Darkness blankets Nyrheim. Pinpricks of torchlight of the night watchmen dot the streets and cast dancing shadows on the tightly packed facades lining the square. A window high up in the Cask & Wick Waywards Inn is open to the night air. Within the room, a candle silhouettes a figure crouched on his knees in flickering light. The priest is murmuring a prayer to his god.
In the language of the dead he whispers, “Four times now, I fear, I have robbed you in the unmaking of men. Four times, I have asked you to spare the dying and grant me strength to continue to do your bidding. Each time you have answered my prayers knowing that I devote myself to you.”
The priest fans his fingers over the candle turning the flame into flames of shadow, “I give to you the names Syndar, Khyzer, and Joryn, as you have blessed them with your touch and silenced the tolling of their bells as I believe they will be more good to you alive than dead – for now.”
The priest holds his arm over the shadowy flame and he winces in pain as his skin burns cold, “You have laid your holy hand upon Syndar twice now, my queen, but know this, in exchange for his life he will unmake tens, if not hundreds of others in his place.”
He rolls up the sleeve to his other arm and holds it over the flame, skin cracking, “Khyzer too has felt your glorious touch and in his stead he too will send many others with a cold and ruthless knife to their backs.”
Wincing in pain with his arm burning, “The monk, Joryn, has basked in your shadow and with his fists may he pummel the very souls from his countless foes.”
He removes his arm from the flame, looks at the wounds, fists clenched, “Grant me the favor to still the tolling bell as I have found a band of murderers eager to bloody their swords and arrows.”
“Grant me the power to give them aid in their unmaking of the world.”