Eleint 26th, 1502 DR

Wuyon'e was captured using an underhanded method, luring her out of safety with a forgery of Sylk's writing to ambush and poison her so she couldn't fight back. We managed to find her trail and assemble a rescue group that successfully freed her with no further complications from any other party encountered.

Everyone is safe... for now.

As the facts currently stand, the only way for these events to have unfolded like so was with the involvement of someone who knows Wu's and Sylk's relationship and has been close enough to know his penmanship. This currently narrows it down to someone involved with the Syndicate, which does not bring peace of mind; quite the opposite.

If a Syndicate member truly was involved in this, it is a breach of our unspoken agreement, for this to be a space where our past lives and actions do not define our stay and safety here. Wuyon'e is not a saint, but whatever sins were made, instead of dealing with them face to face, it was deemed more appropriate to bring our past to the surface to haunt us again, to suddenly gain the right of judge and jury over our lives.

This made it clear to me that the Syndicate is NOT a place where I can sleep safely at night and feel like I'll be accepted, not anymore.

The records of this mission are one that I will not over explain or relay beyond conveying that we were successful in locating and saving Wuyon'e from her temporary capture. Despite the knowledge that the Syndicate would not willingly give over any information or records of previous missions to interested parties, I will not be the reason things come to bite us in the ass if a member does. Someone got Wuyon'e captured. And who that is? Im not sure.

But if it was one of us? Im happy my conscious is clean.

There was a troop of Cyclopses involved. Their intentions are still unclear, and I hope that we will be able to figure them out, sooner rather than later. A journal written in giant was salvaged, and hopefully that will provide answers.

Wu stopped answering, and that was enough for us to go looking for her.

Lief, Ssrin, Azrael, and I set out together. We had good reason to believe she'd been taken and that there were other people looking for her too, so Ssrin helped us keep a low profile. I'm deliberately not writing down where we went, who exactly we encountered there, what names anyone used, or anything else that could make somebody else's job easier if these notes ever ended up in the wrong hands.

By the time we arrived, things had already gone very badly. There were bodies everywhere, and whatever had come through before us had hit hard. We found one survivor barely hanging on, and Ssrin helped her while the rest of us tried to figure out what had happened. It sounded like Wu's captors had run into trouble of their own, and whatever was carrying her had gotten away during the chaos. That at least gave us something to follow.

There was a little disagreement before we left. Azrael wanted to kill the survivor, and I told him no. She hadn't done anything to us personally, and whatever orders she'd been following before we found her, she was already half-dead when we arrived. I wasn't going to stand there and watch somebody finish her off just because it was convenient. Maybe kindness comes back around someday and maybe it doesn't, but that doesn't mean I'm going to stop choosing it when I can. I also made it very clear that if Azrael decided to do it anyway, he'd have to go through me first. He didn't.

We moved on and eventually ran into a group of basilisks. Somewhere in the middle of that mess, we found that Wu had apparently managed to leave behind some kind of magical guardian that was still active and doing an excellent job of killing anything stupid enough to get near it. Lief, naturally, decided this meant we should introduce the basilisks to it. Honestly, it was a good plan. Ssrin almost got petrified during the fight, which was considerably less amusing, but Lief managed to give her just enough of a push to fight it off. We cleared the rest and kept going.

After that, we started hearing something enormous repeatedly hitting metal ahead of us, which is never a comforting sound. That led us to the group that had intercepted Wu's captors. There were several of them, and one was throwing around some very unpleasant magic. I put my storm down on them and eventually hit the worst one with five flares. Five. I don't remember whether I was angry, showing off, or had simply decided that particular bastard had lived long enough. Probably all three.

Lief had a rough time seeing for part of the fight but still managed to beat the hell out of things anyway. I really liked fighting beside him. He's solid, doesn't panic, and doesn't make things more complicated than they need to be. Somehow, he also hits things hard enough that the rest of us feel more capable afterward. Literally. I don't know how he does that, but I appreciate it.

Then we finally found Wu.

She was alive, and that is the important part.

She was trapped inside some kind of containment orb being carried by a construct, and one of the big bastards was trying very hard to smash the thing apart. Azrael had some undead with him that could have helped, except they were much too far away to reach the fight in time. Conveniently, I've learned a new trick.

Scatter.

I grabbed all five of them at once and dropped them exactly where we needed them. I cannot adequately describe how satisfying that was. Ssrin had already covered part of the area in magical darkness, and between that and getting the undead into position, the construct finally had enough room to get away from the thing attacking it. From there, it was mostly a matter of surviving long enough to finish the job. The undead did considerably better against the giants than I expected, Ssrin was excellent, and Lief continued being Lief. Eventually, everything trying to kill us stopped moving.

Getting Wu out of the containment device was a little more complicated. Azrael came up with a solution involving changing his appearance into someone Wu absolutely did not want to see while she was already surrounded by undead, some of whom were wearing very recognizable uniforms. Wu was confused, frightened, furious, and probably about three seconds away from trying to murder all of us. Completely reasonable, honestly.

Ridiculous as Azrael's plan was, it worked. The construct accepted his order and released her. There was then some additional business involving a cliff that I am choosing not to examine too closely.

But we had Wu.

Alive.

We got everyone patched up enough to leave and headed home. So that's the important part. Wu was captured, we found her, and we got her back.

Anything else can stay unwritten.

Also, Scatter is fucking fantastic.