Entry Hundred and Six

Alexis:

Entry Made: 7th of the Month of the Noble Shield, in the Seven Hundredth and Fourteenth Year of the Holy Empire

Pure's request to get a team to help clear out the upper floors of the Labyrinth of some predatory birds was granted by Jules earlier this morning before he left on today's journey to the Labyrinth.

While times are hard and resources are tight, none of the people involved were being called on to make Labyrinth trips any time soon, and easy access to the upper levels of the Labyrinth for the purpose of gathering materials remains a pressing we had little reason to refuse him, especially since this does not seem like the sort of trip that would end up taking very much time.

It was around noon that there was a sudden disturbance from the direction of the Labyrinth, and everyone in the vicinity raised their gaze up to where swarms of birds had taken flight from the centre of the labyrinth. There was a large enough number of them that they blocked out the sun for at least a moment.

I suppose that is the matter of the wild birds being settled, at the least.

On to other matters. Asmodeus has come to me and said that he believes that the magma caverns just below the Deep City is tied to the investigation of the Porcelain Offering in some way. When I asked him to elaborate on the matter, he shrugged and admitted that he was at a loss to explain exactly how the subjects were related, only that they were.

Given the current situation, I can hardly see how we have the manpower to expand our search to the Molten Caves as well. I told him that while it may be a lead, I can't expand the search teams to more than what he already has available. He accepted this, though with obvious ill grace.

Although, now that I am writing about it, I do recall that there is something – someone – locked deep within the Molten Caves. Someone who is closely related to the Deep Ones. I've no idea how he might be able to solve the current problem – or indeed if he's even interested in trying. But I admit that I am running low on ideas.

Scraps has been acting irritable lately. If nothing changes, I might need to seek out an animal doctor and ask his opinion.

Jules

The second floor of the Porcelain Forest had strange sheep-like creatures roaming about. Given the way other denizens of the forest stayed well clear of the sheep's path, I have to assume that it's a tougher fight than most of the others. I wonder if it would be a match for the giant insects.

Probably not.

Evading them would not have been a problem, except there area also had patches of strange spongy moss that severely slowed our movement. In any case, we were nearly caught several times and we had to work to shake off pursuit more than once.

Upon returning to the labyrinth, I was accosted by Sidney requesting for permission to take a team to the Tower of Victory and to attempt clearing out the creature that lurks within.

Under normal circumstances I would have been happy to let her do it, but we're pretty much at an all-hands-on-deck situation as is. I was about to ask her if the situation really couldn't wait a week or two when Rossa jumped in.

Apparently the Tower of Victory used to belong to Armoroad – there should be documents that date to before the Calamity. If we freed the Tower, it's possible we might find something there that would help us.

Well, I ended up agreeing. I don't think Alexis was very happy with it, but she deferred to my judgement. I offered to help with the exploration tomorrow, as a way of making up for the shortage in manpower, but she waved it off and told me that ensuring everyone was well rested still took priority.

She also shared with me the possibility of the Eldest One knowing something about the princess and the Abyssal King. It's possible that this is the case. One issue after another, but still nothing will get done if we don't proceed forward.

I can only wonder where the king and the princess are, right now, and how long it will take before one finds the other.

Tinker

Hoo! Today sure was a sight.

I'd heard from some of the folks still in the navy about how the birds were raising hell in the first floor of the Labyrinth. Apparently one of the old timers remembers the last time it happened. Said it was done by to a king and queen bird declaring it mating season and then the rest of the flock will all fall in and start squawing nice as you please.

Well at least it gave us a target to look for. Otherwise we could've blown up the featerfaces 'till the cows came home and get nothing to show for it.

Once you figure you're looking for the ones in charge, it was actually pretty easy – find a large clearing in the area where they can be mostly uninterrupted. Can't say my senses let me down this time.

Once there though, the birdies took quite a bit of killing, and no mistake! The king even stood up to one of my custom explosive rounds!

But when all's said and done, we polished the two of them off, and that was the end of the bird problem. At least for now.

They'll be back sooner or later, but for today we can rest easy. Nice work, Dwayne. We really did it out there. Now, I'm right nackered and I'll probably get an early night.

Adrian

Mood: ...Proud? Kinda?

Pure shared the story with me yesterday of how the birds had infested the higher levels of the Labyrinth and how he wanted to help clear them out.

I know he's pretty motivated by the bottom line, and I guess that getting rid of the birds in this case helps him too. But he's still decided to initiate something like this on his own. And he followed us into battle against the birds too. 'Course he couldn't hit 'em for nuts, but he'd learned enough healing to keep me and the others topped up, so he still contributed pretty well.

After the fight I went up and slapped him on the back to tell him he did all right. At that point he went down like a sack of potatoes. Guess all that healing took more out of him than I'd realized.

Maybe Sidney and I are rubbing off on him more than I thought.

Oh yeah! Speaking of Sidney she's heading out before sunrise tomorrow. Something about fighting a giant monster out on the sea. Man, I kinda wish I could've gone along, but I guess today's job of fighting through a small army of homicidal birds was fulfilling in its own way. And Master tells me that I need to rest and properly recover from today's fight. Well, it's a pain, but given how hard we're driving to clear the Porcelain Forest, I guess we all need to keep an eye on efficiency.

Guess I'll just be up early tomorrow to see her off. Master shouldn't have any objections to that.