Ignoring Cove, I crouched down, reaching a hand toward the leather-bound book. A heavy blanket of silence fell over the air as everyone watched on nervously as I prodded the book with a finger. When nothing happened, I picked it up, flipping to the first page.
Written in angry red pen across the first two pages was ‘Setare’s Journal –DON’T READ’
[Quest item: Setare’s Journal Obtained!]
[New side quest ??? available]
Footsteps thudded on the hardwood behind me as people crowded around, trying to peer over my shoulder. I didn’t begrudge them for it and lifted the book higher. Cove’s voice rang in my ear as he used his familiarity with me to physically lean over my shoulder, reading what was written.
“I’ve never heard of this quest before.”
I shrugged and snapped the book shut. The sound echoed in the air, and the people around me shifted back guiltily as Cove reached around me, attempting to snatch the book. I kept it out of his reach, slipping it into my inventory where it wouldn’t get lost.
Someone cleared their throat, and the deck turned to where Sinbad stood, front and center. Uninterested in what Sinbad had to say and far more interested in the tales the journal had to tell, I slunk back, slipping back into the hallway as Sinbad began his speech. When he spoke, his voice carried far, reaching the ears of even the furthest men, and even I turned to look at him as rays of darkening sunlight drifted from above, casting him in a halo of light. They all straightened to attention, hanging on to every word as I disappeared back into the shadows.
Ani found me as I picked my way carefully back to Cove and I’s shared room, leaping onto my shoulder to nuzzle my face. Once again, I was grateful for my new suit, which prevented the usual scratches from his claws where he dug in to stay balanced.
Once we were back in our room, I flipped my desk light on, let the book fall with a thud onto the desk, and dropped myself heavily into the chair. My fingers tapped along the spine of the book as I thought. I was at war with myself. For one, reading someone’s journal was an egregious invasion of privacy. Secondly, my brain was screaming at me to start at the back, where the newest and, therefore, the most relevant information would lie, however, starting at the back felt wrong. An abomination. Like those who wrote notes on the edges of book pages.
You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.
With a heavy, reluctant sigh, I swallowed my complaints and began thumbing through the book for the last page.
…the handwriting was absolutely atrocious. I squinted down at the words, hoping they’d fall into line to make any sort of sense. They stayed frozen before my eyes, nearly indecipherable. My palms pressed against my eyes. I lifted them away, only to see the same chicken scratch that had been there before. It was worse than attempting to actually read cursive. That, at least, I could do. The letters were distorted, and separated. ‘L’s and ‘c’s when next to eacho other could be ‘k’s, and ‘d’s looked like ‘c’s and ‘l’s.
I pulled my notebook and a pen from my inventory and began ‘cracking the code’ as it were. The world quickly fell away around me. As irritating as it was to have to translate English into, well, English, it reminded me in a way of my years programming. Of translating standard English into sentences built for machines, though it wasn’t quite the same.
In bits and pieces, from end to beginning, Setare’s story began to unfold before me.
Her last journal entry was dated a few months prior.
It went like this: To feed her younger brother, Setare pilfered the eggs of a rook and cooked them. She was caught by the Ilbis, who considered himself a protector of the rooks. As one might imagine, he wasn’t pleased. Upon hearing her beg and plead for her life, he granted her two days
, a djinn–in this case specifically, an Ilbis–appears before her. After her pleading, the djinn granted her three days to find some way of staying her punishment or to say her goodbyes. Setare found someone to take care of her brother and went on a quest to find a story to satisfy the djinn. Confidently, she returned, proudly proclaiming that she was soon to be free of the djinn.
If it sounded a bit familiar, it probably was. Lazily, the writers had copied parts of the Merchant’s quest but, judging by the lack of further entries, gave Setare a bad ending.
I shook my head and continued reading.
Her handwriting was atrocious, and, like Heirs, her sentence structures left a lot to be desired. However, empathy clawed its way into my heart. Her love of reading, her fear of the unknown, and her intelligence were visible as clear as the stars above. In many ways, I felt as though I were reading my own story.
Of course, I wasn’t quite so stupid as to assume I’d found the proper story to escape an Ilbis. As higher-level djinns, they were notorious for being extraordinarily difficult to read.