Entry 1: Escape, and Sanctuary

*Beric sits in the common room of the Last Stand, scratching his perpetual stubble. He sets a blank book on the table, and, procuring a graphite rod from a pocket sets it to the paper.*

Ilmater be praised...it worked. We all got out, every last one of us. I got seperated from the others...but perhaps TheCrying God will look on them with the same forutune he smiled upon with I, and send them to this blessed city, this Sanctuary.

*he smiles, remebering his escape with the others.*

I was awoken by Davos, a man from my village that had been captured at the same time as I. (We were both but children the day the drow slaving party (a ragtag bunch of goblins, kobolds, and other creatures bound to their will) assualted our town, coming up through the old salt mine.) He smiled at me warmly and, his voice nearly breaking with joy, leaned down to whisper in my ear. "You were right my friend, Ilmater would provide." He pressed something into my hand, something thin and sharp. A dagger. "Where-" "I slipped it off of one of the kobolds guarding our cell, the one that's always falling asleep." I smiled, and wrapped him in a strong embrace. Tears fell on both our cheeks. I laughed slightly, I was bubbling over with more joy than I had felt in the last ten years. "We will do this today then. We can't leave the others behind though. We need to free them as well." Davos nodded emphatically. "I heard one of the others talking while I was tending the rothe heard last shift." We had since stopped using the terms night and day, and reffered to our time by the stiffly regiment shifts our captors had set out for us. For what hope of day can there be when one can no longer see the sun? Davos coughed slightly and continued, "He said before he was a slave, he had been born and raised in a city called Sanctuary...he was telling Sara that he felt it was not more than a handfull of miles from here. 'Not more than five days march' he told her." Sara was a beautiful, young, -as far as it could apply to her- elf that had been brought to the drow fortress a year prior after one of their slaving raids to the surface, and she and Davos were madly in love, despite the cell bars that almost always seperated them. Her real name was Sara'ilenia, but only I and a few others could pronounce it correctly, so almost everyone shortened it to Sara. For she and Davos, the name had become a term of enderment. I clasped him on the shoulder. "Good, then let us be gone from this place." I slid over to the door silently, and, our friendly kobold guard sound asleep, I reached through the bars and cut his throat. His flesh parted smooth as summer silk, warm blood rushing over my hands. I caught the back of his tunic before he could fall from his chair, and set him on the ground gently. I took his keys from his belt, opened our cell, and walked out.

*Beric pauses to take a sip of a drink sitting next to him, pausing his writing. When he returns to the writing, there are tears in his eyes.*

I lied to myself in the beginning of this journal. Not all of us escaped, and I know it. So, if I write it down here, I'll never let myself forget.

After getting out of the cell, I gathered up the short sword the kobold had been armed with, and handed off the dagger to Davos. He looked at me, and nodded with a smile. He pointed over his shoulder. "I'll go get Sara and the others." He paused long enough to wrap me in another embrace, "That's just incase we don't see eachother again." I opened my mouth in protest to the very thought, but he silenced me with a casual wave of his hand. "I'm sure we will too. But don't worry about that now. Just go get her." The her to which he reffered was my own love, Nailo. (Interesting, isn't it, that even in the darkest of hells, love can still survive to give hope. I feel truly that the only thing that kept me from killing myself was Davos, whom I love as a brother, and her, whom I loved as a woman.) Nailo, by a strange twist of fate, was Sara's sister, and had been captured a year before Sara. By her own admission, Sara had been captured in the hopes of escaping to find Nailo. Where Sara was fair, Nailo was fairer still. Her hair was long, and so black as to be nearly blue. Her eyes were of the most piercing shade of green. Her breasts were small, small and, as she would jokingly say with a smile when we lay together,'Fill your hands perfectly.' Her body was slim, but then, all of us were, from the years of labour and little food. Nailo had been placed across the chasm where our cells were located. She had been moved there after we were discovered making love together, when we shared a cell still.

*Beric chuckles slightly through the tears and continues.*

Much to Davos' chagrin of course, as he and Sara did not share a cell, and therefore could not be together as we were as often as they would have liked. At any rate, I made my way to her cell, and, dispatching the guard from behind, opened her cell door. I walked up to her sleeping form, and stood there, just watching her for a moment. She always looked the most beautiful when she was asleep. After a moment, I leaned down and shook her awake gently. "Nai.." I whispered gently. She awoke slowly, her beautiful green eyes widening when she saw me. "Beric!" She threw her arms around me and placed her lips on mine. We shared in a long, deep, passionate kiss, the first time we had been together in nearly a month. I have to admit, I would not have escaped if I could have but laid there with her for the rest of my days. I pulled away and hugged her fierecly. "Nailo my love, we're getting out of here, we're escaping!" Her jaw dropped. "Davos is releasing the others. He says one of them knows of a city a few days march from here. It is home to escaped slaves just as we will be. We can start our lives there!" She started to cry, and pulled me closer. "By the gods Beric, this is the most wonderful day of my life!" We stood up and ran from her cell.

*Beric stops writing and drinks more deeply from his mug. He turns to write again, but stops, his shoulders shuddering slightly. He begins to write again, but the next few pages are stained by tears.*

And so we reached the gate, Davos at my side, Nailo behind, Sara leading the way with the man from Sanctuary. His name was something like Stevens if I recall correctly. I smiled to think of the life I would have when we reached the city, but stopped when I heard a moan from behind. I turned around to see Nailo, blood flowing from the corner of her mouth, fall to her knees, a spear tip protruding from her chest. "NAILO! NO!!!!!" I ran to her, and fell to my knees, sobbing hysterically. I held her as she died, over and over repeating the words 'I'm so sorry' as if they could pull her from Death's grasp. She kissed my cheek, and, crying bloody tears, whispered "I love you so much." "I love you more than life Nailo..." With that, I watched the last flames of life leave her eyes. Paralyzed by my grief, I couldn't move, and the kobolds that had killed her were gaining on us. Davos ran to me, and, pulling me away from her, we put the fortress - and Nailo- behind us. The next few days passed by in a blur, I just walked, and I spoke with no one. On the third day, I wrote a letter on a small piece of paper - one of the same papers I filched so I could send Nailo messages- saying goodbye to Davos and Sara, and left. I was determined to return and die fighting my love's killers. Of course, Ilmater had other plans for me, and by a pervese irony, I came, alive, to the city, without my friends or my love

*Beric stops writing and pushes the journal away from him. His head sinks to the table, and he is overcome by grief, unable to move, grasped by painful, wracking sobs*

//OOC Note: Feel free to post/pm me with any comments or kudos.//

Entry 2: Childhood and the loss of innocence.

*Beric sits again in the Last Stand, writing in his journal. His face seems serne as he writes*

I saw a child beaten to death this morning. I was walking the streets of Lower, and saw, in one of the alleys, a drunken man beating a child. I ran to stop it, but the child was dead before I could reach him, and the man ran away.

I will punish him for his deed if ever I find him.

If only the child had DONE something, I thought to myself as I held his broken body, some much like a ragdoll. It reminded me of the time I first acted to free someone opressed. I was eight years old, still living under my father's roof. (I was nine when I went to the small temple of Ilmater in our village for study.)

My....my father was not a good man. He, like that sorry excuse for a person I found beating his child in Lower, was a drunkard, bound by the demons of his cursed bottles. He beat my mother very badly, and, as rumor had it, raped more than one girl after drinks at the tavern.

I would lie awake at night, listening to the violent beatings he doled out to my defenseless mother for some imaginary indiscretion or slight on his name. I recall vividly her screams the night she tried to flee the house, and, in a fit of alcohol fueled rage, he beat and raped her.

That was the night I loss my own innocence as well. With tears in my eyes, the screams of my mother marching through my head like hellish toy soldiers, I ran from my bedroom. I entered the living room, and picked up my father's sword from the mantle. (In a most perverse joke of fate, my father was a town guard and mediator of the "justice." There is no doubt in my mind he used his position to take advantage of more than one girl.)

*Beric stops writing long enough to order a drink and haunch of rothe. When it comes to the table, he devours it with the hunger of a man fresh from combat.*

So, after taking up his sword, I entered by parents bedroom. My father stood next to the bed, his breeches around his ankles, screaming obscenities at my mother, who lay naked and bloodied on the bed. She was sobbing. He wheeled at me, snarling, spittle flying from the corner of his mouth. "What do you want boy?" Then he saw the sword. He laughed, "Here to kill your daddy then? Don't tell me your angry at me for giving your whoring little mother what she deserves." I started to cry, to which he laughed all the more. I swung the sword, cleaving his torso open at the waist, blood sprayed over my face and arms, his intestines wriggling out of him like grotesque snakes. His mouth was an 'o' of surprise as he fell.

*Beric closes his journal and and finishes the meal, then walks out.*