Some can just proclaim the future

Other's can summon a demon, in an eyeblink....

The good Samaritan

The last bits of daylight where just fading away. It would be completely dark within minutes.
Karl cursed his bad luck, if that last customer hadn’t been so cheap he’d been home by now, instead of riding through these cursed forests...... Rumor around town had it, that anyone in the forest after nightfall had forfeited his or her live and would never be seen again. Karl wasn’t superstitious and he had traveled through the forest at night before but that didn’t mean he had to like it ! Especially since people had disappeared in the forest......

Suddenly he noticed a movement to his right and, grabbing the knife he always carried, he turned to face the possible thread. The movement was made, he saw, by a young girl crashing through the undergrowth with a look of utter horror on her face. The girl also saw him and came to a dead stop , looking around for a way to escape from him. Karl quickly put away the knife and showed her his empty hands to show that he didn’t mean any harm. The girl relaxed a bit, and Karl motioned her to come closer.

When she was so close that he wouldn’t have to shout, he asked the girl why she was running like all the demons of hell where after her ass.
After a couple of minutes she had calmed down enough to answer him. It turned out that she, Clara , and her younger sister had been visiting family at the other side of the forest and had lost track of time so they had to go into the forest during nightfall, something there parents had told them never to do. Everything seemed to go well until suddenly out of nowhere four men in strange clothing showed up and tried to grab them. She had gotten away but she didn’t know if her sister had been so lucky.

After telling her story she begged Karl to help her find her sister. Karl, himself the father of two small girls, just couldn’t say no and against his better judgment he followed the little girl , she had told him she was 12, deeper into the forest leaving his half empty cart behind, because it would slow him down to much.

When they reached the place the girls were ambushed, it wasn’t hard to find since Clara had left behind a clear path of broken branches, it had gotten almost completely dark with only the moon shedding some light into the small clearing. After looking around for a few minutes Karl detected an other trail, this one looking like it was made by somebody dragging something. Clara started crying again and said that the thing being dragged could only have been her sister. Karl decided to follow the trail to see if there was anything he could do to help the little girl. Not willing to take Clara with him into a possibly dangerous situation , he send her to the town to get help.

After a few hundred meters the path opened up into a large clearing with in the center a strange looking building that looked like it had once collapsed and burned and later been patched up. He realized that this could only be the old convent that had been destroyed 35 years ago during the last war. He hadn’t known that it had been partially restored and neither had anyone else he knew. The lights shining from behind the windows proved that there were people inside and he decided to check it out. Pulling out his knife again to be on the save side, he slowly moved to the old building, using every piece of cover he could find and for the first time that night he was glad it was so dark.

Halfway across the clearing he saw what had to be a guard. The guy was dressed just as Clara had described her attackers so Karl took no change, got behind the guard and knocked him out cold. He then continued on his way to the convent, determent to find out what the hell was going on around here.

When he reached the entrance to the building he heard singing coming from the inside. It sounded a bit like the songs sung in the towns church, but it had a darker undertone that made him shiver. He hadn’t seen anymore guards so he decided to take a chance peak through one of the windows.

What he saw scared the hell out of him: around a hideous statue figuring a creature that looked like a nightmare of twisted limbs and heads, a dozen or so people, wearing black robes with strange symbols, were dancing a macabre dance, while still chanting the dark sounding lyrics. In the center of the circle, in front of the statue was a stone table, probably the old altar, stained with rust colored patches, on which a small girl, no older then 9 years old, was tied. It had to be the sister.

He just started thinking of a way to get the poor girl out of there, when he heard a feint sound behind him. He quickly turned around and saw Clara standing behind him. He gestured to her to be quiet, and whispered to her that he had found her sister and what the hell she was doing here. He didn’t notice the small rock in her hand until she struck him with it right between his eyes, knocking him out cold.

Waking up again, his first thought is that it had all been a nightmare, but then he hears the singing again and also feels a burning sensation in his wrists and ankles. He slowly opens his eyes and sees that now he is tied to the altar. Clara is now also dressed in a black robe and when she sees that he is awake she slowly pulls out what looks like a ceremonial dagger, and starts dancing.

Karl, suddenly realizing what has happened with the people that had disappeared in the forest, starts wrestling his bounds, they only cut deeper into his flesh and his blood adds a few new stains to the old altar. He screams in agony and, for the first time, looks straight up at the terrifying idol, that looks even more horrible now since the moving shadows of the dancer make it seem alive. He again thrashes in his bounds and this time he feels the rope on his left wrist loosen a bit. Doubling his efforts he now concentrates solely on his left hand, maybe he still has a change...

Then suddenly the singing and dancing stops and Clara moves to the edge of the altar. There she raises the dagger above her head and shouts: " O Lord of The Hell, accept this offer of your priestess" and thrusts the dagger straight through Karl’s heart.

Gambit 1997

Gambit 1997