First Entry

I remember the fated wagon ride had started off in this heavy, awkward silence. Being packed in with strangers after years of painful solitude was uncomfortable enough for me, but resisting the urge to meet their constant stares was a battle in itself.

Thank the heavens for this mask concealing my hopelessly anxious face. I had prayed they’d be polite enough to keep their questions about it to themselves. Truth be told, I wasn’t anywhere near ready to talk about the circumstances behind its …improbableness. In fact, I don’t think I was ready to talk at all, period.

I nearly jumped from my seat when Finnegan suddenly burst out with cheerful greetings to everyone like it was the easiest thing in the world. It earned him an embarrassed grimace from Raph’æl, who was obviously trying to keep things “on the down low” at the time. I’m smiling right now just thinking about it. It was the first time I ever saw Raph as a true person beyond the clerical cloth. No longer did I have just my corrupted, incorrect assumptions of the Ilmatari to go by when I was in his presence. Beyond that deviation of my thoughts, I also remember this brought upon my first, faint flicker of jealousy towards Finnegan’s boldness.

Speaking in a way that feels worth listening to is tougher than I ever imagined it to be. Forget knowledge and physical ability — if I could trade it all for a silver tongue, I would. I can’t help but covet the ability to just string thoughts into coherent sentences like it’s nothing. My mind isn’t like that. It’s more like a heavy cloud I have to forcefully condense, shaping and squeezing it down until something halfway clear emerges. Even as I write this, it feels like it takes me minutes if not hours to find the right words, and even then, once they’re written, they’re read in the blink of an eye. I just wish I could tell my story the way it feels inside me — alive and worth voicing.

Needless to say, I blame Finn for sparking the idea that we should start interviewing each other. Not that anyone officially decided such, but they all just naturally started speaking. My stomach twisted itself into knots. It took every ounce of self-control not to stammer like some tongue-less fool when Ragar asked me about my faith — my source of power.

How was I supposed to explain that without sounding completely deranged? That I siphon radiance from gods-know-where in the universe, that my body was marked against my will with the sigils of seventeen different deities I was forced to pray to, that I’m on the run from a cult that tried to cram a messiah complex down my throat?

I don’t even remember what I responded with, to be perfectly honest. Whatever I answered Ragar with must have come out with some kind of borrowed grace, because she just nodded politely and turned to speak to someone else.

The relief was palpable. But how long could that relief truly last? Was I capable of keeping myself fully cloaked (physically and spiritually) from a whole group of people I’m meant to synergize with?

Turns out I didn’t need to mull over such thoughts for too long before we were thrust into danger.

The ambush came fast — a wild blur of shouting as an endless hiss of arrows rained from the woods as if the trees themselves were weeping death. It was so sudden, so overwhelming, that for a moment I stood paralyzed, useless.

Before I could even doubt whether or not I was capable of assisting in any way, Ragar — the rogue who, despite my uncanniness, just now treated me like any other comrade — had been pierced through the collarbone by an arrow. Blood was soaking onto the fabric of her clothes in a horrifically quick-spreading stain. I didn’t have time to think or doubt. I grabbed the arrow by the shaft and yanked it out — not careful, not gentle, just fast. She let out this horrible sound, but I pressed my hand against the wound before it could flood open. For a second, I worried that Raph’æl, a healer himself, was judging my carelessness with it all. But that should have been the last thing on my mind.

The magic came spilling out of me, pouring from my palms in a rush of heat and light that I still haven’t learned to trust, even to this day. I chanted the cure wound spell with stern command in my Undercommon tongue and it just flowed, burning away the wound like it had never been there. It should’ve felt like a blessing, but all I could think about was how much I hated this power. How it was the reason The Messengers thought they owned me— the reason a monster like Temenos tried to force himself upon me. How it kept tying me back to a life I was so desperate to leave behind.

But right then, I didn’t care. I needed Ragar alive — not because it was the right thing to do, not for any higher purpose or glory. I just needed her and the others to help me get through this job and whatever others so I could build a life where nobody knew my name, where nobody cared about what I could do. A life where I could finally be free.

———

It’s strange to think it’s only been two months since that moment — a moment I can’t help but feel a bit of shame over now. How is it possible to feel like I’ve spent a lifetime traveling with these people in just seven weeks or so? Maybe it’s because we’ve lived every moment together since the day our paths first crossed — waking up to the comforting scent of Raph’æl’s breakfast, prying my gloves away from Smeak’s mischievous grasp whenever I left my sack unattended, catching Super’s shady disappearances by the absence of his acrid scent alone, and listening, endlessly, to Jack and Ragar bicker about the virtues of daggers versus concussive force until I could mouth along with every retort. These little rituals have woven themselves into the rhythm of my life so much that it’s hard to imagine a day without them. Somehow, in the spaces between campfires and battles, between laughter and quiet talks beneath the stars, they became my family. And I, without meaning to, gave them pieces of my heart.

Far… too many… pieces of my heart.