Ingred's Journal Entry 14: Beasts of Velden

''The pages have returned to their usual tidy arrangement. The writing is clean and free of mistakes/spelling errors. A toasted sketch of a magma snail acts as a bookmark.''

We decided that Lily will stay as the group leader, but only with a few alterations. I believe this was an eye opener for everyone. She deserves more respect than what she’s been given thus far. I’m glad that Lily will stay as Soulfire’s leader, but I won’t blame her if she decides to back out of the position later on.

Anthos got everyone together to make a group “checklist” of sorts. We all added our concerns and ideas onto it. Of course there are other things concerning me but I dare not add them. Not unless I want to lose the trust of my party members. There are some things that they don’t need to know.

I believe that Marisol also has this forethought, but she added something anyway. It was rather vague. She doesn’t want to spill the tea yet, but it has us all very curious. Anthos apparently has a problem now, too. Great. I hope that he can keep this “flame emperor” under control, because the last thing we need is another Vegzet situation.

I’m still unsure of whether my current relation with the Tarlie family is of importance. I keep telling them that it’s not urgent, but little do they know how much I’ve been affected by this. It’s driving me mad. So many questions, but I know that they will likely remain unanswered. For now, we will focus on our work. I will stay patient, but who knows how long my patience will last. Especially with Marisol biting at our heels. Here’s hoping I get news back from Press sooner rather than later…

For our first two jobs, we decided to go to Velden. It’s a marvelous city! Full of colorful banners, shops, and very unique merchandise. I’m looking forward to doing some shopping and research once I return. We took up the mission with the Magma Snails first. To make traveling easier on ourselves, the party rented these flying ships. “Solar Sails”, I think they were called. It was definitely an… interesting endeavor. I’m not afraid of the sky, but I found myself wary of these vehicles. Never have I experienced such height before. I can now say that I’ve spit from above the clouds!

In the end, the mission didn’t feel satisfying at all. I was originally thrilled to be able to experience such amazing creatures up close and personal (I was not expecting them to be so aggressive, though. Or big). I didn’t want Lily to give the egg away. Not really. I knew what our objective was from the very beginning, but it still felt… sad.

Those snails were probably protecting their eggs. They weren’t even out and about, just sitting in their nests. Keeping their children safe. What will happen to them now? Will the eggs wither, or will the researchers collect them when they’re hatched, subject them to all sorts of experiments, or downright cull them? It’s utterly horrible to imagine…  And I didn’t even step up to stop any of it.

The party thinks I’m upset from the mission, but that’s not the only reason. Marisol keeps poking my buttons. I’m getting very tired of her. She thinks that she can just tell me what to do? “Don’t talk to me”, “talk to me now”, why the hell should I listen to what she has to say when she won’t do the same for me? Preposterous. I’m not only going to speak when it’s convenient for her! Nor am I going to open up to her. Why does Marisol think that I would be willing to do that? She has shown me nothing but bitterness so far. Screw her. I don’t think there’s one redeeming quality to that judgemental attitude of hers.

''A bit of blood marks the page. It looks to have been wiped away, but traces of it still remain.''

Apologies, my nose keeps bleeding. Or more like leaking ichor from the Behir harvesting. No matter how much I blow my nose it just won’t end. I suppose this “prestidigitation” (as the others call it) doesn’t work well at cleaning internal messes.

Anyways… The Behir job went fairly quickly as well. After a bit of reconnaissance from Seipora and I, the party dove down into its chambers to dispose of it. The creature was very strong and managed to deal quite a bit of damage to both K and Anthos. I was fairly embarrassed by how difficult it was to patch up K, but he was kind enough to not say anything about it. In fact I did rather poorly today…

I was… distracted.

Thinking back on it, the Behir was only trying to feed itself. Trying to survive, similarly to the snails… so much for that. At the very least, I’m glad that we were able to make use of most of its corpse. We even got a lot of Unka meat from a grateful old rancher. I don’t think I’ve ever had Unka meat before.

I’ll have to ask K to cut me up a piece.