Hello again. We fell down a hole today.

It was a pretty big hole, more of an abyss I guess? Abyss just seems like a smug word though. So I think I will just call it a hole.

But wait, I suppose I should start at the beginning yeah? It will make more sense that way. Hopefully.

When we woke up the Everflame forest was noticeably dimmer and smaller than it had been yesterday. The center of it seemed more, I don't know, lively? Than before, but it was definitely shrinking.

We totally killed it didn't we?

Its a heavy thing, to wake up and be faced with your wrongs.

We all moped for a bit, reflecting on the mistakes of yesterday in the light of today. Until Onica whipped us back into shape with some oddly wise advice about the frailty of life, and how we should live our own lives more vibrantly for those who have fallen. Feels like its more suited for a fallen comrade than a forest, but I'll take all the encouragement I can get today.

We shuffled off into the morning mountain mist, and then we fell in a hole. Some other stuff happened in between, but I figured I might as well get into the meat of the day. It was a bit after lunch. The sun was high overhead, beating down on us like a hammer. One second we are standing on a flat stretch of stone. The next we were falling into a dark pit from whence none may return.

Not my words those, they were scrawled in what looked like very fresh blood of the stone walls of the room full of dead things we had fallen into. A heap of bones and rotted meat is not a very soft landing. Rather squishy and stabby in fact. So I guess it is lucky I had wrapped us all into the Ivers Dream during the overly long fall. We made a sickening *splorch* on impact. Kind of like if you stepped on a pile of fresh shit, and then slipped on that pile of shit and fell into a much larger pile of fresh shit. That kind of sound. I bet the shit would smell better though.

The full quote from the disturbingly fresh looking blood on the walls went like this: Abandon hope, all ye who enter. For this is the labyrinthine dungeon of Sarkesh, and it is a hell from whence none may return. It was a message that took itself very seriously. Which didn't bode well for fun and games ahead.

And sure enough the whole place was all dark narrow corridors of dark gloomy stone. Oy, this day had been a doozy. Well, except at the end there.

Narrow paths are cut out of a rough and jagged stone that likes to grab at your clothes, and the passages were full of sharp corners and hidden passages. Water seeps down the walls and falls from the ceilng far above making echoey drips and splashes to accompany the splashes from our footsteps. The few places where there is no water are covered in bloody scrawls.

Weeping confessions of doomed men. Twisted stories of madmen. Threats and oaths from angry men. All last words, and all written in the blood of those who wrote them. Presumably. Its also possible that this is all some kind of gross attempt at drama by that Sarkesh fellow, or the snakemen.

Because of course there are snakemen. Snake people really. There are women too after all. They come in all colors and have ornate bone piercings through their arms, noses, and ears. They all have thick muscular snake tails instead of legs. They also lisp pretty badly. Their slithery appendages make much less noise then our splashing clomping footsteps. So they like to sneak up on us from behind, and jump us from around the bends.

Hasn't worked out well for them, let me say. Lena in an enviroment with water in literally every direction? Very much over kill. Sneaky snakes get shunked by shiny spears of slicing ice. Lots of mangling occured. Loads of murder. A tad of mincing. Some mild maligning. Thats when the day started looking up. Because alliteration always lifts the spirits.

Add to Lenas extreme slaughter skills tinglewood shelters whenever we want a rest or are feeling peckish, and we haven't got a worry here. The dankest murder tunnels in the world can become cozy little nooks with judicious applications of tinglewood and fire.

The most troublesome thing is the maze. There are thousands of corridors. All leading to narrow rooms where there are dozens of branching paths. It would take a miracle to map and navigate this place. Years, decades even, of maddening memorization to merely plot a course through its depths.

I wandered though it before the sun set.

Yeah, I just went wherever I felt like it and bam. We reached the exit. Its a big round room with lots of dead snakemen inside it. They were alive when we got there though. There is a big glowing pearl floating in the middle of the room and a large staircase leading up and out.

Lena and Julius fought over whose stash the pearl would enter. I ended up having to take it since they couldn't agree, and their fight was threatening to bring the whole cavern down on top of us. The pearl crumbled into dust when we took it outside the dungeon anyway. Both Lena and Julius cried for the loss of their newest bauble.

Once outside the bright blue sky lifted our glum spirits, and the joyous song of happy little birds put smiles on our faces.

We all love bird for dinner.

So, now we are eating dinner, and much closer to the towers than we expected. That labyrinth must have led us directly through a few mountains.

Nice shortcut that.

All in all, today started off sad, turned bad, and somehow in all the mayhem and madness became a good day at the end there.

Nice.

Goodnight.