Lore:Orias's Notes III
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A difficult journey. Only when I reached the wall, did I find some solace... The Mi-Go fungi patch is a pleasure to look at. It's especially beautiful during summer nights, when their seeds float in the air, like hundreds of tiny glowing green lights... The crack in the ground is overgrown with the fungi. I don't like the idea of cutting them down to extract the spores to brew the hepacore. Yes, I choose only the ones whose life cycle is at an end, and the extraction releases the seeds, so the action serves to preserve the species -- yet sometimes I still feel like an invader. But it is the only way -- and the hepacore brew is the sole herbal solution with so many benefits. So many times it has helped me... so many times it has restored my health, or perhaps even saved my life. The broken leg last winter... Without the hepacore tea and compresses, there would have been but a pile of bones left of me by now, probably in the forest or, at best, in the corner of my hut.
Anyway... at least the Mi-Go are not predatory. Well, not those above ground... Thankfully, the hostile variety is nowhere in sight. It must have remained in the dungeons. No doubt they would have tried to infect and attack my Mi-Go, as they did during the breeding phase... Here, every fungus glows with the healthy green cloud of seeds and spores. It is a curious thought that while nature will typically use bright colors to warn you, the opposite is true with the Mi-Go... The glowless, lifeless patches and fungi are the ones to stay away from, while I can tell my gentle ones from many yards away, thanks to their pleasant luminescence...
The dungeons... They must be home to more than just the hostile fungi by now. Who knows what is left in the tunnels? I suspect that there is more to my gentle Mi-Go's determined crawl up, from the depths of the earth, from the tunnels and the old laboratory somewhere under my feet, through the cracks in the ground, than merely searching for nutrients and warmth.
I suspect that once Adramelech took over the laboratory, my Mi-Go ran from his perverted predatory variety, the only way they could -- through the tunnels... and up, towards the surface.
Of course, that is only conjecture on my part. I will never know. I can only count my blessings that they grow here, in the daylight -- I would never dare return to the tunnels. If even Adramelech and the Tribe had left them -- and leave them they did, for I have not heard of their presence outside their territory beyond the mountain range for years now -- then whatever remains down there must be too horrific to contemplate.
It is not like Adramelech to surrender anything useful. His failed living weapons must have proven too difficult for the Tribe to overcome, or too troublesome to control. The hideous creatures I occasionally spot and hear in the cemetery are testament to that. How these abominations managed to leave the tunnels, I will never know -- I suspect the crypts are still connected to the Tenebrae corridors down there, and it is an easy task for the sinewy arms of the monsters I saw to break a grating and venture into the upper world.
But at least, other than my Mi-Go, they seem to be the only ones that have managed to leave the tunnels. No doubt due to their wings... And, thankfully, they stay within the cemetery grounds, for whatever reason... I suspect they treat it as an easily accessible food source. There are hundreds of preserved bodies buried in these boggy grounds. Enough to sustain the monstrosities for years to come...
Until Adramelech returns for them; He did tell me he would never leave his experiments alone for good, no matter how failed they might be... "Anything I have created -- I will return for one day." The words still echo in my mind.
I'm sure nobody ever cleared the tunnels of Adramelech's unsuccessful experiments. He must have filled the dungeons with even more hideous failures after I and the Tribe parted ways...
I wish I had stopped Adramelech back then when he first suggested breeding my plants into predatory species. How naive I was back then. "Protection from predators...", ha! No, it was all about making predators that were completely under his control. I wish I had seen it back then.
Of course, I didn't know then. I didn't remember anything... Not even the shattered pieces of the puzzle that I have managed to recover since.
I wonder when he remembered... and how much. Is the incomplete puzzle in my head smaller than his memories? Or does he remember less than I do?
I do remember everything about her. But my memories of the Order are few and fragmented. Could his be better, clearer? Are his memories concentrated on the Order above all, and less on her and myself? I am certain he knows more of the Order than my shattered memory tells me. He must have gained access to more of the Order's records than I have ever seen.
The first memory that returned to me was her face... and then I had no idea who she was. It was a month until her name returned, too -- and then I remembered.
It was an avalanche afterwards. Sights, sounds, thoughts -- all returning, recovered one by one. Until the end -- until the final memory. The flame, the scream -- the pain...
When did Adramelech's first memory return, I often ask myself? And what was it? I wonder how long he kept lying to me, keeping me useful, while hiding his old hatred of me in plain sight. I know, of course, that by the time I had to run, he had remembered everything that once concerned us three. After all, he did tell me as much... and if I had any doubt as to how fiery his hatred still was, after all this time, my scar proves it all too well.
One would think something so old would not be as fiery a sliver, even when forgotten and remembered again, but... Perhaps it was the time that actually was the reason.
Perhaps once his memories recovered the hatred, he was so drunk on it that he could not feel anything but that. Though the obsession must have come earlier. I still remember his excitement about the Chronicles, when he first spoke of the Chosen -- it was far too candid. He would not be able to fake it just to fool me... Would he?
Then again... there's no point in dwelling on this now.