The Lost Soul

Honorable Priestess,

Now we come to a most disturbing part of our journey.

As we followed the rope, the walls of the cavern gradually became the walls of a manor. There were tapestries of harvests on these walls.

Up ahead, we heard scratching and scurrying on the floor. In moments, the floor was swarming with rats. Ryn remarked that it felt like we were walking near to the land of the dead.

The rope led into a square room, in which we found more decay. At the opposite end of the room was a dais. On the dais was a chair, placed as though it were the seat of a magistrate. On that seat was a corpse. And leading into the chest of the corpse was the rope that we were following.

As we walked closer, the corpse suddenly leapt to its feet and severed the rope -- cutting off our only way to return home! This corpse -- the Lost Soul -- began to attack us. I choked as the corpse summoned a huge rat from inside my mouth. The rat leapt out and attacked me.

The Lost Soul was powerful, but Firinne was able to use her divine powers to make us stronger in our battle. We were finally able to defeat the Lost Soul when Garg commanded Bran to strike the creature, and Bran made a dead-perfect stab that destroyed the monster.

As the Lost Soul finally died, we all saw a vision of the soul leaving its body. It was as though the soul was trapped between worlds. We all felt this soul eminate a feeling of deep relief and a sense of gratitude for being freed.

We then had another vision of the Lost Soul before his body had died. He was a man, hiding a room in the cellar beneath where we stood. As he hid, the door opened, and a shadowy figure appeared.

The Lost Soul tried to cast a spell against the shadowy figure, but the figure flung a brass snake collar around the neck of the Lost Soul. As the shadowy figure approached, we started to recognize who he was -- Brother John.

Suddenly, everything became clear: The Lost Soul was captured by the Executors for committing a crime. He was taken to serve in the army. As he left, his wife and children were left behind, wailing for him. Eventually, the Lost Soul died before he could ever return to his family. He was killed by a disease from a rat.

The vision that we were seeing was "spoken" to us in Old War language. We realized that we were all now proficient in this language.

After the vision passed, we found ourselves in a room like this one but wihtout a roof. There was dust everywhere in the room.

We were now in the Siege world. And without the rope, we had no way -- and no hope -- of ever getting back home.