A tiny bit of Vim for you today! Just a morsel really, but I have been very sick.
I have much more written, but it is still in the throes of revision. (There are some interesting pitfalls to navigate when writing an epistolary narrative ((that is, a story made up of letters or journal entries)*), and I am afraid that I fell into several of them in the segment with which I'm currently struggling – but more on that when I finally post those chapters!)
*Yes, our parenthetical statements are so profound that they possess their own parenthetical statements.**
**AND footnotes!***
***Seriously, it's like a Russian nesting doll in here.****
****Yes, I recycled this joke from the New Game+ Journal in Defender's Quest. My apologies if you are on of the 3 people who's read it before.
In the meantime, I hope you can enjoy our poor brain-damaged-eunuch-scribe-turned-grave-robber's latest adventure. While it may not be our hero's most verbose journal entry, I'd like to think that there's still a surprising amount of information to unpack.
...I wonder what's going on with that Gill fellow.
Anyways, if you'd like to catch the adventure from the beginning, you can find the previous chapters here:
And now…
Three wounds have charted the course of my life, as the magi once thought themselves written in the stars. The first took away what I could have been. The second took away what I was and gave me more than I ever dreamed to have. The third, throbbing in the filthy darkness of our shelter with a growing putrefaction even I can smell, will take away all that is left. I will leave my Paradise.
Here in a cleft of the mountain itself, in a place of danger so great even the luparii will not follow, I can bear to think or write no more.
I wish that I could recall the words that the enemy spoke to me, but all that my ears can hear is the crunch and clatter of that shore of bones as Gill dragged me away.
They argue now about me as they once did him, though I can still walk and converse and carry out my simple camp tasks with my uncut arm.
The luparii, it seems, poison their blades.
Gill, for his part, says nothing. The others pretend to have forgotten that he had an arrow by his heart not two days ago, poisoned, no doubt, as much as the axe that carved my arm. Instead, they argue in their all too audible whispers about whether the gelding will slow them down. Each word of defense, few and quiet as they are, which comes from the lips of my Paradise, is to me an intoxicant worth all pain.
They shall cease altogether soon, I am sure, and I will be left. For now I will relish this delight.
___
I do not sleep at my dear Paradise's feet as I always do for fear of disturbing her with the noisomeness of my wound.
The pain is subsiding, which I believe is a sign of the approaching end. I am not overly disheartened.
My life has never been my own, but for the first time in my 37 years, it belongs to a person of my own choosing.
I ought to hope that I mean nothing to her, for I would not see my lovely Paradise in any pain or grief, but I cannot force my soul to take on such a wish.
In my wicked heart, I dream of her tears on my grave, or whatever mound of rocks they might raise in this evil and desolate place.
___
How I wish I could recall the words of the enemy when I sat on its shore in ecstasy and oneness of purpose.
___
I must move. I must set my mind to something.
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