Guard’s Log, Day 621
The Order is falling apart by my own hands. Half of them have been culled, the ones remaining are at each other’s throats, trying to figure out who is behind all this vanishing, this murder… meanwhile, I continue to play with the lucky ones I selected down below. I did finally get my hands onto some chains and I was right. The multiple ways I can use them… they have proven to be valuable beyond compare. What’s even better is if I keep them on my person, they jangle, and clink, and I can hear the whimpering from those I keep in the vault when I get closer. They know once the sounds of the chains get closer, I am about to pick one of them for a lucky little amount of alone time. The warlock himself is the one who reacts the best – he kicks and tries to scurry away. How fun it is to watch and hear!
The skull inside the vault continues to be loud. It still tells me to be patient, to wait, to be ready for my role that will soon be coming. Each day, I ask it if today is the day and it tells me no. Though it did divulge some interesting information to me. The Order hid the skull down here because they were afraid of its power. Apparently, it belonged to a mighty warlord who was taken down countless years ago and the skull wished to be reunited with its body. It told me that I would be granted a great deal of power if I helped it, if I did what it said when the time came… I agreed. Ever since I gave it my word, the skull has been keeping me company, reveling in the pain of others when I bring them down here, telling me stories that it can remember from when it was whole and in a body encased in iron armor, and even softly whispering to me as I fall asleep. It’s proving to be the best friend I have in this place, maybe on the Isles themselves.
Its telling me the time to act is soon.
Soon.
I can hardly wait.
I decided to slip out of the vault one more time. It has been weeks since I left and the Order, while on edge, seems to be quiet. I snuck upstairs and into the kitchen to steal some salted meat from the larder and I helped myself to some wine in the cupboard, along with some fresh water from the well outside. I couldn’t bare to be away from the vault for long. It was too quiet out here.
Yet I let myself have one luxury. I stripped off only the metal bits of my uniform and waded into the river outside. I scrubbed the faded blue jacket, trying to remove as much grime and whatever else had collected on the coat as possible, along with the thick pants. The clean water washing over me felt refreshing and I finally got a good look at myself for the first time in a long time.
I hardly recognized myself. My face, once so handsome and beautiful, was nothing more than a mangled mess of swollen stitching and infected sores. My rich, dark skin became dusty and pallid, and my hair was nothing more than a greasy mess of braids. Only then was I aware that I needed to take care of myself, otherwise I wouldn’t make it to the promised end. The garden than the Order tended to was not that far away. I trudged out of the river and dug through the mud until I produced a few bulbs of garlic. It wasn’t the first time I used garlic to disinfect a wound – that was a trick my good for nothing father taught me when I was small. I returned to the river and popped the infected wounds and let the blood and puss drip into the water before I cleaned them out with the fresh water. It strung! But I knew it would help. Once I was all clean, I took the garlic cloves back into the Order’s galley and found a mortar and pestle. For good measure, I added some salt and oregano into the bowl before grinding it into a powder. Then I crushed the garlic juice into it and made a paste and slapped it onto my face.
The pain was horrible, but I knew it would prevent the infections from getting worse. If I had more time, I could probably have found a salve …. But I started hearing movement from the bedrooms nearby and the footsteps of what was probably a guard coming my way. I ducked out of sight and made my way back down into the catacombs and to the vault and locked myself back in.
The skull laughed. All it said was what it has been saying for a while, now. ‘Soon.’