I returned to Kolsburg the following summer, fresh off an investigation that led my troop deep into the untamed northern highlands to investigate strange sounds and lights reported by trappers coming from deep in the wilds. I was invigorated by the expedition and eager for some well-deserved rest after a harrowing encounter with wicked fey creatures who rendered at least two of my crusading companions into lifeless wooden statues. When it became clear that my services were no longer needed as part of the recovery efforts, I set upon the road to Kolsburg, lamenting that I would arrive nearly two weeks past my desired arrival time.
True to his word, Robert wrote me frequently while I was away, often with simple updates of news from the village but also including pieces of his treatise along the way. He seemed to be growing near to completion and was eager to submit it to the College by the following autumn at the latest. He had grown quite fond of the young maiden Annalise, whom he had danced with last I saw him and the two had been close to inseparable in recent weeks. Each response I wrote to him was prefaced with an apology for my late reply, but such was the life of an inquisitor I was beginning to discover.
Thinking upon it, I can only speak to how happy Robert was in each of his letters. They spoke in glowing terms of Kolsburg, Annalise, and his prospects for the future. I wrote back to him when the opportunity arose, providing him with snippets of my investigations that I knew would pique his interest, he was always curious about stories of heroism from the crusaders and about the strange locales I had come across. I was looking forward to telling him stories of my most recent outing upon my arrival.
I arrived in Kolsburg ten days after I had hoped to arrive. The hour of my arrival was quite late and I was approached by the night watch when I arrived on the main street. Like most rural villages of the barony, Kolsburg had no walls to speak of, merely a few wooden watch towers placed at the outskirts of the village proper. Happy to see me, they quickly ushered me towards the center of town. I divested my horse to them and bade them a good evening, hoping quickly to meet with Robert and let him know that I had arrived safely. I realized then that it had been nearly five weeks since I had last responded to one of his letters and concluded that he must be worried.
The clinic door was closed but I could see flickering lights within when I knocked upon the door in hurried raps. Robert was certainly accustomed to late-night callers; often times those wounded on the outlying farms would arrive at all hours of the night in seek of proper aid. The door opened just before I thought to put my hands upon it again for a second bout of raps.
Robert’s eyes were certainly exhausted, but for the briefest of moments I almost thought I saw genuine disdain in his eyes for being roused at such an hour. If that was the case it was instantly dispelled when he laid eyes upon me.
“Errol!” he cried out as he wrapped his arms around me in another brotherly embrace. The force of his delight caught me somewhat off guard, but I reciprocated eagerly.
“I apologize for my late arrival, Robert, but I thought to call upon you first no matter what time I arrived in Kolsburg.”
“And you thought well to do so, my friend. Come, Annalise has just gone home for the night, and I cannot wait to hear of your recent travels.”
“Though I am late in arriving, there are still many days left in summer. Let us save such things for a night when I have had more rest. For now I would much rather partake of what hospitality you can spare. I have brought some gnollish brandy from the east that you simply must try.”
“Of course, of course.”
Robert was brimming with enthusiasm at my arrival, and more so than just with delight at seeing a friend. There was a certain…animated energy about him that night. He seemed on the cusp of revealing some wondrous news to me with each passing moment, but seemed equally determined to keep it to himself for now. I recall asking him several times what had possessed him to grin like a fool so widely, but he would just smile enigmatically and quaff more of the brandy I had offered him. In all honesty I remember little else from that night aside from stumbling my way into one of the clinic’s patient beds and sleeping more soundly than I ever had before…and ever have since.
The following morning was the 3rd Almsday in the month of Apex, 1654; the date that scarred the charming village of Kolsburg and the surrounding region with the stain of the Nameless Dark. The first day of the string of incidents that would become known later as the Apex Atrocities. I was awoken to the sound of thunder against the side of my skull which I realized was a heavy pounding upon the front door of the clinic. The light of dawn had not even begun to filter in through the front window yet and the aftereffects of the brandy were making their presence painfully known even without the thunderous sound. Robert seemed did not seem to be roused from his bedroom upstairs yet, so I staggered my way to the front door, fumbled with the lock for a moment, and managed to open it.
The law in Kolsburg was kept by the duly appointed marshal assigned by the baron himself (or more accurately his seneschal). Silas Whiteheart was the name of the marshal here, a shrewd half-gnoll who had earned the respect of the village for his unflinching sense of justice. He had been appointed here from elsewhere in the barony as was custom, but he had become a beloved part of the community despite its insular inclinations towards his kind. He played well off of his species’ reputation for taciturn intimidation, however today he seemed paler than the moons that shone in the dawn sky behind him.
“Ah…Mr. Warner,” he said in a quiet tone. “…It is good you are here. An inquisitor’s eye would be helpful. Is the doctor present?”
I had to gently massage my temples at the sound of his voice. Despite his attempt at quiet, it did nothing to soothe my pounding skull.
“I…I think he’s upstairs. What is the matter Silas?”
“I do not wish to speak of it in the open. Rouse him as quick as you can and gather whatever you need to conduct an inquiry. We cannot wait for long.” His voice was strained, and the desperation it conveyed somehow brought me to a small portion of my senses. I offered for him to take momentary refuge in the infirmary while I summoned the doctor, but he respectfully declined. The way he kept casting furtive glances behind him, staring bleakly in the direction of the Kolsburg tower hastened the unease that was steadily growing within me.
I went to rouse Robert who, much like myself, was still nursing the aftereffects of the brandy in quiet agony. His humbly appointed bedroom comprised the entirety of the second floor of the clinic and was more reminiscent of a dusty attic than a comfortable living space. I explained to him that the marshal had required our presence which seemed to convey something serious to him. He bade me to wait a moment as he crafted a tincture that would help restore us to our senses before we set out to meet with Silas and whatever ominous news he brought with him. Though I had urged him to make haste, Robert seemed to be in no hurry.
“Silas frequently calls on me at strange hours of the day to draw upon my expertise for the good of Kolsburg. I assure you, Mr. Warner, that whatsoever news he brings with him it is not nearly as dire as he would have you believe.”
How I wish Robert’s words had proven to be true. With our wits momentarily restored by Robert’s tincture, we departed with the marshal into the heart of the village.
The sun had just crested over the forest, bathing the cobbled main street of the village with radiant promise. Lazy wisps of thin clouds drifted through the clear blue sky while the call of a distant whippoorwill beckoned from somewhere in the depths of the nearby forest. Mrs. Talbott, the merchant who had directed me to Robert’s clinic last summer, was just arriving at her stall in the village plaza to set up for the day. She bid us a pleasant morning and I recall responding with cheer that seemed out of place for Silas’s grim demeanor. It is not my intent to wax lyrically about the humble beauty of the warm summer day in Kolsburg, but the memory of that morning remains forever etched in the small recesses of my mind that still maintain some semblance of innocence.
Kolsburg was by no means a large village, and I was sure I had acquainted myself with it in its entirety the previous summer until Silas directed us down an alleyway into a side street that seemed to clash immensely with the quaint façade of the village square. The homes here were considerably older and some in notable states of disrepair. The scent of moldering thatch and refuse permeated the narrow street, and the villagers here bore a certain unmistakable air of desperation and danger. I found myself instinctively clutching my hands against my coin purse, and almost instantly flushing with embarrassment as we hurried past the loitering villagers.
In hindsight it was naïve of me to be surprised at such a place lurking just off the main street of Kolsburg. Villages in the barony are far from idyllic communities and even ones situated on prominent trade routes still bore their fair share of the disenfranchised and downtrodden. I would learn later that in this alleyway, and others like it throughout the village, lived those who had truly been forsaken by their neighbors. These were the sort who lacked any family but also any drive to seek the world outside the village walls; those whose livelihood had fallen into decline and were either unwilling or unable to change their ways. They lived mostly off of the compassion and charity of their neighbors; old friends who recalled their parents or other souls of similarly gentle nature.
I recall distinctly the sight of a wretched old crone sitting in the doorway to her decrepit home. Some sort of pox had ravaged her face and left scars that no amount of physicking or magical healing seemed to be able to cure. Her tattered clothing smelled of intangible refuse, her filthy hair seemed to falling out in clumps around her, and she clung tightly to a small cudgel that seemed to double as a walking cane for her. She was alone, with hard features and even harder demeanor, but it was her eyes that lingered with me the most. I saw in her, not a woman who wallowed in her existence expecting pity or showing regret…but rather one who looked upon the world around her with burning hatred.
Robert’s demeanor had changed visibly as well as we passed through these streets. He avoided eye contact with the villagers here, even as he tipped his head to them and greeted many of them by name and ailments. I would later learn that many were patients of his, though I don’t recall seeing a single one of them in his clinic last summer. No, it’s not that he avoided their gaze. More it seemed that he was gazing past the people here, never quite fully engaging with them as he had with me on so many warm summer nights. At the time, I thought it a curious footnote. A small commotion gripped my attention toward a particularly squalid hovel at the end of the street where a small crowd had gathered, held at bay by Silas’s deputy armed with a quarterstaff; we had apparently arrived at our destination.
Silas’s deputy, the same one who had greeted me upon my arrival the previous night, gave us a weary nod before turning to a villager who was shouting rather incoherently about the denizen within the hovel he was guarding, while the constable guided us within.
I fear that not even the release of death will be able to fully banish the ghastly memories of the terrible tableau that awaited us within that wretched hovel. Exposed as I was in my tenure as an archivist to all manner of extraordinary dangers associated with all things horrific and Dark, I fear nothing could have prepared me for an evil that was at once so vile and so mundane as what awaited us within.
Truly, I have forgotten the details of the hovel itself save for the atrocious condition of the corpse that remained within it. It was a man, once, before whatever fiend had delivered unto him torments best left to ones imagination. The stench of blood and bile, mixed with the repulsive rictus that remained of the victim’s face, proved too much for my constitution. Silas’s warning did little to steel my nerves, and I found myself dry heaving outside the confines of the hovel within mere moments.
Robert, to his credit, stood his ground; but appeared to blanch as pale as a ghost at the sight which lay before him and grew motionless as if transfixed by the repulsive horror that dwelt within. The small crowd that had gathered seemed to grow restless, vying for vantage point with which to observe the scene only to be warded away by Silas and his deputy. When it seemed that my guts had settled, I resolved myself to providing what aid that I could.
I nearly leapt out of my skin when Robert’s hand clasped my shoulder.
“Errol…” he winced as he spoke my name before opting for a more formal mode of address. Here we could not entreat upon one another as friends, I knew he would be asking me to assist in my capacity as a scholar of the Dark, “…Mr. Warner. I fear I must ask for your aid in determining what occurred here. My knowledge extends only to the…deeds that have been done to the body. There may be something your eyes can see which mine cannot.”
I suppose it was only natural of me to recoil at his request, though I had meant to keep my composure calm I imagine some of it crept out onto my face for I could see Robert’s pained expression turn into a remorseful smile.
“Of…of course, Doctor. One should not have to face such a wretched thing alone.”
“Thank you, my friend. I am glad you are here.” His smile was weak but genuine. I held no illusions that he had not seen deaths, perhaps even gruesome ones. Even here in a sleepy village near the heart of the tamed lands of the barony one could never be certain that a marauding beast may not claim a few lives here and there. Yet he was clearly not accustomed to it, especially here on the very streets of the village that had become his home.
Long have I wrestled with my conscious on just how much of the vivid details to include within these pages. I am no anatomist besides, and the gazettes have done more than enough to disseminate the grisly details to the public in the years since. Some would say I do you no service shielding you from terrors that are whispered upon the streets of Kolsburg and throughout the barony. And yet I feel that it would be a sin to recreate the corpse for you as intensely as it haunts my memory. In the end, my purpose here is not to shed any sort of new illumination to the Apex Atrocities, they are merely a stage upon which this greater guilt which gnaws upon me now resides.
…This is all to say that whosoever visited such violence on this man was a creature possessed of prodigious hatred, malice, and skill. My thoughts had immediately turned to thoughts of the Dark, surely those gripped in the throes of the Fiend’s madness would be the only ones capable of such things. To say the victim, an elderly man with apparently robust enough stamina to endure torments of a particularly sanguine nature, was tortured is simply not enough. Virtually no piece of the corpse that remained was in suitable enough condition to provide any identifying markers.
“…I will have to contact my brethren at the Church.” I remember the sound of my voice cutting through the darkened hovel like a knife.
“Are you certain the Dark is involved here?” Robert had taken position over the corpse as close as he dared, jotting notes for himself in a small pocketbook that he had kept stashed in his coat. I remember admiring his composure at the time.
“Not necessarily…but I almost pray that is the case. If not that, then the…creature that perpetrated this crime is either a madman of the highest caliber or a monstrous beast that I am not familiar with.”
“Surely there are more mundane creatures out there capable of visiting such violence upon its victims? Perhaps some form of the restless dead?”
“It is possible…perhaps even plausible. But presently, I am at a loss. It must have taken hours to inflict such wounds upon this poor man. I find it…hard to believe that someone could do all of this damage without arousing the attention of his neighbors. But I suppose even I am able to conjure a simple incantation of silence if given enough time.”
“These…the people who live here are rather insular, and drug-addled more often than not. Even without the aid of magical silence I suspect this man’s screams would not have roused his neighbors.” Robert’s words were remarkably callous, I remember being unable to contain my shock.
“Surely…surely you jest, Robert. Doctor Holzmann. You seem to be familiar with the folk who live in this alleyway, did you know this man?”
Robert rose to his feet and I saw his face flush, briefly embarrassed by his previous remark. It was almost comforting to see some color returning to his features however. Outside, Silas’s voice bellowed out harsh instructions for the crowd lingering to disperse. It seemed like a hollow threat, but even from inside I could hear the edge of violence in his voice. There are those who would point to the constable’s gnollish heritage as a tool for use in intimidating such a crowd. But in all the time that I knew him, Silas was never one to rely on the feral instincts of his forefathers.
“I…did, yes. He was a patient of mine; and of Doctor Reinhelm before me. I knew him only as Arkin, an irascible old stump of a man who would sooner beat you with his boots than deign to speak with you. He had a…rather impressive array of ailments that would have killed a man half his age. Doctor Reinhelm often said he was a man animated by sheer spite for those around him. No one in Kolsburg seems to recall if he had any family or where he exactly came from. He was older than most here. It does not surprise me that someone killed him, Mr. Warner. But not even I could expect something such as this. If not for his own maladies claiming his life I always assumed it would be the opium that would finish him.
“I am truly sorry for showing this side of Kolsburg, my friend. This place may seem idyllic, but scratch beneath the surface and you will find the problems that plague us, just like anywhere else I would suspect. Let us quit this place for now, unless you have some sort of insight there is little more to be done here. I’m afraid the body will be remanded to my clinic however for more thorough examination.”
Truthfully, I wanted nothing more than to be gone from the darkened hovel. Sunlight and fresh air was the best medicine for my shaken mind and I felt compelled to be out in the woods once more. I was hopeful at the time that communing with the nature around Kolsburg would help return a sense of normalcy to my day…a foolish hope, in hindsight.
“Of course, Doctor. I should quickly compose a missive to my superiors at the Church. Though I believe including as much detail as I can from your autopsy should be illuminating to discerning what sort of monster, whether man or bestial or borne of the Dark, we are dealing with.”
“The examination will take some time and be extremely unsavory work. If you could perhaps entertain Annalise in my absence, I would consider it a great personal favor.”
“I am not certain how entertaining I am able to be in present circumstances, but I will do my best.”
We shared a weak smile and made to rejoin Silas outside. I remember standing in the doorway and looking back to Robert whose gaze seemed to linger upon the broken form of Arkin. What I would not give to know the exact thoughts running through his mind at that time…If only armed with such knowledge perhaps I could have acted differently, done something to change the course of our shared destiny. He seemed pained, surely, but I do not know how much of my memory remains objective and how much wishes to ascribe additional nuance to his expression.
I wish to be clear. Robert is as good a man as I have ever met who has devoted much of his life to aiding those that have been often forgotten or ignored by polite society. He has toiled endlessly often without thanks or recognition for his efforts nor did he particularly seek out such things. And yet at that moment, as his gaze lingered on the destroyed body of Arkin, I can safely say now that a part of him seemed…almost relieved. Perhaps relieved knowing that a man who suffered for a great portion of his life was finally freed of such torment…or perhaps…relieved for another reason entirely…