[To Five Dear Friends of Seriyah's]

[magical girl salhin]

[This letter is delivered to five people. They know who they are.]

Kanön Hray 6, IY 7789

My dear friends,

We will soon embark upon a most grievous of expedition, one from which we may not return. On its eve, I pen these words, that I may put to ink my feelings before that fateful night.

Perhaps Jamileh Attar was right.

Since Illul Six, it is as if Ephia's Well had been robbed of hope and vigor. The Centuries of Thirst have descended upon us, and our persistent efforts to understand it have only been met with failure and misery. We try and are punished. We try and are punished. We try and are punished. Again and again before us is a road paved of hopelessness, with nothing save that which tells us: stop, turn away, and let inaction be your boon companion through this Age of Ash.

So, perhaps Jamileh Attar was right.

The lesson this Age of Ash yearns to teach us: to try is to suffer disappointment. Better then to argue for the seventeenth Assembly a thousand dinars here or a thousand dinars there the value of an allotment. Better then to vote in the twentieth election as to which Legate shall come to upset you. Better to wait, better to live, better to walk away. Better to wait and sleep and idle because to act at all is to invite failure, to invite misery, to invite grief.

Tired, demotivated, to retreat once more to kinder stars and gentler months - Jamileh Attar may well be right.

In a few days' time, we go to prove her wrong. We will go deep down into the dark, maybe deeper than she ever did. We will meddle. With warnings to the Surface of our Descent, armed in faith and girded in legal writs, we will go. We who come after have learned so much from those who came before us, and upon their despondent shoulders now we climb, bearing with us the hope of the new that the hopelessness they felt we can answer with: it's still worth trying. We continue.

You, O worthies, it is time to try again. It is time to prove to the likes of Jamileh Attar that there is hope yet in our undertaking.

Perhaps this time it will be different.

After all, it is Kanön Hray: when doors are opened to all guests.

With humble gratitude,
Acolyte Seriyah

[Lannister]

Dear Seriyah,

Thank you for this letter. At first I was quite disheartened to see some of the words within it, but quickly this bloomed into hope as I continued to read.

Whatever comes, we shall never wilt.

Yours faithfully,
Aurelio d'Lyon

[Nevrus]

Five letters find their way to the rightful hands.

Kanon Hray 7th, IY7789

Dearest friends,

We have been so ordered in no uncertain terms by Lyrist Domergue that we Balladeers of the Lost Hearth shall not undertake this delve. Lest we be in rebellion of our banner, at present, this delve is - at this moment - cancelled.

Factors may change. I shall update you if they do.

-Dame Onion the Joyful, Knight-Cinquefoil and Balladeer of the Lost Hearth.

[Lannister]

As you may have heard Seriyah, this delve shall not be undertaken, by order of Lyrist Aubery Domergue.

Yours faithfully,
Aurelio d'Lyon

[Whyleth]

[Letters are received, letters are read. Each are meticulously stored away in between pages of a tome.]