Session 3

Sailing on as fast as the Wavedancer could manage, Rafael stared ahead at
the forested shores of Eisen, looking for answers. The only option they had was
to head on to the dig site, to try to deal with whatever Father Bernardo had
sent.

As they landed at the closest
cove to the dig site, the trees loomed, dark even in the noonday sun. Except
for a swathe carved out, cut down to create a wide path through the Schwarzwald
from the makeshift camp on the beach, empty but for a few long boats beached
safely above the high tide. The Eisen sucked in a breath and shook her head.
"That's bad news." Alexander nodded, inspecting the traces. "Yes
- there's at least twenty of them, with horses and gear... maybe more."
"No, not that - the woods. There are rules here. Never leave the path;
never light a fire - never cut a tree. If you do, the monsters will come."
Rafael paused, glancing at the blackness under the trees, cold in the summer
sunlight. "Monsters?"

As they started down the path towards the dig, Ariadne's eyes were focussed on
invisible threads, her fingers twitching as she gently tested them, and walked
slowly towards the giant Ussuran. Her voice was a hiss in the dark, almost lost
in the weirdly-rustling woods. "Your brother is alive; and south of
us." Alexander's step didn't slow, his eyes didn't stop from their careful
study of the foreign forest, eerily different to his native lands, but he
nodded in slow satisfaction. "You shall be our compass, then. We walk the
right path."

It was barely an hour later
that they reached the dig - heralded by six Eisen holding muskets nervously,
pointing into the afternoon gloom and starting at any flickering sunlight
through the branches. Rafael stepped forward with his hands open, the polished
smile of the Vodacce trader in place. "We're here to help."

As twitchy as they were, it
took time and patience to gentle them to coherence – patience that Sebastien
didn’t have. Embers of anger flared up, and his sharp threat caused the locals
to level their muskets shakily. Rafael flashed a frown at the Castillian before
standing straighter and more proud, a captain and commander of men. He barked
out orders, and the men stumbled to follow him.

They were guarding an empty
campsite around a mine entrance, heavily palisaded with new wooden walls. Most
of the explorers, they explained, had set off to the south with a book three
days before, the big Ussuran looking after the artifact and an escort of Klippe
graduates guarding them. The lone Vesten explorer left in the camp welcomed the
party and gestured them to investigate the mine and the diggings deep inside.

They weren’t expecting the room that had been broken into. Eight chairs –
thrones, even – stood in a semi-circle around a cauldron large enough to fit a
man inside and an empty altar, facing a giant stone door. Each throne held a
symbol of a nation of Theah; and the cauldron contained what looked like liquid
blackness; shadows that pooled and roiled in the lamplight, absorbing the faint
glow of fire.

*Something
totally happened about the door opening, and things being traded for other
things through it, that provoked the strong men of the group to shoulder it closed
and shake it from its setting. I am super not sure what it was, though, so
someone else can fill this paragraph in and/or tell me about it so I can update
my purple prose.*

As the door slammed to, the
scrape of rock on rock filled the air, and the roof of the room began to sag
and collapse. Alexander, the Ussuran, shoved Ariadne clear in the face of her
howling protest. Sebastien, frustrated by the delay, danced up to the entrance
where Lena waited; and Alexander set his shoulders and caught part of the
ceiling. Driven nearly to his knees, he still kept enough space for Euan and
Heinrich to manhandle two of the thrones out of the room – the one marked with
Avalon’s Graal, and one with the Eisen Drachen. Rafael waited at the door till
the point of collapse, holding back to make sure Alexander was able to slide
out from under the rubble, and the pair of them raced nearly neck and neck up
the passage as the dust of the rockfall filled the air.

Sebastien, casually looting the supplies needed for a journey through the woods
from the nearly abandoned camp, looked up sharply at Euan and Heinrich and
their giant, heavy stone chairs. “We’re leaving in fifteen minutes. And we’re
not taking them with us.” Euan nodded cheerfully. “It’s okay – I know someone
who can take at least one…”

The Avalon knight walked a
little way away from the palisades, and a couple of minutes later, the air
filled with a sense of pressure, a prickling sharpness of the Hunt. The bell of
the hounds in full cry, a storm of hooves, and a man on horseback stood where
no man had been before. The horse was beautiful, a giant to match its rider,
and impossibly clean-limbed; usually only heavy-set shire horses stood this
tall. Alexander didn’t even try to stop himself from greeting it, his words
soft and foreign and lilting.

Euan and the Sidhe
bargained briefly, but the alien creature seemed pleased with the gift to the
Queen and the land. The Avalonian-marked throne vanished as the rider wheeled
his horse and leapt into nothingness, following a path to a place no human
could see. The other throne Lena discussed quickly with the Vesten, who agreed
to portage it to Klippe Academy. They’d be there soon enough, after all. Then,
almost soon enough to calm Sebastien, they took up supplies and headed deeper
into the Schwarzwald.

The traces of ten men walking enough pack horses to supply them were clear to
Alexander, and Sebastien and Lena both noted Klippe trail signs along the
track. As the woods grew denser, the path wound around, and Alexander, near the
head of the trail, grew restive. “We can follow my compass. Why waste time
following where they went when we know where they are?” Sebastien’s eyes
flashed, and he snapped back, “You follow the rules of the forest as long as
reasonable. They went this way.”

The light was fading when
they found the abandoned wayhouse in a clearing – and the freshly-dug grave
nearby, with a sword as a gravestone. Rafael, searching around the shack, found
blood spatters; signs of a fight, recent and deadly. The horses had been
watered here, it looked like; and then some disaster had fallen. Sebastien and
Alexander frowned at the grave, the memory of the creatures on board ship too
close for comfort. “Is he likely to come back?” the Castillian asked Lena.
Alexander shrugged, “It’s been days – it would not wait that long.” Sebastien,
temper flaring up, snapped back, “These aren’t your woods.” Euan, trying to
cheer him up, stomped over and announced, “Come on, not everything is trying to
kill us!”

The dirt at their feet stirred, and a grasping hand wrapped itself around
Euan’s ankle, neatly proving both Alexander wrong and Euan’s history of bad
luck to be still on form… The freshly-dead corpse hauling itself out of the
grave with whispers of “Rache; Verräter,” wasn’t the only one to welcome the
travellers to this particular clearing; as a volley of ghostly shots rang out.
Rafael threw out his hand to intercept one aimed at Ariadne’s head, hissing in
pain as it shattered the bones in his palm. She slid close next to him and, in
a brief moment of quiet, lifted her veil. His eyes shut instantly, and only the
nearly silent gloved slap to his cheek was enough to make him startle as he
stared down at her face, eyes black in the darkness. She whispered his name,
and brushed a kiss across his lips before he could stop her. She whipped her
veil back down and nudged him with the tips of her fingers; and his bullets
flew faster and as accurately as fate would allow in the minutes that followed.

In the fracas, the tide of
undead appeared to be aiming for the Klippe graduates, wearing their pins
proudly – Sebastien’s Aldana-trained dancer reflexes and perfect ripostes
blunted their attacks on him. Lena’s heavier, slower broadsword wasn’t nearly
as effective as she struggled over to the first enemy. Between everyone else,
the first monster was nearly destroyed when she got to it, but a dagger was
embedded deep in her thigh. “Brother. You will be revenged.” She swapped their
pins, leaving her Klippe symbol in the dirt and taking the murdered man’s in
turn, and snapped its neck.

As the slew of ghosts and
corpses were laid back into the ground a second time, a prickling chill ran
through the warm summer night; and in the darkness of the forest’s edge loomed
a shadow blacker than the night around it, with claw-tipped twiggy fingers and
faint, cold glimmers of light dancing where eyes might be. “Join me under the
trees, intruders…”

They readied themselves, and there was a breath – till someone threw a
challenge at the Schattenmann, oldest and darkest of the creatures of the
Schwarzwald. There was a pale, cold laugh drifting softly in the night breeze,
and dark, heavy shapes of deep-maned wolves appeared out of the darkness,
circling around them. A fragile pause, and then they leapt.

Barely moments later, they
were whimpering and twitching away, proving no match for Euan and Heinrich’s
tag-team of swordsman styles, Alexander’s brute strength, Sebastien’s rapier
and Rafael’s rapidly-reloaded pistols. The creature in the trees giggled
eerily, and there was a movement which may have been a nod of acknowledgement.
“Until later, then.”

The travellers settled down into the wayhouse, barricading the door as best
they could and attempting to ready themselves for sleep. It wasn’t long,
though, before there were new noises from outside; the slow, shuffling of bare
feet, the soft steady pad of strangers pacing towards the temporary haven.
Outside, the faces of the dead roamed. An armour-clad Avalonian trod across the
summer grass; an Ussuran, familiar to Alexander, stood drained of life; an
Eisen woman wore Sebastien’s wedding ring on bony fingers; a boy with Lena’s
features called for his parents; and other, stranger, faces lurked in the dark.

“Shadows,” Lena ground
out from gritted teeth. “Nothing but dreams and shadows, sent to spook us.”
Ariadne’s fingers twitched under their gloves as her fingers tugged on
invisible threads. Her veiled murmur reached Lena’s corner in the broken quiet
of the night. “The empty armour; that’s real. And the boy-child is tied to
you.”

Lena’s head came up from
where she was trying to relax, and she stared at the shuttered windows with
blank, terrible eyes. Sebastien dropped from his perch to rest beside her,
already on edge and ready for violence. “What do you need?” She stood slowly,
leaning against the wall to rest her injured leg, strapping on her panzerhand
and speaking almost absently, “The – child. In here. Unharmed.”

Sebastien bowed with only
a trace of mockery – and more than a touch of pity. Then, with a tap tap tap of
the rhythm of the dance, he opened the shutters, vaulted outside, hoisted the
death-pale boy through the window to Lena, and started to fight. His blade
danced with flashes of fire, reflected from the lantern where Euan opened the
front door to greet the animate armour. “Brother Knight…” Euan’s hands were
empty, and he spoke in Avalonian. “You vowed to never draw steel on a brother.
Your watch is over. Let me take your place.”

Up in the hayloft, Rafael
had been trying to rest alone, but the scent of blood was stronger there. The
movement below him roused him enough to investigate; and as he raised his light
higher, he saw the inimitable patterns of Porte blood spatter, fresh on the
boards. The scent reminded him of other days. “Bellac.” The word was a curse as
he climbed onto the roof with the easy grace of a sailor, pulling his pistols
and spinning slowly in a circle, looking for his prey.

Alexander, armed with a
pole that was closer to a pillar, swept through the sea of creatures with the
simple vigour of someone well used to reaping and threshing. When most of the
creatures were downed, he stared up at the skyline and caught movements in the
air; wings flapping like a flock of bats. He scrambled up to the roof with
brute efficiency, in time to get showered by a few chiropteran corpses as
Rafael shot blindly into the air with freakish success. Then came another boom;
this time of a heavy musket, the painfully real bullet hitting Euan in the
shoulder. Rafael knew the rules of Porte; he twisted to face directly away from
the shot, looking for the muzzle flash and powder smoke and finding it – in the
edges of the woods. He dropped to one knee and sighted along his longest-bored
gun, as Alexander batted the leathery-winged avians out of the air around him.

Inside the hut, Lena tied the last knot to secure the moving corpse that looked
like her brother to a pillar, and blocked her ears to the sound of his voice.
She scrubbed at her eyes, rubbing a dark paste across her eyelids, and headed
out into the dark with the shadows of ghosts and the invisible lingering in her
vision. Euan, catching sight of the same shadow as Rafael, charged across the
clearing towards it, as Ariadne slid around the side of the hut to tug on the
strings of fate in the dark.

There was a fierce
giggle, and the Montaigne, hidden deeper in the forest than the gunman, ripped
at reality. As Euan lunged at the silhouette, a portal opened inches in front
of the man’s chest – and Ariadne stood pinned to the wooden wall, staring down
at a foot of Avalonian steel piercing her chest, her veil hiding her horrified
eyes. She dragged her gaze up to the figures in the treeline, and her jaw set
in determination – she yanked at something, forcing both of them to loathe and
fear any magics, even the ones that saved their lives. Then, as Euan pulled his
sword back with a sickening lurch, she slid down the side of the building,
leaving a trail of blood, black as her veils in the night.

Rafael sighted into the
trees, and a single shot took the man’s face off. It took the Vodacce seconds
to leap from the roof to where Ariadne slumped; and his hands almost shook as
he felt the heat of her blood on his hands. Her eyes blinked muzzily behind her
veils, and she whispered harshly into his ear, “None but my husband touches me.
It’s better I die than my purity be -” Rafael’s slap across her face knocked
her unconscious, and he abandoned his bandoliers of pistols to rapidly tear his
shirt up for bandages.

Euan saw the second man
sliding deeper into the trees, and set his jaw. The chill blade he’d taken from
the armoured ghost firm in his grasp, the giant Avalonian stepped out of the
clearing – and into the Schattenmann’s domain. Lena ground her teeth and
started to lumber into a run towards him, wounded leg slowing her. Sebastien
grabbed a pair of torches and fired his pistol through them, the sparks
catching the pitch and flaring into light. He caught up with her and threw her
one of the brands, readying his blade as the pair followed the Avalonian into
the dark. Alexander stalked beside them, stepping through the underbrush.

At the hut, Rafael laid the bandaged Ariadne down and put his cloak around the
boy wight, who still called for his mother and father. He paused, glancing at
the door, then gently removed his rosary from its place and handed it to the
child, who clung to it with chilly fingers. Rafael crossed himself, took a
breath, and sat down with a wince; his back to a pillar, his face to the door.
He loaded pistols one by one, and set them out in front of him. As the silence
rose, he began to speak quietly in the dark, waiting for whoever would next
come through the door. “Pater noster, qui es in caelis, sanctificetur nomen
tuum…”

The Klippe duo and the Ussuran followed the sounds of a fight in the dark,
torches flaming and burning back unnatural shadows. They found Euan dangling
from a dark, spindly arm, still struggling to fight the monster in the night.
Sebastien hurled his torch, and it spun lazily end over end through the air, to
strike at the Schattenmann’s wrist. The flame seemed to dissolve the darkness,
and Euan fell with a clatter to the ground. Lena held her torch out and
Sebastien took it without looking as she dragged Euan to his feet. Alexander
shrugged back his cloak and called out in Ussuran to Matushka. The little
mother of a foreign land answered his call, and he began to glow with a
brilliant, pearly light. It struck the shadows like the rising of the sun, and
as Sebastien lunged with his brand, the Schattenmann faded. In the distance,
the scrabbling sounds of the last of their enemies fleeing was audible.

They slowly moved back to
the hut; Euan and Heinrich barely supporting each other, Alexander’s eerie
light fading. At the door, they found Rafael with two pistols levelled,
waiting. The captain pulled them up and away, his bare shoulders slumping with
relief. The others staggered inside, and Lena went over to the dead boy who
whimpered in the corner. She checked him for a pulse, but even her ghost-wise
vision saw nothing left of him alive. He could only repeat his cries for their
parents as she untied him gently and cradled him, chill and small in her lap.

Sebastien stepped outside
with a looted sword, and started digging in the summer soil. Alexander stood
over the brother and sister and looked down with patient sympathy. “Kin-slaying
is a great sin; but mercy killing is not. If you need someone else to do this
thing, I am here.” Lena didn’t look up, one hand gentling through her brother’s
hair and one sliding out a holly wood stake. “I won’t leave this to anyone
else. Dieter, schatzie, it’s time to go home.” The Eisen woman took her
brother’s body into the horse stall, and firmly shut the door behind her.

From outside, a faint,
human whistle was audible in the empty woods, and the cheerful tramp of
woodsman feet came up from the path to the south. Sebastien, finished with his
gravedigging, stood ready, but the man hailed him easily. “Is there room at the
holdfast?” “There could be; but it’s been a long night. Where do you come
from?”

Inside, the stranger
talked easily of his journey, and mentioned seeing eight men with horses in
convoy at Konigsberg, a day’s walk away. One of them, he said, looked a lot
like Alexander; and the giant Ussuran looked a little brighter at the
statement. They shared food, late at night, and the man wandered to the stall.
Lena, finished with her brewing, glowered and took the small bundle of cloak
that was all that she knew of her family outside. Sebastien, in the hay loft,
glanced down and closed the shutters with a click; enough to let her know that
friends were close and the space was hers alone.

The Hexe took the results of her creation and uncovered Dieter’s face from the
folds of cloth. Coating her tongue with the poisonous paste, she settled in for
her last talk with her brother.

“They came to the house
after you left. Men with your badge, they brought papers. Mother told me to
run, to hide in the woods; Father went to speak with them. I ran. Lena, can I
go home now? Where are they? The man they talked to, he had golden hair and he
spoke like he was singing, not proper Eisen. I didn’t see any more, because
mutti told me to run and hide. I’ve been in the woods for so long, Lena. Can I
see mutti and vater? Did I do well?”

Lena’s voice was hoarse
in the silence. “You’ve done so well, Dieter. You’ve been so brave. Go home
now. I’ll send mutti and vater on to you soon, I promise. You won’t be alone
for long.”

She held vigil that
night; and as the pre-dawn greyness touched the edge of the clearing, the
Vodacce came out of the hut. Rafael, in a borrowed shirt tight across his
shoulders, stood bare-headed by the fresh-dug grave. “The boy should keep the
rosary; please. I know it’s not your faith, but I don’t think Theus will mind.”
Lena nodded, and the captain slipped the beaded chain around the boy’s neck and
gently covered his face to protect him from the dirt.

The two of them knelt to
scoop the soft earth over the child, and when they were done, Ariadne, silent
behind her veils and not much bigger than the boy they’d buried, let slip a
white paper flower onto the grave. The first rays of the sun made it shine like
silver.

They turned away from the way station, Sebastien wordlessly handing Lena the
bundle he’d packed for her. She blinked rapidly and nodded her thanks without
looking at him as they walked on, heading south to Konigsberg and their
enemies.