At some point, a courier had come calling at the Broken Dagger and asked after the location of one Ariane Carnath-Emory. Upon discovering that she had not been seen in or around the tavern in some time, he inquired after her room at the Dagger, having been told by his employer's contact that she all but lived there; and upon learning where her room was, he went upstairs to it, knocked sharply three times, and then slipped a carefully sealed envelope beneath the door. The courier then left the building, whistling a jolly tune.
The front of the envelope bore the following in a large but neat hand:
TO: ARI & QUINCY
And on the back, in the same hand:
FROM CORAN
* * * * *
The letter, as aforementioned, was carefully sealed in an envelope designed to protect it from the elements. Ari and/or Quincy -- whoever got to it first, and whether they decided to read it together or not -- when they decided to open the envelope and then the letter, would read this:
Hello!
It's been a while, hasn't it? Though by the time this letter reaches you, will probably be several weeks old -- and will shortly be followed by a few more letters.
First and foremost: I'm not dead! Take that however you will. Ari, your opinion on that fact seems to change on a daily basis.
Secondly: As of this moment, I'm sitting on a glacier writing this letter. In case you don't know what a glacier is, imagine the chunks of ice you sometimes see around Myrken during winter. Now make those chunks of ice the size of a mountain with a relatively flat surface. Or three. That's a glacier.
As you can also imagine, it's very cold.
Now you might be wondering why I'm sitting on a glacier writing a letter to you. I'm getting to that. There's some other stuff I first need to tell you.
Ari, you knew about this, but I don't remember if I told Quincy about it: the village the survivors of the battles between Jorn's faction and mine built to live out the rest of their days. Well, apparently some of Jorn's faction survived, too -- and somehow discovered the location of that settlement. They convinced (or coerced) my faction's survivors into believing that living in peace and simply waiting to die was not a life befitting of people with such power at their command, and now they're roaming the world, searching for more men who can channel. They've thus far limited their searches to villages and small towns, but I wouldn't put it past them to soon start looking in cities.
That's the short version of it. The long version I don't have enough ink for at the moment; this letter is stretching my supply thin as is.
Well, to put it simply, I'm hunting them. All of them.
Now we're at why I'm sitting on this damn glacier.
One of them, a man named Logan that served as one of Jorn's lieutenants, is here in the far north. I found him in a port town (I don't remember its name) on the northern tip of Amasynia near New Dauntless, and when he realized he'd been discovered he fled to the Red Caps.
Oh, I wasn't giving up that easily.
I followed him, we tussled briefly; he managed to escape and flee to Hexal Isle, where we met and clashed again, and then to this unnamed frozen hell. He's not channeling -- or he's not holding enough of the Power so that I can't detect him until I'm almost on top of him -- so I have to track him down the old-fashioned way.
I'll let you know how it goes.
With hopes that you're warm and safe, but definitely leaning toward warm at the moment,
Coran.