Day 1 I’ve been here awhile, but it’s the first day I actually had some paper and a quill. Ashhold is a hell hole. The food here is terrible, and the guards here don’t give a sod about who lives or who dies. Seeing the people they move around on carts, fastened to them with straps, ready for the chemical injections is horrifying. They’re always so full of life the first time they go by, struggling and kicking like wild animals, and then you can’t even see a muscle twitch when they come back. I’m not going out like that. I’m gonna get out of this place, and then no one will be able to get me back in here. I know a couple of the guards get too close to the bars when they do their rounds, so I should be able to swipe the keys on their belts and make my way out. After that, it’ll just be a matter of staying quiet and slipping into the darkness without anyone seeing me. I can do that.
Day 5 Turns out my fingers aren’t as nimble as they used to be. It’s probably because of the slop that they feed you here, it’s barely qualified as edible, let alone nutritious. Still, the attempt got my security bumped up, as well as pushing my sentencing date up. I’m not sure I can get out now, but there’s still a chance.
If I head out to the Outlook, then maybe I’ll be able to run when the fighting is thick, and I can slip my way back into New Ashen and get back to my old life. I still have a son to feed, and he deserves to have a better life than the one I had. I just need to wait for my chance. Maybe I’ll be able to make a run for it before I get onto the airship. Day 10 That didn’t work either. The Outlook is barely even a fort - it’s just a bunch of wooden barricades surrounding tents. If it wasn’t located so close to Hullbeck Pike, it might even be one of the first colonies that we set up when we were still settling Arcvelt. I don’t know who decided making this ramshackle scrapheap was a good idea, and who thought it would actually stop profane, but here we are.
Trying to make a run for it on the airship couldn’t happen, they shackled my legs together so I could barely move. It’s like someone was reading my mind and predicting every attempt I could make. Still, I’m here now, so I just gotta wait for when no one’s looking. They gave me a musket slinger and put me on guard duty, so I just need to wait until I’m left alone and I can vanish.
Day 20 I haven’t been left alone for a second. It turns out guard duty is done in pairs, in case one of the two gets picked off by one of the quiet ones. Turns out, fire is also pretty good for scaring off the smaller profane that comes towards the camp, though they’re pretty damn scary in their own right. My partner Alexander had to put down the first one ‘cause I missed my shot - I never really was very good with weapons if I wasn’t sneaking up on someone. He says that it’s a real bad idea to try and run away, because all of the territory surrounding the Outlook is infested with profane - you’re far more likely to die to them than you are to die to any sort of execution squad sent to get you for deserting.
Am I really gonna be stuck here forever? Day 40 A bone walker got Alexander. Day 75 They finally trusted me with armour, and it was Alexander’s set. I had to clean the gore off it myself with copper wire. I suppose being friends with the rich, disgraced son of a noble family has its privileges. Still, it feels like every day I’m here, is another day I don’t want to be here anymore. I can’t even remember my son’s face, or how it feels to sleep in a warm bed.
Apparently the higher ups are getting worried that there’s been a lull in the profane attacks, so they’re sending out a patrol to go and investigate the wilderness. I don’t know whether to hope that they do pick me or not. At least then I could ditch this place. (The rest of the pages are unintelligible, splattered in a mixture of both profane and human blood.)
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