Evesday, 13 Harvest's End
I fear that I will fail to convince my companions that their mission is doomed, but I can’t bring myself to abandon them in their hour of need. Though Mikras, the Paladin, knows a little of the healing touch, it is through my own alchemy that they have continued to survive the rotten marshes.

Sana and Drew had us stop beside a Wyrdsbush as we camped this evening; I’m not sure they recognised the bush for what it was but it captured my attention immediately. As the rest slept, I gathered, as much of the bush’s berries as I possibly could, as much as the task might require. I won’t let these damned fools walk themselves to their deaths.

---

Easeday, 14 Harvest's End
It should’ve been a day of rest, and it would have, had any of them remembered their scripture, but still, we continued onwards. A husband and wife pair, merchants from the look of their caravan and ox, passed us on the road today - they spared no end of strange looks for Mikras, a paladin taking to the road on such a holy day. They needn’t have bothered. Mikras’s faith has never been particularly staunch or absolute, it is stubborn Drew, the blacksmith, that wastes no opportunity to share some parable or tale from the great goat’s book.

---

Mornsday, 15 Harvest's End
This journal may one-day serve as an accounting for my sins, my betrayals. I think a small part of me perhaps wants to be stopped - I seem to have become increasingly less careful about how, and when, I dose their provisions and waterskins with the wyrds-berries. Three companions, three times a day; I suppose the longer this state of affairs continues, the greater my chances of being noticed. Sana’s keen hunter’s eye has glanced a few times in my direction, an observation that has bolstered my paranoia, but to the best of my knowledge, I am not caught yet.

---

Turnsday, 16 Harvest's End
They talk of the Gloom, of the beast of shadows, as though it is an animal they can track and kill. I understand the thing, unlike most I’ve seen the thing first-hand; it is an unstoppable abomination, and they all walk to their deaths with the confidence of men and women taking a gentle stroll.

I don’t care for what it did to our village, nor for what it might do to the villagers it took in the night. My companions don’t agree with me, but those people are already lost. I only care about what the Gloom could do to them, the only ones of us left. It will leave soon, leave these lands forever, and I won’t let it take the last good few I know.

---

Wyrdsday, 17 Harvest's End
They lie around me, sick, heaving, and cursing their ill fortune. Soon it will be too late. Though I mark the page in haphazard and rough casts of the quill, I am pretending. I could write with a poet’s penmanship, or stand and brew the antidote in a matter of hours - I have no complaint rendering me cripple.

To produce a salve, something well within my capabilities, would still leave them plenty enough time to continue their journey into that den of horrors - but for what? To prove themselves heroic? I’ve already seen that the sole member of the group with any cowardice about their person is myself - I can feel the doubt and second-guessing squirming at the back of my mind; if in fact there’s any bravery to my soul, buried deep inside, then please let it be what I grip tightly as I stay this course.

---

Vote here on this story: https://www.strawpoll.me/15442764

or tweet me @NorthDT