Session 2

The ship hove into sight as the crew of the Wavedancer rowed their passengers and their requisitioners - and one strange corpse - back through the noon sunshine. The mood was unsettled; as Sebastien boarded, he grabbed his guitar and headed to the foredeck to play the music that danced through his duelling. Lena, with a quiet frown, asked to borrow a private corner, the dead priest, and some knives.

Ariadne, bare-faced and safe in the captain's cabin, stared blindly at the sea as she twitched her fingers, feeling the strands of fate twisting. Rafael shouldered his way in, to glimpse her pale profile and stop immediately, eyes firmly on the floor. With a rustle of cloth, she reset her veil and sniffed. "It's fine now."

As they spoke, a gentle ring of bells echoed through the cabin. Rafael stopped and stared at the tiny bundle of black lace in front of him, and Ariadne's shoulders shifted in what could look a little like guilt. Staying as still as she could didn't stop a second chime singing through the silence; and Rafael asked with strained politeness, "Might I look at your wrist, Lady?"

The silence under the veil was defensive; but Ariadne slowly held her arm out. With the delicacy usually given to deadly snakes or hideous traps, Rafael gingerly lifted her sleeve - revealing the ornate braided Syrneth bracelet that had until recently rested in pride of place at his desk. "You stole from me. I gave you sanctuary in my cabin, and you repay me with theft."

As the bells on the strange bracelet were chiming, Lena swallowed the last of a foetid concoction and touched the corpse in front of her. "What is your name?"

The body, one eye staring unblinking ahead, the other a pitted ruin, choked out a name - a Castillian name. Lena frowned, and tried again. "Who do you serve?" The gunshot chest heaved in a parody of life, and the air whistled out of its throat as it replied. "Good King Sandoval and Theus. My country and my king."

The dead man's answers didn't get any clearer. He was killed, he said, in a duel - by the Montaigne who had claimed this as his body. He was hunting the Inquisition for the sake of his brother - and he was somehow now dead and possessed and choking out answers from the ruin of his body.

The Hexe cursed softly; then retched and threw up into the bucket she'd placed next to her, vomiting the poisonous plants and rotten meat she'd eaten to get answers from a ghost. She swilled her mouth out, spat into the bucket, and reached for the roll of kitchen knives. More information was needed.

Lena stripped the corpse carefully, laying him out straight; and frowned at the mess on his chest and back. Unskilled tattoos covered him neck to waist; three triangles were branded along his spine and one carefully scarred the centre of his chest. She took notes of the High Thean writing where it wasn't shattered from the bullet, then grimly took up the knives.

The Eisen cook approached Rafael as he stalked back and forth along the deck, trying to restrain his anger, slow Castillian music echoing through the summer afternoon a jarring counterpoint to his mood. "Please, Fraulein Zelle would like you to come and see something..." The captain's jaw twitched, but he turned toward the galley with an impatient wave.

As he saw Lena in shirtsleeves, hands smeared with offal and face white with tension and nausea, annoyance disappeared under rising concern. "Shut the door, Hans. What's going on?" Lena asked a question in return. "How much do you know about dead bodies?"

Rafael didn't vomit, but it was a close-run thing; as Lena had pulled back the flap of muscle she'd severed, the remains on internal organs were visible in a rancid, soupy pile. Gelid scraps of offal floated in an acidic ooze, more suited to a body years dead than a man alive and duelling barely two hours before. He washed his hands carefully, dried them off, then as the Eisen woman sewed the corpse back up and into a sail, he shuddered and called for more clean water.

While the dissection was going on, Heinrich and Euan chatted quietly – as quietly as Heinrich could manage, at least; and the boom of his voice covered Alexander’s Ussuran accents as the hunter stood among the Doppel, finding out more about them. One clapped him on the shoulder; and for anyone else that would have sent them lurching across the rocking deck. Alexander didn’t flinch, but beamed and swung his own hand at the other man’s back in return. The ripple of mirth among his fellows as he nearly fell was friendly, binding Alexander to them with good comradeship and loyalty.

Rafael cornered Euan, and nodded at Heinrich. “Can you make a distraction with him; a bout of wrestling? The Churchmen are dangerous, and we need to deal with them.” Euan grinned with the boyish glee of a man about to have a great deal of fun. “Definitely.”

They almost didn’t notice when Lena strode across the deck to Sebastien. “The man you killed was… dead already. The priests here are doing something wrong. We need to look for tattoos and branding.” Sebastien tilted his head towards the cabin the bishop was staying in, and smiled a small, cold smile. “Let’s just kill them all.”

As the ructions of Euan and Heinrich’s brawl thundered below decks, the Inquisition stormed out to see what was happening. It didn’t take more than that – Sebastien and Rafael pulled out pistols almost as one and shot at the fiery young monk who usually carried a censer and something to burn. He collapsed, his head and chest in a ruin, as Euan twisted from the brawl to draw and lunge at the bishop Bernardo de Ruiz, perfectly skewering him.

Alexander roared at the Doppel to stop. Their commander wheeled to him and struck with a belt knife, the blade cutting deeply. Alexander’s answering strike was a fist to the face, leaving his opponent glassy-eyed and spitting out teeth. The rest of the Doppel looked down at their leader, then up at Alexander, giant and bleeding and ignoring the trickling blood. They stopped.

As Peter fell, Bernardo snatched a glance around and slid back, his hands twisting in front of him as strange smoke gathered. Ariadne hissed quietly, and made a small tugging motion; and suddenly his face changed from fear to arrogance. The smoke stopped coiling around him, and instead spewed up from the boards and underdecks of the ship; the same sweet acid smell that Rafael and Lena remembered from the rotting Montaigne duellist…

At the touch of the fog, Peter stood up. Still dead, still smiling, his eyes wide with flames, he flicked his fingers and the smoke grew thicker and heavier. Sebastien didn’t pause to draw another weapon, just glanced at Lena and saw the small bottle in her hand. His smile alive with the joy of the hunt, he danced down the ropes and landed with Peter neatly impaled on his blade and his left hand wrapped around the monster’s throat. Lena landed on the deck with a crash, and poured the greenish liquid into Peter’s mouth. The scent lifted the smell of taint, boiling away at the monk’s undead flesh. Sebastien’s ungentle persuasion made him swallow, and the fire behind his eyes went out.

The smoke still boiled out from the trapdoors and cracks in the wood, and Alexander walked through it with driven purpose. The last of the entourage of priests weren’t expecting an enemy to appear from nowhere; and his massive axe laid them out to sleep even as the tainted blackness melted through his jerkin – and most of the skin on his flank.

Euan, not so much duelling the bishop as demonstrating with blade and with skill exactly why the knights of Avalon were so feared, left him dead on the floor. As his body hit the deck, the smoke started to clear.

What investigation they could do showed Peter’s corpse to be tattooed and branded similarly to the dead Montaigne. The three priests still living were confined separately, and the questioning started. The first, apparently the lowest ranked, smiled without fear as Rafael threatened him. “Just let me live, and I’ll tell you everything. Everything you’ve ever wanted to know. You remember the dead dog, on the cobbles of your home town when you were a child… I can tell you anything.” “Enough.” Lena shouldered past the captain and Sebastien hauled the priest’s head back as she forced another bottle of greenish broth down its throat. It hissed and gurgled as the body died, something blackened and ghostly escaping through the walls.

The Eisen woman looked grimmer than before. “I was wrong. What I thought they were; it’s not. I need to collect some things from the wood. In the meantime, don’t do anything dangerous.” “I’ll walk with you,” Sebastien offered. “Nice day for a stroll.” As they were rowed to the mainland, he sharpened his sword and reloaded his pistols.

On board ship, the captain bargained with the Doppel. “I’ll pay you for your services to the Vaticine Church; and some extra for danger money. As for your next contract…” The commander, his jaw still swollen from Alexander’s blow, looked almost apologetic. “We can’t take your orders. It’s bad for business, letting people know that we’ll work for the people who killed our last employer. We’ll follow him, though.” He nodded to Alexander, whose skin was rapidly fading from an angry, scalded red to a tanned hue – at the same time as a small tinkle of bells was audible around Ariadne, listening fiercely.

“Let’s discuss this more later.” Rafael nodded sharply; the Doppel at least wouldn’t be a threat to his ship. “We’ve got prisoners to question…”

As they entered the cabin the churchman was confined in, Ariadne whimpered; feeling something tugging at her soul, sapping her life. She twitched and fled, Rafael stepping to follow her – but not before he felt his energy being swept away, and a vast, almost overwhelming hunger bear down on him.

When the Klippe graduates returned, Lena vanished into the galley with wood, flowers and plants, and a small bucket of water. The door opened again as the sun was westering, and she threw a crudely-shaped wooden stake to Sebastien. It was strangely blackened, and the point gleamed with crushed greens. Rafael, chewing on some hard tack, gestured them to the prisoner’s cabin. “Let’s bring the last one in, so he can see what’ll happen to him.”

The last one was an old man, but still straight and strong. Sebastien’s murderous smile caught his eye as the Castillian plunged the stake into the other churchman – who died without speaking, a flare of what could have been true fear in his eyes as the infernal light went out. As he died, Rafael’s gnawing hunger faded. He shivered, half in relief and half in fear of the unknown force that so briefly drove him.

As they questioned the old man, it was clear he was different to the others. He claimed to be born in the years of the Fourth Prophet – some hundred and fifty years before. He was an exorcist, he said, who was only sometimes brought out from the monastery. This time he was given in service to Bernardo, and he had followed, without curiosity.

Lena frowned, and handed Rafael another vial of the greenish liquid. “Drink this,” the captain said, “Or we’ll force you to. Let’s see how you like it.” The old man looked confused, but took the bottle slowly, swallowing it down.

He didn’t die, like the others had. Instead, something shifted, some energy, some strength, and his shoulders slumped just a little; his posture now that of a man in his sixties, rather than the perfect youth and strength that now seemed in recollection so unnatural to his frame.

They left him there so they could talk, the captain and his passengers. “It would be easy to leave him on the shore,” Sebastien offered. “No. That’s the same as killing him, though less merciful – and what if something in the woods uses him? Take him to the priest in the forest.” Lena nodded sharply. Rafael, thoughtful, waved a hand in agreement. “It won’t take long, and maybe he’ll learn something there.”

Inviting Euan along to see the Avalonian graves they’d found in the forest, the Klippe pair retraced their steps with their two fellows; one old man who’d lost his life, and one red headed giant looking for his history. Father Gunther, a wandering Objectionist priest, welcomed them, and accepted the old Vaticine exorcist with open arms, once he heard that the man had never heard of the Objectionist creed. Euan paced along the graves, inspecting their heraldry one by one with a thoughtful frown. Not finding what he wanted, he asked Father Gunther, who nodded. “Yes, I think I’ve seen those arms. There’s another graveyard, just to the north-east of Klippe; you should try there.”

Back on board the Wavedancer, Rafael produced a tome embossed with the Vaticine cross, complete with brass lock. “This was the priest’s; but I’m no locksmith…” Ariadne drifted over to it, and tapped the metal thoughtfully. “I will need some hairpins.” Sebastien, grimly curious, produced his tools for cleaning and caring for pistols, and the veiled face nodded her gratitude as she fiddled at the lock. The clunk it opened with was almost lost in the creak of sails; and Rafael and Lena jostled each other to read it first. They reached the pages at the back filled with unscribed handwriting, and started in on the lists of names. The fourth page, Lena looked up at Sebastien, and pointed down at the text. He walked a pace or so over, glanced down at her finger, then back up at her, eyes empty of hope. “What do you think this means?” She didn’t flinch. “That your wife is possessed.” “You spoke with the Castillian the Montaigne was wearing. He was still there. Her spirit is trapped in her body.” The Eisen woman just nodded, and Sebastien slowly, carefully, nodded in return. He walked away, each step deliberate and gentle, body screaming with tension, face blank and dead.

After they’d finished the book, Lena ducked behind the screens that had been hastily put up around the inquisitors’ bodies on deck. In spite of being the only live person there, the faint murmur of conversation could be heard; one of the voices hers, the other a throttled mockery of Bernardo’s previously smooth tones. When the creaking parody of human speech finished, the distinctive sound of throwing up followed, and Lena came back with notes in a mix of Castillian and Eisen.

“To Cardinal Verdugo, La Bocca, Greeting.

I am on board the Wavedancer, captained by Rafael Giuliani, a strong Vodacce tradesman. He will be a reliable tool in future, once the little trouble we find ourselves in is over. The trouble is this: the Montaigne duelled a Castillian, Sebastien de Ruiz de Navarone, and was killed. I plan on meeting your agent to the north-east of Klippe; we will continue our mission there. The passengers on the ship are useful; Ariadne Caligari, a strega and a good Vaticine tool, will be pliable. Sir Euan Renwick of Avalon, Alexander Irinavich, an Ussuran, and Magdalena Zelle of Eisen are all good candidates for use – there is a chance that the Castillian’s spark will flare, but it has not yet awoken.

I plan on leaving the ship and taking them to the site – I will send more soon.

Bernardo de Ruiz”