Chapter 22

Recovering the Bones

Fabian ushered the shivering Father into the foyer and asked that he recount the details of the bones disappearance. Lucian Petrovich explained that every morning at dawn it was his custom to pull back the stone slate in the central alter to expose the bones to the sunlight and perform the holy rites of his faith. The morning prior was completely ordinary, but this morning he'd pulled back the slate to find the bones missing and the protection over the church with them. As soon as he discovered this, and Ireena's disappearance, he ran to the Inn where Danika told him the party had stayed the night at the von Holtz estate. He claimed to have seen no one suspicious near the alter and assured the group that few people know of the bones exact location. When he asked that the group come investigate the scene of the crime the party agreed to leave at once. Fabian knocked on Ireena's door to inform her of their departure and double check that nothing bad had happened in the night. Ireena was shocked to hear the news and pulled her scarf close around her, but assured the party she would be safe at the manor while they were gone. Without biding Vasili farewell they geared up quickly and skipped breakfast, mounting up their horses and riding for the city.

When they arrived at the church, Eliza tried to place herself in the mind of a criminal, by drawing on her childhood experience as one herself. She investigated the alter finding it just as Father Petrovich had described, a stone slab pulled away, a red satin pillow, and what she saw as the indentation of three bones that had sat atop the pillow for decades. As she examined closer she did however notice a new piece of evidence, the absence of any abrasions on the stone slab. A small recession on the underside was used to pry the slab from it's flush fitting, but without knowing it to be there she expected to find signs of a crowbar or knife tip etched into the edge of the stone. It was perfectly clean which Eliza knew meant an inside job. Though Father Petrovich had not seen anything suspicious, he noted that the best possible lead would be Milvoj, the teenage groundskeeper employed by the church. Petrovich was fond of the boy and didn't suspect him of the theft, but hoped he'd witnessed the thief and so directed the party to the orphanage where he lived.

The party arrived at the orphanage to find it in a more sober state than their visit the day prior, no children played in the yard, no laughter was heard through the halls. When they found the Headmistress Claudia Belasco in the living room she was cradling a young girl, trying to comfort her through the tears. Erros approached, and conjured an illusory flower from behind the girl's ear, brightening up her face and earning a giggle, but had to swap it out for a gold piece when she'd asked to keep it. This turned her laugh into shock, and she clutched the wealth to her chest before running from the room, a few younger boys hot on her heels. Claudia welcomed the kind gesture, and explained to the group that one of their children hadn't woken the night before and was buried in the cemetery later that day. The boy was Cedric, the bright and friendly lad who'd offered them information about the whereabouts of Arabelle. Fabian was stunned, and the entire group offered Claudia their condolences, before asking after Milvoj. With a sigh she led them to his chambers on the second floor, where he lay asleep in his bed. She explained that he'd come back late the night before, uncharacteristically late, though she assumed he was out drinking after taking Cedric's death so hard. Milvoj grew up in the orphanage and now helped support it financially with his earnings doing labor around town. He remained very close to the children. The group tried to shake the boy out of his hangover sleep, but his skin was warm to the touch and his clothes soaked through in sweat. They shook him some more but he didn't wake, so Fabian laid her hands on his chest and mouthed a silent word of encouragement, sending healing magic through his form. It did nothing. Pieron found this immediately amiss, as the holy spell should have had some effect on mundane ailments of any kind. Claudia began to worry, and the group did their best to comfort her while Erros removed some of Milvoj's clothes to look for bite marks or abrasions of any kind. He found nothing but small pools of dried blood deep in his ears. It became clear that something was seriously wrong; Milvoj seemed cursed.

Fabian asked that Pieron and Dyson travel to the inn to tell Rictavio and Danika about this at once, as Erros hoisted the young man upon his shoulders and the group left for the church. After asking about the orphanage for witnesses, one girl named Ema told them she last saw Milvoj when he arrived home, and when the young boy Felix woke up Milvoj after a bad dream. The older boy carried Felix back to bed before returning to his own, and Ema said nothing else seemed out of the ordinary. Without more information, they thought bringing Milvoj to the church would grant them the Father's wisdom in such accursed matters. Dyson and Pieron found the inn to be nearly empty and Rictavio sipping tea in the center of the common room. They told him the bones had been stolen from the church and that the trail ran cold with Milvoj's apparent possession, to which he seemed quite alarmed. Having seen a possession or two in his travels he tried to stress their severity. He could only offer two pieces of information: that some restorative magics were designed to deal with dispelling all but the most powerful of possessions, though such magics were often known only to clerics and powerful healers of the faith, and that the best way to identify a possession is to look for signs of personality change, an outgoing person going quiet, or someone reserved gaining confidence. The two thanked him for the insight and made to rejoin their friends at the church, but bumped into the Krushkin brothers on their way out. The brothers were on their way back into the wilds, much sooner than they'd planned, in search of some lost souls they'd be hired to find. They sounded unsure that their quarry still lived, but the pay was abnormally high, too good to turn down. They wished the two well and told them they'd try to be back in time for the festival. Pieron and Dyson hurried back to the church.

There Erros had already laid Milvoj out before the Father and asked that he perform an exorcism to remove the boy's curse. The Father put up his hands and said that even if he knew what was causing Milvoj's sickness, without Saint Andral's bones he had no power to perform rites in the name of his lord. Inturrupting him Erros grabbed his collar and demanded he fix Milvoj him but he insisted it couldn't be done, and as the group pulled Erros off the poor Father, Athrin removed a vial from his belt, unstopped it, and knelt beside the boy. He poured a single drop of the holy water within the vial into Milvoj's ear, and with a sputter, the water bubbled up and turned black, mixing with the dried blood and emitting a foul smell. The Father gasped, and at this Fabian thought to try one last thing. She knelt down beside Athrin and placed her hand on Milvoj, granting him momentary protection from the forces of evil at work in his mind. With the casting of her spell Milvoj stirred, convulsed, and fell still again. The party hang their heads in defeat, but Father Petrovich assured them this was good news. He recognized the spell taking effect, that it had started to work, but whatever plagued Milvoj's mind and body seemed to plague him still, and the Father sensed the dark blanket of evil wrap about the boy once more. They could still save him, if they could stop who or what was casting the curse.

In their desperation for a lead they asked the Father if Milvoj had been seen with anyone the day before his affliction, but he couldn't recall anything suspicious. He did of course note that Milvoj had dealt with the town coffin maker Henrik Van der Voort when he delivered Cedric's coffin, but this was usual given the burial. Without a better option they asked where Henrik lived, and made their way across town to his shop on the edge of the eastern stockyard, save for Fabian who decided to remain with the kid. It was a quiet part of town with little foot traffic and a great deal of warehouses and granaries, and they found the man's quaint workshop dark and still. They knocked loudly at the door and Henrik answered through an eye slit he seemed to have carved himself, essentially telling them in not too many words to bugger off. Eliza once more made short work of the simple lock, allowing Erros to enter the abode alone: telling the group he only needed a minute. They didn’t hear what was said between the two from outside the door, and with the emerging pattern of Erros' less-than-friendly interrogations, few of them wanted to. When the conversation seemed to end in shrieks of terror from Henrik, pleading not to be killed and to tell them whatever they needed to know, the rest of the group stepped inside. There in his workshop, Henrik stood cornered in a backroom, and through garbled pleas he confessed to paying Milvoj to steal the bones. A woman, tall, wealthy jewels, dark skin, approached him 3 days ago and commanded him to steal the bones. She gave him a sack of coins and a golden locket, and he gave both to Milvoj for the deed. But what scared Henrik the most were the people she brought with her. She told him they were there to see that the job got done, and they were still there in the shop. Henrik raised a shaking boney finger to the ceiling, as the group drew their weapons, and began searching through the house. They gave each room a cursory glance before moving on, until in the attic's storage room they found a peculiar stack of wood with drag marks through the dust pointing right to it. Athrin and Erros pulled aside the front panels of the pile to reveal a stack of six fresh pine coffins, as a sinking dread settled in everyone's stomachs. Vampires.