedication than most. And if he sometimes smiled in the middle of the work, who was to know why. His silence changed, however, when one day they brought him a duckling. It was to be killed and served as a delicacy to an influential Forumite, but for whatever reason he refused to kill it. Thinking he wasn't up to the task, another tried to do it but was met with such anger he stood down. Said he feared for his life, especially when the man started asking “ducky” if he wanted to eat the bad man's entrails – whilst brandishing a cleaver.
Crazed though he may sound, he had given me a clue. The “Blood Man” had done it…. And once again I found myself thinking of the blood on Apiks' clothes.
26th Slate
Another is born to our life in the green wilderness. May the ground give her relief, and the Guardians protect her.
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It both amuses and terrifies me that 4maskwolf presumably became a novice in a poem by reciting it to his duckling.