The Gilderoy Expedition

by PaulAsaran

Margrave Gilderoy, Date Unknown, w/Notes VII

From the private logbook of Lord Margrave Gilderoy of Fletcherstown.

I have never encountered something so terrible in all my years!

We had poured the acid and been waiting to see what would result when the entire team was struck with what I can only call a mass hallucination. It started with a horrible shrieking. I can’t describe it. I don’t want to! Whatever it was, it filled me with a dread I’ve never felt before, as if a dragon were seconds from ripping me apart with its teeth!

As the sound went on, the ice shook with all the force of an earthquake, sending many of us sprawling and knocking down equipment and tents! I thought for sure the glacier would crack, and sure enough, it did. Pillars of ice rose and fell, the taller ones breaking apart and collapsing in cascading walls of shattered, sharp shards. The sky turned dark, even without any clouds, and wave after wave of terror swept over us like physical walls. I saw Gall tearing at his own face with his claws and shrieking! I was able to take off after much fumbling and struggle, but I swear the very air itself was shaking.

Then I watched as poor Gantry was crushed by a pillar that landed directly on top of him. I heard his bones crunching, and it is a sound I will remember to the end of my days.

Then, just as suddenly, it all stopped. Not just stopped, it disappeared as if it had never happened. No shrieking, no waves of terror. The Matti Ths Aioniotitas was as flat and pristine as it had ever been, with nary a crack to mar its surface aside from the one we’d created. The tents and equipment were exactly where they’d always been.

I can’t describe what happened. I have no idea. I only know a few things. First, that everyone in the camp experienced the hallucination at the same time. Second, that the crack is now substantially longer, and wide enough that we might be able to climb down it, though flying is still out of the question. Two of the borers fell due to the displacement but were too big to fall in the crevice completely.

Gall’s face is a bloody mess. That was no illusion.

Gantry is dead. I have no explanation. He’s been crushed, his bones little more than splinters, his blood staining the ice from a hundred small cuts. I saw him smashed by that jagged ice pillar, and I was not alone. At least four of our number, including Eastern Leaves, saw it as well. The pillar is gone. It’s not there! It was a hallucination!

Gantry is dead, as surely as the ice sheet is flat.

What in Boreas’s name have we uncovered?

Cptn. Decadent Dawn, Notes:

What is this?

After reading this hideous entry, I could do naught but sit in my chair and stare at the jagged, fumbling words, clearly written by a griffon under substantial mental distress. Easy though it might be, easy and convenient, to dismiss what Gilderoy wrote, the manner of the unsteady scrawl heavily suggests that he believed the words he set upon the paper. I have compared this entry with past ones, examining the clawwriting, and I have no doubt it was written by Gilderoy, barring some capable forgery.

Ms. Coxswain mentioned in her report before that there were writings about supernatural happenings. The fact nearly put the distressingly paranoid Rusty Iron into a fit of baseless suspicion and dread. Yet I, like Coswain herself, dismissed the entries as exaggerations, flights of fancy, or perhaps simple-mindedness.

I cannot deny this entry has cracked my once-stalwart confidence.

Perhaps I am merely shaken by ongoing events. The ceaseless, damned ringing. The mad itching. The mysterious elements of this investigation. Yes. Yes, it is all getting to my head. I must believe that. I have no choice but to believe it. My intellect and reason cannot countenance the preposterous proposal that what the margrave ranted about in his ignorant writing might have some basis in reality.

I do not wish to keep reading, to entertain the mad ramblings of some selfish catbird about hallucinations and acids! I feel I must, nevertheless, continue. I cannot sleep, I will not let on to the crew that these documents are worming insecurities and fears into my brain, and I am obligated to finish the reading as part of this wholly unwelcome investigation. Oh, how I wish I could unload the task to some other luckless soul. Ms. Coxswain would no doubt leap at the chance, but no. The only excuse I have is childish, irresponsible, and I dare not entertain the notion.

So. Back to it.