Date of Expedition: September 29.

⚔️ Party Members: Alaric (Hedge Wizard), Negen (Thief), Talindor (Road Warden), Valdenheim (Priest of Ulric).

Major Discoveries: A potential dark artifact connected to Nehekaran powers.

Casualties: None.

Part 1

Aubentag, the 6th of Brauzeit. Written in the beastmen's camp, by their own fire.

I set this down while my hands still shake, so that I have it true before I have it tidy.

I came into the Forest because I was asked. A voice woke me and asked a favour, find a relic of evil and destroy it, for its taint runs ahead of a darkness the Great Forest is not ready for. I remember little else of it. I remember what followed: frost on my blanket in a warm autumn, snow falling out of season, wolves howling over Talagaad where there are no wolves, and in the morning Ulric nearer to me than he has ever been. He has granted me things I will not write down. I will say only that since that night I have felt the grant thinning, like a grip loosening, and I understand well enough what is being asked. The favour is not finished. Neither, then, is the blessing.

We met at the forest's edge, at a shrine to Taal among the standing stones. Our quarry was one Oskar Venn, a trader in things better left alone. Three others had come for him. Talindor, a high elf road warden, to keep danger off the roads. Negen Rustig, a thief, who was with us at Garffan's Rest and who is in these places because thieves are. Alaric, a hedge wizard out of Bretonnia, drawn by the artefact's power, which is reason enough to watch him. Of my own reason I said little, and still cannot say it plainly.

The trail was easy at first, and we ran close to it. It took us into a clearing that stank of rot, where the trees stood like willows and were not. The signs were there to read, and we did not: bones in the roots, the dead already taken down and put to use feeding the things that took them. The limbs had us before we understood we were being hunted. We cut ourselves loose. It cost us hours we could not spare, and Venn's lead grew.

Clear of them, we found a second shrine of Taal, deeper in, on a game trail that sees little use. A man stood at it, unassuming and very sure of himself. East of him the ground had been split by a great cleft, and beside the cleft lay a man cleaved in half; how he came to that, none of us could say, and I do not think the stranger could either. He gave his name as Albrecht Tagentodt and said he was hunting Venn as well, and said almost nothing more. When the talking had gone on a while, he called two crossbowmen out of cover, and when it had gone on a little longer, and we had agreed to walk together, he called two more. I am glad no one reached for a weapon at that shrine. We would have died at it. I cannot name what is wrong with the man, only that something is, and so I did not take the front. Better to be behind the bolts than in front of them.

We had the trail again when the noises started off the path. Talindor went north to look. One of the crossbowmen went south. We heard him die, and afterwards we found him in pieces hung about the trees. We went on. Whatever walked beside us kept at it until a second mercenary broke and ran, and he did not get far, and he was left flayed in the branches like the first. I will not pretend we were not unnerved. We had nothing else to do but continue, so we did.

That trail brought us to the third shrine of Taal, and the third shrine was desecrated. The beasts had thrown down the god's own stones and raised an effigy of the Ruinous Powers on the wreck of them. South of it they were dancing. That is blasphemy, and blasphemy is answered.

I was lost to the rage. I own it. Ulric's white wolf came, spectral, and went into the fight at my side. Through the haze I saw Negen and Talindor slip into the trees, and Tagentodt and his two and Alaric go after them. I charged.

A great Gor met me, curl-horned and heavy with muscle, a curved axe in each hand. Two more of its kind stood behind Ungors. I split it from skull to sternum. The next was on me before the first had dropped, both axes coming down, and I got the haft of my axe up and no more than that. I will not lie about what happened next: the wolf saved me. More of them had closed in when they saw the first fall, and the wolf fought with Ulric's own fury among them, and it tore out a throat, and it took a blow that was meant for my head.

I know little of the rest with any certainty. Some of the beasts broke toward Alaric; he was alive at the end, so I suppose he dealt with them, though I could not tell you how. I saw fire fall among the ones ringing the wolf and me and burn them where they stood. I do not know whether that was Alaric or Tagentodt. Either way I disapprove. Either way I am standing.

There was no rest in it. The camp's champion came out, a Bestigor, twice the height of a man, a two-handed axe as long as a man is tall, skulls hung about him. My arms were dead, and I felt the fury rise in me again regardless. Then the ground belched, and something worse rose from it.

It had the make of what we met beneath Garffan's Rest. A serpent's body, a man's torso above it, a golden mask for a face, a tail that ended in a spear, and a glaive in its hands. It stood taller than the Bestigor. The champion of the dark gods barely had time to turn before that tail went through him, and the thing threw him aside like a sack. I have no explanation for it. The beasts' master and the thing from the sand are not friends, and that is worth more to me than any explanation.

I charged it, and the wolf came. My axe bit it. Its tail came for me, and the wolf clamped it in its jaws and held; the thing turned on the wolf instead of me, and that is twice Ulric saved my life. Negen put fire into it from the treeline; how he managed that at such a distance I do not know, and have not asked. In its rage it tore loose, slung the wolf against one of the stones, and broke it. It went out like mist in morning sun. I do not know if a thing like that can be killed, or only sent back. I mean to find out before I pray for it again.

Then it came back to me. I had my axe up across my body to turn the glaive, and an arrow struck it from somewhere behind me, and the arrow's push threw its lurch wrong, and its own weight carried its head down onto my blade. That is how it ended. That is all it was. Then its flesh ran to sand and the metal rusted as though a thousand years went by in a breath, and the wind through the camp took what was left of it away.

So we sit in a dead camp and eat by the beasts' fire. Of the four who set out from the standing stones, four remain. Of Tagentodt's men, Tagentodt and one mercenary; the other went under a Gor's axe. We rest here a while because men who do not rest make mistakes, and I have made enough of those today.

Venn is still ahead of us, and he still carries the thing. Nothing that happened in this clearing changes that.

May Ulric guide us.

• Valdenheim Wolfhart

Part 2

Konistag, the 22nd of Brauzeit. Written in Talagaad, at the shrine on the north bank.

We rested in the dead camp until the fires burned down, and then we took up the trail again.

For four days we had it. Talindor read the ground better than any of Negen, and us read the places a man stops to rest, and between the two of them we kept Venn ahead of us and close. On the fifth day the rain came and did not stop, and the Forest did what the Forest does. The sign went soft. Then it was just gone. We spent two more days casting about for it in country that had never seen a road, and found a stream crossing where the bank had been cut by something that may have been a boot and may have been a hoof, and that was the last of it.

I put the loss where it belongs. We lost Venn in the clearing of those wrong trees, not at the stream. Everything after was us trying to make up hours we had already spent. I read that ground badly. The bones were there to be seen, and I did not see them.

So the man is at large. Where he has gone I do not know. What he carries I do not know either, except that it is a thing whose taint runs ahead of a darkness, and that it is further from my hand now than when I set out.

We parted at the forest's edge. Tagentodt went north with his last man and said nothing worth writing down, which is all he ever said. He knows my face, and I know his. We will meet again or we will not. Talindor took the road east. Negen went wherever thieves go, and I did not ask; the man saved my life with fire I still cannot account for, and a debt is a poor reason to pry. Alaric I have not seen since.

Of the thing that came up out of the ground I have learned only that its origins lie far to the south, beyond the Black Mountains and a great deal of country past them, in a place some call the land of the dead and the learned name "Nehekhara." I have the word from a scroll requisitioned from the Temple of Morr at the behest of my betters in Middenheim, and I set it down as it was written, since it is not a word in any tongue of mine. What I know is this: it was not the beasts' ally. It killed their champion before it came for us, and it was already old when it came. A hand behind it is not the hand behind them. I mean to find out whose. There may yet be more in the archives of Middenheim, and Brother Gerlach has been generous with an old acolyte before.

On the matter of the blessing, I will be plain, since this book is for me.

Nine days ago I knelt alone and asked, and the thing I asked for came, but it came slowly, and it came thin, like water through a cloth. It has been slower each time since. I do not think I imagine it. Ulric asked me a favour, and it is not done. The errand stands open, and the man who was its object is loose in the world, and by every reckoning I have ever been taught, what was given to me should have been taken back at that stream.

It has not been taken back. I do not call that mercy. The White Wolf does not deal in mercy and never has; he is the god of the strength you hold in your hands, and a man who keeps strength he has not earned is not forgiven; he is being watched. I would rather have been stripped at the stream. A clean judgement I would understand. This is a hand left on my shoulder.

The wolves have stopped howling over the city. I had thought that would be a comfort, and it is not.

The frost was on my blanket again this morning, and when I went out to draw water, there was snow coming down over the Rows, light, not sticking. It is Brauzeit. The brewers are still at the vats.

It should not be snowing.

• Valdenheim Wolfhart