Winner of RPGC #29: The Village
A woman rode into the abandoned hamlet, wide-brimmed hat and upturned collar deflecting the rain away from her. She gazed up at the moon, blinking once as a droplet struck her eye, and then turned towards the church, raising the lantern she carried a little higher. The hooves of her steed carried her towards the church with ease, trotting over twigs and puddles without any annoyance in its movement. Once her beast had come to the entrance, she gave the reins a simple tug in order to halt it. Before her stood the doors of the church; once stalwart defenders to any that had needed to take refuge inside, now rotten, the corpses of trees now twice-corpses in their dissolution.
Sighing, she twisted the reins about and tied them to a post by the church, making sure her mount was securely in place before turning her attention towards the building. Reaching into a pocket, she drew out a small handful of shimmering powder, using the water that had fallen onto the stone porch to make a gritty paste, then, slowly, dragging three fingers about the destroyed entrance. Her fingers ran across hard stone and rusted iron hinges, leaving a gleaming trail behind. Once it was complete she tossed the rest of the paste against the floor, brushing any remaining flecks off on her jacket.
Then, she stepped past it, into the desecrated house of worship. The pews were set astray, the altar’s white shroud moth-eaten and crumbling. Unceremoniously wiping her boots off on the flagstones, the traveller would set the lantern down atop the old stone and take a moment to shake the rain from her hat, looking about. “I know you’re here.” Her voice was clear and level, even as her lantern-light quivered at some unseen force.
The shadows closed in around the woman. She looked up, towards the leaden windows and saw as the moonlight shrank away, to a place more deserving of it. A slight scowl would spread across her face and she turned to one of the pews, taking a seat there and leaning forward on her knees. Reaching past her jacket, she would pull a simple symbol from beneath her shirt and let it dangle free, the carved wood displaying a shape similar to a Y, the arms of which had had holes drilled through for a string to serve as a necklace.
Still, there was no response from the presence in the church. Her scowl deepening, the woman pressed her hands together and licked her lips to brush away the dryness. She began to speak, lips forming the oft-spoken words easily. “On sn-”
”Faith has no power here. Not any longer.” The voice finally growled out, and the woman knew only she heard them.
“No, but you were so stubborn with ignoring me, I thought a small prod was in order.” The frown faded in an instant, the woman instead leaning back on her hard wooden seat, nonchalantly placing her hands over her stomach.
”Awful bold for you to come here alone.” The voice was almost mocking in its tone. Let it be; she held the cards here.
“I’d think you’d be happy for the company.” She felt her back stiffen as the pew’s hardness forced it to adjust; there never was a moment of comfort for the faithful. Just as she rose to stand, the edge of the wood biting into her muscle, the voice halted her.
”It is a… Change of pace.” The statement seemed to have been given almost reluctantly, and what had once been a frown on the woman’s face was now most certainly a smug sort of smirk.
”Although still a mistake for you.”Once he had finished, the woman would nod with satisfaction to herself. It was in the main church; not speaking from some other area of the ruined building. This building held an ossuary in its bowels; where the last preacher had hidden his profane deeds. That meant there was an entrance to it. Rising to her feet, she took measured, even steps, every now and again pausing to tap her foot against the floor to check the sound.
Eventually, after perhaps a minute of quiet searching, she found what she desired. A fake flagstone with a cleverly concealed metal ring. Once again her fingers dove into her pocket, pulling out that shimmering powder and slowly dragging another circle out around it. She could feel the presence strong over her shoulders now, as if peering down to look at what she was doing. Then, she lifted the ‘flagstone’ up with a low, dull groan, dust falling into the vacuum of light that had appeared below. Carefully now, making sure not to disturb her previous work, she would let the trapdoor rest, returning to where her lantern sat on the altar. Lifting it up, disregarding the presence in the room, she sank down, the only comfort to her the lamplight as the cold and damp pressed in around her.
It was hard to feel comfortable when dead men watched you. Every alcove; every cubby, every nook and cranny had another set of skulls, and they all seemed to be staring at her. How many generations of villagers had long since settled into the Comforting Embrace? How many hadn’t settled?
Once her head had fallen below the church, the presence vanished, replaced instead by the rank stench of decay. This was not the smell that brought carrion to feast, no; this was the scent of the last few fragments of flesh finally succumbing to the flies. She turned to look at the stairs she had descended and could only shudder when she realised that the space underneath was filled with limb-bones, lined up like so many bleached-uniform soldiers. Another step, and another, her nose carrying her forward.
Then the whispers started. They brushed past her mind like cobwebs, and past her periphery vision like the first wisps of smoke from a campfire. Five? Eight? They were moving too quickly, their surprise at a mortal too much for her to draw a bead on their numbers. Not that it mattered for their bodies would tell her that. The scent drew closer, the whispers more insistent. How long had the preacher cursed them to this existence? Every footfall echoed with her frustration; at the fact that she and her comrades had failed to do anything for these people.
Finally, she reached them. Among the neatly ordered bones, the disarray stood out almost as much as the colour. They were yellowed and covered in a film of muck; viscous and brown. “The Embrace will come.” She said the words with a distinct finality, drawing a phial of clear liquid out of her coat with a soft clink. Uncorking it, she let the unction pour out, nose crinkling at the sensation of the perfumes struggle to overpower the decay.
The true power of this was not in the smell, of course, but in the symbolism. What they had not been given in life, she would provide in death. Each of the skulls received a small amount of the liquid, spilling down their crowns and in rivulets running through their empty eye sockets and noses. She held her lantern up high, opened the glass shutters, and closed her eyes, hearing the whispers pull together, and just as the flies had flitted towards their bodies, so too did they go towards the flame. Then, with a gloved hand, she would reach for each of the skulls in turn, placing them in a neat line one after the other, brushing fingers past where eyelids had once been.
With liquid still dripping from her hand she turned towards the stairway once more. Her lantern’s light was blue-white in its intensity, burning with a radiance that surpassed the natural. Her feet carried her naturally away from their final resting place and up, towards where her business would be concluded.
She emerged into the church again, and turned towards one of the great wooden beams that held the house of worship together. Wiping her hand off against it, she would wait for the voice to return.
”Did you find them? The works of this village? The works done in my name?”“You denied them the Comforting Embrace.” She said it in a matter-of-fact tone of voice. “So now I shall grant them freedom.” She closed the trapdoor carefully, and gave one last check to the warding circle around it. Still intact. “And I shall return you to your rightful place.” One more phial would be drawn out with her spare hand, each of the wooden beams receiving a small daub of the oily liquid.
“What you have done here will become a memory, and when I pass to the Embrace, they will trouble this world no more. Throw your form against my mind; mayhaps it’ll raise my spirits now.” There was the sound of a chain rattling as the woman drew out a far grander symbol than the one that sat around her neck. Burnished silver, beaming in the spirit-light, it rang out a clear message in this desecrated house. Step by step, the symbol jingling with each one, the woman let her lantern-flame grace each of the daubed marks on the pillars, the glowing flames leaping outwards with unusual hunger.
”You dare?!| The voice held none of the confidence it had before- now it practically screeched at her. She ignored it; it deserved none of her time. She would lift the symbol up higher, swaying it gently from side to side as she strode towards the next pillar.
”You desecrate holy ground!” The voice had damned itself with its lies. There was no holiness in this place- elsewise the presence would not be here. The first pillar’s flames had already begun to devour it, so hungry were the flames.
“You cannot escape.” Was all she would say to it as she continued. “The door is warded. The ossuary is warded, so you cannot disturb the dead further. The stones will bury you, the flames will consume you, and their fuel will escape beyond your reach.” The fangs of fire began to bite at another pillar, the old, dry wood burning without much smoke.
The voice continued to screech, wretched thing that it was, but she disregarded it. What more needed to be said? What more needed to be heard? Nothing; nothing at all. Let the fire do the rest of the talking for her. Each of the vast wooden posts would stoke the righteous light and she strode across the building’s threshold confidently. Outside was a mounted host- men and women dressed similarly to her, illuminated by the flames rising up from the rest of the building’s houses.
Wordlessly, they watched as the supernatural light faded from her lantern. Past the wards, there was nothing to keep the souls away from their most deserved enjoyment of the Embrace and they would dart away, their last mission completed.
“On snow white streams the spirits fly, towards the veil beyond the sky. Take up with you our souls to keep, lay with them in Eternal Sleep. Preserve them well throughout the night, watch over them with blessed sight.”
The host would utter the prayer in respectful murmurs, and by the time the prayer had finished and the words had been washed away by the rain, the church was fully engulfed; a holy pyre to drive out the infernal rot that had grown into the roots of the building
Untying and mounting her steed, the woman would close the shutters carefully to preserve the now-natural flame. “We carry the faith,” the man next to her would say, the light reflected in his eyes even as he urged his horse to turn, the group trotting past the burning hamlet and beyond, to the next blighted grove.
“We carry the light that leaves no darkness behind.”
Loksfjoer is a Contest Moderator.
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