In the quadrum of Aprimay, three corpses were found within the northern mountain range. Their possessions and clothing suggest that they used to be caravan folk. With one of them, a journal was found. Out of respect for the deceased, the investigating personell would usually not delve into private belongings, but the cover of the journal had been marked with red letters before the owner finally succumbed to the mountain cold. "Read this when you find me."
- - -
There is a myth among the caravan folk. Few will ever truthfully claim to know its origin, but it lives and thrives among our people, spreading through rumor and superstition. Anyone who has shared enough nights around the cramped caravan campfire knows what I speak of. The mad cannibal. I am writing this because I am afraid the myth has finally shed its deceitful shell of unsettling yet exciting campfire rumor and has become as real as flesh and bone. What I am saying is, I believe I have met them. And it is because of them that I will die here. So I hope that whoever eventually unearths my remains may find this and allow themselves the curiosity to read, to learn and to understand what exactly it is that has happened to me. My time is limited, alas not as limited as I'd prefer. Finding myself stuck with the impossible decision between starvation and the endless cold, my days are numbered, though it is on me to decide that number. As cruel a fate as this is, it allows me the time to give you all that I have.
It seems to surprise people when they learn that handling a trade caravan is a terribly mundane task. Stories of ambushes, drawn out battles with bloodthirsty bandits or starved predators spread like wildfire, yet apart from the occasional illness or broken wheel, there are few things disrupting the peaceful dullness of riding with a caravan. In my years I have witnessed two ambushes and both were a few drugged-up lowlifes who on another day I may have regarded with empathy as poverty-stricken village kids. Believe me, there are few things exciting about endlessly traveling between settlements, exchanging goods for coin and heading back. It is quite boring, but also lonely. And I loved it. Constantly being on the road brings with it the strange quality of seeing so much of the world, while never actually arriving anywhere. In my time I must have seen close to 100 settlements, some grand and impressive, others shoddy and shaken and pitiful. None that ever connected with me. None that ever made me want to stay or care. I was happy in the small wagon with the other lonesome souls and the few pack animals out on the road. Coming from somewhere. Going towards something. Never actually being anywhere.
It must have been after my third or fourth trip that I finally gave up that small abode in the village where I was born. I picked up this job as nothing more than a petty distraction, but even during my first trip I could just not deny feeling so much more than I had anticipated. And returning to your old life after months on the road, it's just not the same. With every trip gone by the time until that feeling of normality returned increased, until eventually it never came back at all. There was no denying it - I had finally found my place in the world. And it was not the cramped room above a bar at the edge of some village I never liked, it was not tilling fields that were not mine, serving beer to strangers that I did not enjoy or crafting arrows for a bow when I did not even know how to fire it. No. It was the vast, lonely freedom of the road. Where the past had never happened and the future never would.
It is a peculiar way of life and it attracts like-minded folks. Lonely drifters with few ties and even fewer responsibilities. There are not many in this line of work that have family or any real friends to speak of. And that makes for pretty shoddy conversation. I learned quickly, even before I abandoned my home, that on the road people do not like to speak - a quality which I had no issue with. But it was when the sun had set behind the great plains and the night shrouded the land in darkness and unknowing, that those who had been quiet all day would finally open their mouths to share the rumors and tales that they had absorbed. Loosened by what little alcohol or herb we carried for ourselves, in the evening hours I would witness these people suddenly begin to smile and talk and share their stories and thoughts. Although no one ever strayed too far from anything caravan-related. They knew better.
It must have been in one of those evening rounds, presumably on one of my earlier trade hauls where I heard the story for the first time. There were many like it, often unsettling and surely misremembered or wildly exaggerated, but the dreadful tale of the mad cannibal was different. When the old man across from me began speaking of the ice sheet up north and asked if any had not heard the story of the mad cannibal I watched the playful cheeriness drain from the faces around me. Few remained as before, mine sure did, for I had not the first idea what the man was talking about. He must have noticed and with a look I could not quite categorize, he began talking.
Nobody knows who first saw or heard them, he said, but it must have been on one of the first trade hauls on the "expanded route". Many decades ago, the traders alliance had decided to expand their network and include some of the more remote settlements - like Ferest, one of the fishing villages far up north. Ever since the great storm had buried large parts of the main road under debris and ice, they had been cut off, locked in by a range of sharp mountains on one side and the frozen sea on the other. But the alliance wanted to change that and after a few months of planning, a new route was declared. It kept mostly to the original path - the most interesting part was the two-day detour to bypass that part of the road that had been blocked and destroyed. It led straight over the ice sheet, a cold and desolate plain for the most part, ravaged all year by terrible icy storms that would block all vision. Navigation was only possible by keeping an eye on the sharp black mountaintops, ever so slightly visible towards the land side. Somewhere within that jagged range was a mountain pass that led, on the other side, to the fishing village. Surely an extreme scenario when it came to weather, but most experienced caravan handlers had survived worse. They had braved the scorching summer desert of Lakan or the occasional snow storm in some other desolate place up north. It was an acceptable risk. This paired with the increased financial incentive offered to those first braving the new route and expanding the reach of the alliance made for optimal conditions. Those who knew their trade had little reason not to sign up and so in rapid succession several caravans crossed the ice sheet and made their way through the new route.
It went well for quite some time, so he told. The weather was no issue for those equipped with the knowledge and apparel to deal with it and the rough road could hardly compare to some of the even more unforgiving terrain many had already witnessed. No, it was easily acquired income for many. And it must have been on one of those trips that the first sightings happened. The man across the campfire explained, that it is unclear who or even how many reported these sightings, but in that lack of clarity lies the issue. It is not unlikely for someone on a caravan to go insane, to suffer some form of mental break and see things that are not truly there - tell tales of marvel and wonder or terror and confusion. In fact it is believed many of the more interesting campfire stories sprouted from the fantasy of some poor rambling fool. But the fact that nobody was able to pin down who started the myth of the cannibal, who was merely reciting what they had heard and who spoke of encounters they genuinely believed to have witnessed, made it hard to discard it as just some madman's rambling. It gave it a strange sense of authority. It was not helped by the fact that the tales many spoke of started to overlap and intersect, as if they had made the same experience at entirely different points in time. They spoke of strange noises on their journey, a piping in the wind or the sound of heavy breathing right behind them. Some say they saw a silhouette in the snow storm, a tall, thin figure watching them from the distance. Others claim they were approached on the mountain by an old man with a long, withered beard who beheld them with a look of strange intensity and oppressiveness. Then some claim, he would smile, not in a friendly way, rather like a preying animal, before being swallowed again by the snowstorm. Some even said they felt him calling to them.
These accounts were frightening and surely made for great horror stories to share with those soon to cross the ice sheet, but rarely more. That was, the man said, until the caravan of Eila Lewin and her brother Marik. I was surprised for a moment when he mentioned their names, for I had heard of them before. They had been a strange pair, on the road together for decades, perhaps a bit of a legend themselves. What I had not learned yet was their fate. As he told it, their caravan, a large group of no less than 16 people were sent on a routine trip to Ferest, but never arrived. The alliance sent scouts after them only a few days later and what they found has been echoed through time from that day on. The scouts found the caravan atop the mountain pass, intact with all wagons just standing there. At first glance it hardly appeared as if anything had happened at all, but as they came closer a terrible scenery unveiled itself.
The first thing they saw was one of the animals, a yak, standing next to a wagon and nibbling on something in the snow. A body - or rather what was left of it. The corpse they found was so mangled and destroyed, they could not even identify if it was a mans or a womans body. Stomach torn open in a gruesome fashion, neck and face ripped apart. In no time the scouts found more dead bodies, strewn around outside the wagons and all of them looked just like the first one. They had large parts of their flesh missing, sometimes entire body parts, often the faces. It appeared as if they had been torn off, ripped from their bones ruthlessly. There was nothing suggesting the use of tools or a knife, no cuts or incisions, rather as if something or someone had just torn the flesh from the bone, the muscle from the tendons, the eyes from the sockets. Animal attacks were out of the question, for there was just no animal that would leave these kinds of marks, especially up here, on the ice sheet. The scouts quickly left behind what they found outside and turned to look inside the wagons. Perhaps some of them were still alive, holed up and waiting for rescue.
No. Inside the wagons the scenery was so much worse. Many were just empty, but there was one were the desecrated bodies of the caravan people were practically piled on top of each other. Blood stained everything inside the wagon, the wares, the floor, the walls. Body parts, loose chunks of flesh and muscle, bones and little frozen clots of blood, all strewn around next to the destroyed corpses of the people they belonged to. Some had their chests torn open, some had their intestines removed, almost all had big chunks of their arms and legs missing, leaving behind bloodied, ugly holes. There was one man whose eyes were still intact and through a bloodied grimace he stared at the scouts in cold, dead terror.
Word of the grotesque scene made its way around the nearby settlements quickly and the alliance gave it their best efforts to suppress them. After all, money was on the line. The human lives lost in the mountains were little more than a bargaining chip, worth some amount of coin depending on how much this horror story would spread. So it was quickly lost in a haze of confusion and misinformation until the population widely regarded it as a myth. The myth of the mad cannibal, who lives on the ice sheet and preys of those who pass. Little more than a scary tale to tell to your kids. But around the campfires of the caravan people this tale had a different feel to it. Some may still regard it as just the ramblings of drunkards or lunatics, but it appears that many think differently about it.
The route over the ice sheet was closed indefinitely, though a different reason was named publicly, of course. Luckily for them, the alliance had no issues dealing with any of the deaths, as us lonely drifters have no one to look for us when we go missing. Still, losing a whole crew and almost the shipment to some crazed mountain beast was apparently incentive enough for them to invest into repairing the road. It took a few months, a huge financial loss, but it seems the alliance found it worthwhile. Not worthwhile enough to go searching for the corpses they never found though, but that's just what it is. "Carried off by the beast", they told us. "It had always been a group of 14", they told the public. After that for years, trades continued as normal. To this day no one had dared or deemed it important enough to look into what had truly happened on that mountain pass.
There the man concluded his tale and from the muted reactions around me I could tell that many saw within this tale more than a mere horror story. I sensed a tension in the air that felt quite alien to me. The mundane tranquility of the caravan had been broken. Few words were spoken before we all retired and the images that had crept into my mind haunted me all night. But with the rising of the morning sun and the promise of a new day on the road, quickly the imagery of terror faded and my life returned to the quiet predictability that I had grown to love so much. I did think of the cannibal again. Here and there the thought would pop into my head and at some point during my career I even heard the tale again, retold a little differently, but being accustomed to it now the shock did not grasp me the way it did before. The myth was now a part of my life as a caravan handler.
It would have stayed that way, I'm sure, had it not been for that terrible storm a few months ago. For years the main road upwards to the icy oceans and its many villages, Ferest and her brothers and sisters, had held firmly and supplied the alliance with a never before seen amount of trade, both in quantity and quality. Fine wares and even finer payments, hauled across the land day by day. That made the ambushes increase slightly in their amount and intensity, but the newfound resources meant the alliance could finally afford increased security. Some of us now held rifles, our blades were sharper and sturdier and while I never got to use either, I felt safer knowing our equipment was in good shape. Any brigand would surely know this and even if they did not, they would learn quickly. Everything was working out, quality of life and labor increasing steadily and predictably. But all that changed when the storm hit. It was not even particularly bad - previous ones had hit the land in much more critical places, washing out fields and damaging villages with lighting strikes and falling trees. This one, while just as intense if not more, had decided to bring down its fury somewhere in the mountains and so it was more a spectacle than a threat. It was when we heard the rumbling, that we understood something more must have happened.
Soon we had our suspicions confirmed. I was stationed in Exhem at the time, one of the many villages close to the mountain belt and watched as one of the caravans sent out just days before, returned to us with all their animals still loaded and the handlers visibly upset. It had happened again. A barrage of rubble, stone and ice had swept down from one of the mountaintops and buried part of the road, precisely that part of the road which had been hit before. It seemed almost too outlandish to believe, but true it was all the same. The alliance member who was calling the shots at the Exhem post, a young woman by the name of Stilton, appeared immensely frustrated with the news and having been part of the team for so long it was no surprise to me. This was no longer about that single shipment; with this trade route compromised all the expansion of the previous years was now in danger and even worse, the whole alliance might lose sustainability over this. To be honest, I think we all knew that. And so it was that the old detour was swiftly and quietly reinstated and it was then that I first thought of them again. The cannibal. I remembered why that route had been closed in the first place and looking around I was uncertain if anyone beside me shared that knowledge. Even Stilton seemed to have no idea of the myths that had been told of that route ever since its closure. Or perhaps she just knew not to speak of it.
I was hardly surprised when she assigned me to go along with the group. I find it hard to explain this sensation, but the moment she mentioned we would fall back on the route across the ice sheet I just knew I would be one of the first to go. Not that I wanted. I was looking forward to the taiga trip I had signed up for, but this was just the way it had to be. There was no confusion or questioning when I picked up my gear, loaded my bag and joined the others at their wagons - I was meant to go on this trip. I was meant to cross the ice sheet with them.
It began like any other tour. Given our comparatively small load and the increasing demand for workers our troupe was limited to seven people. But with two rifles and my years of experience I felt safe enough. Looking back I think I would have felt even safer without the rifles, although in the moment I could not explain that. We traveled the road until we reached the new blockade and truly its size had not been exaggerated. The amount of rubble that had swept down the mountain was staggering. It would take a well-trained crew months to remove all this debris. It was as if someone had deliberately tried to prevent anyone from travelling the road normally, with all their might. There was no way anyone was making their way through that, let alone a caravan with carts and animals. So we made our way off the road. The canyon we passed through sheltered us from the snowstorms for quite some times, but when we finally made it onto the barren plains of ice, the howling wind and the icy thorns it carried cut through my face no matter which way I looked. Any description I had heard of this place had been accurate, the black jagged mountaintops guided us, but where we were, between them and the icy sea, there was nothing at all. Nothing but the cold, the storm and the constant howling.
It took me a while to notice the music in the wind. The wind's howl would shift in pitch ever so often, would change in its volume and intensity and after a while I was stunned to recognize a melody beneath it. There was this faint piping tune, somewhere underneath the howling of the storm, somewhere underneath the noise of the wagon wheels crashing against the uneven surface, somewhere underneath the shivering of my bones. There was strange music in this place. I looked around, tried to see if any of my companions were playing, maybe trying to brighten the mood, but they too were hidden inside their parkas and hoods, wrapped in clothing to shield them from the cold. Nobody was playing. Of course not.
We made it to the peak of the mountain pass the very same day. I was surprised that we had come this far in such short time, but now that we had made it we were stuck on that peak with the sun going down. The storm was even stronger up here and the others had already brought the three wagons into a triangular formation, so they may give us some shelter from the wind in its center. A small campfire was crackling in the middle and a few people were huddled around it. I joined them quickly, for warmth more than for companionship and the lack of any shared stories or anecdotes gave me the feeling that the others had the same idea. We just sat there. It was obvious none of us were quite as comfortable as we would like to be, but the bravely blazing flames in our midst kept us glued there, a small refuge from the frozen wastes around as. At least for as long as it was still going.
Eventually the sun set behind the icy black sea to our west. There was no actual way to see the sun setting through the thick whirling snowstorm, but the light around us slowly faded until the glimmering fire was all that was left to illuminate the faces and bodies of those around it. We let it burn out and one by one we retired to the carts, hoping to find the protective arms of sleep quickly, where we could not feel the cold and live in our world of dreams until the next morning brought back the light and the warmth.
I shared my wagon with Ariana, a stranger. I had not met her before on any of the other trips so spending the night with her in the cramped interior of our cargo wagons was not a comfortable prospect, but compared to the outside it felt almost luxurious. So I fell asleep rather quickly, seeking my escape from the cold and discomfort all around me. In my dreams I found myself wandering the icy plains we had just crossed. I pierced the endless veils of snow and ice, thrown around by the howling wind, traversed the infinite plains in their entirety. It was an almost serene experience, peaceful. But then I heard that music again. It began quietly, a hint of melody somewhere in the howling of the storm, but I could not pretend I did not hear it. I recognized it instantly.
So I followed. Blinded by the snow I did not know where exactly I was going, but I stumbled my way ever closer to the source of that sound. That wondrous, terrible music. I can not remember when exactly I noticed that it scared me. When I had heard it before in the caravan, I had felt nothing special at all, I just found it strange. Now I was terrified. Something about those soothing piping sounds, their dreadful tranquility, was just so terribly wrong. And yet I moved closer. The only thing more intense that my fear at that moment must have been my excitement and curiosity. I just had to know. Had to know what made that sound. And what about it made me feel so powerless.
Without even noticing I had scaled the mountain. The same mountain my caravan was sleeping on. But in my dream no one was there. The little landing near the steep cliff face was clear of any intruders, the snow untouched by human and animal alike. The music was the loudest here, though strangely enough it barely felt as if it had grown in volume at all. Rather in its intensity. As if the vibrations it sent through the whirling snow, through the empty plains were much stronger up here and I could feel them. I looked around, searching for the source and it was not long before I saw him. Although that is not quite right, I feel. I did not see him until much later, but I was aware of his presence right from that moment. Felt it in the music, felt him come closer. He had been waiting in the snowstorm. Waiting for me to scale the mountain. And now he came towards me.
When I finally saw his silhouette approach through the wall of snow the music faded quickly. Suddenly everything was quiet. Just the murmur of the storm surrounding me and this stranger. He was tall and thin, wrapped in a robe of some sort, a faded royal blue. Both his hands and feet were bare, exposed to the snow, but it did not seem to bother him. His skin was grey and weather-beaten. A long, scraggly beard fell from his otherwise hairless face, his eyes beheld me with an intense expression and their color matched that of his robe perfectly. He looked directly at me as he came closer. I think I was scared. I think I was shaking. But it was not the cold, no, I felt warm. Warmer than I had on any of the past days for sure. No, I was shaking with fear and a strange excitement. Something about this man seemed so strangely familiar. Nothing about his face or clothes or even his expression, no, but the energy within him seemed as old as time. So obviously familiar to me, that I almost felt shameful now that I had not recognized it sooner. He stood right before me, a good two meters between us, and still he beheld me with those eyes of ice. I knew what would happen next.
Not breaking eye contact he raised his spindly arm, so the robe slid back, revealing the grey skin. He brought it up to his face and with no hesitation he sank his teeth into his flesh. Immediately cherry-red blood poured from the torn wound, flowing forth and down his arm into the undisturbed snow beneath us. His eyes called to me and I did what they asked. With my left hand I slowly pulled back the cloth covering my right arm, all the way, exposing it to the cold and the snow. I felt warm. Not hot, just comfortable. Peaceful. I watched as the man tore the chunk of flesh from his arm, watched the tendons snap and the blood trickle down onto him, before he finally closed his mouth around it and swallowed it whole. His teeth were tainted red and his face was wild. I let no time pass. I felt my teeth pierce my skin and the pain it caused me was like nothing I had felt before. My entire arm, from the elbow to my hand was searing white pain. But I did not stop. Blood squirting from beneath my teeth, I tore and yanked and eventually freed the chunk from my skin. I screamed, through my closed teeth with such a screeching affect that I felt it through my entire throat. A searing white agony radiated through my arm. I powered through. I know I had to. So I chewed for a moment, savored the strange, wonderful taste and swallowed.
I awoke to screaming. Terrified I looked around. The pain in my arm had subsided, but for just a moment I want to check if what I had dreamt was real. Looking down I saw my arm, intact and covered by my anorak, but covered in a dark liquid. Coated in it. Part of me then knew it was blood. I think that part even knew whose it was. But I didn't or at least I did not want to know or believe, I was terrified. I heard the screaming again. It was one of the caravan-men, outside by our fireplace. The squeals he made sounded terrible, tortured. I jumped out of my wagon to see what was going on. There was chaos out there. I saw the screaming man in the middle of our formation, over the burnt-out remains of last nights fire. Next to him two people lied face-down in the snow. Even from where I was standing and with all the layers of clothes they were wearing, I could tell their bodies were mangled and deformed. The same was true for the screaming man. His left hand was entirely missing and from his opened jacket flowed forth a spill of bright red blood, tainting the snow beneath it.
"What happened?" I heard a panicked voice and turned to see one of the other caravan-folk rush to the man on the ground. He was just now taking in the situation and was clearly in a panic, gasping. The dismembered man did not stop screaming, wailing in his consuming, gruesome pain. "What happened to you?" the other asked again, looking around at the corpses, then back at the man. But the man was not able to produce more than a gurgling sound. His desperate hand clutched the face of the other, smearing his blood all over it. He gurgled but he could not speak. Then he saw me, standing behind the other, and shakily he took his hand of his face. His face sunk and for a moment the pain disappeared, as it was swallowed by an emotion even more intense. I had never seen someone this afraid before. He pointed at me and screamed. The other one quickly turned around, followed the outstretched finger, but relaxed when he saw it was only me. He hastily got up, wanted to ask me something it seems, but as he looked me up and down he quickly choked back the words he had. Instead he asked me something else, his voice now shaky. Uneasy. Confused.
"Why do you have Arianas rifle?"
Looking down I saw her rifle in my hand. I knew it was loaded. "I dont know" I stammered as I pointed it at his stomach and pulled the trigger. A crackling shot tore through the icy wasteland, before being choked out by the storms howling. The screams that followed was terrible. Guttural wails of agony and approaching demise. He had trusted me. The part of me that still felt, still acted on its own accord, was terrified. But it was no use. My role in this was clear to me. I knew what had to be done.
The calculations happened without me even thinking. Two of us down near the fireplace plus two more just now. Absent-mindedly I wandered back to the wagon that I had stepped out of and peered inside just to be certain. Sure enough, Arianas brutalized corpse was still there, lifeless and desecrated, blood pooling and staining the boards beneath her, draining away into the endless snow below. Now there was just one left. Knowing which wagon I had dragged the other two corpses out of made it easy, now only one remained. With my rifle raised I approached the hiding place of my final victim. There was no sound beside the constant droning of the snowstorm. Either the man was still inside, biding his time, hoping to get the drop on me or just wait it out... or he had fled into the snowstorm? It mattered little to me, although I felt that some part of me preferred the former option. Without warning a loud crackling sound rang out and a bullet tore through the coach door before me, missing my arm just barely. "Stay back" came an unsteady voice from within, "My rifle's fully loaded and I'm not afraid to kill you!"
He was bluffing, no doubt, but even so, the risk of engaging this man on his own terms appeared senseless to me. To some part of me. A hunt is not a hunt if the victim gets a fair chance. At least it's not a hunt one should participate in. "It's me!" I shouted back at him, trying my hardest to mask the ever increasing wildness in my voice, "I killed him!". I almost felt disgusted with myself. So warm and friendly and reassuring, I was playing the part of my life. And to what end?
He did not buy it anyway. Screamed back at me with fury that he heard what had been said before the gunshots. That he knew it was me. That I had to come up with something different. I thought about just peppering the cart with my rifle until I heard screaming. But in the end I just used some of the fuel we had loaded to set the whole thing ablaze. When he eventually emerged from his hiding place, all charred and burnt and screaming, I did not even need the rifle to kill him. Just pushed him down into the snow and tore out his jugular. His eyes, his cheeks, his heart. Tore apart everything until he was no longer recognizable. And then I ate. Enjoyed every last bit of my kill. Sat there, fat and filled and content, like a spider in its web. The others would last me a few more days too.
I do not know how much time I spent in that destroyed camp among the eviscerated bodies of my companions. I do not know what exactly I did to them, how much I ate, how much I shivered and shook and screamed in anticipation and ecstasy. But the rush wore off eventually. The part of me that had been terrified and disgusted all this time was finally getting louder again and reminded me of who I was. Or who I used to be. It was so obvious that I had changed, although it was hard to describe in what way. That cruel, hungry, devastating energy within me, it hardly felt unfamiliar, but some part of me still knew that it had not always been this way. But what had changed, what exactly had happened and when, I was not able to say. It mattered little, for now it was I that was hunted. Not by beast or human, but simply by the elements. My resources had run out, my grotesque feast had finally come to an end and I was in desperate need of shelter. The animals had left long ago and I was in no shape, physically or mentally to just return to the world I had left behind. No, I could never do that. So I began moving.
As I left the campsite and slowly marched towards one of the mountain-tops I heard a cruel laughter in the wind. It was hard to tell apart from the howling, but I'm sure of it. And despite not seeing him, I knew exactly who it was. And he was laughing and laughing as if the greatest theatre had just taken place. I am not sure for how long I wandered, but it could not have been more than one or maybe two hours. The biting cold was almost too much to handle and had I not found that cave in time, I surely would have frozen to death where I was standing.
There in that black maw in the middle of the icy wastes the laughter was echoing the loudest and with such an intensity that for a few moments I was sure it would cause the entrance to collapse. But then, as I set my foot over the threshold it ebbed and ended quickly. I lit the lantern I had brought along and slowly, carefully made my way inside the cave. It was here, in the middle of nowhere, somewhere among the pitch-black mountain tops that I found the solution to a mystery that had haunted me and many more for so long. Not far from the entrance, in a little crevice I found them. Next to a few empty boxes of rations and a burnt out torch lay dead Eila and Marik Lewin. The two missing bodies from the caravan, here in their mountain tomb. Preserved by the endless cold, it almost appeared as if they were simply dreaming. Nothing that I could see in the dim light suggested the use of force or violence, no their lifeless bodies had an almost peaceful quality. But there was blood. Blood on their hands, under their fingernails and a thick layer of dark muddy red along with chunks of what I can only assume was loose flesh around their mouths. Surely not their blood at all.
So I sat down next to them. Next to these two strangers who too must have met the cannibal of the ice sheet. Who too must have heard the piping flute and the cruel laughter. Who too must have torn off their own flesh in a pact they never truly understood nor its implications they comprehended.
It is here, next to my brother and sister that I will find my end. The cold gnaws on me and I can only hope that my next slumber will bring a swift and peaceful end. And I hope that whoever finds this is smart enough to not follow the ominous tunes, to not dream the dreams of violence and death, to not wander the endless wastes at night. If my journey brings anything of value I hope it is the understanding that no human should ever cross the ice sheet again.
Farewell.
