From Emerald to Gray, and Back

Fourth month, Fourteenth day (?)
Twenty-two days since we left the Wall

Most Honored Daimyo,

Today the search party has been reduced to two members, the witch hunter finally succumbing to the wounds and poison we have not been able to treat. We burned her body, as is the only way to properly dispose of a corpse in these accursed lands. I reluctantly offered the ratling guide the permission to retrieve the jade fingers from the witch-hunter's possession, but he laughed disrespectfully and refused. My last two jade fingers are turning dark, but I will not steal from the corpse of a companion.
We continue, and the terrain seems a little easier to move through. Still no sight of cousin Shiro, but the trail is fresh.

Fourth month, Nineteenth day (?)
Twenty-seven days since we left the Wall

Most Honored Daimyo,

I now believe that we are lost beyond all hope of finding our way back. The guide will not answer properly when queried about the direction of our travel; it seems that in spite of the famous ratling path-finding skills, he is forced to rely exclusively on following the tracks of cousin Shiro, as all landmarks appear to be shifting. The dark mountains loom far to the right, and the left side is clear, but when I close my eyes and open them again, the mountains are only a tiny jagged line on the horizon, and a wide river that wasn't there a moment ago now flows to the left. Within minutes, this changes again. No guide could find his way back through this unholy chaos.
No matter. The trail is still clearly visible, somehow, and we follow. It is neither honorable nor wise to think about returning before I see cousin Shiro's tainted blood on my blade.

Fifth month, Third day (?)
Forty-one day since we left the Wall

Most Honored Daimyo,

The ratling refuses to continue! It suddenly stopped, threw down its spear, and sat in the dust. "No more", it said "We can't go on, there's no hope of ... whatever it was you were trying to do."
I shouted, threatened, and reasoned, but to no avail. The pathetic creature just sat there and sighed, apparently not even listening to me! I considered beheading it there and then, but decided not to sully my blade needlessly; I continue alone, and will waste no water on the nezumi. Let the treacherous beast die of thirst.
I can just as easy follow the tracks of cousin Shiro on my own, and traveling is easier now that the horizon-shifting has subsided. I move through a featureless wasteland of white dust and grey clouds. The air is dead, and the few sad-looking trees that I pass by are horribly withered. I mention this because despite the ever-present gloom - both physical and spiritual - that pervades this land, I can sense no Taint. There have been no Oni attacks since we fought them off back at the Black Finger River, but until recently minor creatures - insects, skeletal birds, disembodied voices - all seemed to direct their malevolence at us, sensing out passage.
Not now. Everything is dead quiet. The jade fingers have crumbled to dust awhile back; has the Taint already begun to dull my senses? Am I growing used to this environment?

Second month since we left the Wall

Daimyo,

I know not where I am, but if this is Jigoku, you tell all those sages that they've go it wrong. If we had indeed unwittingly wandered from the Shadowlands into Hell, one would expect somewhat more fearsome enemies than thirst and despair. Where are all the Oni? Where are the fires and needles and the screams of tormented souls?
There are none here. There is nothing here, save for dust and emptiness. My fine robe and sandals (the armor I dropped miles back) are now the same uniform grey as my skin and hair. Even the emerald in the hilt of my ancestral blade seems to have lost its color.
Some time ago I saw a rider form afar. It was tall and black with long hair, riding a horse with flaming hooves. I would have hailed the barbarian, but my throat is too parched.
What is it that Shiro drinks now, I wonder? I find the remains of his campfires, but if he uses these to roast some small lizards, or even hardback bugs like the western barbarians, he must devour them wholesale. Maybe he can use the maho to sustain himself. I don't know. I don't know anything any more.

Daimyo, I am sorry. I am sorry, grandmother, but I have dishonored us all. I failed to see what my cousin had become, and now my quest to destroy him has failed too.
I will die in this strange land.
I have fallen low enough by now that I should certainly feel fear and self-loathing, but there is nothing. Everything is empty here, yet it all presses down upon my soul heavily.
I am worthless.
I cannot even bring myself to draw and end my miserable life, hesitant to see if the kami imbued in the blade would deny me, and reject my control.
I will die soon enough anyway.

Second month since we left the Wall

Most Honored Daimyo,

I awoke among corpses today. They were two men and a woman, all dead from precise sword-cuts. Judging by the wounds, I think it may have been my doing, but I cannot truly say, because I have no recollection of the past several days.
I humbly admit that I took what water could be found in their possessions and drank it all with little sense of shame. Then I buried them as well as I could, using only their short blades to dig three shallow graves. I let them keep all their possessions, save for a peculiar item forged masterfully of some silvery metal, and shaped into what may have been the head of a fox. When I touched the device, it shook, whirred, and spoke to me in a foreign tongue! Since it was obviously animated by a spirit (whether an honorable one or otherwise), I tried communicating with it, hoping to learn of a possible way out of this wasteland, but we couldn't understand each other. I tried several barbarian dialects that I was vaguely familiar with, but none worked. The spirit listened to my responses, and made sounds progressively more similar to the civilized speech of the Empire, and eventually it began to make sense.
It sounded much like a barbarian shaman I once knew back when I spent a year with the Unicorn clan; our shared vocabulary was very limited, but it was enough for me to learn that there was a magical door nearby that would take me away from this place which the spirit said was called simply "the Gray Waste".
I still live, daimyo. I am no longer on Shiro's trail, but I will return with supplies and a guide, and I will find it once more. I will clean the gray dust from the pommel jewel from my ancestral blade, and it will shine green again.

Second day since leaving the Gray Waste

Most Honored Daimyo,

I am in a city called "No-Hope-Left". First there was a gray waste that was called "the Gray Waste", and now this. These barbarians truly have a way with names. I blame the mimir spirit and its translations.
This compound belongs to a clan of healers calling themselves "the sisterhood", even though many of them are male. Barbarians. Kind and good-hearted barbarians, though. At least compared to some of the others. They healed me and fed me, and they washed what could be salvaged from my robes. I have not yet learned enough of the barbarian tongue from the mimir spirit that I could offer proper thanks, but I did my best, and it seems to have been well received.
This strange place has tens of thousands of residents, and only a single street. It is a spiral, descending from the gates down to a central pit and an open well filled to the brim with thick black ooze. I shamefully confess that this well is the location to which the magic gate on the Gray Waste had transported me.
Had I not been immediately tended to by the kind Sisterhood healers, I would have undoubtedly met my doom facing a pack of flying Oni, horrific bloated creatures with round bodies and dozens of eyes each (not surprisingly, the barbarian name for them is "beholders"). These appaling beings seem to police the town of No-Hope-Left, which is populated by gray-skinned, gray-garbed, and apparently gray-hearted people, with the exceptions of my kind saviors. Now that I am recovered, I will not stay in this unclean city one moment longer than it is necessary, especially since my purpose has been restored.
Daimyo, cousin Shiro passed through No-Hope-Left! He had inquired about the most prudent way to return to our lands (although I doubt he had the Empire itself in mind), and the barbarians suggested that he should travel to a nearby city. From there, supposedly, many magic doors lead to all lands under the heavens. They call it "the cage". I can't begin to imagine what it may look like, not that it matters. The hunt continues.