CHAPTER I. LOOMINGS
Two watery pools of dark liquid rose out of the encroaching fog, a gasp of moonlight rippling along the delicate legs and cream-dappled coat of a foraging deer. The moist glimmer of a nibbling snout dribbled with groundnuts and leafy frills, attentive and fearful. Its soft ears flicked, body turning at once in a sinuous ribbon of movement, and in the blink of an eye the snow-white flush of its tail disappeared into the brush, blending effortlessly with the forest shade both above and below.
Sister Josephine Peacekeeper adjusted the black veil covering her blonde hair and much of her shoulders, the white coif of starched linen beneath tickling at her cheeks and throat. The front of her holy habit was pinned up at the front so that she could sit comfortably astride her horse, the lack of stirrups allowing her booted feet to dangle and lightly brush the hair of the beast’s warm underbelly. The fabric of her scapular—a black apron pulled over her habit with a woolen belt looped securely over it—spilled down the animal’s flanks like dark raven’s wings, and would have draped nearly to the soles of her feet were she not on horseback.
The young woman’s hands twitched, touching the cross of gold around her neck and the equally gilt band on her left wrist. A closed envelope marked with the seal of her Potent Employer weighed heavily in her lap.
She was late. The individual who was to receive the letter, one Abbess Oriole of a certain esteem in this part of the Hinterlands, would surely be anxiously awaiting her arrival. It was an important and deadly business that brought Sister Josephine to these lands, after all.
Her horse was a wiry and skittish bundle of fur and bones, and when the first howl came stringing through the wood in all its clawing dread, she shouldn’t have been as surprised as she was when the animal reared back and threw her from the saddle, its frantic whinnying sending her head into dizzying loops as she landed with a thud onto the sodden ground, her tunic and white underskirts already soaked through with mud. She could only watch as her pony tore off at a gallop into the distant fell, silver mane and tail fading into the dusk along with her cries, make-believe apparitions chasing her as the clopping of hooves thundered away into echoes.
Twilight superstitions clouded the front of the woman’s mind as she glanced around at her surroundings. There was a fearful darkness in the air, tomb-like blackness shuttering over the landscape in deep, expressive swathes, painting a perfect portrait of the dead hush spread for miles around.
Will-o'-wisps and foxfire sifted over the boggy fields, fluttering and dancing upon the strange winds that circled through the night, the whistling of faeries spurring them into a twirling, eddying madness. Moonlight oozed between the twisted branches of the gnarled forest, creating a blue phantasmagoria that shifted and undulated like an aetheric sea. Her heart raced as she heard the distant cry of some night bird, every fiber of her being attuned to the sinister ambiance of this arcane wood.
Reanimated houses of flesh, Jo knew well, stalked these lands: their eyes gaping like windows of long-abandoned houses, depressed into faces that sagged with unutterable decay. She had only ever glimpsed them a few times and at a distance—when consulting witches in the deeper marsh, usually—but sometimes they would make it out into the waters where the venomous snakes slithered through the low grasses and the turtles could bite at their decayed, fish belly-white meat, much of which had already slopped off to join the mud and worms and other disgusting, wriggling things that love cold earth.
These corpses would stare at her, teeth clicking all in a frenzy as if a display like that could somehow bring her flesh nearer to them, hair hanging in such grizzled, pond-stained strands that it seemed they were forever peering through a curtain of creepers and vines.
She shuddered to think that she might come across one here, alone, on a night like this.
Every little sound seemed like a footstep, every stray bramble a grasping hand to be followed shortly by gnashing, diseased teeth. The hairs rose on the back of her neck when something croaked from the bog, the noise seeming like the stunted wail a dead man would make. It was nothing, she was sure. A frog, or a bubble bursting on the vegetation-strewn surface, or...
But then the sound came again. Louder. Nearer.
Her breath stuttered in her throat, pulse roaring in her ears. Surely it couldn’t be! She had never been so unlucky. And now her horse was gone, too, run off with her incantation cards and everything. Damned beast.
She was still lying on the wet ground, her palms clenched in the dirt. Rooted in place. Every nerve ending strung out, cutting into her skin like razor wire.
Taking in a deep breath, Jo attempted to quell her quailing heart, so as to hear whatever it was a bit better.
There. There it was again. Jo listened good and hard, one hand slipping to her ankle, a few inches above where a silver knife was tucked into her boot. Her icy blue eyes flickered between the trunks of trees, all of her senses straining for a sound that may or may not have been real, and then darted to the road.
Am I going mad? She wondered, feeling rather small, and thoughtless, and completely out of her depth.
At length, her gaze came to rest upon her sawblade, still lying in the middle of the dirt path where it had been cast from her horse.
She needed that. Yes. She must retrieve it.
Jo shakily rose to her feet.
She propped herself against the trunk of a twisted elm, the overhanging branches shading the soft mud under her feet with their oily shadows, casting a wary glance around at her surroundings—and then abruptly froze, her eyes going wide.
A stranger stood upon the road, and he was strange in every regard. But, there were no strangers in this world who were unlucky enough to lack even the tiniest bit of strangeness, so it was a forgivable offense.
Jo first imagined that he must be a highwayman, and froze stiff against the twisted elm, wishing that she had brought her pistol with her instead of a fool knife. But then the stranger became slightly revealed to her by the silver light of the moon, the priestly robes and large axe slung across his back made starkly evident—a beast hunter or witcher, she imagined, but narrowed her eyes at him in fierce suspicion all the same.
He was an ashen, rugged figure, taller than any ordinary man had a right to be, and it would have been regrettable indeed if Sister Josephine had failed to see him standing there, so distracted was she by her own frantic wonderings, trapped within that asylum of a woodland.
"Ahhh... a traveller, is it?" the beast of a man asked, his voice hauntingly low. His calloused hand wrapped around the hilt of his axe, its blade shining menacingly in the half-light. "Or perhaps something more. Have you lost your way?"
The night swallowed up much of his form with a romantic regard, the tattered mantle of a long, ankle-length cloak hanging from his shoulders. His grizzled face was unkempt and his eyes shielded beneath bandages, a slight curl to his lips that seemed caught somewhere between a half-smile and a sneer. There was an intense quality to his voice that gave even the most narrow of minds cause to wonder, and listen, and look a while longer: a mesmerizing compulsion, drawing Jo in with such magnetic force that her feet could not tromp towards where the stranger stood speedily enough.
There she shook and sweated in her habit and robes, blue eyes flickering around to discern whether her unease really stemmed from this stranger... or some other creature stalking in the cavernous brush.
She stooped to retrieve her sawblade, and the man watched her do it. Even though she couldn't see his eyes through the bandages, she knew he was observing her very, very closely.
"Unfortunately so," Jo replied at length, her voice a curt whisper.
She startled a little when the stranger chuckled.
"Unfortunate, yes," he murmured, a slant of timely moonlight illuminating half of his face.
His gauze-layered visage turned, his breath fogging before him in the cold nighttime air, and seemed to look toward the messy hoof prints stamped into the damp, marshy earth, marking the departure of Jo’s wayward mare over the moor.
Alarm surged within Josephine's veins. Something about this man... Her limbs felt as if they had petrified, ensuring she couldn't move a muscle. Sweat pooled in the deepest crevices of her skin as her heart thudded against its ribcage with an incredible force. An icy chill raced to the depths of her soul; grinding and clawing at her spirit like a fox angling for a rabbit on a cold autumn morning. "Run!" it howled in desperation. "Run away! Run away!"
But Jo liked to think she was made of sterner stuff than all that. She braced herself against the growing wave of fear in her gut, her muscles tensing and her grip tightening around her sawblade.
"Yes, it is truly dismal," she replied crisply, a hint of sarcasm lacing her words. "Are you familiar with these lands, sir? I have urgent business with the abbess of Haven Abbey."
The man's head swung up with a jerk, like a dog hearing a particularly interesting noise. The bill of his weathered hat cast eerie shadows across his face, and long, grey hair hung limply from the sides like some kind of mane.
He flashed an eerie grin full of far too many teeth. Despite this, it was like the aura of menace he had exuded abruptly faded, replaced by a bizarre feeling of... camaraderie.
“You are here to investigate the strange happenings, yes?" he questioned, a pleased rumble in his voice. "Magnificent. Magnificent. We must travel together, good hunter..."
He whirled, the tatters of his midnight cloak billowing from the force. His axe gleamed in a shimmering arc as he marched off into the night's depths. And, after a few heartbeats of hesitation, Jo followed after him.
Inexplicably, she felt far, far safer than ever before.
The brutish figure strode just ahead of her, his lumbering frame crashing through the thick fog. The snarl of his breathing and the heavy thud of his boots on the soaked soil was all that echoed in the dreary night.
"I, too, have been sent on this hunt," the silvery priest spoke. "I swore a pact to purge these lands of whatever abominable corruption has taken root... not that I would have refused the opportunity..." his voice trailed off with a soft, echoing chuckle.
"Oh?" asked Jo. "Who sent you?"
The aged priest bowed his head in thought, silver hair shrouding his features. After a long moment, he sighed in apparent frustration, "Ah, it is difficult to recall the name... I believe it was a... a Karl Jak, if I'm not mistaken—a man of considerable means."
"A bit strange, though," he murmured under his breath. Jo pretended not to hear that bit.
"You're a Syntech operative?" she asked instead, her brows shooting up towards her hairline. She looked him up and down, her pale, bloodless lips twisting in amusement. "You don't look the part."
Deep, throaty laughter erupted from the man's frame as he bared his teeth in a sharp-toothed smile. "Yes," he cackled. "I was asked to dress in a most peculiar manner... it did not meet my standard for proper hunting attire. Far too much skin exposed. Yet I sense that you are a hunter yourself, miss...?"
"Sister Josephine... but you can just call me Jo," Jo replied, her voice much warmer now.
"Pleased to make your acquaintance, Sister," he bowed his head in acknowledgement, the shadows of his face folding into an unsettling smile. "You may call me Father Gascoigne. Though simply Gascoigne will suffice."
”Then we understand each other perfectly, Father," the young woman spoke with a smooth air, her gaze fixed on the dismal road snaking before them. The woods were almost fully engulfed by fog and the trees cast an eerie, weighty blackness upon it. "Although I'm not much of a hunter myself, my abilities of divination have proven invaluable to many on hunts. I look forward to being able to put them to use."
Gascoigne uttered the word "Divination..." as if it tasted like poison in his mouth. "Have your gifts revealed what manner of blight we are to face, then?"
Jo shook her head, regretful.
"Not yet."
Falling into a companionable silence, the pair prowled through the woodland, keeping an easy pace. Here and there, the fog seemed to thin and dull moonbeams illuminated the woods in a pale glow. The trees blurred past them; ghostly figures succumbing to the frosty night air.
The road leading to Haven seemed to stretch on forever, but eventually Jo could see a faint glimmer of yellow lantern light ahead, piercing though the fog. As they drew nearer, she began to make out a towering manse rising from behind an ancient stone wall. The hard brick along its edges seemed to be silver in color in the moonlight, giving it a ghostly air of grandeur.
Father Gascoigne stepped forward as they approached the entrance of the abbey. His knuckles grew white as he wound up and pounded on the massive wooden gate three times, begging entry.
In response, a resounding clatter of iron keys announced the release of many locks and bolts. Ancient shutters unyoked from their bindings swung wide open, allowing a glowing orange light to seep through the cracks.
Its warmth dispersed the chill of night like an offering from a distant sun. As if controlled by some unseen force, the doors opened, allowing its gentle brilliance to touch upon their faces...