Stay awake. Just gotta stay awake.
It’s been days now. I don’t know how I’m still standing, much less thinking. The text in these books swims before my bleary eyes. I have to find something, some way to undo this, some loophole. There has to be. There has to be! She can’t…damn, where was that passage? Kirar, Nazzulshen? Damn it all to hell!
If I sleep, she comes. If she comes…I don’t want to think about it. I can’t think about it. I’ll pull this whole damn tower down on our heads before I let that happen.
Why did I agree? Why did I make that bargain? Curiosity, I know. I needed to know the unknowable, to commune with the Things Beyond, to understand things we WEREN’T MEANT TO UNDERSTAND! GAH!
Damn it. I think I broke my hand. And there’s no way I’m going to find anything now that I’ve upended my desk. Even the pain is fuzzy through the fog of sleep-need. My foolish pride. My damned certainty that this day was something I could avoid, or stall forever. I don’t know if I ca—
What?! Who’s—oh, Naeris. No, just frustrated, that’s all. I apologize for the noise. Back to sleep with you, now. And close the door behind you.
….
If I’d only damned myself, I could accept that. But I staked two souls on this bargain, and damn it…DAMN IT!
I know what I have to do. I hope I can stay awake long enough to do it.
Naeris, when we meet beyond this life, I pray you can forgive me.
All right, vile thing. Try to dig our bodies from beneath the rubble. Try to pull our souls from the beyond.
Come claim us if you can.
