Having spent a full season recuperating in the Kingdom of Scales, learning of its people, its secrets, and its dragons, I elected to depart under cover of night. It was no easy decision, but word had reached me that I was to be brought to the capital in Nest. I cannot say to a certainty what the dragons’ intentions were toward me, but I suspect they felt that having been generous to me for a whole season, I would feel indebted, and might reveal what I knew of Draoidahaek’s secrets.

If my feelings are accurate, then the dragons overestimate their power. I had no desire to return to the Nithera Empire, so I located an old map and noted a small fishing village to the west of Nosfair. From there I cut open a docker (I could not risk their revealing my activities to the Scales’ enforcers, not that I need to justify my actions) and stole his sloop, putting into practice the sailing knowhow I gained when traveling from Creuore to the Kingdom of the Malignant Mind, and from there to Tsul Gazar. By the gods and the archliches, that feels a lifetime past.

I knew the Kingdom of Pandemion could be found due west and based on the maps in my collection, that the eastern shores of Pandemion lack cliffs, each of them being flat beaches of sand, dust, weeds, or stones. With such knowledge on my side, I found my way to Pandemion and believe that upon landing I was only a handful of miles off course. Few magi are trained in the arts of sailing, so I award myself a sense of pride for my accomplishment.

Pandemion is a bizarre place, but this is hardly a revelation to you, dear reader. Everyone knows that Pandemion is the kingdom of chaos, where a mad goblin king reigns, where gladiatorial combats, contests to conquer monster-filled dungeons, obscene and deadly tricks, and weird pageantry are all common. What isn’t quite so well known is the mutability of Pandemion law. It’s not just that the high king can change laws and codes on a whim to suit his daydreams and humor; it’s that anyone with a strong enough personality or cult following can do the same, and there’s little rebuke from civic enforcers. This is not a kingdom fit for blindly obedient dreadnauts, it must be said.

The geography of Pandemion is thankfully not as maddening as that of Iom (I cannot shake that place or the fear that I’m still captive there), though tis strange. Deserts and golden plains make up Pandemion’s heartland. The farther north you travel, the more strewn with hills and plunging valleys, before you reach the frozen north coast. I understand the center of Pandemion’s power is on an island far to the west of my location, but have yet to find a means of travel to Frost Harbor and explore it.

My welcome in Pandemion was scarcely as warm as that in Scales. As dragonkin, many of the elves and goblinoids in this realm looked upon me as a spy or agent of the kingdom I’d recently departed. Telling them I was actually a chronicler from Draoidahaek endeared nobody to me. Instead, it resulted in my being pursued from Lake Driss across the expansive Stinger Fields for sport, along with other suspected agents of foreign powers. I tried to protest, claiming to be hiding nothing, but when the Scorpion Legion appeared on the horizon, I realized any breath I wasted on this master of ceremonies was contributing to my premature demise.

I remind you, dear reader, that doom comes to us all. But this journal has confirmed to me that while doom will come to others soon enough, mine is to be deferred until this work is finished.

Across the Stinger Fields I fled, only occasioning to fight back when enough of us were clustered to form a defensive circle, at which point crowns and sceptres were unleashed. Even as we struck riders from their giant scorpions and cracked open those massive beasts’ shells, Pandemion’s observers applauded and cheered. They celebrated the deaths of their own! This kingdom is bizarre indeed.

It was as the air grew thicker and the ground softer, more mossy and fungal, that I realized Pandemion’s legion wasn’t merely hunting us across the wilderness; they were driving us into the warm, wet, welcoming mulch of Verot.

Allow me to write with clarity on the subject of Verot, good reader. Most thinking entities thereof (they exist, for I have read their work) are dedicants of doom just as I. Do not think this makes them kin or peers to me or my philosophy, however. I believe in a single, mostly painless snuffing out of life and light. I believe this is a worthy cause and an inevitable conclusion for this world. Verot’s doombringers believe in a long, drawn out doom, consisting of infection, mutation, wailing, and agony. They have no respect for the end of things. They want to make the end a desire; to make those infected with this kingdom’s vileness to want nothing more than to embrace the void.

This is a corruption of my philosophy. I know all that I need to of Verot. Nothing can be gained through entering that kingdom and tasting its poison. Therefore, I nestled myself in the hills and low purple mountains of Pandemion, watching my fellow prey as they fled into the “safety” of Verot, the Scorpion Legion and the assembled audiences standing back to witness their exploitation, where it happened within sight.

As a chronicler, I must ask the question whether Pandemion chases folk into Verot to allay the spread of corruption, as with the tributes to dragons made in Scales, or because they are truly so ignorant or uncaring as to not realize the threat that comes with feeding a ravenous monster. When you place morsels into the mouth of such a beast, it does not tame, and it does not become one’s friend. It wants more.

Verot is growing. I witnessed its tendrils snaking across the surface of rocks, bones, and earth. The sooner I find a way out from Pandemion, the safer I shall feel.