A journal. Aside from a few scratches and scorch marks, its brown cover is untouched. The pages are spotted with ink stains, filled with writings done in a neat, educated script.
Fifteen years ago, my governess, a vexing, tiresome old woman, told me to keep a journal. Not for recording purposes, but to tame my penmanship. I ignored her, since I quite liked my wild, uneducated script, and saw no reason why the idle daydreams of a girl, seven summers old, needed to be written down.
But now, sitting within the stinking bowels of a voyaging ship, I find myself finally taking up my governess's advice, if for no other reason than to provide an exercise for my beleaguered mind.
The source of my stress, of course, had been the letter that arrived at the law offices in the early, gray morning. I remember my confusion, gazing at the curdled milk colored envelope that sat, meek and silent, on top of the black wood of my desk. When I turned it over, however, all became clear.
Bubbling from the faded paper like some kind of fleshy tumor was a symbol I hadn't seen in ages. My old family crest – a gaunt crow, wings spread, carrying a shield against its chest. I had torn the candle wax apart with some measure of unladylike franticness, ripping the letter from the gaping maw of the envelope.
The first few lines of rosy, gilded script confirmed my already growing suspicions. The letter, addressed to me, had come from my father.
The first emotions that swelled in my breast were an unbridled sense of sickly sweet joy, accompanied by a haze of nostalgia. My father, the shining star of my childhood, had been absent from my life since he had sent me to study overseas. For years, I had not laid eyes on his warm, gentle smile, nor had I heard the soothing baritone that filled my young ears with bedtime stories.
With thoughts of my father also came swirling memories of my family's ancestral home, my current destination: the hamlet. Rising over the picturesque coast of the New Continent, this place was the closest there was to Paradise. I remember my days spent playing in the shadows of my father's manor, an aloof and beautiful edifice of Gothic and Classical origin. The afternoons spent picking mushrooms of curious nature in the meadows south of the estate. The mornings where I and the other lawless children of the hamlet, with torches in hand, would run rampant in the caverns hidden beneath the ground, pretending to be burly brigands or courageous crusaders. The nights when I could watch the ocean and see stars, reflected across its fathomless, black depths, and feel like I was wandering across some wonderful, yet equally terrible, world.
This was my paradise, the golden years of my youth. The first few words in the letter invoked those rosy images:
You remember our venerable house, opulent and imperial, gazing proudly from its stoic perch above the moor.
It has brought terrible, inconceivable ruin.
Ruin has come to our family.
My father had been an optimistic man. This oppressive melancholy was most unusual. The letter continued in a similar fashion:
In those innumerable years of times long past, your departure left my soul wracked with an unquenchable emptiness. I lived the rest of my years in that ancient, rumor shadowed manor, fattened by decadence and luxury. And yet, I began to tire of… conventional extravagance. Singular unsettling tales suggested that the mansion itself was a gateway to some fabulous and unnameable power. With relic and ritual, I bent every effort towards the excavation and recovery of those long buried secrets, exhausting what remained of our family fortune on swarthy workmen and sturdy shovels.
At last, in the salt soaked crags beneath the lowest foundations, we unearthed that damnable portal of antediluvian evil. Our every step unsettled the ancient earth, but we were in a realm of death and madness. In the end, I alone fled, laughing and wailing through those blackened arcades of antiquity, pressed forward only by ephemeral thoughts of you. Until= consciousness failed me.
You remember our venerable house, opulent and imperial?
It is a festering abomination! I beg you, return home, claim your birthright, and deliver our family from the ravenous clutching shadows of the darkest dungeon.
Shrouded in enigma, the letter resisted my attempts to decipher it. Was it some byzantine code that thwarted the efforts of my mind to comprehend the message? Had my father gone mad, chewing the feather of his quill as he sat writing this letter in the hamlet's local sanitarium? Or was it plain in its revelation that my father had, in a fit of grief-driven delusion, delved into powers unknown and unleashed a foul evil upon the world?
Of course, when I showed the letter to some of my colleagues, there minds went to the former two options. They came up with many convincing theorems and postulations to assuage my doubts. However, their skepticism over the third possibility falls flat immensely when faced with the fact that the mortal sphere we inhabit is filled with incidents of daemon-possessed men ravaging the countryside, nuns with unnatural powers purging plagues and disease from poor towns, and knights riding into blood-soaked battlefields with golden, holy auras protecting them from harm. And if mankind's best dreams have borne fruit, by what reason should its worst nightmares not be allowed to materialize as well?
It was for this reason that I posted a notice a few days before my departure to the New Continent, a note promising a hefty sum of money to four strong, warm bodies who were willing to protect me for the length of my stay. Officially, I cited tensions in the seas between the continents as a reason for protection. The most recent, foolhardy crusade the church declared on the southern aisles had left the area in a state of incomparable disarray. Pugilistic pirates and worse were a verified obstacle for any intrepid voyager.
The first two replies I received to my notices were from a doctor and from a member of the local convent. The doctor was solely interested in the gold I had promised the notice – I reassured her that she would be paid in full, for my law practice had left me with a lucrative fortune of my own.
The convent member, however, was far more interested in the contents of my letter. She held the same mind as I did, one that was open to any mental stench, foul or fair. The minute mentions of eldritch evil and sinister forces had caused her eyes to practically light up in the dim confines of my office. From there, she declared that my cause was worthy of notice from the Church of Light, and that an investigative force would be mustered to quash any supernatural resistance I faced.
In the end, however, both of them could not spare time to actually accompany me on my long-winded voyage, due to preexisting obstructions. A week before my departure, I was contemplating my remaining options when a sudden knock roused me from my idle musings. I opened the door to find a mountain of a man filling up the doorframe, the rising, searing sun silhouetting him in a golden halo that drew stinging tears from my eyes. The man wore a full suit of armor, with no space for the familiar sight of warm, pink flesh. Even his visor was small enough that I couldn't make out his face. The purity seals, massive broadsword, and Maltese heraldry on his chest made it clear that he was a man of the crusading practice, a devout dealer of death and destruction.
I invited the crusader in, and asked him whether he had been summoned by my notice. The crusader, upon hearing this information, let out a confused gasp, like a dying frog. In a voice with the lightness of an aged, falling leaf, rather than the rugged depth I came to expect from a man of war, the crusader explained that he came to answer a call from the church. A nun from a local convent had been most insistent on having him grant his services to a certain woman who was involved in dealings of a "devilish sort". After that, he stuttered and asked if he'd accidentally fouled up some kind of application process.
For the most part, he was an amiable fellow. He graciously gave me time to clear up the confusion, and to make permanent his arrangements as a member of my personal guard. Contracts regarding accountability of weapons and equipment, payment, loss of life and limb passed by with extreme rapidity, colored in some part by a meek bout of conversation between us. I learned that the crusader's name was Reynauld, and that he was one of many who'd come from the recent crusade in search of work. He gave me the impression that he would be a pleasure to deal with, and I had been inclined to agree. That was, until after the interview, when I discovered that several random objects, of no actual value to me, had disappeared in an alarming fashion.
Despite the doubt that lingered in my mind, my man showed up at the harbor with neat punctuality. Still, of course, clad in that gaudy gear of his.
We made plans to depart immediately. But before we could step foot onto the water-logged planks of the ship I had hired, the second prospective applicant made himself known to me.
He had the appearance of a commoner. A jacket, trousers, and boots, caked in the mud and dirt of a thousand roads. A scarf, the color of congealed blood, covered most of his face, which was equally as rugged as the rest of him. His eyes, though, belied a sharp intellect, as well as a stifling sort of numbness.
Without any sort of introduction, this stranger told me that he sought to accompany me to the New Continent. To cement the honesty of his proposition, he brought out one of the posters I had used to call for aid.
Before I could announce my verdict on the subject, Reynauld moved in between me and the man. One hand gripping the worn leather of his broadsword, the crusader warned that this man was "nothing more than a common thief", and that he was likely aiming to relieve me of my valuables and certain feminine assets.
At this accusation, the so-called "thief" merely laughed through his scarf and remarked that if I was going to avoid the company of thieves, I might as well dump the crusader as well. With unnatural speed, he withdrew a knife and sliced open one of the pouches that hung at the crusader's side. The screech of leather was followed by the clatter of trinkets and baubles that scattered along the worn stones of the harbor.
The crusader was still as a crumbling castle, his gauntlets clenched. Rather than anger, I sensed that the shroud of shame had settled onto the man's shoulders. I imagined that whatever flesh lay underneath that colossal helm of his was the color of overripe peaches. Without a sound, he gathered up the various items that lay along the ground and retreated into the ship.
"Dismas". That's the name the thief gave me, along with a firm shake of the hand and a comment that he could recognize stolen goods "a mile away". I agreed to his contract, impromptu as it was, and warned him to keep good company with the crusader. The last thing I needed was for my bodyguards to turn their blades on each other instead of the enemy.
Dismas made no guarantees, but swore on a "highwayman's honor" to follow my lead.
A commotion above decks, as I write close to the lamp's fire. Likely the gambling tables. While Dismas may be sharper than an executioner's sword, he's a terrible cheater.
Time for rest. Who knows how much this trouble this simple letter has brought me.