12/31/1347
Madrid. Possibly for the last time.

I'm cold.

The room's actually quite warm, I built the fire up when I got back, and Galvin's gone to find us something to eat. I've got a glass of fire-warmed mead in front of me and my journal and inkwell beside me. From the courtyard below, I can hear the sounds of tack and armor being carried, the click and ring of hooves, the booted feet running through the courtyard to the stables and back.

The sounds of preparation for battle. Which is part of the reason I'm cold, tonight.

The others were mostly excited and chattery tonight, because by all accounts today's mission was quite the coup. We managed to foil Nikodemus with no blood shed, even. Aiden was cheerful, though tired-looking, and Riyor and Strawberries sat next to each other, almost touching but not quite. I shiver, now, at what I was willing to do today, if I had to.

I couldn't join in. When Galvin asked me what was wrong, I could only shake my head. I told him, "I'll tell you later," and I will, when he returns. I hope I can, at least.

There's also a message here, carried to me by a young cleric, one of the initiates from the Solstice. Cernannos, the god of the drow, is dead, killed by Tennant. This is twice now they've forced him to kill a god for them, which is cold, cold news. He's got as much weighing on his soul as any of us, and possibly more.

The drow are now almost all directly loyal to Morrigan. Bad news for us, I'm afraid.

Last night, I was hopeful that we would not lose Ireland, that we could strike a blow there that would cause Morrigan's forces to hesitate a little. I'd hoped to buy us a little time; a week, perhaps two. But Morgan le Fay declared open war this morning, and Andorra fell this afternoon to a horde of orcs and white dragons.

They are sweeping south. Madrid is next. And this is the last time we will spend here for a long while, should Madrid fall. Endraya and her clerics are moving tomorrow morning, as Madrid's not going to be safe for them to be here and their work cannot be interrupted.

I know Morgan is starting this war to distract us. And I can't be distracted right now; there's too much at stake for me to give in to what I really want to do, which is join the only family I have known for years in defending our home and our Order. But I can't; there are too many things that are pulling on me, too many decisions I need to make.

But it feels like a betrayal, not to stay and fight. Gavião mentioned tonight, almost offhandedly, that in the short time I've been Headmistress, more blood has been, and will be, spilled than at almost any other time in our history.

All I could say was, "Do you think I'm not aware of that?" Then I left the room. I'll apologize to Gavião tomorrow, I don't think I can deal with him or the others again tonight. I'm sure he didn't mean to upset me, and he doesn't know yet about the decision I had to make tonight, so it's not his fault.

Endraya was right; my wrists have gotten bonier than usual over the last six weeks. Too much time traveling, too much battle, and I forget to eat when everything else is going on.

I spoke with Maria, the Spanish Headmistress, tonight. She says that she's located at least three Morrigan spies in this temple, and there are another ten possibilities; many of those will probably simply turn out to have been in the wrong place at the wrong time, but some of them are probably actually spies. I cautioned her not to go overboard with this, to limit herself to simply removing all of Morrigan's spies she can find, but I'm not sure she heard me. She seemed utterly offended that there would be worshipers of Morrigan in *her* temple.

I fear for the future with this. It could so easily get out of hand. Have I started something I don't have the ability to stop?

And I am cold. Still. The fire's not helping, tonight.

Today, we helped the people of Sherwood Forest evacuate. They had an army coming through to wipe them out, and Robin had decided to relocate even before we arrived. We moved Arnie's parents and two of our three Atlantean vehicles to the dragon cave--Teryl, Arnie's friend who his mother was teaching how to control her powers, had taken the third and is evidently out in search of us. (Impatient girl! I wonder if she knows there's a dragon looking for her.) I may ask Aiden to see if he can contact her tomorrow. He looked worn to a whisper this evening when he and Riyor returned.

We were helping Robin and her people pack the last of their things when the Sherwood gate activated; and through came drow and a pair of Knights of the Right, the order that Gavião left when it turned into that from the Knights Templar. It turned out to be Sadron, his old commander, and his stepfather, Neeron. One of them tried to tell Gavião to hold, but if they thought that Gavião was going to stop to chat, they were both very, very wrong.

And, in a few minutes, very dead.

Both of my shoulders hurt tonight--the part of the drow army that they'd managed to bring through kept shooting me with arrows. Fortunately, Riyor managed to (quite spectacularly, I might add!) damage both the Sherwood gate and the Underdark gate the drow were coming through, and it could have been much worse than it was. Ow, though. While I adore Dream as a mount, the "smallish woman on a grey draft horse" description is enough to mark me to even the most unobservant of enemies. I have "target" written in burning letters above my head, I swear.

(Has anyone ever really ridden until they ride their familiar? The sensation is a cross between sex and flying. When I'm riding Dream, it's as if our two minds link together, and we become one entity. One of several bright spots in the last few days was gaining him.)

I was impressed with Riyor today, by the way. Bouncing a lightning bolt off of all of the circle stones just as it was opening was a stroke of genius. As well as extremely lucky, but considering the orb he's currently carrying, I almost take that for granted.

I healed myself, of course, but it always takes a few days for the aches to fade. The body remembers that it's been injured even after it's been healed. The accelerated healing we can do doesn't cancel that out. And I've got some fresh scars across my left palm tonight, as well. But that's from later.

Then Galvin shouted, "Blue Great Wyrm incoming. We're about to meet Nikodemus, folks." Things got confused for a few minutes. When everything was sorted out, Nikodemus had taken Riyor, and Nikodemus said he wanted a trade--Riyor for Strawberries.

How we got Riyor back is a long story, and most of it's not mine to tell, but we didn't end up having to swap Strawberries for him, which is a relief. Besides the fact that, well, she's a goddess (was a goddess? Something like that) and we don't want the council to have her powers, it sounds like she and Riyor have started to sort things out a bit between themselves. There's an old and deep story there that I'm pretty sure I'll never hear most of. I might ask, one day, if we ever have an evening by the fire, but I'm not sure he'd tell the tale.

Having Strawberries working with us is also a good thing, because I have to learn how to play the deep games, and Strawberries happens to be the undisputed expert on those sorts of things. The order of Epona as a whole tends to be pretty straightforward, which is usually fine. But our enemies are fighting dirty, and we're going to have to learn how to fight even dirtier. Thinking like them makes my head hurt, but it's vital that I learn.

Aiden got Riyor out from under Nikodemus' nose, and we didn't have to kill Nikodemus--or ask Strawberries to sacrifice herself. Which is good, because I fear greatly Morgan le Fay's threat to my sister, that the next time we kill a council member she will call all of her family to her and she will kill them all in front of her--including the mother we share. I don't know if Morgan can carry out that threat, but I have a feeling my sister thinks that she can and she will.

I haven't been allowing myself to think of what happens if Epona dies. I have a feeling I may need to do some thinking on it sometime soon, because it's starting to be more of a possibility.

My hands are tied for the next month in regards to my sister. I can't get her out by myself, and it would be sheer folly to attack Versailles now. Everything's in Gaius' hands, now. I think I can talk to her, though. Dream did something last night that I think will help protect me if she comes after me again. Would Morgan believe her if the girl said she'd attacked me to no avail?

They have taken everything from her, even her name. And still she fights them. I hope she can last another month; I hope she believes that I'll come for her when I can, now that I know she exists.

That's one more child of Epona located. Three to go. I wonder if they're all my full-blooded siblings? I think I now know why my mother--the one who raised me from a baby--always had that deep sadness that nothing seemed to touch. I'm not sure if she knew she was sharing her husband with a goddess, but I'm sure she had her suspicions. The girl Morgan has prisoner is four or five years younger than me, suggesting that he had an ongoing relationship with her.

Which, of course, brings me to the other questions I haven't been facing. Who is my father? More to the point, *what* is he? And what on earth does that make me? He's currently guarding the Ark of the Covenant, quite effectively, it seems--but why him? I remember that armor and that sword that he's using, and I thought it had been taken away from him long ago.

There is so much to do. We need to destroy the Ark before our enemies gets their hands on it. The Ark isn't particularly portable, and it's possibly one of the most dangerous things in the entire world. I need to see if I can make alliances among the other threatened Orders; while most of them may be unwilling to get into battle, we may be able to get support from some of them. I'll send out what clerics we can spare who have diplomatic skills to see if we can recruit help, I think. I need to wake our own network; I ran out of time to do so tonight, but I may have a bit of time to do so tomorrow morning. I need to find out how we can possibly convince Dushela to help us, and we need to get the Servant of the Bones away from her. I'm not actually certain if we can do both, but damn if we're not going to try. We have to kill Morgan le Fay and the King of France, get my sister out of Versailles, and probably find the three missing children of Epona. There's a war to fight and one of our two most effective fighting forces is committed to Ireland., and a plague to combat...

Oh, by all that's holy, the plague. This is the thing I was avoiding writing about.

I am so very, very cold.

I spoke with Endraya tonight, you see.

Research on the samples we have is coming along too slowly. Damn that Dushela for being an obsessive-compulsive bitch, anyway! Her plague is resisting all of Endraya's efforts to modify it or to find something that will even guard against it, much less cure it. If we had access to her, it would be different, but we cannot assume we're going to be able to get Dushela to help us.

The plague's picking up speed out there in the world. It'll be an epidemic in six weeks, ubiquitous in six months. It affects every race differently, and each race needs a different cure designed for it. There may be enough time to make a cure for one race. Maybe. There is no time for anything more.

And tonight, Endraya asked me to make a decision. Who do we save? Who lives and who dies?

And she asked me not as the daughter of her heart, but as Headmistress. Not "what should we do?" but "what will we do?" That, in itself, was enough to nearly tear me in half; just as Callas, I may have refused to make the decision altogether, but the Headmistress does not have that luxury.

I forced myself not to think of the faces of my friends, those I've been traveling with for the past several months. And I made the decision. Humans, then dwarves, then elves, then the rest, if we manage to have time. Save as many as we can, relocate those who will go off the continent, and pray that I've made the right decision.

I dare not second-guess myself.

How am I going to tell them? How am I going to be able to say "there simply wasn't time to save you all"? How do I explain why I chose the way I did, why I am doing the things I am doing now? (I do not think Arumaga will betray us, in the end; but I cannot explain why. I fear attempting to tell Gavião about what I've done.) There is no right path here, and I seem to be leading us all deeper into the shadows.

Even as I sit, tracing the new scars on my palm from when I found out I needed to make this decision, I am feeling the beginnings of what promises to be a vast and uncompromising anger. The kind of anger that will burn everything in its path until it finds its target--those who would set themselves up as the new gods, those who will fight amongst themselves until only one is left, who would be rulers of a wasteland empty of magic. Who covet power only for power's sake.

The kind of anger that may, in the end, burn me alive. I no longer fear that this war will mean my death, because I know that it probably will. I will endeavor to see it through to the end, but I no longer am sure that I can.

And beside that anger is a deep grief, a mourning for what might have been. I allowed myself to hope for the future, for a time of peace. But these few weeks may be all we have, should I fall. And if Galvin falls, and I live…no. I cannot think of that. It cannot be possible.

And if I do live--what then? Who will I be, at the end of all this? Will I have allowed the last of my humanity to burn away, will I have done things I cannot live with, in the end?

If I do...it is a risk I must run. I will do what I have to do.

The places we walk get only darker from here.

__________________________________
[a folded piece of paper, stuck between the last two pages of this entry. It is unsealed, and it says "Galvin" on the outside in Callas' handwriting.]

Galvin,

If you're reading my journal, it probably means that I've fallen and you're looking through my journal for explanations or for some sort of comfort.

I can't provide you with much of the latter and probably less of the former. But I can give you this.

I don't know what's going to happen, but please know that I've loved you with everything I am, without reservation. I know we've spoken of the future only in whispers, but I did--do--want to build a life with you. I fear that we may never get that chance.

I know you would go anywhere with me. But you may not follow me into death. Stay in the world, love. Be the Headmaster I know you can be, lead whatever is left of the Order back into the light from these shadows. Do the work you need to do, keep these records for the future.

I will be waiting for you in the realm of dreams, when the time comes.

I love you.

Callas.

<< Previous | Next >>

Back to Callas de Navarre | Back to the Twilight of the Gods campaign