James' first entry

Life has become a series of such unusual experiences I fear I can no longer trust my own perception. Nothing seems plausible, yet everything feels quite real, even as it offends my sense of reason.

I commit these events to paper in the hope that the ever-shifting sands that are my current existence may be pinned down more definitely, that some pattern may yet be established, though the meaning of these last days has evaded me thus far.

I seem to be travelling, though this is no society lady’s tour, gaily collecting trinkets and anecdotes to please at dinner parties. There is no itinerary on this grand tour, no merry boarding of ships, all noise, bustle and jollity. No, simply a hard fog and sudden arrival.

And what arrivals! I have done a little travelling in my youth, but never to such lands as these. I thought I had seen people of most types, and all the physical deformities that might be found, but I’ve been confronted with such strange physiologies even my dreams could not conjure up such twisted visions. But here they are, in abundance, and seemingly as solid as myself.

There are others also being whisked between lands, and it has become some comfort that there is a little continuity in this world, as it seems a few of us are now linked together. I hesitate to describe our desperate band as a group of travelling companions – none of us are especially companionable – but familiarity is of itself becoming a welcome thing. The group is not welted together – we have been separated occasionally, but it seems we are bonded in some loose manner.

The mists in which we travel may keep us together, but currently there is a schism between two of our party of their own making, though I was not privy to that which passed between them. Certainly the newest man to join us is a dark soul, quiet and brooding for the most part, though occasionally he is gripped with a desire to ask questions of us, questions that are of the most part personal, and cause a mental anguish I would rather escape. Though such escape is harder to reach these days. He, and our legionnaire friend appear to have come to blows and will not go near each other.

John is a mystery. He would seem to have military training, though also the knowledge of a scientist, understanding matters of electricity in astounding detail. He is currently in an unfortunate state, having just had a rather close brush with death, though escaping such a fate through a means I’m not sure I understand yet. I don’t think I can even write lines about the things I felt prior to John’s healing. My whole sense has been opened to a realm I want to run into, though none of it can yet be reasoned with – although I am no stranger to interesting experiences of the psyche, I have yet to take what I see there into sober life. It feels as though it would be descent and ascent in one blow, and I fear a fundamental alteration would occur.

Catherine was absent from this last station in our journey - a most perplexing person. Quite young, silly and frivolous, yet capable and knowing. Catherine's seen much for someone of that age, I suspect, I have seen others with that mixture of childish whimsy and adult knowing, and they usually have something to hide, even if it isn't of their doing.

Well, we all have things we wish we could erase from reality.

So. I have much to write, but I grow tired, memory in this land causes a fatigue unlike any other. I must rest while there’s still peace – suspecting if things continue as they have been that peace will not last.

Time passes...

... and I am still here.

It is not worth to complain, of course. Of all the places these mists have taken me, this would be the first one that has not tried to kill me or teach me some form of moral revelation I was better off not knowing... but now I am worried.

Things, like time, pass, along with the memories of what has gone before. The gods looked down on me and cursed me to roam these lands one after the other, but instead of thrusting me from place to place... they just left me here. Here, in this land of mis-directed alleyways and cursed corners. Three years of making a living watching people come and go from the mists. Why?

I have long given up the hope of meeting someone from my time, from my place. So many primes, so many worlds, it would be a blessed miracle - or curse - to see someone from the days when Rome ruled it all.

From the days that I ruled it all.

The thought of them leaving me here to die tempts me with each day... but my natural born stubborn-ness will not give in so easily. That would be far too easy a fate for them to bestow me; they might as well just send me back to my desercated kingdom and have done with it all.

Even today, three years on from the first day of mists, I remember it clear as day.

I sat in the throne room, struggling with myself not to order the whole senate to their death.They had sided with me when my time had come and wanted their well-earned dues. The Vultures. To fight them would be to fight myself, and I was ready to give in to whatever they wanted to ask... when I heard it. The sound of fighting from beyond the door. I walked - Caesar does not run - and looked beyond my balcony, to see a small boy, armed with a sword, standing in the court. He yelled, cursing my name, swearing that upon the dead bodies of his family he would see me suffer for what I had done.

That, I believe, was when the guards cut him in two.

I know it was, because that was when I shouted the order, unhesitantly.

Only then, and then on up till now now, looking back on myself, did I realise how much of a fool and tryant I was. A proud king, a bloody throne, and the dead carcass of a young boy too innocent to die on his own. When I left that balcony, and returned to my chamber, I was that no more. The spell of power had worn off, and I could see myself for the first time in the three years of my rule.

A Dictator.

And had I not entered my chamber, looked up with tears in my eyes, only to be standing in a sea of white mists, I do not know what would have happened to me.

They took me, in my moment of weakness, everywhere. For what I would assume to be the better part of a week, they took me through worlds beyond worlds, horrific image after horrific image. They came hard, fast, quick, I was here one moment, and I was gone the next. I went mad, insane, depressed, all at once with each change. I met companions on my journey for some of it, and lost them on the next.. and then... just like that, I was here. The centre of all worlds. Placed here for something, anything, only the gods would know.

And here I will remain, till the gods see it fit to move me elsewhere. Here I shall stay till it all becomes clear. I retrain myself, I study, I learn as much as I can, in paitence. Even now, the bartender down the road - any road - has sent word that a band of adventurers have come with a story to tell. He thinks it would settle the business with the succubi from last month.

Psh.

What good would some prime do me?

Catherine's Journal.

It feels like years since I stood by the banks of the Thames at Richmond or ankle deep in the dirt of Southwark.  I do not know how long it has been and, in truth, my memories of my life before the mist have become something of a pallid blur.  It is as though the mists have woven a veil between the past and the present, as though there is no way back for me from here, even should I truly remember where home is.

I do not yet understand why the mists bring me what feels like it could be friendship, only to snatch that feint connection away from me once more.  I cannot help but reflect on the encounters I have had with the doctor, the soldier and the magician.  I met them first on a small ship which was set upon by a great serpent of the sea.  It seemed so ridiculous I could scarcely believe that there was any truth to the encounter.  While the others may have been physically far stronger than me, none could take command in a crisis.  Perhaps it was the abject futility of trying to understand that a giant serpent was tearing our vessel to driftwood, but my heart did not tremble and I stood strong.  I would scarce say it was my bravery that saved the lives of those poor men, for it was possibly selfish pride that forced me to find a way ashore.   The sailors did not survive, leaving me with a motley crew consisting of a brute with a sadness behind his bravado, a nervous doctor and a man from a very strange land whose will could flare as though with magick.

The jungle island was a hostile, cruel place, where vicious savages lurked in the shadowy woods.  We happened upon the house of a civilised man who described himself as a surgeon, but how he had arrived there seemed to make no more sense than the monster of the deep whose tentacles had thrashed our ship to pieces.  His daughter was kind to me and allowed me to take spare clothing to replace that which had become water-logged.  Luckily, the girl was slender and the dress a good fit, if a little loose around the midriff.  Less fortunate was being woken in the night by a hellish scream.  My companions rushed to be heroes, only to discover the surgeon treating a wild animal.  I took the opportunity to indulge my curiosity and filled the folds of the dress with vials of something they had called ether.  It smelled heady and noxious and struck me as a dangerous thing to carry.

The surgeon asked us to visit a monastery on the cliff-top, where he said a cult of priests held a relic of great and terrible power and he asked that we wrest it from him.  Sensing that there was perhaps more to this matter, we made our way up to the monks.  The order was a strange and largely silent place with withered old monks shuffling around the cloisters.  The abbot met with us, but his faith had become perverted by isolation, I fear, and he had fallen deep into delusion and sin.  They believed it their sacred duty to protect a stone table that granted them a hollow immortality; they aged eternally but their souls clung to their bodies.

The order filled me with horror and revulsion.  Although we held no particular love for the surgeon, these monks had such a hideous vision of the world that even I considered their actions blasphemy.  We conspired to take their altar away from them that they could no longer leech their profane sustenance from it and that they would be released from their purgatory.  Anger and indignation consumed me and when it seemed we would not escape, I took it upon myself to take the ungodly life of the Abbot that we could freely escape.

When our actions were discovered, the monks revealed their hideous rage and chased us towards the edge of the cliff.  Fortunately, the ether I had purloined proved to be very effective in igniting the straw in the courtyard and creating a blazing barrier between them and us.  The monastery itself took up in flames as we made good our escape.  Taking the relic from them seemed most effective in ensuring that the flames ended their heresy.

While the men carried the ungainly slab through the woods, back to the surgeon's house, we spied a ruckus ahead as the native folk were laying siege to the house.  At first, we were stirred to strike them down and save the surgeon and his household, but then it struck us that he, too, was exploiting the recuperative powers of the table and using its curse to experiment on the local people, fusing their flesh with that of base animals.  Realising that only the savages of the land had any shred of dignity left, we left the table in their custodianship and let it sway the skirmish in their favour.

We fled the island with the help of the daughter only to discover that she too had been a victim of the surgeon's perversion and that she was only part human, the rest being some kind of porpoise.  Had she left with us, she would have been starved of the infernal power that sustained her unhappy life and we left her to swim back to try to bring a little sanity back to the island.

As we watched the smoke billowing from the scorched ruins of the monastery, I wondered if, as my companions suggested, I might possibly continue to travel with them, but when the mists surrounded us, it was in a very different land, and one where I found myself alone and without the strength of three men, however nervous and melancholy they may have been and I was forced to learn to fend for myself in a cruel environment. But that, and the story of the haunter manor in which I met these men again, is a tale for another time, for the mists are closing and I must ensure I do not lose this journal - some day soon I fear it will be the only connection I have to my past as the veil between my homeland and this dark realm grows ever thicker.