Journal The Disastrous Diary of Liadain's Least Lucky Lady

[Zinnia]

Zinnia's Journal, Entry 1: Bristly Beginnings

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Okay so this is gonna be weird and new for me, but uh...I don't know. I never thought Dreadlord work could be so lonely, and Kristen thought it might help if I started keeping a diary to store my thoughts in. I don't really know how effective this could really be, but...I dunno. I have a lot of time and no one to talk to, so this stupid book will have to do, I guess. Worth a try, at least.

Oh, and I won't be bothering to add dates to these. I don't see the reason. Hopefully no one ever even looks at these besides me, anyways. Why am I even prefacing this entry with this? Gods, come on, Zinnia, just get on with it.

Alright, so...scout work on the border territories again today. Yes, the Falwood, AGAIN. This area is awful, and it's a lot less, um...*entertaining* without someone like Kilien to keep me company. I keep requesting the Academy to have him sent out for another field mission with me, but they don't seem too keen on letting that happen again. I really can't figure out why...

In any case, today was even more terrible than usual. I completely get why everyone in Vel Anir hates the locals. Well, not the elves, but the fae. The more I encounter them, the less I like them. Are they all such awful little jerks? One leapt out of the tree line today and scared my horse. He started running right towards an embankment and I couldn't get him under control, but right before I thought he'd throw himself over the side and get himself hurt, that same fae creep *poofed* in front of him and made him turn one-eighty.

Unfortunately, him turning so fast threw me off. I hit the ground pretty hard and rolled down the embankment. Guess what? A whole mess of sticker bushes were at the bottom. I'm still picking brambles out of my skin and leathers. Ow ow ow.

Thankfully I got my horse back, and I'm supposed to be heading into town tomorrow to restock on supplies and get some rest in. Couldn't have come sooner.

Um...until next time, I guess?

 

[Zinnia]

Entry 2: I Hate Big Words

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Hi again, I guess? I made it back to town, and was immediately reminded of how I cannot seem to fit in much of anywhere. I'm not giving up, obviously, but just...ugh. Why am I like this?

Sorry, sorry, moping again. This is for VENTING, not moping, right..? I'm not totally sure what the difference is, but whatever, I'll get to the point.

There was...a REALLY handsome guy that I saw in town. The weather was pretty nice today, and he was sitting in the sun with an easel and a canvas and stuff. Painting. He was painting.

I did that thing I always do when I get the butterflies from just looking at someone where I keep trying to sneak glances at them, but I'm way too obvious about it and they make eye contact with me and so I end up feeling obligated to actually TALK to them instead of just respectfully absorbing how nice they look and--ugh, alright, I keep reminding myself to try and be more bold, like I said I would when I graduated.

So...instead of running away when he noticed me, I went ahead and approached him, tried to talk to him and all that. At first it was going okay, I just asked him about his painting and he lit up like a candle.

Then he started talking about technique and stuff? And I made the mistake of pretending to know ANYTHING about painting. He used a word I have literally never heard or read in my life, and I said just about the dumbest thing possible because I misunderstood what he meant.

"Oh, yeah, I love it when there's olives alongside the little meats and cheeses!"

GODS. I THOUGHT HE SAID CHARCUTERIE, I'M SO STUPID. He looked at me like he'd just seen a rat publicly chew off part of a BABY, Journal! And then he just said
"Uh-huh, well, you have a good day, I need to finish this," and went back to painting.

I went to the local book store right after and asked the owner about the word. "Chiaroscuro?" Who uses that word?! Just say "lighting" or "contrast" or something! AAHHH I WANT TO DIE!

Anyways...I'm just going to drink and pass out now. Thanks Journal, until next time.

 

[Zinnia]

Entry 3: Breakfast in Bed

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Well...it certainly has been an eventful morning. I've been staying at a local inn during my down time and it's been alright for the most part. Not the nicest place, but Dreadlord pay means I've got a room and I'm not sleeping in the commons.

Funny thing, that. I woke up in the commons this morning anyways. Actually, technically I woke up midair. My bed fell through the floor of the upper story.

I want to write that again. My bed. Fell. Through. The floor. Or, the ceiling, I guess?

I screamed. The other customers screamed. The inn workers screamed.

Thankfully no one was hurt. The innkeeper explained it to me a bit later. Apparently during a flood a few years back they had a pretty bad roof leak above the room I was in. Water got in and didn't get put back out, so dry rot got to the support beams. A few years of rot and decay later, and I was just the unlucky patron who happened to be sleeping in the room when the support beams gave way.

I feel a lot more fortunate that nobody saw me uncovered when I came crashing through. That probably would have been the worst case scenario.

At least the innkeeper gave me free breakfast and didn't charge me for that night's stay...it's the little things, right?

 

[Zinnia]

Entry 4: Ghosts n' Stuff

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Hello again. I've been back out on the road for a couple of days now and I thought I'd do another of these because today was...weird. Weirder than usual. While I was traveling up a trail through some pretty long-forgotten fields I spotted an old, run down house in the distance. I thought I'd go check it out but I was pretty shortly cut off.

This old guy in what looked like the remains of robes hopped out of the reeds and started waving at me and shouting to "turn back! Away! Away!" He must have heard my horse's hoof steps and gotten woken up from a nap or something.

In any case, he had a holy symbol of Kress hanging from his neck, but I'm not sure if he just found/stole it or if he was actually a priest of some kind. He was going on and on about "not treading upon the land here to follow, o ye of bright eyes and brown hair, lest ye invoke the ire of the fiend of yonder abode!"

(Or something like that, he was using way too many big words for me to fully get what he was saying.)

I told him I was a Dreadlord and that dealing with things like that was exactly my job, then asked him what I'd be dealing with.

"An ephemeral cretin, a specter from beyond the veil of life and death! Fear it well, young Dreadlord, or thou shalt--" yadda yadda yadda.

Anyways I spent like half an hour poking around the house. The place was a wreck, looked like a fire might've burnt part of it down at some point. The old guy followed me closer to the place but maintained a good distance.

I nearly soiled myself when something in a pile of rubble finally moved on its own. I drew my hammer and readied myself for something terrifying...only for the fattest opossum I've ever seen to come tumbling out of the pile a few moments later. I grabbed the thing by the scruff of its neck and held it up for the old guy to see, and shouted at him if this was the "ephemeral cretin."

He looked absolutely terrified and started raving and praying a bunch of babble I couldn't quite make out. I carried the opossum a good fifty yards from the house and set it down on a log, and it wandered off. When I came back the old guy was praising me for performing an exorcism and calling me a saint. I told him it was nothing and went on my way, but not before he handed me a little hand-carved charm that he said would ward off demons.

The Falwood outskirts are just as weird as the forest itself, I swear.

 

[Zinnia]

Entry 5: What am I Doing?

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This one's gonna be hard to talk about. Write about. Whatever. But Kristen's some number of thousands of miles away, and I don't know if I'd even want to talk about it with Kilien, or anybody else. I just feel ill.

I came upon the remains of a fight today. I figured it was recent because the corpses were all pretty fresh and a burned out wagon was still smoking and warm. I know this sort of thing happens all the time out here, and in the world in general, it's just...a lot harder to look at than I thought it would be.

The wreckage was definitely Anirian. Probably a merchant convoy or something. If any of them survived, they were long gone by now. The rest were full of arrows or sliced up with clean cuts, and any abandoned crates had been totally emptied. Elf raiders, if the stories and my own little experience was anything to go by.

I found out I was right pretty quickly when I heard some pretty pitiful sounding coughing. I didn't think Falwood elves were particularly keen on leaving their wounded behind, but maybe things got so messy that this one was made an exception for.

He was hurt badly. Belly ripped open through his leathers, guts spilling out, blood draining from his mouth. I was shocked that he was conscious at all, but maybe elves are tougher than humans, I don't know.

When he saw me coming he growled something I didn't understand and spat me, a glob of blood and goo that didn't get more than a few inches from his face. He got a lot quieter when I got closer, breathing hard and just looking up at me, eyes kind of glassy looking. I think holding on to the anger was too much effort for him.

I didn't know what to do, or what to even feel. I was taught for my whole life that the raiders from the Falwood were evil creatures, supernatural monsters capable of cutting you to ribbons faster than you could see them coming. What I saw in front of me was a person on death's door, suffering as he bled out.

"You and yours killed these people?" I asked him. He nodded, and I think at that point he really knew I wasn't there to save him.

"Do what you will," was all he said back.

My hammer gave him his last mercy.

 

[Zinnia]

Entry 6: Are They All Like This?

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I really cannot overstate my dislike of fae.

I'm back to patrolling near the tree lines and I hate it, I HATE it. I can't get ONE NIGHT without something WEIRD happening. I thought that maybe the Visitor was unique in being the more chatty type, but no. No, I was very wrong.

Another one appeared tonight while I was making camp and at first I thought I might actually be dealing with a ghost. It was a lanky, floaty thing with a long, tattered sheet hanging off of it and a kind of weird glow coming from its body, like a bunch of shades of red that was kind of hard to look at. The thing had its arms above its head, wiggling its long, creepy fingers in the air and literally saying "ooOOOooo!" You know. Like a ghost in a kids' book.

I froze when it floated in because, let's be honest, when you're settling down for the night while trying to cook a pot of beans over a campfire, the average person isn't expecting whatever in Kress' name that was. But then it started twirling back and forth in front of me and getting really silly with the "ooo" sound it was making? Then it just sat down across the fire from me and started talking.

"Did my eldritch entrance impress you, child? Does my baleful visage not drive you wild? Grant me but a cup of beans, and learn the secrets of my mien!"

(I would not have remembered any of that if the thing wasn't rhyming, that was actually kind of neat.)

I said something like "If I give you a cup will you just go away, please? I don't need to know how you're doing this, I just want some peace and quiet."

It sat there for a second staring at me from under the sheet, blankly, and replied "Yeah, okay."

So it sat there politely while I finished cooking, I gave it a spare cup with fresh beans in sauce, it thanked me, and left. I hollered after it to just ask like a normal person next time and it yelled back "you know that I won't!"

Please, someone, get me away from here.