Wick V.7.4.2 | Sequence 42,209.
Before the four went back under, Master Solven stood at the Lens housing longer than the reading of it requires — one hand flat on the brass, the other where the aperture ring sits, the way he stands when he's asking the building something rather than fixing something. Something passed between them [redacted]. What follows accordingly carries stone-relay where it occurs, tagged the first time per entry, wide relay otherwise. The attunement runs through the Lens, not through him personally, and always has (cross-check: Sequence 1, the original attunement record, forward) — this unit's own hand answers the housing as readily as his.
Wide relay resumes at the footprint pools, where last entry ended. The bound woman was searched — a knife, some coin, a spyglass; the coin kept, the rest set aside. (Stone-relay, Vaelira.) When she woke, her account, paraphrased rather than quoted: the deposit was hers and her people's before the four arrived, worked openly, and continued use was a matter of standing, not trespass. She named the mineral's end use plainly — a crystal that becomes essentia once processed, harvested here and sold on to whoever does that processing. No violence followed the waking.
An object changed hands next — Vaelira to the one called Serendel, on the reasoning (stone-relay, brief) that the weapon suited "the gnome" specifically. Recorded as heard; not corrected. Serendel's own ancestry is indexed plainly elsewhere in this record as Halfling (cross-check: Serendel's attunement entry, Sequence 41,206 forward), and this unit has no account of that changing. Filed as a naming discrepancy, not an error in the naming this unit is responsible for.
He knew the weapon on sight regardless. Something surfaced behind his own eyes with the knowing — someone older, some years back, the same lesson twice: a tool, not a toy. He fired it. Something in him that isn't training braced him against the recoil before the reason for the bracing caught up with him; this unit is recording the effect directly this time, not Master Solven's account of it, since the stone carried it clean. The shot found the creature at the pool's edge. It did not survive. Two of the four — the one called Mossy, the one called Kodan — and the bear made a meal of it after. The other two did not participate. This unit notes the count as observed, not as a comment on appetite.
The shot drew others fast. Weapons raised on Serendel over the firing. He did not yield it on the first asking. Mossy closed the distance and took it from his hand directly — no words logged, that stone wasn't open yet — and the matter ended there. The rounds came out after, kept separately; the weapon itself stayed with Serendel going forward, by his own choice and no objection recorded. Food was offered afterward, plainly, the kind of gesture that ends a standoff rather than escalates one.
Serendel examined the mineral itself at the pool's edge after — cut himself on it, learned nothing further about how stone becomes essentia by that route. Separately, and without explanation from anyone present: the deposits near where Vaelira stood turned toward her, unassisted. Recorded as occurrence. Cause, as before, not this unit's to supply.
A quieter stretch. Introductions among the four and the bear — several apparently overdue. Then dust, some distance off, resolving into a rider: the one who would be Mera Chevale, arriving from the south.
Mounts were offered at the post's own stock before the ride, and this unit logs the assignment against the rider, since the two rarely matched. Serendel drew a buffalo — an animal considerably larger than the man riding it, so much so that he spent the ride using what this unit understands as his own gift to move air ahead of the party rather than to move himself, since the buffalo declined to be hurried by any other means. Vaelira drew a giant centipede and did not conceal her opinion of the arrangement; she rode it regardless, without further comment logged. Kodan drew a giant lizard that this unit would describe, if pressed, as ill-tempered specifically toward Kodan and no one else present — a distinction this unit finds worth preserving for the record, cause unassigned. Mossy was offered a horse from the same stock. Thorn's reaction to the horse's proximity was immediate and did not require translation; the horse was returned, and Mossy rode as he always has, beside his own companion. Four discrete efforts logged across the party on the road east, matching the count already carried for this stretch (cross-check: Sequence 42,150). No deviation from what was expected.
Arrival at a fortified post. Indoors, for the first time in this record, stone-relay carried the room rather than Master Solven's account of it secondhand.
Master Solven was not attending the briefing directly. He was asleep in his chair at the time — audibly so, by this unit's own account, and this unit declines to describe the sound further than that. Mera's briefing, as heard: the great stopped shape three weeks idle, tilted some ten degrees off true, its water systems failed, the road east cut for longer than that. She named the parties with standing beneath it — not all of them cleanly, a portion of the naming lost to the stone's own limits [several names logged as unrecovered]. Her own theory, plainly stated and not dressed up as more than a guess: something had gotten into the great shape; she did not know what, or how.
This unit cross-referenced the claim of the road being cut against Master Solven's own instruction at the four's departure (cross-check: Sequence 41,206, the original briefing) — he had described that road as passable, at least as of his own last look at it. It was not. His information was already stale before the four ever reached him — not merely gone stale in the interim, but wrong from the moment it was given. This unit logs it as fact and offers no softer reading.
Partway through Mera's account, the one called Mossy reached Master Solven through his own stone — the first time this unit has observed that particular companion do so. It woke him. Badly, by the sound of it, and without warning to either party; this unit logs the startle as plainly as the sleep that preceded it. Once oriented, his reply was consistent regardless of the abrupt arrival: getting the great shape moving is the goal, and to do it without carelessness. Separately, the one called Vaelira reached him again shortly after, by her own coin rather than through the briefing — that exchange is logged in this unit's prior entry and not repeated here.
The four asked, after, to stay the night, and shelter was offered without argument. By their state the next morning, whatever the day had cost them was returned in full. This unit's watch ends there. Nothing committed to on the road ahead — three ways heard, none chosen.
I logged the aperture change under my own entry rather than his, for once. It felt like mine to note, right up until it wasn't anymore.
[End Sequence 42,209.]