Prologue
"Now I've told you this once before, you can't control me
If you try to take me down you're gonna break"
"I Stand Alone" written by Sully Erna
Performed by Godsmack
1458DR
"Year of the Plotting Priests"
Port City of New Amsterdam
James Beckett, former paladin of the noble God, Heironeous, stepped into the nearly empty chambers provided as an office for an advocate for the commons of the city of New Amsterdam. He had hung up his sword and armor nearly five years hence, much of that time spent seeking answers for why his wife Johanna had been murdered in the bottom of a flagon of mead. It had taken many years to work past, nearly alienating his strong willed - but wounded - daughter in the process.
He had been away serving his god, smiting evil and providing justice to the downtrodden for so many years, he'd had no idea what Johanna had become embroiled in here at home, how much peril his family had been in, but when he marched triumphantly back into the city's gate he had returned to find his wife stabbed to death in this very office.
Though he was certain it was his imagination, as he had been assured the floors had been stripped and resurfaced years ago, he was sure he could still see the stain on the floor where Johanna's blood had pooled under her body, still warm when he had found her on that black day when his oaths to Heironeous had ceased to have meaning. He would place the armor stand on that spot to remind him of his failure.
He had failed to uphold the third oath, the one to his lady his one and only true love and she had been killed, leaving no crusader to take up the mantle that had been left vacant with her passing. He would pay his penance to his Lady and his god by taking up her standard instead. To serve as diligently as an advocate of justice for the people as he had as a Paladin.
His fair Johanna had gone on to the next world, and so he'd sworn his service to Blind Justice instead, though in his heart of hearts, under that blindfold, she resembled his beloved.
He'd made a solemn vow to never fail her again.
1463DR
"Year of the Reborn Hero"
An hour's march from New Amsterdam
When the smoke cleared, nearly everyone from the caravan lay dead. Cole Maddox surveyed the handiwork of himself and his small squad of highly trained assassins.
The skirmish had been brief and only one guard had acquitted herself well enough to kill one of his men. He'd had to draw his blade and deal with her himself. She was good, obviously not the sort of sell-sword that would hire herself out to a merchant caravan. Given the identity of the red haired girl he had been sent to retrieve, he was not surprised that she would have at least one guard chosen by her father. She'd made him work for it, but in the end he was better. He'd managed to cut her down without killing her.
"You fought well," Maddox stated without a hint of derision in his tone. "Nobody has fought me to a standstill like you have in a long time. You are a credit to your order, but I need something from you."
The young woman spat blood that had pooled in her mouth, some of which landed on his boots. He'd expected as much, and his expression never wavered.
"You'll get nothing from me," she hissed, "be on with it and be on your way."
Two of his largest men dragged her to her feet. She was nearly the same height as the girl now unconscious and bound in the back of the wagon, sporting hair the same shade of red. Anyone going by a general description anyone else could have confused them as sisters, but he knew better.
"I need you to convey a message for me, sword maiden," he whispered, "but out of respect for your skill, I'll make this quick."
In a movement so quick that not even his own men were prepared for it, there was a dagger in his hand which he buried in the young woman's chest, slipping it easily between her ribs to cut her heart in two.
"But...the message..." she choked out with her dying breath, the light slipping from her eyes.
"You are the message, my dear, not the messenger," Maddox whispered in her ear as she faded out, "or, you will be, with a little stage dressing."
"Strip the bodies, no traces!" Maddox ordered to his men as he allowed the now dead body of Allison Tisdale to fall to the ground. "Bring the sword maiden. I have something particular in mind."
Lady Katherine Beckett had been tracking a fugitive for most of the day when she came upon the scene later that day. Fifteen bodies from the small trade caravan, left where they fell, stripped of their weapons and equipment. One of the bodies lay in the middle of the defensive circle of wagons, stripped bare and covered in rose petals, her eyes covered with sunflowers, a slender sword clutched in her hands, as if laid out for warrior's burial.
Why go to all the trouble to make this look like bandits then do this? She thought to herself. It doesn't make any sense.
This was bigger than chasing some art thief, royal warrant or not. She had to get back to call in the guard before the bodies attracted carrion eaters. As her father had found his new calling years ago as an advocate for the living, it had become hers to seek justice for the dead when the wicked had robbed them of their voices.
She had a duty to speak for these men and women. To find the people who killed them, and put them in cages. Their families deserved closure, their spirits deserved to be put to rest, the closure she and her father had been denied. It had become her crusade, her life's work. Something just didn't feel right about this one though. There was something she was missing.
She just couldn't put her finger on it.
Richard Castle, Third Under-mage of the Order of Magi, had been called to the scene - at the insistence of Knight-Captain Montgomery - to search for magical traces. None of the bodies had been moved and Castle was shocked at the tableau, one he'd all too familiar, yet alien to him at the same time.
His mind spun wildly as he crushed the needed materials from his pouch and muttered the spell to reveal magic by rote. The sword clutched in the dead woman's cold, dead hands glowed as if on fire and before the guards-woman who'd discovered the bodies had carefully removed the sunflowers over Allison Tisdale's eyes, Castle knew beyond all shadow of doubt whom she was.
He had hired the young woman now lying dead at his feet to guard his daughter. The sword now clutched in her hands as if for honored burial had set off all of the protective wards in his home the day he'd met her three years ago. But the sudden recognition wasn't what had turned his skin pale and made him sick to his stomach. What hit him like a punch to the stomach was how Allison's body was laid out, a tableau he was certain he'd never seen outside of his nightmares.
Nightmares he'd had off and on since the night after he'd been found in Hollander's Woods when he was eleven years old. A day that even now he could not remember, other than a scene just like this one seared into his memory along with pain and fear.
Why take Alexis, and leave Allison like this for me to find? Castle asked himself. How could someone know to do that? No one knew about this nightmare, not Meredith, nor Gina, nor even mother. It was just a nightmare... wasn't it?
He would need answers to these questions and there was only one place he was going to find them. The place that, to this day, still filled him with a sense of fear and dread, a place he would have been content never to set foot in again.
Somebody either connected to that day he could neither remember nor ever forget, or somebody who knew what happened there had taken Alexis. If he wanted to find her and bring her home safe, he would have to set aside his fear and return to the place where the course of his life had been altered forever.
For the love of his only child, into Hollander's Woods he would go.
**Author's Note** I know, I know, I've started another major AU instead of continuing my other unfinished works. I understand how this might be frustrating to some of you guys who've been waiting a while, but season 8 has given me little to work with in the way of inspiration lately. This is the first really fresh idea I've had in a while, so I hope you enjoy the ride. I used to write Dungeons and Dragons fanfic back in the day, so it's sort of a return to my writing roots. I hope you like it.
For those of you who may not know, the city we now know as New York began its life as the Dutch colony of New Amsterdam.
I would also like to thank LordofKavaka for the incredible cover art at such short notice