Landen Paletail - The Written Word of a Man's Purpose

[Blissey]

The Written Word of a Man's Purpose
Prologue
Act I

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Grandfather died today. It was quick, and sudden. There was no build up. No rising tension to an insurmountable conflict, no sneaking disease, no lingering knife that claimed him. It was nothing more than the encroaching tide of old age. I found him slumped over his favorite writing desk, inkwells split across the fine, Calishite parchment he so adored and his age-old quill held firmly as if even in death, there was still much more to write. At first I felt sorrow, then, selfishly, relief. I knew even when I was young that one day my grandfather’s work would kill him. People underestimate the strain that it takes on one's mind to hold onto an unanswerable question, a purpose that can never be fulfilled. I suppose that is now what is drawing me to write, even now as I sit at my grandfather’s desk, writing on the same parchment he died upon. The Kelemvorites reeled him from our home once I had called for them. They are a kind people, the Kelemvorites. They gave him his final rites, and a funeral was held in our local graveyard in Arrabar.
“Did you wish to follow us back to the Chapel, Mr. Paletail, to escort your grandfather?”
“No. A morgue is the last place I would like to be right now.” I replied. I felt bitterness in my tone when I said that. Only when the door shut below, and I felt the odd quiet rest over the house like a dull cloud, was when the tears arrived with due haste. I had not cried in so long, not since I was a boy, not since my parent’s indelible passing. Now, I was truly alone despite all of grandfather’s teachings, all his preparation for this very day, it still hurt beyond all belief. His funeral eased some part of the pain on my soul. It was pleasant seeing my grandfather’s friends, colleagues and even some family arrive and pay their respects to a great man. Even the sun seemed to show sympathy, granting us a warm, agreeable day to mourn him.
“Landen,” Karan called after me once the procession was over, “How are you? Silly question, I know but I just want to make sure you’re alright.”
It was a silly question, but coming from Karan I felt my knees buckle, my lips quivering at their ends as if ready to unleash another torrent of sorrow.
“I am just glad he got the farewell he deserved.”
“It was nice, wasn’t it? Seeing all his friends here. As soon as I heard what happened, I came as quickly as I could.”
“Thank you, Karan. It’s hard to care for most who came here, but you? It means a lot, and I imagine it would mean the world to my grandfather, too.”
It was calming to feel him touch me again. A hug was what I needed, even though I didn’t know I needed it. Smelling the fragrance of his bright blonde hair brought back feelings of a time long past, and as much as I wanted to speak on those feelings to him, a funeral was the last place I wanted to do it. I kept hold of him as long as he willed it, and he must have known it was what could begin to mend the aching scar I’d added to my repertoire today because he did not let go, not for a long time. Barten, my boss per se, told me to take the day off to rest, or more if I needed it. I figured that day was as good as any to open my grandfather’s wine collection, but to break it open on the day of his death? I thought against it after much deliberation. I returned to work the day after, and fought through the waves of condolences kindly, but awkwardly offered by my colleagues at the local temple of Deneir. I sought refuge in the study area, digging my nose into ‘A Matter of Chance’ by Tivialix Ravaphius, a raunchy, if not comically bad, romance novel to distract myself. It was Karan’s favourite. But my joy found in reading Ravaphius’ laughable prose was put on pause when Barten had found me.
“Paletail, there you are. I’ve been looking all over for you.”
“Here to offer your condolences, Barten?”
“You’ve gotten enough of that already, Paletail. I won’t be feeding your misery this day.”
“Then what is it?”
“The High Scrivener wishes to speak with you.”
Leave it to the higher echelons of the Deneirrath church to disregard your misery for the sake of pursuing knowledge. That burgeoning anxiety reaches its peak, however, any time the High Scrivener wishes to speak with me. I’ve spent too many occasions sitting in his office, face down with his sickly tea breath wafting over me during an intense monologue about the importance of protocol and our mission. But something was different this time around; the High Scrivener was flanked by the Aspirant Scriveners and his Full Scrivener.
“Mr. Paletail, take a seat.”
“Is something the matter?” I inquired.
“Not at all. In fact, this might be the most positive instance in which you’ve come to this office, Mr. Paletail. We have a task for you, an important one.”
“Of course, let’s hear it.”
“I assume you’re well versed in the history of Amn? Regardless, we have received word that The Small Teeth has reopened, connecting Amn once more. I imagine this might bring a wave of new information and important historical events to follow. We want you, along with Markus Huntbone, our prodigal Aspirant Scrivener, to journey there and make connections with the Order of the Vaunted Word in Murann.”
“Why me? Surely Barten, or any other Zealot is far more qualified to do this job, sir.”
“Despite your clear disregard for the way we do things here, Mr. Paletail, the other Scriveners have decided that you are most suited for this job. Unpredictability, bullheadedness, stubbornness; that is what is required out there, beyond the walls of Arrabar to survive the roads to Amn. Letting you rot here in your own misery would be a waste of talent.”
I reluctantly agreed, not that it mattered. It was strange hearing the High Scrivener’s ‘praise’, as if all my insubordination had been validated. It was unclear what sort of message he was trying to send me, if any at all. He is old, after all, and on that chance perhaps anything that comes from his mouth is nothing more than the ramblings of an old-man who believes himself to be a sage of his time. But out there I feel like I have a chance now. A chance to find what my grandfather was looking for, not stuck in a chair in a dusty old house, but out in the wild. On the roads where dangers and strife are abundant and clear. This will be the written word of a man’s purpose.
​

​

 

[Blissey]

The Written Word of a Man's Purpose
Act II
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What a peculiar thing emotion is. In all my time studying poetry, you begin to notice the nuance in each emotion. How happiness can be brought upon or vary in so many different ways. How sadness can wash over and control you. Yet with renewed purpose, there is no nuance. It is direct, pointed, and blunt. It is like being flung towards an object at a speed only you can control. But like any emotion, its brief rush, either positive or negative, is fleeting when presented with the current, harsh reality. I met with Karan today before I left Arrabar. This was my harsh reality.
“You’re… Leaving?”
“The High Scrivener dictated it. I have no choice.”
“Of course you have a choice, Landen. You always have a choice.”
“You don’t understand, Karan. This is important for me.”
“And what about me?” I felt the silence linger, not for a lack of want. His tinged sullen tone pierced me. But it was fleeting, like all else.
“What about you, Karan?”
“You didn’t even try to fix things with us.”
“Is there anything to fix, Karan? It’s done. You said so yourself.” I lied, but the touch of his hand upon mine made me immediately regret my harsh lie.
“Don’t pretend like there was nothing between us. Like we didn’t…”
“... Love each other? We do. I love you, Karan. But I need this. I need to see what’s out there, to find what it was my grandfather was searching for all his life, what killed him. Otherwise I’ll end up just like him; a shriveled up man, jaded by the unanswerable.” I sounded just like my grandfather. Always academic. Always lacking the compassion that would mend what books could not. Karan could see that I meant well, that it was important, that it truly meant so much to me. That was why I loved him.
“Do you remember that day out by the river?” He reminisced.
“When we skipped rocks for nearly the entire day and dissected ‘A Matter of Chance’ down to its core?”
“That’s the one.”
“That was a good day.”
“... The best.”
Truth be told, our harsh realities are often not the source of our woes. It is the feelings that follow thereafter, their nuance, their evershifting change. What we feel certain about now, do we feel regret for later on. I wished then and there that I kissed him. To enjoy what we had while we had it. But in the end, had I done so, the pointedness of my purpose would have dissipated. I weighed it in my mind as I watched him ramble about something pointlessly trivial. But I could not let Karan get in the way of it all. I couldn’t let love stand between me and answers. Amn was waiting for me just beyond the horizon, but Karan would be waiting for me on my way back. I know it.
“All set, Paletail?” Huntbone said.
“Ready, sir.”
“Very good. Let’s get to it. The caravan is leaving soon, I do not want to be late.”
“Did I ever tell you what happened to the last Aspirant that joined me on a venture, sir?”
He shook his head. His stupid, snobbish eyes squinting at me.
“He favoured his parchment over a pack of wolves. Suffice to say, the stress of a rambunctious youth was the last thing that troubled him that day.” I was lying of course. But the soft-boned Aspirant Huntbone didn’t know any better. Colour me an arse, but consider it my way of testing the waters, to gauge them. Obviously Aspirants aren’t well versed in the art of combat, their eccentricities and skills lie in the art of the written word, and clearly Huntbone was a homebody. He’d brought so much useless gear that it could weigh down an ox, lucky for him, he was built like one. More fat than muscle, however.
“You aren’t going to cause trouble for me are you, Paletail?”
“I believe that works both ways, sir.” I saw Huntbone’s face fall after setting the tone for our hopeful journey across the world to Amn. Let me tell you, there was nothing quite like watching the sunrise that day as I stepped onto the caravan. Just like the wheels turning on that caravan, so did the wheels of my life turn too. I was finally on my way, searching for the written word of a man’s purpose in each colour of the sunrise.

​

 

[Blissey]

The Written Word of a Man's Purpose
Act III
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When you are young, the world feels far more surreal. Smells, sights and sounds are scribed into one’s mind as dreamscapes of immense imaginative opportunity. Rooms and places you rarely visited were hallowed grounds where sins and mistakes were etched into the very air you breathed. Such was the case with my grandfather’s study. I recall each floorboard that would creak with my step, the ways in which the sunlight would cast it’s rays through the open, wind-kissed window, the flecks of dust that floated aloft in those rays - gently resting across the piles of Calishite parchment sprawled in each end of the room. Yet now, twenty-two winters into my life, that magic has since faded. I step within his study without care or worry to disturb his things. While my mistakes are etched in that air, and I see them, they leave no burden on my heart as they once did in my younger days. The roads have given me a blessed opportunity to mourn him, and the loss of that magic, in my own personal ways.
“Little Tail, are you comfortable?” Grandfather said, as he tucked me under the thick linens of my bed.
“Yes, grandpappy! Will you tell me about Deneir?”
“So eager, little Tail. Very well. Did I ever tell you about the Metatext?”
I recall shaking my head, but I knew far more about it than any young boy did at that age. My grandfather wouldn’t know any better as memory no longer seemed to be his trusted ally as it was mine.
“It is said that Deneir once glimpsed at the Metatext when he was a young man, a loyal scribe of Oghma. There upon the Metatext Deneir saw a world of knowledge that no man, woman nor child had ever seen in this world before. Answers to the unanswerable, and through those answers, cures to all our woes and worries. Deneir teaches us that this world within words can be seen in all things; words beside words, patterns upon a glyph or marking, and perhaps, if you are lucky, an entire sentence! That is why, Little Tail, your quill is your most trusted ally. It is your sword and your shield, it is the torch in that dark night, and it is, almost always, the cure to many of life’s pains. Never forget that, Little Tail.”
As my grandfather kissed me on the forehead, and blew out the candle, those words stirred in my mind endlessly, just like any other night he spoke of Deneir. I had dreamt of discovering the Metatext myself, standing tall bedside Deneir and Oghma in their celestial ascendance. But that was the very same dream that killed my grandfather, and so many Deneirrath before him. In our pursuit of knowledge, to preserve and protect it, we are often beckoned by that very same bittersweet dream. I find myself thinking that perhaps, even in just the slightest of chances that what killed my grandfather was what he was searching for all along. He glimpsed into that world within words, and never came back.
“Paletail! My magnifying glass, and quill! Fetch it now, boy!”
It seemed that all Deneirrath shared that same dream. Huntbone, however, was an example of a Scrivener who, for lack of a better phrase, saw flecks of gold in shit. He fixated on the sign directing us to Saelmur, along the Lake of Steam. Huntbone believed that the way in which the ‘S’ on Saelmur curved underneath the entirety of the word mirrored the golden unity of the Metatext. The trip into his backpack aided my slow process of dissociation from the entire situation. I took great pleasure in digging his tools from the pack in a manner so slow that on the off chance maybe Huntbone’s gloriously stupid idea would slip from him. But like many Deneirrath, we are hopeful thinkers. I, for a moment, was envious of Huntbone; it seemed that despite all his incessant rambling and sluggishness, he found joy in those specks of shit. There, Huntbone found the written word of a man’s ‘purpose’ on a signpost. If only it were that easy.

​

 

[Blissey]

The Written Word of a Man's Purpose
Act IV
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Nothing strengthens the spirit more than a hard punch to the face. Strangely, I learned this at a young age. Not exactly a lesson appropriate for a young, erudite boy in the academies of Arrabar, nor would one expect the animosity of those youthful brawls behind the academy. Many children there were offspring of retired Zealots. They grew up in households of trained martial artists who knew that, despite the power of the written word, callused knuckles and palms still seemed to be an adequate answer to the unanswerable. Barten and I picked fights where we shouldn’t have. I can still see the piggish face of young Drousel Merrybor staring down at me with bloodied knuckles in that dingy, back alley behind our school. We were enamored by the tales and legends of famous Zealots and Scriveners whose names were sung in bard songs. Yet by the end of our schooling years, and the beginnings of our training as Zealots, the drive to become one no longer stemmed from envisioning ourselves as famous Zealots, but to be the ones staring down at Drousel Merrybor.
“Come on, Paletail! I’d sooner be wanting to fight your Grandfather than you with the way you punch!”
Barten’s technique in the midst of a brawl didn’t lie in his jabbing, his footwork nor the power of his punches. No, his expertise lied in mockery. Vicious, anger-inducing mockery. Yet his stoking of the fire stirred something in me each spar, he dug deep into an anger I had not realized was there. The same blood-red rage an animal feels in the presence of a threat. But this felt more honed, more focused. A quick under leg sweep, followed by the grueling submission hold we were taught silenced him quicker than the moon does to singing birds. Though, something tells me Barten knew what he was doing, something tells me he knew that he could never match what I have, what I can do.
“I think you spend more time trying to turn us into an old married couple amidst our spars, Barten than actually trying to fight me.” I said after I had released him from the submission hold, his face was cherry red from the brief asphyxiation.
“Ah, you know me, Paletail. I’m an old soul, you can see it in my beautiful eyes. Just trying to share my ageless wisdom with my betrothed.”
“That’s why you like older women, right?”
“The librarian was one time, Paletail. One time.”
Huntbone tore me away from my endless daydream, the cicadas of the night fading back into my ears as we had trailed along the moonlit roads past the Lake of Steam.
“I must concede, Paletail, I am a huge admirer of your Grandfather’s works.”
“Ah? Yes, he was quite passionate about ancient civilizations. The Netherese being his favorite, of course.” But it was not where his true passion lied.
“Makes you wonder, doesn’t it Paletail? That perhaps one day, our great civilizations will be read about and documented in the future. Perhaps my old bones may be dug up in some grand archaeological site and examined, displayed in an even grander museum.”
“I am sure your bones will provide many an insight, sir.” I dryly returned, though he was none the wiser. His thick-boned head acted like a drawbridge, receiving information at a rate only he could adjust.
“Are you intending to pick up where your father left off? I imagine it would be a tremendous honor for you.”
“Of course,” I drooled on, playing the part of the subservient Zealot as was intended, “Burdens passed down through families ought not to be abandoned, sir.”
“Quite right, Paletail. I am glad we can have these conversations. It is good that you and I can bond on this long journey, despite it starting on a rather… Sour note. You remind me of my son, you know.”
It was at that point that my mind switched off entirely, snuffed like the candle on your dresser when sleep called. Huntbone was prone to long, stringent tangents of useless idioms, spiels of ‘wise’ anecdotes meant to inspire revelatory insight in me. But I soon gathered that they were for him. I surmised fairly quickly that this was the furthest Huntbone had been from home, from Arrabar. I could see his hands shake every morning when he awoke, trying to steer his mind clear of the thick weeds of anxiety that seeped through his drawbridge mind. Did I pity him?
That question roamed in my mind that fateful night. Huntbone was not the most acrobatic man I had met in my travels, his feet weren’t so eager to catch his large form when he’d fallen. A sharp turn on a steep cliffside was not apt terrain to wander with your nose dug into an upside down map as Huntbone soon found out. The loose dirt gave way under his footing, and there I had found myself with one hand latched to his as he dangled over the cliffside - fear and tear filled eyes pleading wordlessly with me. I had the strength to heave him up, but something had kept me. I couldn’t explain what. One would think in a moment where another’s life lies in your hands that benevolence, mercy and selflessness rises up and towers over all else within you. But, alas, we are fickle creatures, born with a desire to live, a desire that overrides all else. Perhaps a man’s purpose was to live selfishly, to understand that we are as fallible as the victors of history.
I had made my choice then and there with his clammy hand in mine. Huntbone’s eyes had widened. He knew what choice I had made.
“Don’t let me die like this.” He whispered.
His hand slipped from mine. My mind roared to look away as his thick frame cracked and rolled against the jagged rocks below. But I stared, I looked my mistake dead in the eye. Bits of parchment spilled from his pack as he fell, gently descending down the jagged incline. There I searched for the written word of a man’s purpose in the blood-stained parchment that pooled around Huntbone’s mangled body. But I did not find it.

​

 

[Blissey]

The Written Word of a Man's Purpose
Act V
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My grandfather used to say our lives begin not when we are born, but through the culmination of a singular, life-changing experience. An event so grand in it’s scale that it starts the heavy fall of scaling dominos that grow in size, and crash louder with each clash. Did mine begin with murder? My shallow reflection that rippled in the rivers just on the borders of Tethyr, beyond Saradush provided no answer, not even when blood drifted into it’s currents upon washing Huntbone’s writing equipment.
“I am a murderer.” I had said aloud in the clearing near the river. My only audience was the indifference of nature. The world carried on despite my admittance of sin; the trees still swayed, the birds had continued their songs, and the sun above shone no brighter nor dimmed. It was then that I felt the weight of my sin, a sin that only I knew existed. A sin that only I knew I had committed. There was power in those words as they stewed in my mind, then guilt. What could I gain? What could I lose? The careful balancing of any Deneirrath’s cold, calculating academic perspective brushed past any emotional sentimentality like clockwork.
I had nothing to lose, and everything to gain.
I had tread along the riverbank, following carriage marred roads to a dimly lit tavern nestled beside a bridge that crossed into the borders of Tethyr. I was fed up with only having the stars as company, fighting back cold mountain winds and the looming threat of bullywugs or goblins lurking in the depths of my peripheral. The tavern was littered with exotically dressed Calishite merchants, tailed by brutish looking Damarran mercenaries, and the odd lonesome traveller or two - a category I’d fit within inconspicuously. The tavern stunk of hookah smoke, spice and questionable intentions. I’d seated myself and observed as one lonesome traveler would, and most often when I had found myself alone in a land I was not acquainted with, the observation of what I considered the ‘other’ provided a most valuable gateway into the idiosyncrasies of their lives - idiosyncrasies I could emulate. Yet suddenly all had dimmed within my mind. A dark cloud covered all that I had wished to understand and absorb, to note and document. A cloud that wished to explode from within and out.
“Here lad. On the house.”
I turned, seeing that the fiery orange haired barmaid had slipped me a tankard of the tavern’s local piss.
“Do you not want my money?” I returned, words bloated by the dark cloud.
“I do, but I’m thinkin’ that perhaps a tankard or two on the house’ll loosen that coin pouch of yours. Not to mention you look like you’re close to swallowin’ in on yourself.”
I peered at her incredulously, to which she offered a subtle, yet shockingly sincere smile.
“Go on then. I’ve a five-minute break. Let’s hear your woes then.”
“Are you a barmaid or a shrink?”
“I’m one or the other when the need arises. Some fellas come in here drinkin’ their lives away, hoping they’ll find their grand epiphanies at the bottom of their tankards. They keep chasin’ that dream till they drop dead, and Gods forbid anythin’ gets in the way of that.”
“Thankfully I’m not an alcoholic.”
“It’s not just with piss, dear.”
Did she know? How could she? There was no telling. Women seemed to have a sixth sense when it came to emotion, they were more in touch with themselves and those around them than any blathering man would ever be. It is why I loved Karan, so woefully oblivious to the turmoils of both his and my life. It made things easy, less confrontation with the things that ail us.
“Very well,” I’d begun my allusion, “I recently parted ways with a fellow traveling companion over a disagreement… A major one. You see, he is, for a lack of a better word, obsessed with finding beauty in words. A poet of sorts. I could not see the beauty in the words he’d crafted and observed, perhaps I was jealous, envious even of his ability to admire simplicity. So, I tore his work apart in a fit of rage. I looked down at the pieces of torn parchment, rearranging the words, but nothing fit. I’d torn it’s meaning away, looking for meaning in the tatters.”
“But there wasn’ any, was there?”
“No,” My voice returned, shallow - like Huntbone’s grave, “There was not.”
“Why were you lookin’ for it in the first place? Was it not fine jus’ as it was?”
“My grandfather was a poet much like my former traveling companion. He let his work consume him. He was obsessed in finding meaning in everything he does, or perhaps, a singular piece of art that birthed meaning into everything else. Perhaps I am looking to finish his work, to better understand why it consumed him the way it did.”
“You sound obsessed with finding that.”
“Obsession is the birthing of genius. All great writers, poets, artists - they were obsessed with their work.”
“An’ how many of ‘em are still alive today?”
She was right. There was no beauty in what I’d done. There was no beauty in what I was striving towards. I would die, one way or another, trying to find the root of it all, the written word of a man’s purpose. But like all great artists, I would die having created a work so great, so tremendously vast and incomprehensibly beautiful that all my sins will wash away like blood in a river. That day, when I drained the last of the piss-ale, staring at the backwash and foam that curdled at the bottom of my tankard, I saw it. The pastel foam that writhed against the crusty, rusted metal of that cast-iron tankard… A fraction of my purpose. Huntbone’s death was meant to be. It was the dawn of my awakening to what would come in the future, to where I would end up, to who I would become, to the lengths that I would go to find out what killed my Grandfather. I had found the first of many pieces of the written word of a man’s purpose.

​

 

[Blissey]

The Written Word of a Man's Purpose
Chapter I
Act I
​

In life we are so certain where we begin, hurtled from womb into a world bent and misshapen. Some stumble, many fall and from there we tread forth along an line that is incongruous. Yet in dreams we are sent sprawling once more, born into a temporary life that is borderless and endless, a canvas of a void that goes blank at the rooster's call when the sun teeters over the horizon. There is no beginning in a dream. Only an end. The Mire, however, is not one of these blank canvases. It is a singular thing, never-changing, immutable and forever set. The rooster cannot stir me or draw me away from it, the kiss of the sun does not lure me back to waking life. I cannot quite recall when the Mire came to me, or I to it. It is an uncertainty, an illogical machination of my own mind that seeks to dismantle me. I dream of the Mire, and am roused by the smell first. It is a stench, a wicked invasion upon my senses. Yet it is nothing like I have encountered in my waking life for it is the stench of desperation. It hangs upon every black bog-like surface and crooked, leaf-less tree that stretches across the expanse of the Mire. My body is weighted by unseen stones tethered to the core of my body, and with each pained step into the viscous tar that bubbles at my heels I am tested physically. Beyond the thick smog that blankets the Mire therein lies a light, like the shine of a lighthouse, distant but welcoming. It warns of a jagged shore, but with the promise of softer, caring land to find a most needed respite. I press on. The lighthouse draws nearer, and my heart throbs the cage it sits within. Across the Mire in all directions, vagrant shadows trudge through the tar like I do. They move with a similar purpose, to reach the lighthouse. I see these shadows, these men, dressed in white, blue and grey - smattered by the black tar and sweat. Some have fallen, sinking helplessly into the tar until it consumes them utterly. A hand latches upon my ankle, and the stench comes fast and hard. It attacks me, fills my lungs causes me to gasp aloud. I yank my ankle hard and watch as the hand drifts deeper into the tar, a muted gurgling joins the song of the bubbling black. I see it now, the lighthouse. It breaches the fog like the shine of Selûne with each rotation of the spinning light. Each time it graces me, a moment passes over me like a wave of ecstasy. At it's base, where the sharp stone meets the tar, the shadowed men coalesce. They swarm it like parched men to water. Their blackened, tar-soaked hands drag against the grey stone, nails digging in and scraping until there is only skin, until then there is only bone, until there is what is further down the length of their arms. I press myself against the mass of cold bodies, and a body presses against me. We all breathe at the same time, a symphony of orchestrated breaths that rasp and wheeze, that groan and cry. I feel beneath my feet the bodies that could not climb, the men lost to the tar. For a moment, I feel myself lost to the mass. I feel the urge to push as hard as I can against it, to grasp feebly against the jagged stone and whittle my arms away only to then be smothered by the crowd. But I rebuke the Mire. I rebuke this machination, this 'test'. I turn my head then, and it is like trying to bend stone. I turn and yank away the hood to the man at my right, and I see me. A pallid reflection, rippling like a watery mirror. I am this mass. I am this stench. I am all these men in every variation, in every vain attempt to reach respite.
"Stir, you fools!" I yell into the Mire, "Steel your minds! Rise against it, rise against your desperation!" Yet it falls on deaf ears, it is muted by the sludge, by the groans, by the sickly slapping of bone and meat against stone and rock. I shout again, I scream so hard my veins bulge and throat grows hoarse. I scream hard until I taste blood, and when my voice fails me, my hands become my most trusted advisor. I latch onto the body in front of me, pushing him down into the tar. I bring my foot up on top of his shoulder, and push him deeper. And onto the next, and the next, until I am but one man crawling across the heads and the shoulders of a horde crushed against the lighthouse's foundation. I grasp a sharp ledge, and feel my skin tear. I heave upwards, my body aches entirely. Muscles spasm, tendons burst and twang like split violin strings. I look out then, at the foot of the lighthouse, across the Mire to the faces that now watch me. They are all but silent now, they are no longer breathing. They no longer drown or ache for the embrace of the lighthouse. One by one, they turn on each other like rats in a furnace. They tear and rip, they bite, snarl and eviscerate. Yet beyond this, across the Mire one figure stands still. His core, weightless and fluid, floats a mere inch above the tar. Behind me, a door churns, creaking open as a light trickles out slowly through the cracks until it's shine bursts forth. I am yanked away from the lone man's gaze, and for a split second, I see him turn to walk away - floating across the tar. The light's wreathes lather me in ecstasy, and like the wretch I am, I wander closer, close enough for the doors to shut behind me. Darkness swallows me, the light recedes like a tide until it is but a pinprick at the end of a long, familiar hallway. It is the light of a candle, dim and snuffed by the silhouette of an owl-like man hunched over parchment.
"Old man," My voice croaks, "Hear me, old man, damn you. Hear me!" He does not turn. The itch of his quill against the parchment's surface bangs against my ears like the swan song of a dying sound. My body, no longer decayed by the tar, sends me into a sprint. I bolt across the length of the hallway. The wooden beams and struts that hold this hallway twist and lurch, it shifts in motions beyond what physicality I could fathom. As it shifts, I am slammed into the walls, into the floors, into the ceiling, repeatedly. It is with one final leap I hurl myself through the open air with which the bending and shifting hallway does not affect. I slide across the splintered wood and crash my head against the foot of the old man's table. I grasp it's well sheened surface above and yank myself to my feet. He still writes, this old man, but now that I am closer and see him more vividly. He is my grandfather. Old and withered, the same as he was hours from his passing. All that was missing was his face. A blank rough surface with loose strands of greying hair falling across it. These were his final moments, and I could see now what vigor he drew from the last stores of his own energy he'd poured into the movement of his wrist and his quill. This is the promise the dream holds for me, I think. This is the answer, this is what I seek to know above all else. He had burned that book the night he died. Something within it held a secret that unmade him.
I looked upon the book and I see nothing. The quill stops. The skin bound across where his mouth once was moves.
"DENEIR LIES."
I awaken, drenched in sweat. The caravan has stopped, and all aboard rouse their attention to the curtain that shades the outside. I peel it open, and there lies Murann, and peeking just above the walls, a lighthouse. It's light pales under the moonlight of Selûne.
The metatext is here, hidden beneath it all. The Mire cannot stop me. Grandfather cannot dissuade me.
Here I will find it. The last pieces of the puzzle. The written word of a man's purpose.

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