The Warlock

The Pyre and the Promise

I wasn't in town on the day they came, but I did hear about the details later from others who were. Early in the morning the whole group of them (about twenty people) came right to the town square and started yelling their heads off, preaching, waving their arms around. There were already a few people there, at the market stalls, but they left quickly.

Out of the twenty Helix Priests who had come, more than half were armed with crossbows. They were all wearing heavily-padded leather armor, which was of course covered in more of their silken-smooth, perfectly clean white robes.

About an hour into the shouting and yelling at the town square, the mayor came out to try and talk to them, see what they wanted and what was going on. They immediately condemned him as a "witch's bedfellow" and refused to speak to him. Outraged, the mayor first tried shouting over them, but eventually gave up and left.

The day was already off to a bad start. However soon afterwards there were complaints in a few of the farmers' houses down by the south side of the village, near the water-well. There was some evil in the water, some poison. A young girl and her father two houses away had fallen dreadfully ill in the night. The news spread quickly, and people were soon going out of the south gate for water from the river. A few people debated sending for the Warlock.

The news spread so quickly, in fact, that it seemed even the Helix Priests caught on. They started integrating this into their yelling and shouting. They screamed at passers by that they had been "seduced by the witches" and that now they were getting "the punishment they deserved."

While not many people paid the Priests much attention, many more were worried about the water supply. Near midday, after some talks in the town hall, and some attempts to talk to the Priests peaceably (which failed) someone asked if it wasn't best to send for the Warlock.

Someone in the meeting asked if they couldn't take care of this on their own. These priests were blocking up the market, refusing to move, and that was enough pretext to kick them out of Kadagv. A few people supported this idea. A few more people pointed out the problem of their crossbows. Everyone at the meeting agreed there was to be no bloodshed. The Warlock, they thought, could resolve this more peacefully, and perhaps talk to the Priests, explaining that there was nothing to be feared. A while into this debate, someone pointed out that there was also the matter of the drinking water. Going out to the river was easy enough for now, but the water-well supplied water to all the farm animals at night, and there was no way to carry that much water from the river by hand. This seemed to settle the issue. It was best to call on the Warlock. No one was too eager to venture into the forest—it'd been a long time since something so urgent had happened. Another hour or so was spent deliberating who should go.

Meanwhile, some of the Priests (two unarmed, with an armed companion) started making their ways down the streets of the town, knocking on people's doors, and talking to them about witches, about their Lord of Light, and the Unblooded God, who had corrupted the town with witchcraft, and who was poisoning them from within. They talked about the poisoned water a lot. They said that if the town was to renounce the witches and exile them, then the Priests could help cleanse the water supply with the power of their God.

Around this time (after lunchtime) Chal found out that someone was needed to fetch me and the Warlock. After some confused searching in the town hall, he found the mayor and volunteered to go into the Warlock's forest. People commended him and sent him on his way.

And this is how, about an hour later, when Chal took his first steps into the Warlock's forest, Daniel sat up from the kitchen table and said—

"Something's wrong in the town."

I'd been sitting, transcribing his grimoire across the table from him. I looked up, a little alarmed.

"What?" I stuttered. The quill in my hand dripped ink onto the page I was working on.