Journal of a Wizard

*written by candle light in the dark hours before dawn, shortly after the cleansing of the Death House*

I began this journey with much doubt, both in the quest and myself.  Certainly I was useful to my home, defending it in times of great need against mundane threats such as goblins or orcs.  This though, to travel to a foreign land and cleanse of it a curse that has sunken into the very land itself over the course of four centuries?  We were not properly prepared for such a journey, and that inexperience lead us into an echo of evil.

Evil acts don't always end when those committing them cease their existence on this plane. When the method used to end evil is by perpetuating more of it, that evil can act as a catalyst to take mortal wrongdoing and warp it into a threat far more dangerous than the original doers could have ever imagined.  That is what happened at this house, and the reason sleep evades me.  While in that abomination, we discovered the lost souls of two children.

My first instinct was to assist them, for they knew not the reason or means of their binding to the place.  That instinct was replaced by terror when...I find it difficult to write this, or even think of it...I became possessed by one of the spirits.  The feeling of having my own consciousness pushed so casually aside and replaced by something alien was beyond my meager training, beyond anything I could have comprehended before it happened.  My body was animated as if it were a flesh puppet, the strings pulled by the possessing entity towards its own goals while I was incapable of stopping it.  Being helpless in ones own body is an experience I wish upon none.

Even now I find it difficult to close my eyes, the memory of the spirit asserts itself whenever I try to let sleep take me.  The act of casting it out of myself wasn't triumphant, it was the terrified, soul struggle that happens when one is truly in danger.  I didn't cast out the ghost with the strength of will, I did so with every mote of fear I could muster.  Once you've let that kind of fear out, one has trouble putting it back in its cage.

So, for now, I write, and study ways to protect myself from something of this nature befalling me, or my companions, ever again.