Aftermath and on to the Ashen Cloister Road
They stacked the Forsaken in the cabin yard and put the torch to the porch. Red boards went up fast. The captain burned with the rest. One man was already gone into the trees. Sigrid did not wait for him.
"Cloister," she said. "Elara's brother. We walk."
Vaelith watched the smoke a moment, then turned her back on it.
The black forest thinned as the ground rose. Southern hills. Sour grass. A feeder stream that still ran too thick. They made camp when the cabin smoke was only a smear on the ridge behind them.
Hard Times came looking. Roots and late berries took the teeth out of it. One gold. Sigrid paid it and did not complain.
Grimwald spent the evening drilling footwork he was too old for. Staff low. Step. Turn. Step. His knees cracked. His hands did not. By full dark he was quicker than he had been at dawn. Meaner about it, too.
"Research," Rose said.
"Nothing," Grimwald said. "The ground here doesn't keep books."
Dust and Vaelith went out while the fire was still small. They came back with a pouch of springwind berries, pale and sharp-smelling, the kind cooks bake and soldiers eat raw when they need their legs. Dust tied the pouch to his belt. Vaelith did not ask for a share.
Morning put them back on the track. That was when they met the laughing girl.
She was sitting on a milestone with a wooden flute across her knees and a tin saint hung around her neck on a frayed cord. Blonde pigtails tied in red ribbon. One boot off. Toenails black. Pretty in the way road-dirt never quite kills. She looked up, saw six armed people and a Halfling with a war-bow, and grinned like the track had done her a favor.
"If you're robbing me, take the flute," she said. "The tonic's worse."
Finn had an arrow half-drawn. He lowered it. Garric kept a hand on the bastard sword. The girl kept smiling.
Sigrid stopped. "Name."
"Ivy Merrin. Merry Ivy, if you've heard the bad songs. I was an Ashen novice until I laughed through a death-watch. Prior threw me out with one shoe. I've been walking the joke off ever since." She nodded at the hills. "You're going to the Cloister. I can smell the springs on the wind. Rot in it this season. You'll want someone who knows which stair doesn't creak."
Rose's mouth went thin. "We don't hire fools."
"Good," Ivy said. "I'm expensive when I'm foolish. Today I'm only lost, and you're only ugly. We can share a road."
Vaelith looked at her the way she looked at doors. "She isn't lying. She's just enjoying it."
Sigrid jerked her chin. "Walk in front. If you're a trap, you die first."
Ivy put her boot on, bowed like a drunk courtier, and fell in. She did not play. She talked the whole way. Bad saints. Worse cooks. A prior who snored through his own prayers. Finn laughed once, then found a reason to walk beside her, then another. Rose watched him do it and said nothing. By the time the bells showed, Ivy was their friend whether Rose liked it or not.
Ashen Cloister sat on the southern hills where the old sect had planted it, long before the Womb opened. Pale stone. A square bell tower. Hot springs breathing under the walls. The air smelled of wet mineral and, under that, rot. Bells rang when no hour called for them. Pale-robed monks moved in the yards with their eyes down. On an inner wall, half-hidden by steam, someone had started a green mark and not finished it.
Ivy took them to a side door used by tonic-sellers and penitent drunks. A lay sister with ash on her cuffs counted heads, took coin, and gave them two rooms over the stables. Narrow cots. A basin. A window that faced the spring-house. Garric claimed the corner and set his new armor where he could see the door. Finn took the cot nearest the hall, where a flute might pass.
Sigrid showed Elara's letter.
The sister did not read it long. "Guest wing. West stair. Torren. He came in shaking and has not asked to leave. We do not ask why. The springs are for endurance, not questions."
They found him in a cell that was trying to be a room. Thin man. Elara's mouth. A fresh scar at the hairline and hands that would not stay still. He looked at the letter, then at Rose, then at the steel in the doorway.
"She said someone would come," Torren said. "I didn't think it would be a warband."
"It's us," Sigrid said. "We burn what needs burning. Then we take you home."
Ivy leaned on the doorframe, flute in her fist, and smiled at the poor bastard like this was the best part of the song. Finn smiled at her instead.
"Welcome to the Cloister," she said. "Try not to drink the water."
Turn 11- A Day at the Cloister
The lay sister caught them in the yard before the bells lied again.
"Letter," she said. "Left for the northerners with the blackthorn girl. Been sitting in the ash-box two days."
Sigrid broke the seal with a thumb. Mara Reed’s hand. Short. Hunter-plain.
Heard you were walking south. The woods between the manor and the Cloister are wrong again. Not cultists. Soldiers who will not stay dead. If you are still breathing when you read this, count it as luck I owed you.
No coin in it. Just the weight of a friend who had already paid them once and still meant it. Sigrid folded the page into her kit beside Elara’s letter. One more reason not to die stupid.
The town crier was already shouting by the spring-house gate. Pale robe. Cracked voice. Brother Cald. A sealed packet for Blackthorn Manor. Tonic, copied vows, and a prior’s mark. One gold, and another if they took it before the shout went cold.
Rose looked at Torren, then at the road home. "We are already walking that way."
"We take it," Sigrid said.
Brother Cald stopped shouting. He pressed the packet into Rose’s hand and the two gold into Sigrid’s, and some of the crack left his voice.
"Then I owe you a door here," he said. "Ask for Cald. The Cloister will know."
A friend in the ash and the steam. Cheap, for what they were about to walk into.
Hard Times found them anyway. Four gold. Sigrid counted it out herself and did not flinch. Generous, for her. The purse hated it. She did not.
The town guard was short two men and long on trouble at the lower gate. Drunk initiates. A thief in the tonic sheds. Nothing that needed a battle. Garric stood in the yard like a wall. Finn watched the roofs. Dust put an arrow in a post and everybody suddenly remembered their manners. Three gold for the afternoon. Ivy played nothing and laughed at all of it. Finn laughed when she did.
Sigrid spent what was left of the light on the straw post behind the stables. Battering Storm rose and fell until her shoulder burned. No new trick. Just the old one, driven deeper. One more mark of experience. Not a level. Enough.
Come morning they sold what they had been hauling since the road went bad. The stolen furs from the deserters at the crumbling inn, still worth five. The spice jars from the logger cabin, worth four. A Cloister broker paid without asking where the blood had been. Garric kept the armor. Sigrid kept the Curing Ward. Dust kept the springwind berries.
Grimwald took the afternoon in the scriptorium and came back with ink on his fingers and no patience.
"Not the chapel," he said. "A different contract. Something lost. A new mark on the map, unexplored. They want it fetched."
Sigrid did not take the page.
"Not our problem," she said. "Bigger fish."
Vaelith watched the paper go back into his sleeve. The drowned vault could wait. So could this. The Curse could not.
They spent the Adventure Points the hideout had paid them. The Curse of War dropped again. The captain’s death and the burned cabin had finally reached the tally. The same digging turned up a second hole. Gnawling Horde. A hidden warren, not on the Cloister road. Teeth in the mire. Marked. Not today.
Sigrid stood in the stable doorway with Torren’s kit already strapped and the Cloister packet in Rose’s hand. Ivy leaned on the frame, flute idle. Finn stood closer than the job required.
"The brother goes home," Sigrid said. "The packet goes home. But the Curse camp sits on that road, and it is still warm. We hit it while the iron is hot."
She looked at the steel in the room.
"Sharpen your swords. Gather your arrows. We end the Curse of War next."
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