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8 to Wakening Sun, Inalis, 43 days remaining

Heh, so Clio and Briar thought to check on Torag since he kind of disappeared after the whole “where is the dragon egg incubator?” fiasco started. I decided to tag along since I’m Briar’s walking buddy right now and she’s still teetering on her new legs. We found a sign on the door to Torag’s room that read, “Closed, do not disturb”. Clio ignored the sign and knocked anyway. Torag opened the door only a bit and peered out at us, his eyes wild.

“Let us in, Torag,” said Clio. “I need to help you bond to your dragon.” But Torag would not budge. He mumbled something about trusting us, which is a very Shadow thing to say. Clio kind of just pushed a bit more and we all got a glimpse of what was inside.

I think he’s a little concerned about the missing incubator. There are rather crude images of us and I think all of the crew hung up on the walls, with little bits of twine connecting them. I’m a little offended that my drawing is so poorly done. And I think Briar is a little offended that her drawing has both tiefling and centaur traits. Really, Torag? Four legs and wings?

Anyway, Actaeon has suddenly decided to take up the case of locating the incubator. He kept slinking around the ship, muttering things like “I’m on the case” and “Crime never sleeps on the ocean”. He looked around Briar’s room for quite some time before going to interrogate Estor Arkelander. Good luck with that, my friend!

Well, it’s late and we’re all a bit tired. Father has already gone to sleep, and Briar and Clio have gone their own ways already. Pity, I was hoping to have a little night cap with them. Maybe some other night.

7 to Wakening Sun, Inalis, 42 days remaining

I got woken up a little earlier than expected today. Father was standing over my bed, much to my surprise, and asked me if I could keep a secret. I mean, sure, I can do that. I kept my true identity a secret from you, Shadow, for like two weeks before we met up with the others! Hehehe. But yes, I told him, I could do that for him. He took me downstairs to the lowest deck and into the food storage room.

Now, real quick, Heath, there’s been something going on here on the Gjallarhorn for a few days now. The blueberries are missing. Someone is eating them. Or rather, stealing them. I thought Father was going to admit that to me, but instead he showed me the dragon egg incubator!

The mystery of the missing blueberries will have to wait. Or perhaps we can commission Actaeon to find the truth of that matter.

I was at first very excited to see that he had found the incubator and questioned him on why it was down here. Shadow moved it here on purpose as he had just acquired his own dragon egg – an egg that was sitting in the incubator at this very moment! He was nervous to show the others the egg, and I think it was because Torag had just found his egg, too. Those two are always competing and perhaps this was one thing Father did not want to compete on.

Umm… Alright, so I might have been in the wrong about some stuff here. We figured we ought to take the incubator back upstairs, but how would we explain its disappearance and reappearance? In my head, I thought up this elaborate prank. Here was my plan:

• Shadow sneaks the incubator back upstairs and places it in Briar’s room
• Briar wakes up and sees it and thinks “Oh boy, I’m so silly! I can’t believe I missed it. Here’s the incubator, everyone!”
• We all have a good laugh about how silly Briar is before Father and I confess what we did
• We hatch two dragons and all is well!

Here’s how it actually went…

We couldn’t move the incubator into Briar’s room again without Zirconis noticing. He’s just barely hatched and, like all children, doesn’t sleep when he’s supposed to. We can’t sneak it past him, so I decided to distract Briar and Zirconis by showing them a sunrise and one of my morning prayers. Zirconis was interested already, but Briar was difficult to get moving. When I got her to the top deck and showed her how we pray to the sun, she just kinda dozed off while standing up. She wanted to go back downstairs, but caught Pholon’s eye (by the way, Pholon was doing a lot of weird stretches. I should do that, too. Probably make my back feel really good) and went to talk. I didn’t want Zirconis to go back downstairs to the book he had been reading, so I distracted him with a magic wand.

I probably shouldn’t have given the baby dragon a magic wand. I definitely shouldn’t have run away when he accidentally used it on Briar and steamed her hair into really funny curls.

I figured that was enough time for Shadow to sneak the incubator back into Briar’s room, so I headed down to my room and shut the door tight, hoping Briar wasn’t mad. Spoiler alert: she was very mad. Then she got somehow madder when she went into her room and saw the incubator. Somehow, I got blamed for it! I was with you the whole time, Briar, how could I move the incubator? Perhaps it was here the whole time and you just missed it, right? Well, she shot down that idea pretty quick. Actaeon, she reminded me, had been inspecting her room the night before.

Aha! It must be Actaeon, then! My prank was going perfectly! Now no one suspects me at all!

Or so I thought. Briar called a group meeting in her small room and Clio started reading the minds of everyone in the room to see what was going on. Somehow Clio thought I was suspicious even though I was acting very cool the entire time. Anyway, I couldn’t block her mind reading and she figured out the prank pretty fast. To her credit, though, she decided not to spill the beans about Father’s egg. The party was upset about the confusion.

Yes! My prank worked! Now the incubator was back, no one suspected Father at all, and we had some silliness this morning! I am amazing at pranks!

Maybe not amazing. Shadow pranked me back by telling Briar and Clio that I was the one who ate all the blueberries. That’s not true at all! Well, maybe not entirely. I’ve snuck a few here and there, but not enough to be noticeable!

We spent most of the afternoon and evening sailing towards Scorpion Island. I’m almost done with my divine essence. It’s mixed now and just needs to rest for the day. I’ll put magic into it tomorrow and it’ll be totally finished. Briar is going to make something with it, I think.

Speaking of Briar, she and Clio talked to the old man, the one we helped get free from the Isle of Yonder. Briar managed to cure his mania and we learned his name is Enigma. Like me, he’s an outsider to the Emerald Isles. And just as Vanadon-Necroth had predicted, Enigma knew about the Book of Life. He tried to read it but was made catatonic by it somehow. He does not know where the book is now, but knows that it was on an island that isn’t supposed to be here. He and a crew went there, but his crew perished. A sphinx on the island had the book in its possession. The only problem is that he doesn’t know which island it is. Good news, though! There’s another sphinx on Scorpion Island and we plan on asking that one for assistance. Hopefully things go well there.

Since Enigma is feeling better now, Clio abdicated her room in the library to him and Sokrates (oh, yes, Sokrates is in the library now and is working as our cataloguer of information). There was no room for Clio now so she went to find a new place to sleep. Briar’s room is too small now that she shares it with the incubator and Zirconis. I would offer to sleep in there and let Briar and Clio sleep in the medical room, but Briar has things set up a certain way in the alchemy room and I was afraid I’d lose something important.

Briar and Clio decided to go sleep in the captain’s quarters on the bottom deck. Rendu refused to use that room as Arkelander’s specter is haunting it, but Briar and Clio thought of that as a challenge. They got in and immediately began setting up the room to their liking. Who knows where Arkelander has gone now? Probably to haunt some other room on the ship. Hopefully not the chamberpot, though. That would be awful.

Just as we were ready to sleep for the night, we all heard a lot of commotion on the top deck. Our crew spotted a shooting star! We’ve seen a few from time to time, but this one seems to be landing somewhere nearby. Actaeon and Rendu have already spoken to Ilos about charting a course in its direction, and we’re going to see what we find there. Last time we found some star metal and some angry lizardfolk. Hopefully this time we find something less ferocious.