I sit here in this modest room at the Ragged Moon, hunched over this journal. I commit to this: no matter how shameful my actions have proven to be, I will not withhold them. I have been lying for too long, to my flock, to Aldmaar who only sought to help me, to the very Lord I have sworn to serve, and most despicable of all, to myself.
I was almost literally dragged by my ear by Lady Sparrowhawk, Knight of Darkmoor, to the cemetery where she shattered the chain securing the great door of the mausoleum. “Pieter,” she advised, holding my gaze with her firm, piercing blue eyes, “you and I will investigate, in this moment, what has been occurring here amongst the dead, as you have several times promised his Lordship you would do without fail.”
I swallowed my pride, and creating a minor enchantment so that we could see despite the impinging darkness, she and I descended.
I do not know what I expected to find. However, my breath was quickly drawn from me as we continued. Row after row of shelves, sepulchers and niches where the bodies of the fallen of Darkmoor had been respectfully interred now lay bare. Not all of the remains had vanished, as we inspected passage after passage in that dark, damp space. Those whose final resting places bore the holy symbol of San Nicholas — or those who had been interred bearing or clutching symbols of my faith– remained. However, many … far, far too many, who I had personally delivered to them their final rites and seen brought to earth here, were lacking. And in a number of instances so great I… do not know how to confront, another symbol had been hidden here, perhaps alongside them this entire time. A dark symbol of fire and torrent, marsh and smoke minted into coins and pressed into stone and woven into dark, noisome bedclothes were all that served to indicate that a person, in their final form, had ever resided in these spots.
“The people, Nikita, they’ve been stolen.”
“The dead, Pieter, have arisen and stolen themselves.”
The symbol, I knew, was that of a threat, a cancer growing in Darkmoor. The “Old Church,” I’ve heard it called. The “Temple of the Elemental.” A secret cult whose members meet in basements and in catacombs, tunnels, concealed places beneath the earth. They speak a forbidden tongue, evil and powerful merely in the speaking. They lie and obfuscate and disguise in their daily lives while they meet in their hidden worm-holes and spread their contagion, pulling especially the young and hungry in with their promises of dark power.
And they prey upon the gullible, the old and vain, with flattery and promises and little gifts. And even those whose wisdom, so-called, is vaunted by many may fall into this web of lies. And then lie to obscure their own part, their own foolishness and naiveté. The cultists use these fools to do work they could not themselves, such as having their allies freed from an earned imprisonment with the shallowest of misrepresentations.
The love that they give, these cultists, is of the ugliest sort. Easily discerned by any willing to look past the pure animal acts. Easy, that is, except to those who look only for evidence that someone might love them.
“You have cried enough, Pieter,” Lady Sparrowhawk said, not unkindly. “Now we must act. At last, you see what is happening in our Darkmoor.”
We returned to the shrine in Elder Pool, to find it entirely vacated. Every item of monetary wealth, gone. Deacon Willmat slain in his robes, a leering grin cut into his dead face by some ritual dagger. Thomas Slate, freed by my incompetence, entirely at large. And with him, likely clutching his young hand and having a shared laugh at my expense, Valentine. Lovely Valentine.
The scales have fallen from my eyes. In the morning, I will travel with the Knight of Darkmoor to speak to the sage, in Anthracite. To learn what we might about how to confront this threat.
But only after I confess my sins to the Lord of Darkmoor. Whatever recriminations he has for me, I will bear with equanimity and take to heart that which I can bear. I have disgraced myself and failed to live up to the promises I made to San Nicholas, on that spare altar these many years agone. But I am Pieter of San Nicholas, and there is no more time for self-pity and tears. We are at war. I can, at this moment, not yet find pity for those who oppose us.