Chaya's Journal #8

Road to Vallaki from Yester Hill

I do not know what unsettles me more—the battle itself or the questions it has left me with.
The fight on Yester Hill was terrible. The druids and their followers fought like people possessed, with no hesitation, no thought for their own lives. Fanatical, as Stoick said. But fanatics do not spring from nothing. Something made them this way—whether devotion, desperation, or a force far darker. I should pity them. I want to pity them. But the way they looked at us… the way they fought… it was as if nothing remained of them but their madness.
And then there was Strahd.
He appeared from nowhere, like a shadow cast suddenly across our path. Not a coincidence. It could not have been a coincidence. Why would he be there, at that moment, just as Gretch found the seed Davian so desperately sought? How did he know? Was he watching? Listening? Following? Is he always watching?
I fear that we are being played with, like pieces on a board where only Strahd knows the rules.
And Riordan… I do not know what to say. I do not know how to reach him. There was no need for what he did. No need for such ruthlessness. He showed no mercy, even as they fled. That is not strength. That is something else. But given what he has chosen to share about his family.......the sorrow he must feel....I can understand it but not accept it. Stoick is practical—coldly practical, but I cannot fault him for it. “An enemy spared today is an enemy you have to fight again tomorrow.” I hear the wisdom in his words, but I do not accept them. That is not the way of Selûne. That is not the way I will walk.
I am weary of the darkness here, of how it pulls at us, changes us. I see it in my companions. I feel it in myself. How much longer before we no longer recognize the people we once were?
I am tired of reacting. Of being surprised. Of being hunted. The festival is coming soon. A time for light. A time for warmth. Perhaps a moment to breathe. But I fear there is no place left in Barovia that the shadows do not reach.