Lore:Orias's Notes I
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Time has come to pile up hepacore for the coming winter, so I went to pick up another bunch of Mi-Go spores at the old ruins. It took me a while to climb to the top -- the mountain seems taller and steeper with every season...
Had it not been for the vagabonds' and their camp, I would have made the journey in daytime, but it is safer that way. The traveling merchants whom I occasionally see near the river, those I do not fear -- though they are getting to be something of a nuisance, filling the already cramped passage with their spare crates and containers -- but the vagabonds are dangerous, hostile and, no doubt, deadly. I do hope they stay in their valley and never venture near my hut -- it would not do for them to find it...
The stone bridge is even more weathered after the winter. The rocks are cracking and one almost fell under my foot as I was crossing the chasm. I almost dropped the key as I stepped back. It will be safe to carry it in a pouch from now on. Better still, I will have to pick up an appropriate stone and chisel out a copy. The stone lock is not too complex, and the magic that permeats the key is weak enough that infusing the copy with it should not exhaust me.
On the way, I passed one of the giants roaming about the valley. If there is anything good about Adramelech's cannon fodder, it's how often he failed to succeed in breeding it. The giants were supposed to hate everything but the Tribe... and they ended up hating only themselves. I'm certain that those cracked rocks I see every time I open the stone gate are the remains of one of these sad creatures... which ran into its brother, and lost the clash. I wonder how many of them remain in the mountains? Only last month, deep in the night, I heard the rumbling sounds of stones smashing against each other. It lasted until dawn, until the last echoes died down... and until one of those that fought died as well, no doubt. Because it must have been two giants, running into each other, and fighting -- doing the only thing that their malformed minds tell them to do.
Nothing in nature hits with that kind of fury. It takes a pitiful half-living piece of rock twisted into hunting for its own species and destroying it.
Start with hatred as your only goal of design, and you will never succeed. Another lesson that Adramelech could never learn... even though it's an easy guess that he is still trying to breed the giants somewhere beyond the mountains, somewhere on the Tribe's side... Of course, he could have concentrated on even more dangerous species... or cross-bred the giants with something else. Was there ever a time when I didn't not find his morbid obsessions with the cross-breeding of species to be nauseating? If so, I cannot recall it. It only took so long to finally see the truth...