Mordred's Diary

## Note on the first page

> *To my parents.*
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> *Most people write diaries for themselves. I’m writing this for you.*
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> *I don’t know where you are, who you are. If you even exist. But maybe one day I’ll find you, and I can tell you the story of my life.*
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> *The Gladefolk say we all become stories in the end. Lives become histories. Histories become myths. Myths become nothing but a memory.*
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> *Hopefully, in these pages, the **truth** of my life will live on.*
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> *Your son,*
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> *Mordred*
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## Session 01

### **03/06/352 - On the Road to Lowmarsh**

I dreamed again last night.

It was dark. So dark. I heard flesh tearing like fabric. The ring of steel against steel. I smelled blood. Then, I saw a deer peering at me through the trees, its antlers cradling the moon.

I don’t know what it means. I never do, really.

The dreams are getting so bad I’m scared to sleep, to close my eyes. They haven’t been this bad in years. I need to get to Rymes.

We’re close to the Broceliande here. I can feel it. And I know she’s in there somewhere, watching, waiting. Waiting for me to fail so I can be hers again. I won’t. I won’t go back. I can’t.

In these woods, you can feel eternity around you, magic so old it’s stifling, circling around you, tightening around your chest until you can’t breathe or think.

It feels like home.

There’s a woman in the caravan. Drizella. Her name makes me think of morning dew on grass or the light rain you see before a storm. She always sits away from the group, hiding in the shadows. She never shows her face. I don’t know why she’s hiding: there’s people of all types here. But maybe I do. I’ve needed to hide in some places, too – the “touch of dark magic,” they say. Maybe she’s got darkness in her too.

I think there’s a sadness to her. Her voice is so quiet and unused. I can’t tell if she’s afraid of speaking or if there’s some deeper pain stopping the sound. I want to help. Maybe I’ll try talking to her again in the morning.

We’ll be in Lowmarsh tomorrow. I can’t explain it – maybe it’s the nightmares – but I can feel death ahead. I’ll be preparing any healing magic that I can.

I hope that I’m wrong.

Until tomorrow,

Mordred.

## Session 03

### **04/06/352 - The Split Bell Inn, Lowmarsh**

“*He’s not enjoying it right now, but he will come to understand his magic if he faces his fear*.”

I could almost hear her saying it.

No matter how far I run, I can’t escape her. I thought I’d disappeared, but she always has a way of finding me.

Me. The disappointment.

It’s my fault. I should never have stepped back into those woods.

We did the best we could, but we couldn’t save any of them. They were all dead, their bodies desecrated. So much death. Maybe if we had been faster? If I’d been stronger. She always said I was too weak.

I did what I should have done all those years ago. I took a golden dragon from one of the corpses. It was covered in blood. I’m beginning to wonder if that symbol can be anything other than an omen of death. The Matron will perform a ceremony, she says. Hopefully, this time, their souls will find peace.

And, I've, well ... I’ve met some new people.

Sibylla disappeared before we returned to Lowmarsh. She knows a lot of the old magic. I wonder how much?

Like me, Bigby wants a place to live. I hope Lowmarsh can be that place for him. But he’s not really like me. He’s got a beast of a different kind inside him.

Nik is scared of magic, though he seems to use it well. He thinks he sees everything, but I think he’s scared to look inside himself.

Merida says she’s finding herself, but she seems so sure of who she is. I don’t know who she is, but *what* she is – is kind.

And, of course, there’s Drizella. She reminds me of, well, her. Bending nightmares to her will. She even uses the same words. But she’s not her. She can’t be. She was beautiful but filled with darkness and hatred. Drizella thinks she’s a monster, but as strange as she appears, I know there’s good inside. I have to believe it.

Lowmarsh is a strange place. I don’t understand it at all. Something’s happening in the woods. Something’s coming. The Green Man’s name is entangled with the Sunderance. Is that what’s coming? Coming for all of us?

In Lowmarsh, all they care about is the treasurer, some missing beef, and pretending that the worst thing is a group of outsiders. But there’s darkness beyond these walls, dark magics, death, and deep within the woods, something even worse.

Your son,

Mordred

## Session 05

### **05/06/352 - The Split Bell Inn, Lowmarsh**

I should’ve left.

Death is in my shadow again. Following me.

After everything we did to save the town from Ghoul Fever, they did this?

I know there’s no cure to Redeye. I’ve seen it. But these were people. A fate worse than death, some say, but it’s their fate to choose. Not mine. No matter how lost the mind, no one should have their fate placed in someone else’s hands. *No one.*

The ghouls. The Redeye infected. Now Thori Black, too. Why can’t everyone live for once?

*~~I’m not a killer. I won’t be a killer. They won’t make me one, either.~~*

Sibylla wanted to cure them. She’s not a killer, I think. But she speaks in the tongue of the Order, and I saw a black feather in her pocket.

A feather.

A crow feather?

My nightmares are bleeding into daylight: four eyes and a crow’s cry. Bad tidings fly on black wings. I need to get to Rymes.

Then there’s the Hand. Hag-killers. Forest burners. Monsters blinded by hate and fear.

I’ve run from them long enough. The Burning God’s eyes had to find me eventually. The Gladesfolk say his gaze pierces through the thickest crowd.

I’ve rarely seen them so far north – what if they’re coming for her? If they’re coming for her, are they coming for me too? My heart’s still branded with her name, my scars with her magic. If they knew, they’d kill me in an instant. Or worse.

I didn’t know what would happen. I couldn’t hear anything but my heart in my chest. I’m safe for now, but I can’t help but feel an itching under my skin, waiting to break free. The words spreading across my skin like a confession: *Mordred Le Fey.*

I can’t let them know who I am. I need to get away from here.

Someone's son,

Mordred

## Session 07

### ***05/06/352 - The Winter Express***

A pet finch! I’ve never had a pet before. She never allowed it. It’s not the first time I’ve seen one of these birds – it almost feels like mockery.

When I was a boy – well, more of a boy than I am now – maybe six or seven years old, I heard a strange song in the woods. I was alone, as I usually was, and decided to follow the song. It was a bird, unlike anything I’d heard before, with a clear and bright voice, like how I’d always imagined the sun to sound when it broke over the horizon. I’d – well, I’d never seen the sun before.

In the brambles, I saw a small bird with brightly-coloured feathers, a beautiful, painted thing against the greys and purples of the darkwoods. It writhed and chirped on the ground, its wing clearly broken.

I wrapped it in my cloak and carried it all the way home. She had been teaching me healing magic for some time, and I thought I would test my new skills on the poor creature. It took me days, but I nursed the little thing back to health. It filled the house with cheerful songs, and I had never felt our home so filled with light. It was the closest thing I’d had to a friend in those early years.

But then she came home. And I … I’d prefer not to think what happened to the little bird. I never saw the finch again.

I guess that's why the Hag ran. She didn't want to disappear, too. My "mother" was always quick to anger. And when she did, I don't think there was a place in the depths of the Essirian deep enough to escape her rage. She was a monster. The Begot Queen, the Hag said. I've never heard that name before. She wasn't a queen, just a monster. I've always known I'm nothing but the child of a monster. I can't seem to shake her grip on my soul. The party are already getting suspicious, between the Aklo, the Hag, and the mention of my mother. How long will it be until they turn me away?

Yours,

Mordred