17th of Opal, 255
Log of Sakzul Likotgemsit, Soldier Commander
I swear, it's like every day we lose more soldiers and the next more come in. Today, a Deep Crow by the name "Seviro Seviroforamen Crassusvoratus" attacked the fortress. Our valiant militia of 20 charged out to meet the beast, myself included. The son of a beard flew around the fortress for a pretty long time, until we finally caught up and grounded it. The first two soldiers to meet it, Ast Asrerral and As Adilzon, never made it back to the fortress. Ast had his stomach clawed open by the beast and As had his arm pecked off, both of them bled to death. Memorial service will be held on the 20th. Both me and my wife, another militia captain by the name of Thikut Bisekzuntir, are getting worried. That is the tenth soldier we've lost in the last two years. One of them was even a steel dwarf! How can so many soldiers die when we have full sets of steel armor of masterwork quality and rigorous danger room training?! Of course, they've made it far longer than you could ever ask of any dwarf. Most of us have been through two massive centaur sieges, several beastman sieges, various goblin and lizardfolk ambushes and even several titans and forgotten beasts. Something is starting to scare me, though. I am a tough dwarf, but even the toughest get bad feelings... There is the smell of danger in the air, most of those sieges have occurred in the last three years. I question how much longer our soldiers can hold together under the stress of watching their brothers and sisters get ripped limb from limb by wolves, melting down to a pile of goo from corrupted armor acid, taking a spear to the throat from a goblin, or getting pecked to death by a gigantic bird...
