Day Five-Seventy-Six: You can't see me, you can't see me

It's funny how nature can drive you places you do not wish to go.

Coming through this jungle in the first place was a bad idea. I knew as much. When last Plato and I touched these fertile lands we became separated from Traveller, our companion, and we sought refuge in a house. The house. We spent perhaps fifteen minutes inside it, searching darkened passages for a way out.

We found it. Though the ghostly creatures that waited within seemed rather intent on keeping us inside. I am lucky that Plato was with me - he unknowingly steered them away, and was blind to their presence the whole time. For such a fearful creature, he knew surprisingly little of terror then. Hence his suggestion that we cut through the jungle to continue on our journey westward.

Plato isn't here anymore. There's only me, this diary and its tiny, tottering legs, and the house.

The mist that claimed the crew was unnatural. I could tell as much from the start. You'd have to be a fool not to think that there was a presence behind it, and I can't think of any presence more likely to steal warm bodies than cold, dead ones. Ghosts are not well-regarded among my kind - they are nuisances at best, possessive terrors at worst. We don't like them, and they don't like us. 

Were I amongst my peers, my kind, I would not fear the house. We can control ghosts, manipulate their code and make them do our bidding. But I'm not amongst my kind. I haven't seen another sentient regulator for... well, I don't know. Two years, perhaps? My memory has corroded so much from their absence that I can't remember. Their power hasn't truly flowed through me in a long time. All I can do is write in this diary without a pen, command it to follow me...

... and cower beneath it at the foot of the house. The house. 

Nature guided me here. I knew I would have to find it to locate Dragomir and his team, and the trees did not disappoint me. A mere half hour of blind searching through the jungle brought me back to its darkened hallways, hidden in a place civilization has forgotten. It must be several hundred years old, perhaps as old as the war. Its eroded wooden walls and algae-infested supports smell of experience. 

I can't bring myself to go in. Even though ghosts typically fear and avoid my kind, I can't go in. 

Not yet. 

But... eventually... I'll have to...

Because I can smell Plato on the house. 

And Dragomir.

And the rest.

I can smell them all, and, oh, gods, the thought of following them fills me with dread.

Sincerely,

V the Rat