As the World Spurns

At first, it seemed the gods were against me.

I arrived in this hell of a town a few days ago. Travel weary and foot-sore, it had been a much longer trek than I had anticipated. Seeing the lights when I broached the last rise had filled me with gladness. An emotion that wouldn't last.

Curse these people. I don't know what he has done with them, or if they are just the sort to spurn a woman like me, but they refuse to answer my questions regarding the bastard. They range from outright denial to his very existence, to a guilty glance downward as they turn away. It's as if some of them WISH to speak with me, but have been warned against it. It is maddening! What is wrong with them!?

Still, the merchant at least has the balls to deal with me, if with few words. An old man at the edge of town seems to be one of the only other few that will also speak with me, but it is for his own nefarious purposes as he sends me in search of Ember that he can profit from (however, since I also profit, I shall continue to deal with him... for now.) A few other people also deal with me, but like the ember hunter, it is only because they can gain from it.

So for now I have been stymied in my search. Was Bastion ever even here? Will I find his body in the mines below? I have traveled in them often since arriving, of course. They are filled with vermin, and it is becoming an increasingly difficult task to rid the area of them. Curse the gods again, for the weapon I have brought with me seems to be becoming ineffective at an alarming rate. The reason for this, I do not know, but the vermin I encounter as I go deeper into that blasted place seem to be growing a discomforting ability to shrug off my attacks... yet the merchant sells nothing I can use, and all I seem to find in the various rotting and mold-covered chests in that dank darkness are the weapons of former adventurers with skills so much different than my own. Axes that I can barely lift, let alone use in combat. Staves that I would be more likely to knock myself senseless with than anything that attacks me from the gloom.

Oh, my life for a bow! Something made of a sturdier wood perhaps, than my own. Something with a magical enchantment. Something that would let me pierce these blasted ratlings with far more accuracy than I can thus achieve.

We shall see what happens tomorrow. It grows late, and I hear the rumbling even in my room here, far from the mine entrance. The evil below continues to grow. The gods cannot be against me forever. My portal waits for me, at the entrance to something new. The runes that surround the door-way there promise something different. Something far more evil than anything I've encountered thus.

Still, I question this whole thing. I cannot even be sure he is down there. I cannot even be sure he is alive. Yet something tells me. Something speaks to me. Alive or dead, he is down there. I shall find him.

If, that is, I can ever get my hands on a weapon that will help keep me alive!

- Journal Entry of one Karyna Arbalest, Vanquisher for the King