I am...oh, I have done something unforgiveable again...
I was going stir-crazy in the Tavern of Glass. The fever having broken, I felt as if I had been in that one room forever, with what felt like half of Valorn coming in and out. I was wearing a dress as well, Mistress Jaymes having given me one to wear when I was still delirious. It was more comfortable than tunic and trousers, but it was a skimpy thing with little in the way of sleeves, leaving my arm exposed to the gaze of all. I suppose she must have seen it, but she was kind enough to ask no questions. Mylor already knows of course. I hope no others saw it. I kept a blanket wrapped around my shoulders like a shawl to hide it.
Even without the arm, the dress was...odd. I have not worn one since... Not for a long time. I would have rather have changed back, but everyone seemed sure I would run off as soon as I had my own clothing back. Which shows my friends are perceptive, I suppose... They seemed convinced I should be resting, but I could not rest there. I wanted to be home, I wanted peace. And, despite everything, Milltown seems to have become home, somehow.
So I sneaked out. I got hold of my spear,and with Isolde restored to me, I set out. It was foolish, I admit. I got dizzy walking, so I leant on the spear. I suppose I was not at my most rational. But I feared for Milltown. I know the other took me away out of kindness, but I feel wary when I am away too long. Foolishness. If the attack comes... There is little I could do no other could. I just have the feeling... I should be there.
Of course, I was barely in Dundee before I ran into Steel. Who was angry, of course, to see me stumbling about like a day-old fawn in a sundress. But, typically, he knew there would little use in trying to persude me to go back to the Tavern. So he took what must have been the simplest course, to his mind, and picked me up, Isolde, spear and all, and carried me to Milltown. I was spitting mad. I hate to be picked up. It is annoying enough to be not far-off child sized without being treated like one. And I...dislike being touched without expecting it. The demons...
And so when we got to the inn, I was...cruel. I was so angry... I said some unforgivable things... I forbade him to touch me without my permission again. He...froze. I...I know I hurt him. I tried to explain... If I can explain. I cannot be helpless. Not again. I have elraned the lessons too well. If I could only explain why I must always push. But I cannot. The words are twisted up inside me, and I cannot disentangel them. I can only hope he can forgive me.

There was light, a lot of light... Shining through the Tavern's ceiling, a multiplicity of rainbows and pure white ligth shining off each other, the winter sun for once shining and all was made clear and shining, and in that moment I saw the man's face, caught shimmering and illuminated amidst it and I knew him. Oh sweet Light, I knew him...
And after all of this I slept, slept for the rest of the day and the night and much of the day following, and when I awoke the fever had broken, leaving me weak and exhausted and, as I now notice, annoyingly close to gaunt, but mending. I see the relief on the faces of Esh and Steel and Mylor and I admit I am glad. I am glad to have these friends. I am glad to have people who care whether I live or die. And Isolde... My sweetling. I am so glad to see her again. I have missed her so, and I can tell by the way she clings to me that she has missed me. I shall never leave her again. I wish I couls swear this. I know that I cannot, that I time may come when for her safety I shall have to be parted from her, but as I lie here is this bright, pure morning I can almost see a future without shadow of parting from her.

In a jagged and scribbled script quite unlike Venus's usual flowing hand, wandering all over the page

Hot...thirsty...no, cold, freezing... I think there is ice inside my bones. I am afraid to stand up, I am afraid they will collapse and crack like delicate icicles...
The man is still watching me. I can see him more clearly now, I think. I know him very well. I am getting too weak to keep from sleeping any more, despite the dreams. I am so tired... Oddly enough, the man aids. I feel as though he is watching over me. I know my friends are also, but they cannot keep me safe from the visions. Somehow...somehow, I feel as though this man can, at least in part. I am so tired...
I hear a child crying, nearby. It...is is Isolde. I think...I think I remember her coming here with me. If I can hear her crying, she is safe.
Whatever happens, I made Mylor promise. If the demons come, he will take Isolde and run with her. I thought I saw him go down once in Milltown, but I cannot be sure. If he runs, he will not die. And he would not break his word to me. I know him. I know that before he has chosen to survive when other would have died. He has snatched life from the clutches of hopelessness. If all else fails, he will survive, and he will make sure Isolde does too. And that...that is all that matters.

The man is still there. He never leaves. He is watching me...I see him. I... know him. Somehow. I know that I know him very well, and yet I cannot quite make the jump between seeing and knowing. It would help if I could think straight. I am so tired...
I saw hium first in Milttown inn, just as I began to feel so ill. It is so strange. On one hand, i can see him so clearly. He has long black hair, streaked with grey, he is medium height; towering over me as most, and all men, do. I can see the callus on his chin from wearing a helm long, in the name of the Light, but the face... I know I know him, but somehow, it is not getting through. It is like...translation Like when I think of a word in my own tongue and then try to find the right Valornian word for it, and there is this gap. So close, and yet not there.
And of course, I am the only one who can see him. He is there, by the Tavern fire. He casts a shadow. And yet, only I can see him.
I do not...I cannot think he is evil. Despite the gap, I have seen him looking at me. He smiles...it does not look like his face is used to smiling. It seems worn and scarred by pain, but when he looks at me... he smiles. And even through the gap, it is enough to break my heart. And once...Esh thought my talk of him, confused I am sure, was a description of an evil spirit. She tried to banish him, thrusting her sowrd at him. And he...he wept. Not as though the banishing affected him. Was it being called 'demon'? Was it...was it because he could not see me?

[/I]In far more shaky and spidery handwriting than usual
This is the first I have been able to write in some days. I am...ill. A fever...about the worst I have ever had save the two instances of wound fever in the past...
It is odd but the cross-shaped scar in my side aches terribly. The one where Mar so carefully, so tenderly cut my flesh to remove a barbed arrow without tearing my side up and having me bleed to death. It has never troubled me before, but now it burns and aches like the pains of Blood...
The dreams...the dreams still torment me whenever I allow my eyes to close. Some almost make sense. Others are blurred and broken, fragments of pain, shards of fear and loss. I am so tired...I flicker in and out of consciousness as I have for the past few days. People are here with me. My friends. Mylor stands often by my side...I think. Redti. Alastair. Esh. Llye? Steel? I see their faces, hear their voices, but it is all pieces. I cannot make a whole.
A long scratch and spatter of ink down the page as though the pen has fallen out of the writer's hand onto the parchment.

In such scribbled and illegible writing it can hardly be made out, with small patches of blood staining the page

I feel...sick...

It seems I am in danger of becoming an even greater oddity as a Cleric; one who fears temples... Not for fear of the Gods or of the Light, I may add, but for far more tangible reasons. The...people I have started to meet within them.
It was always a habit of Teraminis and mine to meet within temples. Not so much a'purpose, but that we tended to run into each other there on our own journeys. I was in Dundee recently on an errand to buy potions from Mistress Tracey. Having done so, I thought to step into the temple there for a few moments of contemplation and meditation on my dreams, hoping for clarity and guidance. Inside, the temple I saw, apparently, Sylent One in conversation with Teraminis by the altar. I appraoched, a little warily I admit, and greeted them, Teraminis was dressed in black again, and when he turned around, his eyes...looked odd. too bright again, and with something very odd in their depths. Sylent One came over smiling and immediately began to talk to me, when Teraminis stood up and approached us. His walk...was not his walk. There was something hungrily predatory about it, as there was with the smile he gave me as he said "Ah...you must be the Lady Darkmoon...I am not Teraminis...".
I suddenly grapsed who he must be, and warned Sylent one to leave the place..indeed, I nearly pushed her out the door, she was so reluctant to go. "Caldiminus Darkblade...his brother".
The man who had murdered Teraminis's wife, many and many years ago.

Here the writing becomes rather more spidery and shaky for some lines, as though written by a shaking hand.

Darkmoon, he had called me, and in those moments, I knew I must stand my ground. He had my true name. All the half-forgotten lore of my childhood rushed up in me. He who possesses your true name has power over you, and can harm you if he wishes it and knows how. And looking into those cold eyes, I was suddenly sure that this man would know how. And that he wished it. If I did not fight him now...he would have me.
He walked towards me, until he stopped some few feet away, and...sniffed the air, like a hunting dog. And the look of plesure in those eyes deepened. He seemed to smell Teraminis off me... and that I had rejected his advances...he spoke in confused half-sentences about me as tainted, having suffered pain and hurt and despair...and he smiled as he looked at me. Like a predator, but one who wishes to savour the hunt, and they prey's life, as well as the bloody carcass at the end of it... I held my glaive at him and swore he would not touch me. And he smiled, oh so charminingly, witht hat same cold hunger in his eyes, and said simply "We will meet again, Lady Darkmoon." as he vanished in black flames.

After that, I had to meet Teraminis. I found him in the Milltown temple, though I only caught him in passing. I told him...I warned him that his brother had returned. I talked to him warily...I am still afeared that this brother may prove to be a trick of the demon inside Teraminis, posing as an identical brother even to Teraminis himself, using his own body to murder hs wife and then fleeing, locked in endless prusuit of his own self. But the news turned Teraninis so white I thought fir a moment he was about to faint. He whispered he had been so sure his brother was dead...I left him in the temple, huddled by the altar.

I wandered long after that...I did not want to go back to Isolde. She catches smy mood so easily these days, and I do not wish her to sense the turmoil in me. Instead, I wandered high in the mountain passes, and there I came upon Steel, standing in the snowy winds as though he were forzen himself into a statue, only his hair blowing around him in the gale to show he was a living man. I greeted him with a gentle reminder that he should take better care of himself. He worries me, time and time. What he seems willing to suffer. What he does not even seem to feel. It is too easy for such people to simply let go one day. And that...that would be...terrible...
He stood silent for a long moment, and then his voice came from half-frozen lips, but rough with anger. ""Wha'ye be doin' wit'im?... 'e be a'dangerous.."
I stood for a long moment, half-thinking to deny that I had met with Teraminis. It had only been the other day I had stopped Steel from going after Teraminis...I know he sees him as a threat to me, as does Mylor. But I feared I had barely stopped violence from being done. And the tone in his voice frightened me. I would not have him as an enemy, but most of all I will have no one else hurt or in danger because of me. I will not. I explained as well as I could, and I think he understood, some at least. I hope so. I will not have anyone else hurt because of me, or drawn into something that could get them hurt. Especially not my friends. I will not.

And other dreams...worse ones. Ever since I went to N'Rolav, images of a ruined Milltown have flitted through my dreams here and there. So, of a right, I should not have been any more disturbed by this one than by the others. But I was...oh, by the Gods I was.
I dreamt...of a battle. A terrible battle. In Milltown. Horrific beasts attacked, I have never yet seen a N'Rolav beast up close but they looked not unlike the hazy glimpses I have caught of them. But worse. They...they seemed to strike terror into the hearts of defenders by simply existing. No one ran, but here and there I saw a defender, usually a citizen of the town but now and again an adventurer, slump to the ground apparently unmarked, but with terror glaszing their eyes and choking them until one I fell into was dead and cold when I turned him over.
I fought. I had no choice...the inn was at my back, and I half-thought I could hear Isolde's thin high voice crying my name from behind me. I...pray...that was only an illusion, even if naught else is. I hope I would have fought even if it had been otherwise though. I would have had no chance against the Beasts, but there were other, more humanoid demons also, though huge and swollen and...insectoid... I was amongst a small group fighting one of them. I thought I recognised Mylor and Steel and Alastair among the group, but I cannot be sure. Thank the Light. Even as we pulled at the demon and struck him and poisoned him and tried to overwhelm him under sheer weight of our bodies, his skin oozed something that gave forth a horrific stench...it began to erode our weapons, and burned our skin... His weapon was a great spear like a club with shards of razor-sharp glass ahrd as rock embedded in it, and I felt it...go through me. I fell into darkness...
...but, slowly, rose out if it again, in a pile of corpses...a field of the slain and ravaged in the Sqaure and out through the Gates and into the desert. Demons, beasts...and adventurers. I had not hit the floor in the inn. I stumbled...or floated, I know not which...over the field of the dead. And against the Gates, less despoiled in the manner of her dying than others, I found a tall woman. I turned her over, and...it was Esh. I am dead and cold sure of this. Esh's face, grey and bloodied and blue at the lips, one of her eyes gone, her hair full of gore.
I woke up and barely made it as far as the privies before I vomited everything I had eaten for days.
And, fool that I am...I told her. I did not mean to...it slipped out. Kindness. It is worse than swords. I know I could have stood against much pain, but kindness...it makes me suddenly vulnerable. Ever since I have come to Valorn...I am like a bottle suddenly unstoppered. I...cry. I say things...things I never meant to say. In the past, in the Wastes...I never said anyhting I did not mean to. I said nothing for the first years, after all. I never felt words come naturally to me, even after a regained them. Perhaps to Mar, once or twice...in the darkness, I said things I did not mean to say. Whispered into his flesh, almost silently. That I loved him. Other things...But that was in the darkness, and in the morn, who was to know. Except him...you know what happened to him... But here, it seems I say things all the time I do not mean to. What I feel goes to words before I can catch it.
Esh...Esh thinks it is a prophecy. Every part of me screams and prays and hopes til it bleeds that it is not. Please. No.

Dreams...bad dreams and strange dreams and dreams...that break my heart. Last night, I dreamed...of mar. Not so unusual, but this dream...
I dreamt I was standing in the Wastes. The sky was dark, though in the east a pale light lingered for a while, then there was nothing but the stars shinig overhead. Mar was there. I could not see him, but I could feel him, and I could hear his voice. He was singing to me, a song he made for me long ago. His voice was so beautiful... Even when he was dying, his voice speaking to me in a broken broken whisper from a throat hoarse from screaming, it was beautiful.


Sleep now my love for darkness is falling
Though your eyes become dim
Though I become only a shadow
Come close in my arms
Warm me
Lay your cheek against mine
Sleep now in my arms
For I will be watching

The stars look down on us from the darkness
The infinity of night deeper than mountains
The shadows envelope us
Come close in my arms my love
If I can feel your touch
I does not matter if the darkness takes us
Sleep now my love
For I will be watching

The stars dance above us in their ordained patterns
Shimmering above us writing our future
We float amongst them
Borne on their river
Come close my love
Together we will voyage amongst them
Sleep now my love
For I will be watching

The darkness encroaches on us as we sail
It cannot be fought, only endured
Take hold of my hand
While you can still see me
Hold on to me love
And forget not my face
Sleep now my love
For I will be watching...

His voice came to me out of the darkness, and I felt him...that fleeting warmth like a kiss, as though I was enfolded in his arms. And then a darkness came, and all the stars were blotted out, and in the darkness I lost him. And, a long time later, I came to myself, and the moon was shining above me, full and bright, and I felt...I felt as though it was looking at me. It was the colour of old old bones, long dead. And I was alone. All alone, under the gaze of that moon. And a last verse to the song Mar made for me came up out of the ground, out of the air, out of the Moon...

The moon is above me now, her bone-white face
Seems turned to me as though in a dream
Her light shines through
Illuminating me
And I see I am alone
Where are you my love?
I seek you
And I am watching.

And I realised I was in the desert near Milltown, not far from the walls, and I could see the mountains in the distance. And at the crest of a peak I saw a shape of a person, a man I think, silouhetted against the moonlight. And I awoke, with Isolde patting my face. Her face was wet, and it was some moments before I realised that the tears were not hers, but mine. I never used to be able to cry...