Diary of a dead man (third entry)

Unfamiliar Ceiling
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It was a subtle feeling, but one no less maddening…

I stared at the alien limb upon my body just as I had too many times before this night. It was obvious that the arm didn’t belong to me; anyone remotely understanding the concept of consistency could have could have seen it. The arm was more muscular and had just enough length to raise an eyebrow about its size in comparison to the other. Both traits could easily be masked under the aid of a robe or even using basic concepts pf subtlety, but something about it was just…off. For one the arm’s coloration difference was noticeable from across the room. The bones themselves that made up the digits and elbow of the limb were blackened, much like a rod of ash held against the encasing flames of a furnace and the skin held a dark and eerie grey tinge much like a storm cloud that refuses to give rain…

I had run into the Warlock Triumvirus quite by accident upon my forced reentry into Silvermoon. I must admit, it was my own foolishness that I did not properly cover my back during the salvage operation but that being said I’m glad of how the events of the evening were carried out. The warlock caught me literally as I attempted to pull a shelf from its place against the wall with little success. Try as I might, the foreign limb screamed in pain at my person with the slightest motion. If I’d have been sanctioned during my little field trip into the city, it’s likely I would not have been able to see beyond the searing pain long enough to remotely move into a counter action. The pain was alien to me, for it was not like the feeling of a prosthetic where the body might reject a simple implant. The arm itself was rejecting ‘me’…

Which, considering what I did to the previous owner… is understandable.

I will not record the how of the events that transpired, because to do so would mean to go back on a promise. After all this, besides Shae and the friends I have in this manor, my word is one of the few things I still have. The Afflictionist bonded the arm to my Psyche and, for lack of a better term, contained it’s will to some remote corner of the flesh and bone. The pain no longer exists in any form. It does not burn as move it, and its presence no longer bores itself into my mind like rusted nail would a melon… But this sense of…alien still resides within’ its narrow walls of Skin and bone…

The arm is not mine… And it almost feels as if it ‘forces’ me to know that…

In short, the shelf was moved and my arsenal was salvaged with no other contact besides the aid of Triumvirus. Until I can make sense of this mess, the Sun is in her possession and it is her’s to do with what she desires… so long as said desires do not include placing it on auction.

And what a mess this is to make sense of…

I began to look around the room I had been given by the grace of the Faol’s to take my weary mind off the hell it had tumbled against all night. Before I had touched it, the room remained well furnished, but relatively simple. The doorway sat to the left of a good sized oak desk that sat snugly against the wall. The floors were hard wood and the bed could have held aloft two Coffins atop it if it wasn’t already littered with my things. A small walk in closet sat in the far corner of the room and all and all, though obviously a guest room, could very easily suited any manner of person with noble stature.

After I had finished with it: A netherweave bag filled to the brim with any and all documentation I could carry that recorded names, locations and histories of comrades sat atop the oak of the old desk next to a stack of papers I kept as magistrate. Beside it sat an old and overused whetstone placed beside the ornate steel of six sacrificial Kris blades, each measuring about a foot an a half in length. Beneath them, lay what was left of the blanket I had ripped from the bed in order to make my then blood drenched and battered figure a bit more subtle. Against the headboard of the bed that I had ripped a corner off and nearly used to steak Fingal upon my reawakening, leaned a pair of recently oiled rifles. The first being a long musket with a scope to match that I had obtained off the corpse of an irate dwarf with a score to settle and the second being a twin barreled slug thrower from my days in the Shadow. Ammunition, powder and musket papers lied intermixed amongst the oils, cleaning rods and replacement mechanisms atop my blanket-less bed and around them sat no less than a dozen bags of alchemical components and vials ranging from fire oil to crypt fiend venom. Still in the second bag lay four demonic rune stones from my time on Hell’s Peninsula and a spring loaded sheath designed to some form of blade under the wrist. The notion that I would remotely come close to using the entirety of the things in the room was ridiculous, and even if that wasn’t so far off the thought of going up against the Zealots of the Forgotten Shadow with anything short of a god’s will was suicide. At best, the arsenal did little more than give me the ability to lie to myself and say I was prepared…

I gazed at the weaponry around my person with expressionless eyes and made my way to the matching oak chair that sat in front of the room’s now cluttered desk. Slowly, I unbuckled the Sledge mace and Scepter that sat upon my belt and set them amongst the many papers before me. Letting my weary figure slump into the wooden seat abruptly as the weight left my sides. I could feel the path of my eyes as they drifted first the unfamiliar ceiling above my person and then to the mystic bound smoke that perpetually rose from the sledge mace before me. I could only recall the day I held my wife as her life’s blood ran down her breast as one where I experienced true terror but if the feeling that gripped me now wasn’t to par, it was far too close to my liking…

Although, as much as I refuse to admit it… Some sick part of me was enjoying this…