This girl unnerves me more with each day of
travel. Egh.
We have been on the move since waking up
this morning, and Eve uses every opportunity she gets to investigate me. I
would not normally mind the attention, especially since we are losing no time,
but she flips me over and around far too often. Spiders can be just as bashful
as humans, and I'd rather she not gently poke at my undercarriage.
Also, she does it without saying a word,
without even an expression on her face. I don't know how Dragomir finds her so
utterly adorable.
It may be the disassociation with her
reputation that unnerves me the most. Eve is supposed to be a rampant killer, a
fighter without peer. She murders without hesitation. This Eve, by contrast, has
no combat prowess: when we ran afoul of a brown bear earlier, I had to claim
control of its mind before it ate us. She showed no great fear of the thing,
but Eve also didn't look ready to kill and consume it, either.
Why weakness over strength worries me is
unfathomable. But it does. Hrm.
The girl's strangeness aside, we're making
excellent progress. I was worried that the Non we're trailing might be capable
of quick flight, but it's obvious they're moving by land. On Friday we were
tracking the big Non's footprints through the wilderness, and early this
morning we found the footprints merging with the remains of a campsite. Several
more sets of footprints joined the larger in a new direction…
… headed towards Dragomir's former castle.
Which, as far as anyone out here knows, belongs to the Non. These creatures
have obviously been ordered to abduct Dragomir and return him to his old home.
Why they're doing this I don't know, and I'd like to discover the answer.
I'd like to know more about the Non, for
that matter. They're perhaps the most enigmatic race of creatures I've ever
encountered, and I've been alive for almost a hundred years. June has a few
ancient tomes regarding the Non, and she's discussed them with me several
times, but from all that I've learned very little. All I know is that they were
once sealed away by the rats, the regulators of this world, and that the act of
doing so brought a horrible war to an end.
Given what June sometimes says about the rats,
I'm not sure which side I would have rooted for. She is… biased.
Regardless of the past, the Non have
returned, and they're on the move. They seek the same thing June seeks, a
'lock', and my master demands that they not have it. She has her slaves working
constantly in Pubtwon to unearth the lock so she can claim the full extent of
its power, and not just emissions through rock walls. If the Non reach her
before she can get to the lock…
I don't know what will happen. I'm not even
certain what will happen if June has her way. My master has always kept her
deeper schemes and ambitions closed, and I, her familiar, cannot open what is
closed. All I can do is look for a man, and hope that all is well in the end.
We have stopped for the night to rest. Eve
is a hardy girl, but she can't walk forever. I pray that the Non grow weary
like the rest of us or we'll never catch up.
Sincerely,
Julius the Familiar
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