Ferryman’s Log, Entry #3 (10th of Sehanine)

My hand is trembling so violently that I can barely write legibly as I wait for permission to visit Tilia, Val, and Wynlynn in the infirmary where more seriously injured combatants are treated. Though I sustained a few serious burns and was knocked about pretty badly, my own injuries were relatively minor compared to those of my friends. My physical wounds have been healed, yet inwardly I have never felt so wretched.

I can’t believe Travis is really … gone. Why did I hesitate to write the less euphemistic truth: dead, incinerated, fried almost beyond recognition? The list of descriptors for his fearful end could go on, but the degree of refinement ultimately matters not. It doesn’t change the reality that our companion—the perennially amiable woodman with all his scholarly projects and pedagogical aspirations—is no more. Nothing left but a lifeless, charred wooden frame, the glow from the diapson crystal in his chest completely extinguished.

The Arena clerics attempted to teleport him to safety when one our opponents shoved him into the moat of superheated lava—but evidently, they were too late. To add insult to injury, they also assumed that he was some kind of automaton—treating him as damaged property rather than as the latest victim of the Arena’s brutal practices.

This wasn’t supposed to happen. I know that statement is one of the oldest clichés when we’re faced with death, but really, this was supposed to be a game, a lark, a tightly-regulated competition in which—at most—you risk losing your money and pride. So much for all the safety regulations and all the bureaucratic rules surrounding the use of magic. I’m pretty sure at least three people lost their lives in the round in which we participated. 

The life of an adventurer (I suppose that’s what people call us) is by definition a perilous one. In recent weeks, all of us—myself included—have been compelled to confront our own mortality in the course of our strange expeditions. But the difference is that we knew that our lives were at stake and why we were nevertheless pursuing that course—whether it was out of an intense desire for knowledge or for the sake of friendship, even love. None of us believed that we were risking our lives in the Arena; the cruel irony is that Travis wasn’t even interested in the adrenalin rush or monetary incentive offered by this bloody sport—he even declined, on principle, to put any gold down for the wager. He was anxious to visit the Cobalt Reserves, and had only agreed to defer his visit on our account. He would probably still be in the library right now—if he had been less obliging—if we hadn’t dragged him into this display of gratuitous violence.

As difficult as it may be to admit, the truth is that we—not our adversaries or the lava—killed Travis. And I—I willingly put in 200 gold—not because I enjoy fighting but because … I was so eager to please my friends. Because of my weakness, I am as much to blame as any of those who really wanted to fight. Nay—more to blame, since I should have known better than to participate in—and thereby endorse—the glorification of violence for its own sake. Have not my teachers instilled in me an understanding of the preciousness and the interconnectedness of all lives? Can you inflict injury for sport and expect to do so with no consequences?

My cheeks burn with shame to imagine what Ama Halle, my revered mentor, would say if she knew that I had cheapened the sacred magic she taught me by helping to put up a bloody spectacle for bored city-dwellers. And my uncle—I can almost hear his scornful reproach: “No better than whoring, Teal—just more dangerous.” Perhaps rightly, he would view my participation in these entertainments as yet another blow to his carefully cultivated respectability. His brother’s bastard son embarrassing the family again.

But enough. The cleric’s assistant is beckoning me to enter the room in which the healers have been tending to Tilia, Val, and Wynlynn. How will I break this news to them? No, I can’t do it … have I not caused enough pain today? Especially Val and Wynlynn—they stayed with Travis in the Glade, and of all the party, Val seemed to understand him best in spite of all his eccentricities. Yet since Panthagion and Jerry are outside trying to figure out how to handle Travis’s remains, I have no choice: I must do my best to tell my friends of this tragedy as truthfully and as gently as I can.