Dear Diary
Do you think I'm drawing myself too tall these days? I mean, I'm not really that much taller than Marigold, but when you spend your time being a part of a band of great heroes, it's easy to forget that, and draw youself as one of them. I must remember to keep that in check. Today's pictures are particularly flattering, please don't think I look like this.
Anyway, where was I? Oh yes, we'd just defeated the undead boar when I finished writing this morning. While I wrote, the others searched around the area, but the aura of evil in Highglum wasn't in this part of the building. Ayeena led us through to the other half of the ground floor, where we found a haybarn containing a shrine to Chauntea with a big round statue of her. The statue looked sad, I think that was mostly because her scythe had been taken, and we decided to keep an eye open for it so it could be returned. Marigold spotted a trapdoor which I guess would lead to the tunels to the towers outside. Someone had been rather irresponsible and left a spiky table where it would fall on whoever opened the trapdoor, and Marigold made it safe for us all.
The shrine also contained a ledge, which Vincent was kind enough to boost me up to so I could have a look around. After all, scambling around small dusty ledges isn't the kind of dirty work befitting heroes. Other than the table, there also happened to be a pile of tools, and the ickiest nastiest looking shrine I've ever seen. The thing was a pile of skulls glued together with wax, surrounded by black candles, Ewww! I reached out to take off the holy symbol and show it to the others but as I touched it I got a really cold feeling in my arm and a deep scary voice ordered me to go away. Vincent helpfully mentionned the symbol looked like a symbol of Shar, and that this was probably the cause of the unrest in the monastery.
Just as we were making a plan for how to deal with this, a... ghostly thing appeared, and attacked us all. The explosion it created threw me across the ledge, knocking me to the floor, and I lost sight of all of the others. I've never been more scared in my life, trapped by an evil spirit without any friends to protect me, so I decided to get out of there as fast as I could. I dodged sideways and jumped back to the floor, barging through the shrine for good measure on the way. The fall winded me a little bit, but at least I managed to get the holy symbol to Vincent so he could break it.
It's funny how when you're caught in the middle of a melee you hardly remember anything. I remember the fight lasting a very long time, with everyone fighting as hard as they could - even me! although it seemed to shrug off every attack I made, making me feel even more inadequate than I usually do. Vincent and Argent were particularly amazing, burning it with light and fire, but I don't remember much else. I do recall that we all used pretty much every trick we'd ever learnt, and that it sat there happily soaking it up and throwing explosions around. In the end Vincent impaled it on his spear, and held it still so Terato could fill it with arrows and kill it.
With the ghost destroyed, we went back to looking around the ledge. Marigold and Vincent hopped up with me to make sure nothing else attacked me. Vincent destroyed the shrine properly, and Marigold helped me get the table down to the floor. The pile of stuff was mostly useless junk, but it did contain some coins, which marigold got particularly excited about. I don't know why yet, we don't have any use for coins. Also in the pile was a book of rituals that we gave to Argent, who seemed genuinely delighted for a change, and a big square magical rock with a hole in it. That last I lashed onto a haft in order to make up a magic hammer. When the haft was in the right place, the rock helpfully fused itself to the haft, making what turned out to be quite a nice weapon. I then offered it to the heroes, who all declined, each favouring their own weapons instead, so now Vincent's teaching me to fight with it. I'm not very good yet, but he thinks he can teach me to at least look after myself.
I know the hammer looks awfully big, but it's surprisingly light, and I can just about wave it around with one hand. It is a little weird having a magical weapon to fight with, I'm convinced that it's... watching me. No, I'm probably just being silly, everyone knows magic weapons are just the same as ordinary weapons, just more effective.
Yesterday's entry got cut a bit short because after the big fight we were all too tired to continue, and we retired to one of the towers to rest for the evening. Apparently this area isn't as quiet as we'd thought, since we were visited by stirges and an earth elemental in the night, but Vincent scared the stirges away, and Terato talked to the elemental and convinced it to leave us alone. I didn't know Terato could speak earth elemental! He's just full of surprises.
In the morning we set out to finish clearing the monastery of evil, and we checked out the second floor. New hammer in tow, I tagged along to see if I could be any help. Ayeena and Terato scouted ahead up the stairs to make sure it was safe for the rest of us. As I was catching up, I was greeted with the sight of a skeleton throwing Ayeena (full of arrows) off the top of the stairs. This seemed to upset everyone enough that we fought extra hard, and dispatched all of the skeletons quite quickly.
Looking around the top floor, all we found was a magic axe-head. Having learnt from the hammer earlier, I made it into a magical battleaxe, which I gave to Ayeena to cheer her up after the fight. She seems to quite like it. With the Monastery clear, we checked around for more signs of evil, but while the aura remained, there were no more monsters. We'd also not found the healing spring or the scythe, so I guess they're in the tunnels. We're going there just as soon as we've got our breath ba- oops! Time to go!