Disheartened ... dislocated ... discouraged ...

I'm sitting behind a barricade I built in the treasury of Old Dundee. I've lost track of how many nights I've slept here, how many more days of stalking the streets of this dark and twisted place while I hunt down the horrors I hear roaming just beyond the flimsy defence I've been able to build. In the darker moments it seems that the pile of timber and broken strongboxes isn't the only barrier that is starting to break down, threatening to give way any moment and let in the things I'd prefer to keep out leaving me engulfed, overrun ... finally beaten.

There are a few guildkin who wake often. We speak, share jokes, pass information and gossip between us ... but all too soon they go to their rest. There are others who wake for a fleeting moment, just long enough to see who else may be walking the lands at that moment. There are some who have time only for a brief word ... and some who won't make the time even for that.
The dark thoughts assail me as the horrors come again. Hack and slash as my mind is taken over by questions and wonderings. Those thoughts seem to have worn a rut in my mind, in much the same way as my boots have worn a rut in the streets of Old Dundee. Over and over, during these last few long - and often lonely - cycles of the moon, the screams of horrors have battered at my ears as questions and doubts batter at my brain.
Ellyana, I promised you that I would hold on, and hold out ... to look after the guild and our guildkin as best I can, while I watch and wait.

I'm holding on, princess, and holding out ... thought it's a long and dark solitary path I walk. As for the guild, I guess the guildkin are the ones who know how good the hands may be into which the guild has been entrusted. Perhaps their thoughts on the matter are kinder than my own.

And I watch and wait ... for the one bright light in what seems to be an ever-darkening life.