16 September 1243
I had to halt my contribution to the investigation for several days because of what happened since my last entry.
Shortly after my meeting with my co-investigators on the eve of 13 September, I began admitting to myself of having a sense of heightened anxiety regarding the situation, higher anxiety than what is tolerable for a person in my profession, which began to concern me in the meta-thoughts of my mind.
To me, life here began seeming like a whirlwind, with the overwhelming dread of Ivella's disappearance, the growing influence of the Chaplain over the University Council, and even the situation regarding Brian Kempt and the town protests.
I began to feel overwhelmed.
At first, I chalked it up to simply a breakdown of my mentality, which to this point I thought was quite resilient with my experience. But then I began to speculate. Yes, indeed, I am not usually susceptible to a breakdown like this, but I was dealing with Darius Weller here, who was very cunning on crafting darkfire in ways never reasoned out by those even in wrayth-hunter training. So I began to wonder if perhaps my psychological phenomenon was the result, after all, of a concern brought up by the Chaplain in the first place during our Office meeting.
So I checked myself with both my Residual and Personal Darkfire Dose Detectors and found with quite resounding shock that I had received quite a very high dose of darkfire in my system at some point during this investigation. So I immediately went to the Cabotton Hospital, where I had to be detoxified. My official diagnosis was "moderate darkfire poisoning," and I was ordered to rest and take treatment for two to three days.
I am still in awe that this happened, and I am still scrambling in my mind to determine where and how this happened, and why the assurance I received during my peer-review session was so dreadfully wrong. And I certainly hope that I did not spread my poisoning to the Chaplain. I immediately sent a message to him alerting him of the concern.
It's not that my respect for him has elevated, though. Upon my return to the Scalar today, I found that Headmaster Snow had mailed me a copy of the Flagstaff. It turns out that when he received word of my poisoning, the Chaplain was telling the public that I was effectively done in and therefore not reliable. Now he is using my case to push the University Council into implementing his desired outright ban. And a majority of Council members publicly voiced agreement with him thus far. They have not voted officially yet, but I think I know how this will turn out.
Furthermore, I have been reading the Cabotton Journal, following up on the situation with "Club Merlin." The protests have been getting worse; in fact, I had to conceal myself upon discharge from the hospital earlier, prompting me to pick up a copy of the Cabotton Journal in the first place. It turns out that this is more organized than I thought, now under the leadership of a young 23-year-old figure named Marya Thomas. As of yesterday, she led her group to submit a petition to the Cabotton Mayor George Teffler, who promptly rejected it. Today's protests are backlash to that.
The Headmaster still supports me, but I believe he is doing so out of sympathy. It turns out the Chaplain has successfully turned the majority of the University body against me for being unreliable. And as for Karla Bringamyn, I believe she is being more genuine in her support of me by segregating the numerous student opinions on this manner in a separate "Letters to the Editor" section in the back of the paper. I have a lot of sympathy for her, though, for I do not see a lot of hope in this.
This may be the end of my part of the investigation. I am incapacitated because of my health. That may be temporary, but more permanent is the bad publicity I have received thus far. I believe that the investigation will be able to continue without me, although there is no knowing how it will turn out. Nevertheless, I am effectively an obstacle to a certain degree, so my best move is to allow the investigation party to continue without me. I will leave on Monday and take my postponed vacation, hoping to recover and forget about this embarrassing failure. Hopefully, I will be able restore my reputation with the federal government in the future and continue my career as an independent-contract wrayth-hunter.
As for the University. It may have been founded twelve years ago on the basis of open and equal scholarly discussion for completely uncensored academic material, and for the scholars to have a voice in leadership. But, at this point, I believe it has served its purpose to inspire the founding of the Retunian Republic, and is now falling victim to Alconist fundamentalism, the upholders of whom wish to render this organization an undemocratic and theocratic platform for the evangelists.
My time at Cabotton is done.