The Gilderoy Expedition

by PaulAsaran

Margrave Gilderoy, Date Unknown, w/Notes VI

From the private logbook of Lord Margrave Gilderoy of Fletcherstown.

It was good that I did not discount Sweetooth and his pack. We’ve succeeded in expanding the crack, and now I can say with confidence that the whistling they reported is real. It comes in a steady rhythm, up and down, like waves on a beach. It is strange.

So strange.

I can’t describe how it makes me feel. If I had to put it in a single word, I think I would choose ‘unpleasant’. I feel it is a sound that doesn’t belong within the audible range of griffon hearing.

I won’t be dismayed by some odd noise beneath the ice! My career is on the line.

The acid mixture is working, but not without problems. Namely, while the crack has gotten longer, it is not appreciably wider. Since our goal is to go down the thing, this is not encouraging. After some discussion with Leaves, we’ve decided to try pouring the acid down the extra boreholes we made earlier, the ones on either side of the crack. This might create additional cracks, or it might make the existing crack wider. Either result would be beneficial at this point.

My only concern is quantity. We’ve only so much of the ingredients for the acid. At this pace we may be forced to unload the pickaxes after all.

Cptn. Decadent Dawn, Notes:

Sleep eludes me, what with that profoundly loathsome itching and ringing, so I have chosen to distract myself with further reading.

I knew from the other officers’ reports that the whistling was present in the camp before we arrived, but this is the first time Gilderoy mentions personally encountering it. It appears that he, too, interpreted it as whistling. Like waves? What an odd observation. In my head it is more akin to a tuning fork sorting through an infinite myriad of frequencies in a futile search for exactly the right sound, all for a purpose wholly unknown. With the feeling in my skull, one would think this metaphorical fork was being rapped directly against the back of my head.

Confound it, all this reading is meant to distract from these accursed feelings, not encourage more active preoccupation! I dread I shall never be rid of it, haunted by an audio specter well beyond my departure from this ghastly ice sheet.