Retnuh followed the ghostly procession through the streets of Barovia, rain beginning to needle down through the fog, cold and thin, hissing faintly where it struck the cobblestones. The spirits paid the weather no mind at all. They drifted on in that same loose, wandering formation, all of them moving with the same slow, deliberate purpose. Retnuh kept pace beside them, soaked through within minutes, watching his own breath fog in the cold while theirs did not.
The procession carried him clear out of the village and onto the open road beyond, rain falling steadier now, until the fog ahead parted around the shape of a wagon standing motionless at the roadside. It was black, lacquered so dark it seemed to drink the little light there was, its wheels and fittings wrought in iron and silver scrollwork, a crest worked into its door that Retnuh didn’t recognize. No driver sat at the front. No one waited inside. It simply stood there in the rain, empty and still.
Harnessed to it was a horse unlike any Retnuh had seen. Ash grey, its coat seeming to smolder faintly at the edges, its eyes burning a deep, steady orange in the gloom. It stood perfectly calm as the ghostly host passed directly through the wagon itself, continuing on down the road toward the distant silhouette of Castle Ravenloft rising through the mist on the hillside beyond.
Retnuh stared, something in him coming loose at the sight of it, and found himself grinning despite the cold and the rain and the impossibility of it all. He crossed to the horse without much thought, digging a handful of nuts from his pack and offering them up on an open palm. On closer inspection the horses mane was amber-bright and hot to the touch.
The horse dipped its head and ate from his hand without hesitation, and Retnuh felt a faint warmth pass across his skin as it did, the nuts seeming to roast lightly right there in his palm before the horse took them.
“Wonderful beast, isn’t she.”
The voice came from behind him, smooth and unhurried, carrying an old world cadence that made every word sound deliberate, almost performed. Retnuh didn’t turn. He stayed with the horse, running a hand along its neck, and answered the stranger without looking back.
They spoke for a long while like that. The man behind him was tall, Retnuh gathered from the shape of the shadow thrown long across the wet road, dressed in fine dark clothes that belonged to another century entirely, his voice carrying the particular stillness of someone who never seemed to be in any hurry at all. Retnuh only caught glimpses from the corner of his eye. Pale skin. Dark hair swept back. Eyes that seemed to hold their own small light in them, the same way the horse’s did.
The stranger offered to help him up onto the horse’s back, and Retnuh let him.
As they talked and Retnuh adjusted to the saddle, the man spoke of the curse laid over this land, old and patient and without mercy, and of the mists that wringed it, saying they had a way of unraveling a person’s memory the longer they lingered in Barovia. Retnuh found, turning the thought over, that he was already struggling to place much of his life from before the mists had taken him.
“Come to Castle Ravenloft,” the man said. “Dine with me, and we will see what of your memory can be recovered.”
Retnuh, loosened by the strangeness of the night and the warmth still lingering in his palm from the strange horse’s breath, told him of Arabelle, and of Krogarov, and of the party’s search for both of them through the rain soaked, joyless town.
“I will have my people watch for them both,” the stranger said, and there was something almost pleased in how readily he offered it. “And the horse. Buccephalus may carry you for as long as she chooses to stay at your side.”
Retnuh asked him then about the curse itself, and whether there was anyone in this land looking out for him at all.
The stranger was quiet for a moment before he answered. “There is a girl,” he said. “Ireena Kolyana. Bring her to me at Castle Ravenloft, and I will see that she is looked after properly.”
Retnuh agreed without much thought, telling him that after they had found Arabelle he would see her brought to the castle himself.
“Wonderful” he said calmly, and something in his voice settled, satisfied, as the rain went on falling around them both.
Strahd von Zarovich vanished into the night as Retnuh rode off back towards The Village of Barovia on the back of the Nightmare. The wagon quietly vanished into the mists behind him.
Back at the burgomaster’s manor, Virro and Edric Storm compare the letter that Edric had recieved to another, undelivered letter penned by Kolyan Indirovich and saw that the letter Edric received had been altered. The original letter seemed to be warning people away from Barovia.
Ireena Kolyana asked to be escorted out of Barovia village and towards a safer town, but requested that they bury her father first. The trio agree to go to the church where Father Donavich would hopefully bless the burial in the name of the morninglord. They set out in the direction of the church.
Ignacious Teegan felt the door of the townhouse close behind him and in the corner there was a figure hiding, brandishing a short blade. A performatively deep voice from behind a face covering of cloth tells him to stand in a corner and brandishes the blade at him. standing in shadow is a lean and wiry young man with delicate features and long pointed ears, with dark messy hair falling loosely in front of his face, he looks exhausted and pained.
The young man also bore a large wound in his side that he clutched in his off hand, wet with blood.
He said that he had been watching Ignacious and his party since they arrived in the village and that he needed to know if they could be trusted. He introduced himself as Vesper Kasimov and said he was expected to deliver a package to the an organisation known as the “Keepers of the Feather”.
Ignacious offered to assist him with his quest and Vesper revealed that he used his ability to throw his voice and cast illusions to draw Ignacious in and interrogate him. Quickly they reached an agreement with Ignacious offering to mend his wounds. Vesper picked up his bag and they head out into the street together
At the center of town, Ireena, Virro and Edric fell in with Vesper and Ignacious, the group finally catching a moment to breathe and compare notes on everything that had happened since they’d split up. The rain had eased to a fine mist by then, though the cold remained. Before long, hooves sounded on the wet cobblestones, and Retnuh rode into view atop Buccephalus, the ash grey horse moving with an unnatural, smooth grace despite the slick stone underfoot. The party turned as one to watch him approach, and Retnuh, grinning, began explaining where the horse had come from before anyone even asked. The mood soured the moment he mentioned Strahd’s name. Ignacious went rigid. Ireena’s expression closed off entirely. Virro’s eyes narrowed on the horse itself, sizing it up like something dangerous rather than something to be admired. Virro said, flat and unimpressed. “You understand a nightmare like that could be watching us right now. Reporting everything we say back to him.” Retnuh shook his head firmly, already defensive. “She is not a spy. She is a good horse.”
“She is not a horse,” Virro said.
Rather than argue further, Virro circled around behind the creature, and before anyone could stop him, brought his palm down hard across its flank, shouting at it to run off.
Buccephalus responded instantly. The horse let out a sharp, furious neigh and reared, hind legs snapping upward and catching Virro square in the chest. He was thrown backward, landing hard several feet away, unconscious, a thin curl of smoke rising faintly from his smoldering surcoat where the blow had struck.
Ignacious rushed to check on him while Retnuh, more annoyed than concerned. muttered something about him deserving it.
“Come with me to Castle Ravenloft,” Retnuh said. “Strahd asked it of me. He says he can help us understand this curse, help with the mist, help with all of it.”
Ireena’s answer came without hesitation. “I will go to that castle,” she said, “when I am ready to bring the fight to him myself. Not before.
It was Ireena, while speaking a short while later, who turned the horse itself into something useful. She proposed that her and Virro use Buccephalus as a channel back to Strahd, not for honest reports, but for whatever misinformation the party wanted him to believe. If the nightmare truly carried word back to its master, then let it carry only what they chose to feed it.
The party arrived at the church atop its slight rise, the building looming gray and weary against the roots of the great pillar stone that held up Castle Ravenloft far above. Centuries of siege against whatever evil haunted this land had clearly worn the place down to its bones, stone crumbling in places, timber sagging where it hadn’t already given way. A bell tower rose at the back, and through gaps in the shingled roof, flickering light spilled weakly into the misty air, the rafters groaning faintly under a weight they no longer seemed built to carry.
Two creaky wooden doors marked the entrance, unlocked, and the party pushed through them without resistance.
Ignacious peeled off first, drawn toward a side room off the main hall, its door left slightly ajar. Inside, the space was small and dirty, dominated by a straw stuffed mattress on a simple wooden bed frame. A small table beside it held an oil lamp burning steadily, and above the headboard hung a carved wooden sun, clearly meant as a holy symbol of some kind.
What caught Ignacious’s attention wasn’t the bed at all, though. Scattered across the table and along a shelf nearby sat dozens of small whittled figures, along with the knives and carving tools used to make them. The progression was obvious even at a glance. The earliest pieces were crude, blocky things, barely recognizable as anything at all, clearly the work of someone just learning the craft. Further along the shelf, the figures grew steadily more refined. Among them was a woman rendered in wood, and unlike everything surrounding it, this one was flawless. The wood had been worked so finely that it no longer looked carved at all. Her lips held a softness that shouldn’t have been possible from a blade and a block of timber. Her hair fell in strands so fine they seemed to catch light the way real hair might. Even the folds of her dress carried a smoothness usually reserved for polished marble, not whittled wood.
Among them was a woman rendered in wood, and unlike everything surrounding it, this one was flawless. The wood had been worked so finely that it no longer looked carved at all. Her lips held a softness that shouldn’t have been possible from a blade and a block of timber. Her hair fell in strands so fine they seemed to catch light the way real hair might. Even the folds of her dress carried a smoothness usually reserved for polished marble, not whittled wood.
Meanwhile, Retnuh made his way toward the far end of the church, where the main chapel opened up in a state of disarray. Pews lay broken and overturned across a dusty floor, and dozens of candles, set into candlesticks and candelabras crowded into every corner, burned steadily against a darkness, determined not to let any darkness in. At the end of the room stood a claw scarred altar, and kneeling in front of it, dressed in vestments gone soiled and threadbare, was a priest.
Even approaching him from behind it was clear that he had worn through the knees of his vestments.
“Morninglord Morninglord shine your light upon your son and see us through this darkness. Let your light guide us. Morninglord Morninglord..” He droned. His hands clasped in murmurous prayer, unclasping only to tug on the long rope that lay slack beside him and ran up into the tower above. The bell above tolls in turn.
When the party approaches his murmuring stops and he address them, as they get closer they see his arms covered in pocked circular cuts.
“Forgive me,” he said, voice rough and hoarse. “I don’t often get guests through those doors anymore. My name is Father Donavich. I keep this church, for whatever that’s worth these days.”
Before Retnuh could get a word out, a voice rose up from somewhere beneath the floor, muffled by the timber but unmistakably desperate.
“Father! I’m starving!”
Donavich responded with prayer, his hands clasping high together in prayer. His sleeves fall to his elbow to give a closer look at the marks on his forearms, teeth marks.
Ignacious asked him if he’s keeping someone down there, he responded with “That’s my son. Doru. He’s… unwell. He doesn’t leave the undercroft anymore, not since…”
“…not since he came back from the castle, ive tried to feed him but hes always hungry for more.”
The sound of chains moving quickly across the floor underneath could be hear through the floorboards. Something underneath was watching them through the cracks.
“The morninglord has sent you to me!” Donavich continued “You have to save my boy”
They learn that Doru, Donavich’s son was stricken with the curse of vampirism, Ignacious tells of a story he remembers about a vampire that became a monk by dedicating himself to the light of Lathander. Ignacious tells them that a strict regimen or death is the only cure.
The party go down into the cellar to confront Doru. Below, the undercroft opened into a low, cramped space, its walls rough hewn stone, the floor packed clay and damp soil underfoot. Rotting wooden pillars strained upward, bowing and straining under the weight of the chapel floor above, and thin cracks let candlelight bleed weakly down from the room overhead, just enough to make out a gaunt shape hunched in the far corner.
The shape shifted the moment they stepped off the last stair, a chorus of chains gliding across the floor could be heard as Doru made his way to them. “I can smell your blood,” he rasped, voice cracked and thin. Another step closer, faster this time. “Have you come to feed me?”
Ignacious raises a hand toward Doru. “Swear it,” he said. “Swear you’ll harm no person again. Hunt animals if you must feed, or take only from those who offer it willingly. Do that, and we’ll help you.” Doru’s eyes never left him as he spoke, though not his face, his throat, tracking the pulse visible beneath the skin there, watching blood move beneath the surface like something already promised to him. He lunges. The first to act is Retnuh, who charges forth and strikes the vampire, Retnuh is struck and bitten by the vampire before being thrown off him by Edric and Virro. Quickly the gang realise they can use the layout of the pillars to trap Doru using the long chain, forcing him to restrain himself. They lure him back and forward, with many close calls and the might of even a lowly vampire spawn proving to be tough to contend with. Every time he hit the end of that chain hard, the beams overhead groaned, a low, straining creak rolling through the timber like the whole church was holding its breath. Eventually Doru gets a small amount of slack in the chain and leaps to the cieling, where he grabs Virro by digging his claws into his shoulder, Before he can sink his teeth into the Harrengon, Retnuhs axe finds purchase in Dorus side. Just as it makes contact the groaning of the church reaches a crescendo and the floor collapses on them, with the rest of the building seeming to follow suit.
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