COMPLETE! The Wasteland. A woman screams in the night. Spotlights flash on a pile of dust in the desolate patch of land that lay just beyond the tall crosses that picket the boundary of Encampment R-34. A group of curious students leave their bunkho...
MELL'S NOTES BOOK October 28, 2245 Entry #7 - Handwritten
This day is a most-unforgettable for sure. Oh, Bryne. I'm so thankful for him. I hope this discovery will continue to bring us closer, though I fear the opposite.
Where to begin? To say that I was disgusted by what I had read would be an understatement. After only six letters from this Ezzelin, I decided that it would be better to just give the tablet to Bryne the next morning. Over the course of a few days, he read more than thirty-five letters without speaking a word to me beyond noting his progress. Then, last night, he told me at dinner-hour to meet him first thing today on the roof of the building where we found the Chronoscope. The look of surprise on his face expressed that the startling read of the Dracula Index grew increasingly more graphic.
"Was this really necessary?" I asked, climbing the makeshift ladder he had propped against a twisted bunk in one of the empty rooms. I crawled through the hole in the roof and found him staring off at the sunrise.
"I wanted you to see," he said thoughtfully. "We've never been allowed to see most of this valley. Isn't it stunning?"
I agreed and took a seat beside him. Bryne wouldn't look at me. I wanted to ask him right away what he'd read, but I was afraid to hear the news. Almost an hour passed without talking before he handed me the Chrono-tablet. Thankfully, Ireath has been too afraid of what happened to Ficcin, the Scaver, to risk going out, herself. So I waited safely for him to start the conversation, knowing that we had all the time in the world.
"What you're about to read," he began, his legs trembling. "I...I understand why the machine sorted it all before the letters from Jonathan Harker, and the book that Rufus found. The man, Dracula...the one Ezzelin was tracking down for the King of Hungary...he is the infection."
"That doesn't make sense."
"I know it doesn't, Mell. That's why you have to keep reading."
"So," I said with pause, "It's more than just the fighting and torture?"
Bryne nodded profusely. "Much more."
"Okay," I sighed. "I'll get back to reading it tonight. I thought you might want to just tell me what's coming, but —"
"No. No...no...you have to read it for yourself." He shook his head back and forth for a good while before getting to his feet and regarding R-34 from a distance. "You know, if you stand here, you can just see over the hill into our valley. Lenny is out there in the desolate patch. Wonder what he's doing?"
"See, it's so clear to me that there is more to this than just an infection. Why all the mystery, and the protection from the Priests? Maybe there is another dust mound out there. Or maybe Kumpan's back to sell his amulets?" I wondered aloud, not expecting the reaction I would get.
Bryne nearly fell over as he spun in place to look back at me. "I...I really need you to catch up to me, Mell. There's so much I never understood. And now...it's like..."
He trailed off.
Minutes of silence passed between us.
"What? What is it?"
"It's all clear to me. Everything," he muttered with a mesmerized tone. "Everything that ever happened. Everything that brought us here. It makes sense now. It's as if the Chronoscope knew exactly what I wanted to hear, and then gave me the answers, one confusing note at a time."
At those words, I immediately wanted to start reading. "So, this isn't all a mistake? Really? You know where we came from? How it all started? Where everyone else went?"
"Yes. Yes. And yes."
"And you seriously won't tell me anything?" I begged, catching his gaze.
"I'll tell you this. You know that the first letters are written by Ezzelin von Klatka, as he searches for Prince Vlad and finds him. In the next letters, you'll read how he fights with Vlad's army, and then returns to him after twelve years," Bryne explained, while pacing the roof. "Then there are five or six letters from a Knight named Woislaw from two hundred years later."
"What's a Knight?"
"I think it's just a title. There are a lot of titles and names of regions in these letters. You have to just look past them."
"Fine, then what?"
"It jumps almost three hundred years more to a man named Morley and then ends another century later with a whole bunch of information from multiple sources. It's...difficult to put into words, but necessary."
"Why jump so far ahead?"
He lowered his chin to his chest and mumbled, "You'll understand why. Trust me."
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