These are the final pages of the diary found in the yellow box, they are written in a steadier hand than before, but are still written with grandma Trinaday’s blue pen and slanted writing.

???, 1985

I have been saved from the brink of death; I am not relieved. I thought I would be. Instead, my emotions writhe and tangle within my head. I sit here tonight in the safety of a wagon, surrounded by brave men who rescued me and carried me away from the ruined keep, and yet I cannot stop shaking. From what, I do not know; am I afraid? Enraged? Relieved? I cannot separate the emotions enough to tell.

At first I think I was afraid. No, more than afraid. The feeling was ever present and overwhelming, turning the lonely days into a blur, I was terrified. That word still cannot describe my experience, it was moments, bright flashes of terror, standing out amid a sea of terror’s more insidious brother, dread.

I was dying, slowly starving. I knew it. I did my best to ignore it, but I always knew. There was no plan, no possibility of escaping the green creatures at that ruin.

Goblins, the men tell me they were.

There were moments I could not, that I did not record while there, drowning in fear huddled in my crumbling library. Writing them down and re-experiencing them would have made it all worse than I could bear. I need not write them down ever, those moments of terror. I can never forget them. There were too many to count, horrible moments that stole my breath and reason away. Moments I knew the goblins would find me, moments I knew the food I had left was running out, moments I knew I would never see my family again. The last of those terrible moments was the moment before I knew I would be saved.

It was loud, the sounds that woke me up that dawn. The screams and shrieks of the goblins clued me into the danger. I had thought another fight had taken them dangerously close to my library. If the skirmish went on for long enough or was destructive enough, they would find me. I could do nothing but lay there, too weak to stand. If it had been even days before I would have tried to crawl up to safety atop the tower. But that morning I knew, if I tried to climb the tower I wouldn't make it.

Soon, as I lay there, devoid of energy and waiting for the end, the noises changed. First, I could hear the sharp ring of metal on stone. Then the sound of voices, human voices. I will admit as I lay there sorting out the very much human yelling from the goblin's shrieks, I was overwhelmed with relief.

I wish I still felt that way. There was no doubt in my head, no wondering if I had suddenly succumbed to delusion, no thoughts on how I could understand what these foreign voices shouted. No, I could only think that they had come, that I was saved.

The thread of my emotions only tangles more as the day continues, the dread and relief are the simplest things I can pull out of my head to sort clearly on these pages. But there are more emotions I must continue to sort through. I must remember I am still a lone woman amid strangers in a strange land. I cannot let a tangled mess of emotions distract me from making it home. A well-ordered mind comes from well-ordered thoughts which can only be created when I understand how I feel. I cannot afford to make irrational decisions based on emotions I do not understand.

Once the men had broken through my barricade, some of them set their sights on defending the only entrance to the library, while the others searched it for anything valuable that could be carried away. They found me quickly, offered me food and an odd green drink to restore my stamina. They spent what I was later told were valuable resources on me without even the slightest bit of hesitation.

I got to experience yet another emotion, gratitude. Those men were heroes, and I will never forget what they spent to save me… I will always wonder if they would have survived if not for that expense.

The next events happened so quickly, snapping my gratitude away to another new feeling. One I can still feel all the way to my bones, horror. I had thought while training and learning to be a doctor back home I had experienced the worst of injuries and violence. I know now the sterile halls of an emergency room, even filled with the grievously injured, pale in comparison to an active battle.

May the actions of the Bardic Reeds never be forgotten; I will have to find out the names of the ones who died and write them down here

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The horror of witnessing people who came to save me, being pushed back through the door by an overwhelming tide of green, will haunt my dreams for as long as I live. Two of those brave men were trampled underneath the weight of goblins pushing through the fallen barricade, their bones audibly cracking, even over their screams. One choked gasp of the man an arm's length in front of me as he had his guts ripped out of his body by goblin claws. The stench and panic as a ball of fire explodes in the middle of the fray, burning goblin and man alive.

These horrible and gruesome sights still echo through my head. The worst part of it all? When I try to close my eyes, those moments replay themselves in my memories. And when they do I can't tell the difference between the pained screams of the goblins and humans dying in front of me.

I cannot account for the rest of the day, the sight of the battle in the door is the last clear moment before it all turns into a blur. There are snippets and scenes of clarity. Another group armed with machetes, huge swords strapped to their backs, crashing through the door to save us. The men's sick enjoyment of the pain and suffering they inflicted on the goblins as we rushed through the turns and twisting hallways of the keep. My first view down a crumbling moss filled hall leading to a broken arch and huge rotten double door and beyond that, the freedom of the forest.

My next truly clear moment is sitting alone by a fire, sun setting, a warm woolen blanket tossed around my shoulders, a meaty stew clutched in my hands. I made it, I was alive.

That was but a few moments ago. The bowl of stew sits next to me now in the covered wagon, still warm, I have been eating it slowly enjoying its odd taste.

I think, having written this down, I have sorted through how I feel.

I am guilty. People died for me today.

I am grateful. Some force, be it luck or God, has given me another chance.

I am still afraid. What will come next?

I have taken my time in this quiet night to think, and I have found there are too many questions. If they are left unanswered, I will never rest easy. Who are these people, can I trust them? Will they keep helping me or will I be saddled with debts I cannot pay? If I can trust them, why were they so cruel to the goblins? Can good people inflict such suffering on another sentient creature? Why can I understand them? Do they speak English? Did the journey here change what language I speak? If it did, what else has been changed within my mind?

There is one thing I have learned beyond a doubt. Magic is real.

Now that I have found people I have a new mission beyond survival. I must make it home to my family. I must learn more about the fantastical, about magic. If that is what brought me here, what whisked me away from my home. Then that is what will bring me back.

~~

L alak’q ohdilwh lq dq qeh qlph yxq L zdv dyrxq qr ihdsh lk qedq midfh qeh shob qrriv L khhaha qr pdnh lq erph, mhoedmv qedq lv qeh lorkb rc cdkqdvb. Lq dizdbv vhhpv qr yh flofxido, qehoh dka ydfn djdlk. -Jodkapd

~~

??? 1985

It is confirmed, I am not in Kansas anymore, this world is called Elentier. The people who saved me are from a country called Revena, a human empire that stretches across the continent. There are two factions that participated in the raid on the keep, a duke's knights and an adventurer's guild. I am making camp and traveling with the adventurers. Their leader, a man named Solen, has told me not to speak or ask questions to the duke's men. He has told me that being a ‘traveler’ can be dangerous. I am unsure what he meant and whether or not I can trust him.

I am also having trouble distinguishing between what is magic and what is not. They carry around these little devices they call Ephernevence Network Tablets, or Ents. They remind me of cordless phones, able to contact another tablet in range if they're close enough to the network. When we make it out of these woods, I am told the network reaches almost anywhere in the world. But the devices are more than that, they have a storage capacity of dozens of floppy disks, and almost ten times the computing power of a computer back at home. Apparently, they are affordable enough that almost every adventure here has one. The existence of such a device seems beyond a fantasy, and altogether too close to home.

The stories they tell of the ‘small town’ we are headed to sounds like a city almost the size of Boston. With millions of residents and towering buildings. Even the carts here pull themselves, without an engine or other power source I can find.

I am exhausted, I can barely find the strength to write. My flight from the keep and the questions I have weigh on my mind. I cannot sleep. I am far out of my depth.

There is a place the adventurers tell me of when I ask about learning magic, a grand school for mages and engineers in the capital. If I want to find out more of the magic that brought me here, that will be the place. I had thought my schooling had ended when I married Gordon, but I may have to pick up a pen yet again in this new world, just to make it home. I hope the old men here are more willing to let a woman learn their craft.