You remember our venerable house, opulent and imperial, gazing proudly from its stoic perch above the moor…
"We are the Flame! Darkness fears us!"
The stagecoach rolled into the Hamlet, the sole remaining man inside, a Crusader by the name of Reynauld stepped from the cab, pulling with him the dead remains of his traveling companion and only true friend, the Highwayman, Dismas. If Reynauld were a weaker man he would have turned to the unsettling power of the occult, necromancy, to bring his friend back. However, his years in the crusades, seeing the horrors of such ungodly planning, and his grandfather's scrawled warnings of what awaited those who delved too deeply into things they could never understand, strengthened his resolve to carry on without him.
He pulled Dismas out of the carriage and onto the ground, leaning him against the grand wheel of the stagecoach before he stood and lifted the visor from his helm to gaze upon the crumbling Hamlet he remembered only from childhood, four and a half decades before. His piercing blue eyes sought out the silhouette of his ancestral home in the distance, dark and foreboding like he had never seen it before. He suppressed a shudder, moving the focus of his mind, and his eyes, away from the horrors that no doubt lurked in what was once his place of solace. Instead his eyes turned to the Abbey, and the Graveyard beside it. He glanced down at his deceased companion and steeled his resolve once more. By end of day, Dismas would be buried. And then a night of repentant confessions and fervent prayer would be his reward.
Reynauld lowered his visor and lifted Dismas' corpse into his arms once more, nodding once at the quietly giggling driver before dragging his friend off on the long path to the Abbey's Graveyard. As he stepped through the slowly waking Hamlet, he noted the weary gazes of the townsfolk, emaciated, paranoid, stressed.
Women shushed their children. Men narrowed their eyes and clenched their fists. Reynauld continued his slog.
Past the brothel and the desperately waving prostitutes within, begging him to spend coin on them, if only to take their minds off their fears for a few scant hours. Reynauld continued on.
Past the Gambling Hall with its jeering crowds, even at this early hour, past the Bar that promised a hard drink and a somewhat friendly ear. Reynauld continued on.
The Sanitarium loomed above him, casting its shadow over him and his dead friend, the morning sun doing nothing to make it appear more inviting. Faint screams could be heard coming from within. A woman in a religious habit nodded sadly at Reynauld as he passed, and he nodded back. Both knew that by the end of this horrible task, not the burying of his friend but the cleansing of the Mansion and the closure of the Dark Dungeon below, they would be well acquainted. The caretaker took pity and offered a sad smile. Reynauld, however, only continued on.
Finally, after a scant fifteen minutes that felt like eternity, Reynauld arrived at the Abbey, stopping to set Dismas' body down on the stone steps and take a breath for himself. As he did so, the large wooden door swung open and a priestly robed man stepped from the dimly lit interior, suddenly as if he had known the crusader would be arriving.
"So, I see the old man's missive reached you after all, Reynauld, may his soul lay at rest." The man's voice was soft as he spoke, a bereft sadness belied in the calmness of it, yet some semblance of holy power yet stirred just beneath the surface.
Beneath his visor, a flicker of surprise swept through Reynauld's normally hardened expression, a surprise that the old Abbot, who did not seem to be as old as he perhaps should be this many years later, would know who he was, being so many years older and still wearing his visor down. But just as quickly as the surprise entered, so too did it leave, his expression hardening once more.
"Not only me, Father, but Dismas as well." Reynauld motioned to the dead body of the highwayman at his feet on the cold stone steps. "However he met his fate upon the Old Road."
The Abbot's expression saddened for a moment. He had not always liked the hardy young (though not quite so young, or hardy for that matter, anymore) rogue who had befriended his pupil, but he would not have wished death on the boy, though boy he was no longer.
"As so many do, who venture to this cursed land. But, unfortunate as death for a man may be, he was fortunate not to die here, or while cleansing the eldritch filth from the land. If he had, perhaps his soul would not be resting so easy as it is now." The abbot's expression calmed again as he spoke, looking back up to the helmed head of the crusader before him, once a youth well known, now an old veteran of holy conflict, mysterious in his person.
"Such bittersweet solace that is." Reynauld went quiet for a moment, gazing down at the dead Dismas through the bars of his visor. Then, suddenly, he lifted his head back to the Abbot. "I pray ask you to allow me to bury him in the graveyard. Personally."
The abbot looked hard at Reynauld, his gaze seeming to pierce through the metal of the visor and into the crusader's eyes and soul. Then he nodded.
"I feel that would be the right thing to do." The abbot glanced to the dead highwayman and back to Reynauld. "The shovels are in the shed. Be of mind not to disturb the other graves. The dead sleep lightly enough as it is."
Reynauld nodded, and it would be his last communication to the Abbot for the rest of the day, perhaps even the night. It acted as both acknowledgement and thanks. And that was all the old priest needed, turning himself away from the two heirs and shuffling back inside the Abbey, the doors closing behind him with a hard, loud boom and leaving Reynauld alone with his thoughts and dead friend once more.