Entry Twelve

Things have been slow in these recent days as we begin preparations to travel to the crumbling city, Sunny has practically locked herself in her workshop leaving the rest of us to acquire the necessary supplies. Water is simple, and it seems that Duok got us a good deal on rations as well, whilst I purchased the last of the supplies I will need for any alchemy and finished processing that Ocra sapphire. But it was the fuel for fires that was worrying, coal isn't good enough on it's own and there's not much wood for us to use. Or at least there wasn't, as in a stroke of luck the a piece of the dead tree fell off, a massive branch that's easily enough to last us and then some! So naturally we set out to harvest some, one of those two dwarves was their first already hacking away at it and lent us his axe to use, which naturally was then given to me to start harvesting. Sometimes I dislike this new strength of mine...
 
But then Duok asks for the focusing stick.
I let him have it, didn't see the harm in it then. It's just the Tortle chooses to use it o the dead tree, making it come alive a little and start playing this creepy music, a sound that filled me with such fear, but also such curiosity. I was frozen by it, unable to choose which to act on. Duok let go of the stick before I could choose however and that was it, the music stopped and the tree returnded to its natural state. One of those tree huggers came around after, the leader of them actually Monarda Ddimia, she mentioned some more things about them, like how theres another bigger tree in the capital and people have dreams of the tree's flourishing.
There's something about that, these trees are dead but come to life with light focused properly, adding on the genie mentioned that Iron Guard was once a beautiful landscape, I can't help but wonder if these tree's relate to that, that they are integral to understanding Iron Guard.
 
Regardless, we have the last of the supplies we need and are ready to set off, our destination the crumbling city and the secrets it offers us.