The hacks, her screams, the caramel that could not be anything but blood! These stains on Jillsenbane! I am sure it is not the first time I am forced to do something like this, but the memory is as confuse as being on the passenger seats during a terrorist attack. She pleaded, she offered me money and even other things—which, as a demonstration of respect, I should not disclose— in exchange for stilling my blade, yet I carried out my orders anyway. I murdered without mercy and, after rinsing myself in the bath to remove not the most heinous of dirt on me, went back to where The Sentinel is, just to write that horrible fragment on the previous page. I killed two adventurers, novices probably, in cold blood, and I derived cruel pleasure from it. What have you done to me, Scarreladai?

I am not free to give them a proper burial, and the “dogs” are coming to take their nude remains to the brewery. I cannot count the hands, the arms of the dogs: How many do they have, and why are their eyes bloodshot red? What are dogs made of in here?

But, luckily, I have grown so weary of this reality that the shock isn’t long lasting.

Now and then I stare for several solid seconds at Jillsenbane, thinking that there is a low blow I can strike against the dragon and her undead entourage. This sword has shown it is pretty good at gutting humans, And, I’d like to believe, I still fit the description. It would be so easy, once determination sets in. Take Jillsebane, plunge her between my ribs, and funnel holy fire through her and into my chest. Let it burn my shame, burn my guilt, burn my sin. Burn this coward, burn this murderer, burn this parody of a man.

I am right, it would be too easy. Just another way of escaping my duty to save Abeline. Just another of endless paths that lead to the avoidance of accountability. I know the right course of action. But that is not enough to walk it. I need to defy the dragon I came to depend on, the one I praise and obey now. And the prospect of a hereafter if I succeed on vanquishing Scarreladai is… scary. Life in this blissful slavery is tranquil, safe. My stomach is full unless I vomit, the undead soldiers keep us protected from external attackers. All the important decisions are taken for me, taken from me. Unaccountability is its own form of coveted freedom. After all, don’t cheating spouses blame the other when they get caught? Don’t children blame their siblings or friends when they break something? We are not dogs, we humans. We know responsibility isn’t inherently tied to our acts, we humans. We are terrible egoists, we humans. This dragon is a mother, both for the whelps and for me. The yearned return to an eternal childhood that every man wishes for when life gets unfair, dark, inhumane. Outside the cave there is adulthood, there is facing what I did with a straight face and lowering my head as I dig a grave for these poor people. Outside there are monsters with no lack of want for my death. Some of them walk among townsfolk and are called things like Johnathan, Tiago or Esmeralda. In here, the monsters respect her, and thus me. I am Scarreladai’s prized pawn, and it is not that tremendous of a torture.

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And to think in a moment of madness, I may eat that innocent girl that wielded the daggers, or one of his companions, the mage or the warriors. Bite the raw muscle, use these old teeth to tear it, nerve and sinew from the bone and hope my holy magic is strong enough to fend off the illnesses derived from raw flesh and cannibalism. And If I surrender, if I remain here, it will not be my fault. It will never be my fault; the metaphorical blood will never be on my hands. Because who would not give up in my situation? Who would not hand themselves to madness to avoid this dilemma. Who wouldn’t not fall in love with purple-voiced, blue-winged, scale-dressed, thin-lipped, wide-smiled Lady scarlet?

I am sorry, Abeline, your knight of shining armor may have lost any and all will to battle the dragon that keeps you captive. I am sorry, Abeline, I keep on living for you, but that is all I can muster for now, everything I can force myself to do for you. Your blue prince, you got him wrong, because he is no more than a man, and depending on who you ask, even less than one. I am sorry, Abeline.

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In the palace everything sleeps. In the cave some things never close their eyes, but I still consider them slumbering, inactive. I am in the entrance of the cave system, on the border of Lady Scarlet’s realm. The sun slowly washes over the fields, reveals flowers of bright yellow and red, grass so green and real. Judging by the flowering trees dressed in pink that grow nearby, I assume it is springtime. Life goes on, even when a young dragon flies overhead now and then. The world does not need a hero, men do, and what do I owe to them?

Abeline does, and what don’t I owe to her? Yet this moment, I deserve to cherish it after so many years of darkness. I deserve to expose myself to sunlight which hurts my eyes and my pale skin. Out of the dungeon, in its limit, where reality meets the fiction of my life, here the world isn’t cruel, but soothing, lulling. I could fall asleep on this bright morning, and maybe never wake up. Look at the birds, they sing and fly free, so seemingly happy, yet they have to bear the burden of flying, of surviving, of making a nest, of finding a mate.

I stand up and pace from side to side now and them, never to escape the rocky floor that denotes the beginning of the cave. The Sentinel watches with dead, blind eyes, and he doesn’t mind me being here. This opening, in my moments of madness, looks like a forge, be it ablaze with day or ashen with night.

The sky is blue and clear: there are no stalactites to mock me out here. But all of this: the morning, the sky, the trees and their flowers, the grass… they don’t belong to me. Mine is the darkness allotted by Scarreladai, mine is the shame of abandoning my beloved, and mine is this heavy sword, a duty to be fulfilled.

Let’s go back inside, diary, lest madness catches us out there and I commit another atrocity.