Session 3

From Osmund's Journal
What have I done? I'm a murderer and the others don't even care! I should have known that arrow was going to make the horse's rider fall... I couldn't have guessed that he was going to land so heavily though, could I? ... and on his head too... I can still hear that wet snap...

His name was Francis and he was chasing us because if he didn't catch us a sorceror was going to kill him. Why did Ardit have to send us through that gauntlet of a pass!? Couldn't he just have magicked us out of the valley, or summoned a flying horse or something? And now i've killed someone...

Ardit said we should leave because he used to be part of a wizard group called "The Watchers" and that horrible thing we went hunting in the woods was just going to get more and more powerful and eventually kill Travis. Holt thought the best plan of action was just for Travis to never go to sleep again, which is easier said than done.

Apparently the king might be dead too? His second in command got shot by an arrow and levelled half a city and might have killed him in the process. The King's Guards in Fristad were running from the aftermath - what we are heading towards is going to be interesting to say the least. I don't expect i'll survive long, no doubt someone will stab me or set me on fire or make me turn inside out with magic. I need to be more cautious, we're not in Fristad anymore. Assuming Holt doesn't tell the city guards that I killed a man and they string me up next to the other murderers and thieves, he told Ardit about our fight with that creature.

The king's guard we made surrender told me it would get easier. That I would forget the faces of the men who I send to Frånfälle. I can still hear the horse scream and that snap when I close my eyes though...

Elle
I used magic to harm.

After healing Travis and borrowing a shirt from Rasmis, we snuck back into town and in various states of exhaustion collapsed into sleep. Between then and now, Holt snitched on us to Ardit and as far as we can tell told him anything he could think of. We also found out that Travis has been marked by the creature. It can hunt him in his dreams despite the runes protecting us, so Ardit said we need to go to the capital so Travis can find a teacher to train him to defend himself. Travis’ dad was beaten by the soldiers for trying to leave the valley and the village was told no one was allowed to leave. The atmosphere in the valley changed, just as the soldiers seem to have new purpose, so does the village as villagers began sharpening their threshold swords and accepted the existence of monsters with strange ease.

We tried to sneak out, we really did, but the guards on this side of the pass spotted Holt and we had to use every skill we knew to defend ourselves. Holt and I put to good use the magic we had been learning but it only got us part of the way out, we were going to be run down by the guards who were on horseback and Osmund and Travis’ defended us with their weapons. We left one dead, one befuddled and took one as a prisoner. We discovered from him that the king is probably dead, killed when his first advisor was struck by a crossbow bolt “by a foreigner.” The advisor responded by destroying a portion of the capital with an earthquake.

I don’t know why Osmund keeps going on about being a murderer, it was self-defence they were trying to kill us! What kind of soldiers abandon their city and are willing to serve a dark sorcerer, let alone destroy an innocent village. I feel worse about the poor horses. When we started out I wouldn’t have agreed to hurt anyone, but it’s more complicated than that and I worry if I’ll recognise the line, if there is one.