The last thing any of them saw was the ceiling giving way, timber and stone raining down in a single collapsing breath, and then nothing.
Virro woke somewhere else entirely.
There was no floor beneath him, only water, black and still and endless in every direction, stretching to a horizon where the whole sky pressed down and sealed at the edges in the colour of amber, appearing to take the consistency of glass.
A figure stood on the water some distance off, draped in robes of grey and gold, with glowing eyes of amber. It regarded Virro with a warm voice that seemed to ring in his head.
“You are drowning. Trapped,” rang the voice sonorously. Virro’s thoughts seemed to turn to being trapped in Barovia. The figure seemed to smile formlessly.
“Not here. And not within the mists. Within the stone and blessed rubble.”
“I can give you strength,” the figure went on. “Enough to pull stone from stone. Enough to save who can still be saved.” A pause, and something in the stillness of it felt deliberate, weighed. “It will cost you nothing today, but nothing is without a price.”
“I sense within you a spark of divinity. Let’s nurture it together.”
Virro mulled it for a moment and boldly took the outstretched hand of the robed figure.
Virro awoke beneath the rubble and began to pull himself free. He felt the strength and vigour of youth surge through him as he easily and tirelessly lifted his companions from the earth.
First he found Vesper, though he didn’t realise it at first, as what he found was the limp body of a raven the size of a man. He had a long beak and large, inky black wings, and wore Vesper’s clothes, his head awash with gore from the bad fall he had taken. Ireena was next to be pulled from the rubble, free of any major injuries and easy to wake. After a few moments of digging, Retnuh, Edric and Ignacious were found. Last to be found was Father Donavich, unconscious and at death’s door. The gang set about resuscitating him, and he awoke.
Before he even commented on the collapse of the church, he was concerned about Doru and asked where his son had gone. Virro was unable to find Doru among the wreckage, but he picked up a trail where someone had moved rocks before he woke, and realised it was Doru’s. He told Ignacious and Retnuh, who headed off on their horses in a hurry.
Resolute in the wake of his ruined church, Donavich dusted himself off and climbed up to the only intact section of the church, where he said, “We will continue with the burial rites for Kolyan while your friends find my son.”
Retnuh and Ignacious passed the Vistani girls and Ismark, who were carrying the body of Kolyan Indirovich in the coffin that Ireena and Ismark had made. Retnuh reached out his hand toward Sorvia for a fist-bump, which she accepted with a wry smile.
Several dour-looking, sallow-skinned Barovians gathered for a hurried ceremony to bury Kolyan Indirovich. Father Donavich began the ceremony standing at the head of the grave.
“We gather here in the light of the Morninglord to honour a mighty and compassionate fallen friend to all.”
Before he could continue the eulogy, a figure appeared behind him. He was tall and dark-skinned, with long hair, dressed in fine black and deep purple, the fabric cut close and precise in a style that belonged. Ismark pointed out to Edric that he was Rahadin, the castle chamberlain.
“You are doubtless tired, Father. Take a seat,” he said, with a voice of strange, foreign silk.
His hand found Father Donavich’s shoulder, his eyes glinted purple, and Father Donavich took a seat. Edric looked concerned. He was aware that this person had just cast suggestion.
“We are gathered here beneath the glorious shadow of the Pillarstone of Ravenloft to pay humble tribute to a Barovian of little renown,” began the eulogy. A look of discomfort washed across the crowd, while the stranger seemed to revel in his mockery for what felt like an eternity.
Meanwhile, after a short time, Ignacious and Retnuh tracked Doru to just outside of town. He lay half in the ditch at the roadside, one leg bent wrong beneath him, breathing in short, wet gasps that rattled with every rise of his chest, the wound from Retnuh’s axe deep and plainly visible. He managed to get to his knees before the pair. Retnuh chopped a branch from a dead tree and began paring it into a stake while they talked.
“This darkness, you can’t control it. You almost killed us,” mourned Ignacious.
“This will be easier. There will be peace. Stay still, lad,” he said, attempting to hold the vampire down. Doru strained in Ignacious’s grasp as he was pinned to the muddy ground. Retnuh drove the stake into his heart. Doru didn’t scream. He only let out a long breath, something between relief and shock. Soon after, his features melted away and he dissolved into white ash in their hands, his last breath fading into the air with an unsettling rattle.
Back at the funeral, Rahadin finished by offering a large sack of gold to Father Donavich for rebuilding the church. He said it would come with “some instruction on how best to redesign it”, and that it should help to guide people on how to live their lives. Rahadin had the body of Vesper the wereraven brought to the side of Kolyan’s coffin and carelessly kicked it into the grave to “save on space”.
Rahadin attempted to speak with Edric and Virro, who both told him their names were Retnuh. Unamused, Rahadin left them in the graveyard and walked off. As he left, Virro mocked his dress sense, a comment that stopped Rahadin in his tracks before he continued on. Each Barovian present gathered a handful of dirt and threw it into the grave. Once the numbers had dwindled and Rahadin had gone, Ismark began to give a eulogy of his own.
The road narrowed as it wound between two halves of an old graveyard. Weak wooden fences sagged along either side. To the east, a scatter of grave plots stretched off into the mist. To the west stood a squat stone mausoleum.
In the middle of the road lay a horse’s corpse, mauled and stiff. Beside it knelt a figure the party hadn’t expected to see again: ginger hair plastered to his forehead with rain and sweat, armour rent open at the chest, the breastplate torn clean away, his right arm caked in dried blood.
“It’s you!” the party chimed in amazement.
“I thought he died,” Retnuh said.
“No,” Ignacious said slowly. “He went off in a different direction. To an inn, or…”
Red looked up at them, eyes wide, disbelieving, scrambling back half a step. “You guys can’t be real.”
“They’re after me,” he said, voice climbing, words spilling faster than he could organise them. “The things that come out of the ground. Everywhere I go, they keep following me. They keep getting up.”
“What are you talking about, lad?” someone asked. “And,” Ignacious added, nodding at the book, “what’s that in your hand?”
“The lady in white gave it to me,” Red said. “At The Last Gasp. She asked me to pick a weapon, but I couldn’t pick one, so she gave me this. I lost my shield to some wolves as well…” he admitted.
Retnuh crouched beside the horse’s ruined body, frowning at the ground. Hoofprints circled the corpse at odd, dragging angles, and a long smear of gore trailed off toward the treeline, inconsistent with a horse simply collapsing where it stood. The horse, who once drew the wagon that brought them here, was barely recognisable as Stanford.
“Did he limp here,” Retnuh muttered, half to himself, “or did something drag him?” He turned to Red, motioning at the fallen horse. “I think you might be bait, or he is.”
Before Red could answer, or the party could press further, Ignacious went still, eyes dropping to the grave markers around them.
“Something’s moving,” he said.
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The ground shifted, wet earth bulging upwards by the headstones. Then a hand broke the surface, grey and swollen, skin split and sloughing from the knuckles. The earth tore open, and a dozen zombies marched toward the party. The party launched into action and attacked.
“They’re back,” Red whispered, and then, louder, panicked, “they’re back!” before bolting to the mausoleum despite Ignacious’s protests.
Retnuh, Ignacious, Virro and Ireena began fighting back the hordes of the dead while Edric grasped his holy symbol and cast turn undead. A wave of radiant light burst outward from him, washing over the graveyard in a pulse that made every zombie in its path flinch and stagger. Several of them turned at once, compelled to march away from Edric, some marching off into the mists in confusion, never to be seen again.
Red attempted to climb the mausoleum but slipped and landed on the side of his ankle with a sickening crack. Just then, a mass of writhing dead limbs emerged from the mausoleum. The Swarm of Zombie Limbs marched toward Red until Edric compelled it to march off into the mist. One of the zombies made its way past both fences to Red, although when it reached its target, it simply stood there. Virro took aim at the zombie standing motionless beside Red and fired, the arrow finding its target not in the undead, but in Red’s heart. Red looked shocked for a moment, and then fell to the ground motionless.
The gang dispatched the rest of the zombies and rushed to Red, who immediately took in a sharp breath and bolted upright, clutching his lilac book. Red’s skin was pale and Virro’s arrow was clean through his heart. He looked deeply confused. “You got me,” he said, his other hand waving vaguely at the arrow in his chest. Virro ripped the arrow out and Red got to his feet, his right ankle folding under his shin, though he didn’t seem to notice it.
“Lad, I think you might be dead,” chirped Ignacious, “or undead at least.” The party deliberated over what this could mean for some time, before Red asked, “Do you guys have a quill? I lost mine,” and Edric obliged him. Over Ignacious’s protests, Red began to draw a horse on a page of the lilac book. (describe stanford rising from the ground as a reanimated corpse). Red handed the page to Edric and moved to march on into the mists in search of the woman who gave him the book, so that he could be fixed. The party tried to get him to stay but failed to persuade him, only managing to anger him when they forgot his name.
“IT’S FREDRICK!!” roared Red, his voice breaking as he shambled into the distance.
Edric carefully approached Stanford, who allowed Edric to mount him.
Continuing down the road toward Vallaki, the party arrived at a squat stone windmill gone grey with age, its great sails turning slowly despite the stillness of the air, creaking with every rotation. In loose rings across the field leading up to it stood straw and sack creatures in the shape of men. The field was full of scarecrows. Smoke curled faintly from the base of the mill and carried a sweet smell of something delicious, baked with cinnamon.
The party approached the onion-domed mill to find Morgantha, wearing an apron covered in flour, who offered to host them for tea. Before they entered, Morgantha made an offer to Edric.
“I can tell you where young Arabelle is, or I can call in your favour,” Morgantha started with a wry smirk, before continuing, “but I want you to do something for me.”
“Tell me where the girl is,” came Edric’s reply.
It was impossible not to notice that one of the straw and sack creatures in the field was as large as a horse, and shaped like one too. It had hooves of blackthorn root and a mane and forelock of frayed hemp rope, combed straight. Its eyes were bone-white buttons, hanging mismatched over its face of sack and straw. Retnuh scratched it as though it were a living horse, and it moved its head toward his hand in kind. Retnuh was unfazed; his mind was elsewhere.
Musing for a moment, Retnuh remarked, “Would you not tell us where the girl is if he didn’t agree to help?”
“Yes,” came Morgantha’s hollow reply.
“Then I’ll stay outside. I don’t want anything to do with you,” Retnuh said defiantly, while Ignacious, Edric and Virro went inside.
Entering the first floor of the old mill, the trio saw a set table and two older women who moved around it with quick, practised hands, smoothing cloth, setting cups and resting a large ceramic teapot in the middle.
“I thought you said your sisters had left Barovia?” said Edric.
“Oh, you flatterer.” Morgantha’s smile widened, something satisfied settling into the lines of her face, plain for anyone paying attention to see. “These are my daughters.”
“Bella Sunbane.” The first inclined her head, dark-eyed and sharp-featured, watching the party with open, unhidden interest. “And Ophalia Wormwiggle.” The second woman stared vacantly.
“Sit, sit. Tea first. Business after.”
The trio sat, and Morgantha poured tea for each of them before reaching Virro, who said, “I’m not a tea person, I’m a wine person.” Morgantha rapped her knuckle on the side of the teapot and poured it into Virro’s cup. Wine poured from the spout in turn.
Being watched expectantly, the trio drank from their cups and found the drinks pleasant and sweet.
“Young Arabelle is in Vallaki. She has been separated from Krogarov and taken by a man named Izek Strazni,” mulled Morgantha. “My sources say that the town militia had her last, and that her father was last seen heading to the lake to…” Morgantha paused to consider her next words. “…drown his sorrows.”
“Now… in return for this information, I need you to get something for me. I need the tongue of a very rude dusk elf. Bring me the head of Rahadin, the castle chamberlain.”
Morgantha described him as very rude and arrogant, but did not mention her specific grievance. She told them that if he isn’t in the castle, he can sometimes be found in the drowned village of Berez, or up Mount Balinok.
“And I can’t have any of you unhorsed. Take Tatters with you. He needs a walk. You don’t need to feed him, but you can if you want to.” She smiled as the party shared some concerned looks.
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