January 23rd
Shadow has gotten much bigger. She is approaching the size of a bloodhound. Our food stores are beginning to run low, it looks like. As her size increases, so too does her appetite.
February 4th
The thaw has come early this year! The snow has already shrunk down to almost half its height in the past three days. Within a week, it will have melted more than enough for me to spend significantly more time outside.
February 8th
I went to the town today to buy some supplies and when I was returning I once again saw that strange bubble of fog. It was off of the side of the road, enveloping trees. After a while, the bubble disappeared and I went to look at the area. I saw marks in the snow. The tracks left behind were of two different creatures. I would say one of them was a hare, but the other was unrecognizable. It looked like there were 6 toes on each foot, two in the front on each side and two in the back, one on each side. There were hints of claws poking into the ground in between the front toes and it looked like the creature had jumped from the ground onto its prey, the hare. There was a scuffle that left erratic marks in the snow. I would guess that it took maybe three hits for it to kill the hare, because of the jump marks on the tracks and the resulting skids through the snow. I also found that there were many spots where the tracks abruptly ended and started somewhere else, but I was quickly able to figure out that it had been hopping between branches. I tried to follow the trail away, but I lost it fairly quickly.
If I remember correctly, that was in a similar place to the previous time I encountered the fog bubble. Maybe the creature capable of creating that bubble doesn’t leave that area much? How am I going to capture it? There are several problems that I can foresee. The first is obviously the lack of visual information. It is a much more intense obscuration of vision than the shadows that the wolf could induce, so I will be limited to just a few feet around me, or less. The second issue, in conjunction with lack of vision, is the creature’s agility. I have already seen evidence of its ability to jump between trees and branches, using the terrain to get a drop on its already disoriented prey. I immediately was thinking that I could use Shadow’s nose to find it in the fog, but she is not trained well enough yet to take into the forest for hunting monsters. Once her abilities fully develop and I have trained with her thoroughly enough, it will be an invaluable asset to have. It would be exceptionally reckless to send her into the fog without knowledge of what the monster is capable of.
Griffin and I will have to do it ourselves. I am thinking we could plant torches in the ground once we enter the fog. That way, we should be able to at least illuminate the fog enough to notice the creature moving in front of the lights. I will bring more things to use to capture it, such as a net. If I can spot the creature and throw the net over it, it would not be able to evade us as easily.
We spent the rest of the day organizing what we would do. We still have a lot of work to do tomorrow before we are ready to proceed.
February 9th
We have prepared pitch for torches and made a few obstacles to hopefully impede the beast. Griffin helped me practice throwing the nets for several hours today, and I am confident I will be able to snag the beast. Now we just have to wait and see if we can determine a pattern of appearances from which we can guess a possible location to attempt its capture. If I remember correctly, it has appeared near the same place twice.
We have also prepared contraptions that create a lot of noise and have attached some bells to our equipment so that we can make noise that will hopefully disorient the monster
February 10th
We did not find the beast today, however we did find marks on trees that were consistent with what I found before.
February 11th
*have another dream memory, something when mathew was about 6 or 7 maybe
February 12th
Griffin and I set up barriers today and yesterday. The barriers are planks of wood, about 4 feet by 5, set upright with brackets for torches. We did not place the torches in the brackets, nor do I plan to. The barriers are set out in a vast perimeter. We have felled a few trees, cleared away branches, and drove spikes into other trees. Our goal is to reduce the number of potential escape routes that the beast could use. This way, it will be much more likely that we are able to capture it. The perimeter covers perhaps four times the area of the immediate location of past appearances, as we have not yet determined a concrete pattern. To help maintain the effectiveness of the perimeter, we have made it easy to get in by leaving what are effectively steps to get in but having the inner side of the barriers be smooth and, when possible, angled inward slightly, resulting in increased difficulty finding purchase to climb it. I hope the barriers are tall enough to block the beast, but it is unlikely. We still have much of the perimeter to finish, so I am planning on using the terrain to our advantage. It will likely be a few more days until the perimeter is finished, or we could strategically approach from the opposite side of the target area, driving the beast towards the perimeter.
February 14th
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When we were setting up the last of the barriers, early in the morning today, we became enveloped in a thick cloud of fog. We were near the edge and were able to quickly exit it. At that point, we raced to set up the torches. Griffin and I had no way of telling if the cloud would shift when the creature moved, I am assuming it would not, but it is possible that the beast can make multiple clouds of fog, so we had to proceed with caution. Not knowing where the center of the cloud was, not where the beast could be, we began to slowly work our way through it, setting up the torches and tossing out nets periodically.
It was slow work, visibility was terrible, and it only got worse the deeper in we went. The torches sputtered and died out the farther in we went, so we had to resort to simply leaving glowing embers near the ground around dangerous obstacles that we came across. We kept having to run in and out of the cloud to resupply on torches, we could only carry a few at a time, but it helped that a section already had torches set up, just needing to be lit. It was a long process, and I kept thinking that I had spotted it, but I kept being wrong. There were swirls appearing in the fog, as if something had walked through it, but I could not see anything.
We were trying to drive the beast towards the barriers but we kept having to circle back through the section we had left open to sweep for signs of the monster. We consistently found nothing though, which was a good sign.
After quite a while, we had eventually combed through the center of the cloud and worked our way towards the edge, near a section of barriers. The center of the cloud was by far the hardest, I could hardly even see my shoulders or chest. We essentially had to manage by feel and feel alone. Not even the embers would stay ignited in there. And the smell, it was horrible. A putrid stench was slowly seeping through the cloud, settling in my nostrils and choking my lungs. The stench was attached to disgusting black smoke, which you would think perhaps would make it easier to find the source of the smoke, but it did not. I was positively gasping for air by the time I had gotten into a section thin enough for light to penetrate and reveal the smoke. I reached out to Griffin and pulled him close. He had tied a cloth over his mouth and nose and I could hear him breathing deep, even breaths, contrary to my own experience. I told him I would run out of the fog for a quick breather and he yelled back confirmation. I then proceeded to jog as fast as I dared, wary of obstacles, towards the edge, while at the same time leaving a trail of rope behind me to follow my way back to Griffin. It was at that point, when I was reaching the edge, that I began to see movement in the fog. I gave the rope three quick tugs to signal Griffin and then raced after it. I had spotted the monster, but what a horridly disfigured beast it was indeed. It was frantically running away from some unseen foe, leaping between trees and weaving through the obstacles we had set up. The obstacles were indeed slowing it down, and I got a good view of its face and body. Big ears, a bulbous nose, and beady little eyes on its face. It had sharp claws at the end of its flabby arms. It was covered in hair, or should I saw, it had been at one point, as there were patches ripped out and bleeding scratch marks along its side. I threw the net, snagging the beast as it attempted to scramble over the barrier, and dragged it towards me as Griffin raced out of the cloud behind me. We quickly bound the beast and retreated back towards the manor, after deciding that it had likely been avoiding something.
We went to Lake Eleanor and set down the monster. I bandaged the oozing wounds on its side so that it would not die and then tied it around a tree with a length of rope. With it leashed in place, but still with some room to move, we gave it a bowl of water then retreated to observe it.
Up until this point, a second cloud of fog had not yet appeared, but when we approached it, after we gave it the water, another cloud of fog appeared. It was smaller than the previous one, and certainly not as dense, but that gave us quite an interesting bit of information. Somehow, the monster is able to turn water into vapor at a significant rate. It has to be pulling water from somewhere around it because the water we gave it, while certainly very large in quantity, was not nearly enough to make a cloud that large. Furthermore, the fog monster is able to somehow heat up the water enough to turn it into vapor. It must be something with its internal organs, perhaps something similar to the fire fox? Tomorrow I will return with Griffin and examine it more, as we need to take down the barriers and torches.
February 14th
We have removed many of the obstacles and barriers. By the time we had returned, perhaps about 4 past noon, the cloud of fog had dissipated. It took quite a while to pack everything back up, as we really set out quite a lot of material, but we eventually managed to do it. I also found the tracks of the monster on trees and in the dirt, but that is nothing new, I suppose, that was how we tracked it, after all. I also found footprints. Those were likely just Griffins, but the tracks were weirdly positioned. Nothing to worry about, I suppose, we were stumbling around blind for a long amount of time.
February 15th
The monster is dead! I went back to the lake this morning because I wanted to test how long it takes for the cloud to dissipate, but when I got there I found the rope snapped and the corpse of the monster laying perhaps 20 yards from the tree I had tied it to. Something had killed it, but what what? What I thought were claw marks on its side instead seem to be the result of some sort of blade. Not Griffin’s cutlass, the cut was too messy to be done by a refined material such as steel.
February 16th
Shadow has gotten quite big since I first found her. I think I am able to start increasing the intensity of her training. I think I will start doing long distance sprinting and prey recovery with her. Hopefully I will be able to train her to not kill the target, as I have already instilled an attack command into her quite deeply.
February 17th
I was training Shadow today when she noticed something in the forest and chased after it. I did not see what it was that she had been chasing and when I reached her, she was standing on guard looking at something off in the distance. She looked confused and whimpered quietly. I saw nothing there though.
February 18th
I went back to the lake today. I have not seen any evidence of what killed the monster since that day. Nothing seems to be out of the ordinary, rather disappointingly. I think I will go to visit Archibold today, I have not seen him since before the winter.
February 18th
Archibold is as obsessed with books as ever. He gave me several books on Norwegian and Swedish fairy tales and stories, insisting that I take them. Nothing really extraordinary happened today.
February 19th
Once again went back into the forest today. I am hoping to find something interesting, perhaps a sign of what that monster was that injured that other monster. Wow that was totally not confusing at all, I need to create names for monsters.
February 20th
Something interesting, I did find. I found splotches of blood. I have no idea what it is from, but the blood is thick and goopy. It is a dull black, lacking the luster or shine that blood usually has, which would make me think that it is not new, except it is. It is fresh blood. Whatever could it be from?