With the work being done in your absence, you decided to retire to the bar for some much needed reprieve and distraction. Ever since your fingers had first made contact with that journals eerily smooth binding, since your eyes had began so ravenously consuming the pages content and their wondrous, worrying implications, there had been this tension building within your bones that you found yourself unable to shake. Even finally pushing the book away, burdening someone else with its yet unplumbed, troubling ballast had merely dampened the feeling, not quelled its source. It was alive very much inside you and as you wandered the mostly vacant city streets you could hardly shake that damnable sense of being watched. Beheld, by something, somewhere in the general leaning of that ruin atop the hill.

Grateful, you pushed open the tavern gate. You had made it. The room behind looked exactly the way you had left it. Dim lighting illuminated a few mostly inert silhouettes, hunched over tables, sprawled in corners. The only new contrast was the highwayman who had joined the dormant patrons at the bar, glass in hand, with a stoic stare and poise that blended in all too well with his surroundings. Had you not known the man, you would not have been able to tell him from the locals. Silently you took a seat next to him and motioned the keep to serve you a glass of the offered lukewarm distraction.

Usually when that familiar thirst for diversion arose within, you had shared the chosen spirit between you and the evening alone. A silent moment in much needed solitude, allowing you to reflect and think and be on your own. Drinking around people was not a quality you had been known for, much less around the more... common folk. A tall jug was set before you. You eyed the mixture suspiciously, then took a large gulp. The murky liquid splashed against the back of your throat and it was so utterly revolting. You had expected something of a less refined quality, but this emulsion was as off-putting as it was nondescript. No singular taste could be made out, it all collided within a maelstrom of stale, alienating murk. And all taste that could have been, was smothered and drowned in the overwhelming sting of the very substance the lazy-eyed, driveling patrons were here for. Once again you understood that intoxication was not an act of provocative stimulation here, nor a funny, social affair. It was a patch of long expired medicinal herbs, pressed with might on a septic wound that simply would not stop oozing. But instead of mending the wound, all the people here could do was press harder.

The rogue next to you emptied the rest of his drink in one large swig and motioned the barkeep to fix him another. "I have not properly thanked you for saving my life" you directed word towards him in an act of transactional kindness, "so thank you." The man next to you showed no reaction to your words. Stoic gaze turned ahead, thoughts wandering down some distant road, limbs and body firmly rooted in this place, with his drink and with you. But otherwise absent. The glass was set before him and finally, he returned from his mental retreat.

"You could've died out there, y'know that right?" he finally returned a dry, dark answer without turning his head. This reaction confused you. "That's what you were there for," you returned, hardly masking the irritation in your voice. The rogue took notice. "You weren't prepared for the ambush. Had there been another, you would be dead," he replied, again draining more of that vile drink into his mouth. What was he talking about? You had paid the man for your protection, it had been his job to protect you. And now he was telling you, he could not have even done it? You found it hard to contain your anger.

"If you are not fit for the task, you should tell me so, highwayman." The highwayman finally turned towards you. His stone-faced passive demeanor was betrayed only by the deep scorn within his eyes. "You are not prepared for what lies ahead," he spoke, "You haven't the faintest clue what you got yourself into."

You were stunned. "You should be careful how you speak to the person lining your pockets, rogue." This man better know who he was talking to. But the cutting bitterness of your razor-sharp tongue found its target inexcusably intact. Without turning towards you once more, Dismas emptied his second glass and got up from the bar. His back turned on you, he scaled the shaky wooden steps towards the upper floor and retired to his room.

Your still mostly filled glass in hand, you sat there in a state of small shock. The scathing disrespect you just had to endure at the hand of your contracted underling was a fire that burned within you. But it merely hid the devastating truth that lied underneath. Endlessly your mind replayed that last night on the road, rewound the clock again and again to that moment where the bandit before you had pulled his weapon, ready to execute you on some nameless landing by the old road. And then you placed a second man beside him. Then a third. You saw Dismas' projectile shatter the first mans skull, but again and again you would watch yourself get gunned down by the others with utter impunity, your dagger, your only means of defense, lying shamefully in the mud beneath you. Over and over all blood drained from your lifeless body, seeping into the mud below. He was right. He could not have saved you. Without thinking, your hands raised the glass to your lips and you took another mouthful of that dreadful drink. Somehow this time, it was ever so slightly less revolting than before.

When the whip cracked outside and the telltale tittering of mad laughter rang out in the town square, you found three empty jugs before you and the lights outside the tavern unexpectedly low. You got up, shaky from the vile mixture and shaky from the pulsing nerves and stumbled to the door. You stepped outside. The madman was here with newly recruited soldiers for the cause. He eyed you from the top of the wagon, his expression somewhere between concern, confusion and that unbridled manic ecstasy. He laughed as he saw you. From the wagons small door stepped two figures into the town square. Quickly you tried your best to swallow your inebriation and approached the newcomers with strong, only slightly wavering steps. The women took in the surrounding scenery, beheld the Hamlet for a moment before engaging you. The one with the cloak took the lead.

"You are the one that sent for us?" she asked. Through the beaked mask on her face the words came out muffled, but you still took note of the directness of her request. After having her query confirmed, she simply reached out her hand, shook yours and introduced herself. "Paracelsus." Then she left you alone with the other one. She was a plague doctor. Clad in robe, mask and gloves, you had no real image of her. All you knew was her voice, muffled and contorted by a birds impression that obscured her face. That and the pouch of jingling, clattering glassware she kept strapped to her body, right next to that dangerously glinting blade. Somehow, the caretaker had materialized behind you and held a jingling set of keys towards the approaching guests, smiling as always, a greeting, welcoming smile, the best that he could. Paracelsus took the keys out of the outstretched hand and left for the inn.

The other was a nun. Visibly uncomfortable, she stood before you, now dangerously lonely without her beaked companion. Her tan robes reached all the way to the floor and her anxious face was framed in a hood and white cloth headscarf. Her left hand pressed a thick volume tightly against her chest. The book was bound in some noble fabric, and adorned with golden shining decorations. Her eyes met yours eventually. "My name is Junia," she spoke quietly. "What is your purpose?" you eagerly inquired. "I am a healer." Good. You would need those in the days and weeks to come. It was now you saw the mace in her other hand and took note of the limp grip on its handle and its downright impeccable shape. This weapon had never been used. The way her hands gripped it so meekly, it appeared more an alibi than a tool of attack or defense. "Very well," you said and motioned her to the already waiting caretaker. With small, unsure steps she approached him and he placed the keys into her hand. Still visibly unsettled and unmoving, the caretaker gently placed his hand on her shoulder. "Welcome", he uttered in the softest tone his raspy voice could muster and ushered her to the tavern. Dismas and Reynauld were standing next to the open door, surveying the situation. Beholding the scenery with the same stoic expression on their faces, they leant against the cobble walls, aware and watching.

You let the newcomers make their own way to their rooms and waited in the square until the madman and his coach had disappeared into the forest once more. Having fallen victim to an unprecedented ambush, the sight of the wagons wheels and its shaky lanterns light dissolving into the maze of trees, evoked within you a certain kind of anxiety. What would you do when the coach got assaulted a second time? For now you could only hope that the example you set out in the woods was enough to discourage any other murderous vermin from making a second attempt at your belongings.

You took in the cool evening air and watched the moon ascend over the distant horizon. Fatigue settled in. You were tired. Pushed aside by drink and tension, it had there had been no place for it before, but in the silent solitude of the night town square, weariness finally overcame you. You returned to the inn. As you ascended the stair, the barkeep extinguished the torches behind you. Impassively he wandered from sconce to sconce, smothering each flame in a bowl of murky waters. You had not spoken a word to the man the entire evening and he had not said a single one to you. Stepping through the portal into the hallway to the quarters, the final light died behind you and basked the Hamlet tavern house in an impenetrable blackness. Blind, you staggered to your room and, after struggling with the lock for a moment, collapsed onto your bed. Sleep found you quickly. The static charge of justified unease and panic had not abated. You were merely too tired to react to it.

In the nearby quarters, a panicked vestal clutched every bead she could find in her jittering, folded hands. Muttering frantic prayer, the holy book within her lap let her down once again, as it had done so many times before. A crusader did the same, though with stoic, silent conviction and found momentary peace within the holy words and commands he repeated in his mind. A rogue with a foggy, unclear past slept a slumber of a usual tumultuousness. Numbed by drink and fatigue, his body slept, while his mind was in all too familiar upheaval. Replaying a terrible scene that had afflicted him only once, but echoed through in his waking and dreaming hours ceaselessly.

Another wall further a curious rat found itself victim to cruel, deliberate deception. Snooping around in the darkness, it felt drawn to the scent of fresh meat. Or was it blood? Its senses were overwhelmed by a strangely artificial assortment of alluring stimuli. Uncertain what to make of it, the rat took careful steps towards it, one little paw at a time. When its little nose touched a small pile of wondrously smelling, but foul tasting powder, it realized its mistake. But too late. A razorsharp blade shot from somewhere in the dark and pierced its body through. Precise as the doctor was, the animal was dead on the spot. Mask still on, unrevealed to the world even in darkness, the doctor went about her work - extracting, experimenting, taking apart that which belongs together.