"I say old beans, I do believe this is my father's journal."  Arngeirr had remembered his father telling him that this was where he recorded everything important about his life.  Surely this relic was important; his father had doubtless written countless pages about these cursed items in the tome's pages.  Even now he could still see his father scribbling away.  His father had always been sure to put it up someplace so that the young lad never read it by accident or betrayed his better judgment and took it without asking.  Putting it up someplace high... Anvindr had put this container up on the highest place he could find in the reliquary, ensuring that only a hugeman could find it without standing on top of something.  Had that been intentional?<br/><br/>Was his father leaving his clues?  A trail of breadcrumbs?  Had he wanted his son to come all this way looking for him?<br/><br/>Or had he simply anticipated it?<br/><br/>Arngeirr was sure now that his father had done all of this intentionally.  From that, he concluded that his father had also left this book with the items so that Arngeirr would find it straight away.  Whether or not he wanted his son to follow this path, he would have left him with the resources to understand the relic, or at least understand what to with it; be it to destroy the relics, hide them, return them to their home, or make use of them in some manner.<br/><br/>The hugeman opened the book reverently, holding it out so that both his comrades could see it.  He feared that perhaps the first page he opened to would be a warning to never wear the sashes; with a sigh of relief, the giant saw that the first pages were his father's account of how he came into possession of the items.<br/><br/>"I never thought this would have survived," Arngeirr read aloud, "But it is some small comfort to know what happened to it.  My old friend Hachi retrieved it from the ruins of Fort Hoshino, far to the east; the sight of our final battle in the brush war."  His father had never spoken to him of this.  He knew Anvindr had gone east, but he had never heard of his father involved in any battles.  In fact, he had never heard of any battles in the far east, or of this Fort Hoshino.  Or even this man named Hachi for that matter.  His stomach lurched with something other than hunger, his head swimming as he was nearly overcome with an overwhelming sense of vertigo.<br/><br/>"I say," he breathed, "I don't recall him telling me any of this.  I should spend some time with this record.  I... I do not know of this part of my father's life."<br/><br/>----------<br/><br/><i>The hornets are locked in mortal combat with Buzzia's blessed bees.  Despite being faced with a natural predator, the bees are not without their defenses; they cannot break the carapace of the giant hornets with their stingers, nor do they have the same raw strength, but the chosen heralds of the goddess are gifted with her wiles.  They cling to their attackers in groups, beating their wings furiously, building up an intense heat that cooks the hornets inside their shells.  But they quickly lose ground to the huge predators; the giant hornets are capable of slaying dozens of their smaller cousins, snapping them in half with a single bite of their powerful jaws and pilling them to pieces with their legs.  Coordinating the attacks is hard, and the bees stumble more often than they succeed, their numbers dwindling as more and more hornets are called to the front lines.  Despite their overwhelming numbers their simply are not enough bees to hold the tide of hornets back...<br/>
<br/>
..and behind the broken hive, its ruined walls seeping honey as the dying bees scramble across the ground, desperately clinging to life, something wicked stirs...</i>