755 CC April 5th

We didn’t bury the bodies deep enough. I should have overseen it better. Grey clouds reign over the land, steadily dripping water upon the hills and glades. Every tree bows down for the heavens, laden with the meager nectar of the sky.

The stench of decay seeps through the fresh mud. Some men are valiantly at war with the slipping erosion. They fight with hand and shovel to fill carts which they dump atop their fallen comrades. The rain continually turns it to mud, making it dribble and slough around their boots, oozing and sucking against them. I’ve watched them for an hour now try to cement the dead in place, to stop up the seeping gasses of decomposition.

They won’t find any success until tomorrow.

Perhaps because of this, however, I have found myself thinking more about my stigmata. Such a mild gift from the gods it seemed. Part of why I joined the order was curiosity out of why I had been given this ability. I wanted to understand it and find a use for it. When I grew up, I first thought it was something like a compass. I didn’t think much of it when my ability could be replicated by a lodestone needle. As I grew older, I came to understand that I had merely been sensing the Ice Sea, as it was the greatest mass of water. Right now in the abbey I can still sense the sea far to the north. Other, closer, bodies of water made themselves known to my senses too. First it was ponds and rivers, then I learned the touch of it in the kitchen. Again, I never saw a use for it. Anyone familiar with the land would know where the river or the pond was, and in a kitchen it merely took eyes to see the water.

It was storms that changed everything for me. When I realized that I could, I suddenly gained an awareness of the future, or so it seemed at the time. I had a sense in my body that thunder would come in the next few hours, then days. I had a miracle of divination I thought.

Sadly, that was not true. I could simply sense the water in the clouds before the turmoil of the storm squeezed the rain down to the ground. The storms did not come from nothing, they moved across the land. I could merely feel them as they approached. Misinformed as I was, I am not upset by my youthful folly, for it brought me to study.

I do hate the rain however. After all my efforts to develop my stigmata I struggle to ignore it. To be surrounded by falling rain is something akin to standing in the middle of a raucous tavern when everyone but you is singing and stamping their feet. For a time it is tolerable, but it wears the senses thin.

To escape it even slightly, I descended to the sanctum and prostrated myself before the relic for prayer. This of course is not necessary, especially with how it has waned, but perhaps my will might resonate with it somewhat. Perhaps that is mere justification for me to get away from the downpour and the lurking monster.

Ather, the name of the angel long dead. The origin of our temple, our church, our home, it is nothing more than a mummy. Is it blasphemous to compare an angel to a heretic? I know little about the process of mummification. I think it has something to do with the way wastelanders will shrink heads and keep them as fetishes for demons. What I do know is that Shepherd disapproves of the process. It is an insult to the natural order to prevent decay. I think that rule only applies to humans. Surely nobody embalmed an angel. What would they have even used? What tincture, oil, or drug could preserve part of the heavenly host? I think just the opposite is what happened. Nothing of this world could cause it to rot away, so it withered instead. Flesh diminished and skin shrank tight until the fragile bones within shattered to dust.

Ather still grimaces at the ritual bowl with yellow teeth and empty sockets. Only the crest has rebuked the ages. While it is cracked and damaged and perhaps lean of magic, our sacrifices have prolonged its life.

Fool that I am, I had forgotten my duty as Abbey Master. I had to fetch one of the pigs. The soldiers grumbled at me when they saw me taking another meager yearling inside but they did not stop me. Father Marcuese left me notes on the prayers to say and I did my best to perform the ritual on my own. The corpse burned–fat, skin, bone, and meat all–but nothing of the relic healed.

A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

I am not fit for this duty.

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755 CC Apr 6th

More deaths, but this time not from an attack on the abbey. For that, I am thankful. It was at range. The food is growing lean and even the Vassish are n0ot so callous as to empty our stores. Some of them went hunting. Perhaps they thougth they might spy the injured and infected troll or perhaps they thought they were safe. nAll we know is their bodies were found hung from the boughs of an oak like a gallows.

Do trolls have that kind of thought? The dexterity? The malice? Where had it gotten the rope?

I fear that Leomund’s theory is the right one. He returned shortly before lunch carrying an enormous boar hunting spear, the kind of broadheaded, long toothed beast of steel that can be braced against a charging monster. In a normal man’s grasp it would be too heavy to fight with but I have seen what he is capable of.

He thinks discontents are taking advantage of the grendel. No troll would bother to disgrace a body according to him, though the legends I’ve read would say otherwise. He thinks revolutionaries are lurking in the woods with their deep-set eyes gazing upon the Prince’s host.

Maybe he has a point. The abbey has lost so many monks, priests, and acolytes now that it can hardly be said to function. We couldn’t host a prayer service if an emissary showed up for one. All those brothers–no more of course, lest they come back–have surely been spreading rumors and frustrations. Even the bare truth would be enough to stoke the ire of righteous men. If these are revolutionaries, I fear that I cannot say they are wrong in what they do.

I wonder if it would have been worth my time to learn what these people had to say for themselves. I understand they do little to hide their presence when it seems safe to do so. They will get up on tables in taverns and scream about the rights of men. They lionize some Vassish writer like he’s a prophet of the future. The only thing I’m confident they do is use their own persecution as proof.

The Princeps does what he can to peacefully subjugate them and I do not believe he wants to crush them. Their grievances are with the empire and only by association with the Princeps. Most of them would love nothing more than his refuting of the treaty and full independence.

Regardless, they are like a pack of mongrel hounds who have noticed the prince of Vassermark, it doesn’t matter that he is second in line to the throne, is vulnerable. They are vultures circling a starving man and waiting for him to become food.

I don’t know what the prince will do about that. Is this the sort of justification he’s been hoping for? Is this why he has abused the abbey for so long?

I think Leomund was hoping to provoke a fight this evening, another display of his strength now that he was equipped to fight the troll. That did not come to pass however. The prince didn’t join us for dinner and did not have to suffer through a gruel of oat and winter apple. The hard fruit has little sweetness like its fall kin. It is hardly anything more than a berry to attract birds as the flowers come into bloom. Humans can hardly find it palatable.

I was told the prince was traveling to the neighboring villages. I shudder to think what he did there.

I expected most people at the table to complain about the poor state of the food, but it seemed that the Vassish understood themselves to be the cause of it. The northman characteristically endured the bad taste and of course my brothers accepted it. What surprised me was the other pilgrim, evidently an acquaintance of the northman for the dark skinned fellow had arrived with him.

I watched as he produced a bottle of white wine from southern Vassermark, expensive by my reckoning, and poured it into his bowl along with a dash of honey he had pilfered from our storeroom. Combining them all together, he made a mash seemingly fit for an old and infirm man. At first, I confess, I thought it appropriate for him as he was an older man. Then one by one we all began to grow a bit curious about the zeal he consumed the meal with. When I asked to have a splash of his wine, the grin he gave me was fit for a troll, but he shared all the same.

It did improve the meal a great deal, turning the bland food to a sweet delight.

Then he asked if he could be allowed into the library as payment. I agreed as a reasonable enough price and afterward let him in. He promptly took a seat at the reading desk, lit the little stub the prince had abandoned, and opened up the two tomes left out. Legends of the North as well as the ritual book from Aillesterra. To my surprise, he started from the beginning, which is written in fae-tongue. I don’t have the faintest idea if the translations were accurate, as I was not that much of a polyglot, but it seemed that he was.

I suppose I should be thankful that somebody was able to make use of those ancient texts. Perhaps tomorrow I will speak with him further.

As I sit here penning this journal, I think I can see the raven in the orchard. It isn’t moving much, I can barely tell the glimmer from the stars above. Just something slightly wrong that may be nothing more than my sleep deprived imagination. If not for the grendel, I think I would bundle myself in cloaks and head out to see for myself, but I fear not.