Post Dobluthe - May 1113 - The Shores of Amnor

It is quiet here and I find myself enjoying seeing the hut in the new warm light of spring. Although I had hoped not to have to return here so soon again after Arrakech.

I'm carving a memorial to Jericho, the Wavesinger, into the walls of the hut to go alongside the others I added but a few weeks ago. Berzerker, Ripgut, Janus, Filff, and Prince Nethaniel. The intersection of our lives was all too brief, yet I cannot doubt my feeling of kinship too them. The natural instinct of the pride. The collective might of our fury.

I did not expect to return so soon.

And Winter's face shall soon follow Jericho's onto the walls.

I spoke with Queen Lenia, Crown Prince Caleb and Althea about this place. About whether there was someone else more capable to take up this task and why Hengist told me about this place?

“Because he knew you'd do it. Knew you'd carry on.”

Hengist was an extremely devious man, but even I have to wonder how he knew. I'd ask, but I expect all the Crowns will say is that the King was quite adept at judging characters or something similar. Of all the people I'd have thought he'd pick for this task, I would not have thought the “happy news elf” was amongst them.

And yet he did. So here I am.

Building a cathedral to our pain. Establishing a monument to transcend that loss into loving memory. A more likely architect for such an edifice there is not.

I am trying to focus of the events at Dobluthe in the sense of the grander scheme of things. The recovery of the Elfstone, the success of the dwarves and the destruction of Albion, but my mind cannot hold the thoughts in place. They drift away and are replaced by other memories.

Dreams.

The first night here I dreamed and I was terrified. Having no recollection of what dreams were, I woke in terror at the barrage of images and sensations that assailed me. They seemed all too real. All of the faces going back over the centuries. A millennia of pain replaying gradually inside my mind. Death after death after death....

The same dream every night.

Some faces stand apart from the others. There is no clarity and yet in the recesses of my conscious, their significance speaks to me. The sensation of betrayal that I have felt since Caras Estarwae remains and grows stronger with each passing dream.

And within all of this, I hear him calling me. Demanding that I let Darkness come forth and have his revenge. The offer is seductive. An easy escape from pain. But Apsenniel was right. I am not him and he is not me. What he was made to do against his will, is not my fault. Nor his. But I understand his anger. His rage. But I do not yet understand his loss or who he was.

That I felt there was a darkness within me should turn out to be a literal truth feels like a joke gone awry. Never would I have conceived that something so terrible would exist within me.

Yet here at the hut, I find my measure of peace in the solitude and the sunset.Perhaps Hengist sent me here as much for that as anything else?

As the sun sets, I feel the metaphorical tick of my pattern. I never noticed it before and now it is almost all I can think of when I rest. How long do I have? Years? Decades? Or is it only months now?

So I watch the sunsets and find peace carving into wood.

And so the Darkness within slumbers.