Diary of Skolla Shawni

Written by Skolla Shawni and published in A.Y. 5751, the Diary is a rather chilling first-hand account of his life and adventures with a young woman he calls only "Zeph"(real name: Zephanie Gahliardi) whom he grew up with and later went on a lengthy adventure. The diary then covers the later parts of his life as he struggled to deal with the events he witnessed, and how he eventually resigned himself to a life of poverty in order to understand the depth of what happened to him, and who-and what-the girl he knew as Zeph really was.

Contents

Preface

Let me begin by saying that I am not sorry about my later life. I wish, sometimes, that I had not made the mistakes I made in my wreckless youth, but I am not sorry for the turns of fortune and fate that my life has taken since then. I do not write this to better my lot or for mere profit; I have spent a lifetime coming to understand the events I am to relate to you, and I wish only to see this information circulated so that, cruel and unrewarding as my life has been, I can pass from it knowing that my understanding endures. Though I may yet draw breath for many years, consider this transcript my last will and testament.

The Early Years

I was born and raised in Zathra, and will always remember my childhood as the happiest times in my life. There were rough spots, ups and downs, to be sure; what is life but an endless series of peeks and valleys? I was loved by parents and had many friends, and idled away my time on the pursuits of youth. The pleasures of the young; of life and love and anger and jealousy and a thousand other emotions that felt so strong in those aeons past. I recall feeling alive, but I know now that I never truly lived.

Zeph was a sweet girl. I can't say where or how I met her, she was just there. A normal part of life. A neighborhood kid like any other. We'd run and play and swim and laugh; in our younger years I thought her no different from any other youth. She was of average height, perhaps tall for a girl, with long and flowing blond hair and a vibrant, living smile. Her eyes were the strangest shade of gray; and that, one, singular feature stood out to me in our youth.

We had our time together. On our abouts our formative years there was a spark. Youth, especially early teens, always call it love, they sigh and swoon and claim to have a deep connection, as if 'liking the same music' were somehow the cornerstone of a lasting relationship. We'd grown close and ours was, to me at the time, very deep, though I never felt the same from her. I am uncomfortable even now, both because of the personal nature of our relationship and of what I know of her know, in divulging too much of what went on between us, but I will admit to a level of intimacy that, to my young heart, was the highest too which two people could aspire.

I said, I know that Zeph was not faithful, there were mitigating factors, and our friendship survived. There were around twelve of us in all, very close-knitt, friendship can survive anything. It was important, it turned out. I know, now, that I would not be alive today-such as my live is-if it were not for the bond I carried with those people.

The Journey Begins

Let me diverge for a moment to tell you a bit more about Zeph. She was a very intense child, and not the way one normally characterizes overly-dramatic youth. She was strong-willed and possessed a fortitude of spirit unmatched in anyone I have as yet seen. I have now lived these past thirty-two years in Arindell, walking the streets alongside Slayer Dragons, and for what I have seen, none of them has the sheer will I saw in Zeph.

I remember, once, when we were perhaps twelve. We visited a museum on the outskirts of Zathra, which sat on the edge of the Nara. While the other students milled about, admiring scultpures and being kids, she stood, along the river, facing up stream and staring into the distant mountains. As I stood behind her(admiring her, for I had these feelings of romance), I heard her speak.

"I want to walk those roads again..." was all she said, and to no one. She had not seen me standing behind her. She'd often been prone to flights of fancy, of course, so at the time I dismissed it.

Now, Zeph had spoken of 'our grand adventure' off and on all throughout our childhood. In our early teen years, while we held each other in what I was then certain was deep and affectionate love, she'd whisper to me quietly about the adventure we were going to have. I promised to follow her to the ends of the earth and back, because I was young and stupid, but she was completely and fully serious.

Our city sat at the mouth of the Nara River, spread across the delta where the waters meet the sea. The coast along this region of the [{Greater Continent]] is pretty well populated, and Zathra is a major port city, yet just a scant few hundred miles inland not a single soul dwells. A few hundred miles past that, and there is but an empty wasteland where no grass grows.

Yet further still it is known there lies and ancient, ruined city. The once mighty capitol of the feared and hated Marcon Alliance. It was this city that Zeph believed well and truly that we would one day visit together.

Writing in this present year, it has been some five millennia since any mortal being walked the paved roads of that city. No expedition has been launched, not even Finious Aberton, who by himself journeyed as far as Centered, had glimpsed it's aeons-dead coastline(though I know from my research that, had he not died, Fineious would likely have gone. Death, I think, was a preferable choice). So you can understand my misgivings, but I still pledged to follow her-and I meant it. Even after our love dwindled to friendship, I meant it.

Still, not a single one of us thought Zeph was serious until she bought the boat.

That day I remember. She had a surprise, she begged us all to meet her at the waterfront. She was excited, she was thrilled she was maybe fifteen. I remember the day, not the date. The boat itself was a simple affair, twenty-two feet long and made of lightweight sheets of aluminum. A skiff, you could practically hold it out of the water with one hand. We didn't believe her when she told us it would take us all the way to Lake Bentika. We were right, of course, but that did not stop us from trying.

I know now where she learned it, but at the time I had no idea where Zeph learned to handle a boat. We'd never sailed and she'd never discussed it, but here, now, she knew how to operate the water-craft like she'd sailed one like it her entire life--and more. We spent the summer taking turns, learning to operate it, and exploring the islands and tidal marshes of the delta.

Zeph had begun to prepare in earnest, teaching us skills and honing our equipment. We started to camp more frequently, using the boat to go out without adults. Instead of bringing along stoves, Zeph made us learn how to light fires, and to build our own stoves that could be ran on things we found in the wilderness. She taught us to forage, to fish, and at the time it all seemed like grandiose fun.

Still, I don't think any of us truly believed that we would be going on Zeph's grand adventure. As seriously as she took it, it was all just... a dream, to the rest of us. It wasn't until we had finished our primary schooling that Zeph asked us out right who was going and who was not. She had been planning. For years, perhaps even since early childhood, she'd been saving money, soliciting donations, and amassing a very considerable sum to pay for the expedition. And now she presented the plan to us: she had enough in her coffers to modify the boat we had and to purchase two more, plus all of the supplies and gear the twelve of us would need for the eighteen-month excursion.

This was her plan: using the flat-bottomed boats, we'd make our way up river. There were no real maps of the area, but by her estimates, the jounrey would be five thousand miles. She said it would take us just under eleven months, and five to return home(aided by the current). That would leave us a full two months to explore the city and to bring back as much treasure as our little skiffs could carry.

I won't lie to you and claim that the notion of treasure didn't have anything to do with my decision. It was quite a large part of it, in fact. I'd heard the stories of the ruined city many times, no one ever mentioned treasure, but Zeph hadn't been wrong yet. I knew how much she enjoyed history, perhaps she'd found something no one else had. Still, of the twelve of us, only nine agreed to follow Zeph that day. Of the course of our preperations, two more left. That made eight, total, including Zeph, in two boats.

We spent the entire next year, day in, day out, preparing for the journey. We modified our boats, adding a cabin large enough to sleep four people. We added masts and learned how to tack up stream. We took apart the outboard motors and reasembled them, made modifactions and learned every aspect of the equipment. We practiced every conceivable skill, and when Zeph decided we were ready, we set out."

Hard Travel

The first two weeks of our journey were glorious. It was like any other camping trip, we sang and laughed and joked and had a wonderful time. But we quickly reached the end of civilization, and soon after, we ran out of food.

Ok, not 'food' food, we were well-stocked with hardened travel rations. We ran out of sweets and snacks and the sort of food teenagers would prefer to live on. We were young and invincible, about to spend a year and a half with no parents! But two weeks in, we'd run out of tastey things and were left only with what Zeph had packed. I will be fair and frank and admit that it was very good food. She'd spared no expense. Our larder consisted primarily of a sort of hard-baked biscuit, which was inedible on it's own but formed the basis for the bulk of our meals. Crumbled up and mixed with other foods, then topped with an array of spices, I dare say we ate better than I did at home(or, I admit, through much of the rest of my life...).

There was dehydrated trail foods of every sort. Pastas and rice chiefly, with dried chicken and beef. We'd take a packet meant to feed four, and add in crumbled biscuit and seasonings until it adequietly fed the eight of us. No one was ever left hungry, and little was ever wasted. We augmented our food stuffs by hunting and fishing, bringing in trout and birds for the first several months before finally going after real animals.

We'd all learned to shoot, and we carried guns. Not for defense; between the eight of us, we had packed four riffles, always with the intent to use them for hunting. We had spare parts and ammunition, but though we'd fished and killed birds, there was much hesitation in taking down game animals. We were not hungry, I must be clear, but dried food made into soup and seasoned grows very tiresome, and the desire for some different thing finally drove us to take aim. Zeph brought down the first one, bringing down a water buffalo as it paused to drink beside the river.

We were perhaps five months in to the journey, at this point, and as we feasted, a growing suspicion was finally brought to light. Zeph had insisted that when we began, we had "at least eighteen months worth of food" packed, but based on our stores, we felt it was probably more like fifteen. As we cooked and ate the buffalo(it was young and tender and quite delicious - I said we were hesitant, I didn't say it was a mistake), she told us she had always planned that we'd augment our food source along the way, much as we had, and that our remaining stores would easily last another fifteen months. There was some argument, but we believed her.

The second problem arose as we checked our progress. I said no maps existed, but by our best estimates, we had covered only a third of the distance--with the most treacherous runs still well ahead of us. Zeph had always insisted that 'we would get faster as we traveled', and that the way back would be much shorter. For all her planning, she seemed to give a lot of contradictory answers. But I think the promise of treasure, and the level of trust, kept us going. If we only continued at our current rate, we'd still reach the city in fifteen months, so it was agreed we would hunt and fish more aggressively, and try to ration our food. We still held that it would take "just five months" to get back.

Let me take a moment to tell you about cataracts. On a river such as the Nara, that flows chiefly through deserts, there are occasional areas where it becomes wide, shallow, and swift. These places are dotted with rocks and nearly impossible to travel against. We used our outboards some, but we had to save the fuel for the mountains. So our method often reported to using poles and pushing against the shallow river bottom. It took us a week to navigate one that was only a few miles long. Another that we scouted on foot to be 12 miles looked so impossible that we simply dragged our boats around it. It took us three weeks. Unloaded, the boats were light, and we dragged them over sand. But we still had to move all of our supplies. And the cataracts were not the worst.

You think you may be prepared for something, but you never are. The vast, trackless desert bisected by the river had felt like our greatest challenge. There was little game and few fish. But then winter came. I will not say we were utterly unprepared; we had very fine clothing and still plenty of food. What we had not prepared for, though, was the effect on the river. Zeph's plan involved us being in the mountains and using the winter floods to cross rapids. But we were still in the desert. We could tack against the current, but it slowed our progress even more. Eventually, we found that simply getting out, and dragging the boat in teams through the water while we walked on the banks, was faster. Finally, we gave up entirely and simply ran the engines, desperate to progress against the torrent.

It was the heart of winter when we reached the foothills. There were no impassable water falls, but the river ahead was choked with ice and full of treacherous rocks. The area was forested by now, and we had another meeting. We were nine months into our adventure and still less than half way. But we refused to turn back, Zeph gave a pretty impressive speech, but we didn't need it. Two weeks in, when we ran out of snacks and comforts, we may have given up. After nine months... we weren't stopping until we reached Lake Bentika.

We pulled our boats out of the river and up some ways, then carefully leveled them out. We'd brought along what was effectively a tent to go over each one, and we actually lived in quiet comfort. In the foothills the winter was not severe. There was some six feet of snow, it was cold and demoralizing, but we had plenty of food, and we had each other. To idle away the time, we practiced our hunting, killing more animals than we needed and testing methods of preserving their meat. It was a hard time but I think we were all happy. The stress of not traveling, and a perceived abundance of supplies(and Zeph's clear forward-thinking in bringing along very warm clothing) had us all in good spirits.

When the spring thaw broke we started scouting ahead, and soon came across something... terrible. Not fearful in the way our journey would later become, just bad. We'd only been in the foothills so far, but a few dozens miles ahead the real mountains began, and the river flowed through a deep canyon. This meant fast currents, rapids, and possible waterfalls surrounded by treacherous cliffs.

Still we pressed on. We were eleven months in, now, and nobody was willing to give up. We used the spring thaw to get over the worst of it, and the first canyon was simple. Still, we were nearly out of fuel, and some short months later, we encountered the next canyon.

It was larger than the first, and we could no longer use our outboards; we had precious little fuel remaining. A hard decision was made. We found a cave near the river, and over the course of four days, we took the engines(four of them in total, two from each boat), all of the fuel, spare parts, and tools, and stocked them there on a bed of rocks and tucked under a tarp. We covered the cave entrance with stones and logs, and built ourselves an elaborate cairn to mark the spot by the river side. No mortal men will ever find those outboards, but we thought we would the following year.

Our boats lightened, but with only sails and oars and poles, we started through the canyon. I experienced a terror unlike any other that month. It was by no means the worst I would experience on that journey, but at the time it was the worst experience I had yet encountered.

Zeph already had the method worked out. When the rapids got bad enough, we'd go ahead of the boats, auger eye-bolts into the stone, and use pullies and winches to jack the boats along the top of the rocks. This mean getting out of them and jumping stone to stone through treacherous rapids. When we ran out of fuel completely, we abandoned gas winches in a second cave and settled for a hand-crank comalong. It was extremely slow travel, some days we'd stop for the next and be able to see our morning's campsite. Others, we reached sundown with so little progress made that we had to tie-in the boats and sleep on the river, which terrified me even more.

Finally, after fourteen long months, we reached the end. Not our destination, but we had finally encountered something we could not pass. Up the end of a long, narrow canyon who's current we could not row against, a single, enormous waterfall carried all the waters of the Nara river over an escarpment three hundred feet tall.

Zeph cried.

It was not the tears of mere defeat, or the sobs of an angry child or anyone merely upset over a failure. She collapsed, lying on the dirt sobbing uncontrollably. I remember her words, the way she shouted 'It wasn't here before, this wasn't here back then' haunted me as much as the day she talked about walking those roads again. I'd known all along that she was special, but this worried us all.

No one had ever seen Zeph cry like this, in all our years. For her, no one wanted to give up. We decided it could not be much further and, with a single-minded unity we had not even felt that day on the docks when we set out fourteen months earlier, we picked up Zeph and made plans to walk the rest of the way to Lake Bentika.

We had penetrated further into the interior of the Greater Continent than anyone had since the time of the Mage Wars, and we were unwilling to give up now.