The trees became twisted and the bark darkened the closer Draka rode towards the Abbey. The path was wide enough that it was once a road, Draka saw once he found it. The way it had been explained to him, the road was supposed to be wide and well-traveled, even if it had been over a century since it was used. An Abbey abandoned by its Clerics and priests?

  He questioned Cardinal Thomas, one of the Diocese council members and Historian, about it. His answer had been, “The locals are strong in their pagan faith and stubborn. Their last report said just that. Then we received no further word. It was assumed they found the crusade to retake the Vatican as more important. It was happening about the same time.”

  The closer he came, the more he wished he hadn’t injured himself. He should have surveyed this sooner. There was corruption of the Holy Spirit everywhere. The trees were getting more barren the deeper into the forest the path took him, the ground became darker, a misty fog drifted across it in wide tendrils. The Paladinate never abandons its holds. Especially where there are pagans.

  “It is likely overgrown by now and will need significant repairs,” Thomas had told him when he handed him the chest of ten platinum disks. “This should pay the wages of guilds’ men and help you on your journey, with plenty to establish your holdings properly.”

  One platinum was worth a thousand gold pieces. He had added his own gold and platinum disks from the wages of his time in the Holy Lands between campaigns when he worked as protection for caravans through the deserts. His lion, leopard, and zebra pelts were also very lucrative to sell to the very men he protected, too. Usually made between two and eight hundred gold each and it was easy kills. The beasts tended to attack them during the night, which made it very convenient. And he was able to skin and tan them on the way for a few copper coins on one of the wagons or carts. He never spent his wages on anything, unlike his brethren-in-arms, who tended to spend them at brothels if they were Clerics or Monastic Knights, and the Paladins would use theirs to buy spirits or sharpen their weapons and repair their armors. Draka knew how to maintain his not only by keeping his blades sharp, but also by using them in such a way that didn’t cause enough damage to truly warrant a smith’s hand. The others may look down their noses at the Diocese quartermasters for their ‘lack of skill’, but Draka had no misgivings about utilizing their free services when he truly needed those repairs. He barely spent more than a silver the entire twenty-three years he was in the Holy Lands.

  Now, he understood why. This entire area will need to be cleared, once it has been cleansed, and it would not be free for anyone. One look at these trees alone would be enough to send every woodsman alive fleeing in the other direction. Only a pocket of gold will give them courage.

  Vigora’s head lowered, her chin tucked, and her ears lay across her forehead. She sensed something. Draka pulled the reins for her to stop and searched the trees around them. Up, down, and between. His heart was throbbing, his breathing steadying in shallowness. There was danger nearby. Prints in the dirt caught his eyes and he narrowed them at it. Should have brought my armor. Why do I always think it won’t be needed when it is?

  Draka slid off Vigora and knelt beside one of the prints. Boar tracks. This might be the opportunity he had been waiting for. For a boar, he really didn’t need his armor. He needed his sword and spear. He had the sword on his belt. He lifted the spear from the cradles on the side of Vigora’s saddle, which had counterweights on the other side in the form of two fixed blocks of metal. She eyed him, blowing butterflies through her long lips. He rubbed her nose to reassure her and signaled for her to stay nearby, but at a distance. She knew what was coming.

  Gripping the spear, Draka moved. Rock to rock, pad of moss to pad of moss, raised root to raised root. His eyes darted to where each foot would fall, to the tracks leading away from the path to the forest around him, and back. All that could be heard of his passing was the rush of the air he broke with his speed. Leaves barely shifted as he rushed around them.

  The tracks curved. He followed. Through prickly thickets. He climbed up a tree with the spear in one hand, using the strength of his thighs wrapped around its trunk until he was above it and thrust himself to the other side. And he was on the move again. It crossed to where there were trees untouched by the darkness and then back. It went into a large hole.

  Red eyes, body slathered in ichor like dripping blood blackened by decay, tusks jagged as a saw. Draka shook the dream out of his head. The hole was different. He had never hunted boar before but also had never heard of them burrowing like that. They were basically wild pigs. He might be wrong. He ducked to look into it. Thin roots and cobwebs lined the walls all around, puddles of water reflected his crouching image back at him. There were only prints going in, none coming out. There’s an exit nearby.

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  Draka eyed the ground. There was a curve to it, like a ridge. He followed it from where he stood and saw a discoloration in the ground where a shadow lay. It was at the base of an uprooted tree that had fallen. He moved. It was exactly what he was looking for and the tracks continued into the forest.

  There were droppings. He felt them. Warm. He moved faster. No gloves, his hands were beginning to feel the onset of rawness. He stopped where there were signs of the boar munching on truffles. Another set of droppings. He coated his hands in dirt, felt the warmth of the droppings, and sprinted. Silent and fast. Nimble and alert.

  A dim haze of light was ahead, a glade. Draka slowed his pace and gripped his spear at the ready. If it is anything like the predators he had taken on before, it would be near the glade, waiting for easy prey. Let it mistake him for easy prey.

  He listened to the trees. They were just as silent as it had been the entire time. From the moment he found that path to the Abbey, not a bird chirped, not a squirrel clattered. Nothing. The air was still. He lowered himself and shifted away from the tracks to where he had some cover from leafless shrubbery closer to the light.

  It wasn’t a glade.

  It was a break in the trees that was barren. Dirt. No grass, no weeds, no growth of any kind. He eyed the forest surrounding it. No signs of any living creature. The trees looked black as char and leafless. Dead. He slowly inched closer. The tracks led right into it, close together and never returning. He knew it was close. It must be close.

  He stopped. Every part of him screamed to run. His muscles were flexed but shaking. His hands were tight but numbing. There was an acrid scent. Sulfuric. He shut his eyes. Great Jehovah, let me see.

  He opened his eyes.

  The glade was filled with crimson of corruption. It seeped through the ground. It dripped from the trees like sap. It hovered across the tree roots and the bare shrubbery. His True Sight faded, as it always did, and he saw what he had hoped he wouldn’t. The tracks went into the glade where it went in a circle. Draka took a step into the glade and tightened his jaw at the sight. Two other tracks did the same; entered the glade and made a circle. No tracks led away.

  Three sixes whose circular bottoms joined together in a triangle. Draka spat. Not even the true symbol of the Enemy. A caricature of it. The beast was spitting in his face, teasing him. Goading him.

  An owl hooted.

  Draka turned narrowed eyes toward the sound. He couldn’t see it. He called on his True Sight of the Lord again. Still, all he could see was the crimson corruption. Nothing had changed.

  Another screeched.

  Draka silently cursed and pulled a small vial from his shirt. The last vial of holy ointment he had since he left Sodiulakum. He pulled the cork with his teeth and took a step back from the symbol.

  ‘In the name of the Lord our God, Most High, I call upon the Blood of the Lamb to wash over this ground.’ And he whipped his hand so ointment sprayed over the symbol the tracks had created. The drops struck the tracks and sizzled. Black flames erupted from the three sixes the tracks had formed. They burned for a moment, flapping with darkness until light rose within the flames and turned them blue. They slowly dwindled and extinguished, leaving two triangles of bright green grass and blooming white flowers where the sixes had been. One faced to the north, one to the south, over top of each other so their combined six points were protruding outward to form a star.

  Draka sighed with relief. He had enough to do that at least.

  He returned to Vigora and placed the spear in its cradles before giving her a rub on her high forehead. She twisted her head and licked his face with her long tongue. He agreed. He was glad that he had returned to her, too. Only, he wished he had found that boar first. And the owl.

  There is a demon in these woods. Draka leapt onto Vigora and turned her back toward the house. The amount of corruption was too much for him to handle alone. And…he tightened his thighs for her to move faster…he knew he wasn’t hunting it anymore. It was hunting him.

  It just wasn’t strong enough to fully venture beyond the cover of the corruption long enough to reach him. But it was getting stronger. Stronger than just haunting his dreams, sapping his expectations and knowledge from within him, but manifesting. Which meant one other thing, without a doubt in his mind. The Abbey, Draka concluded as he lowered himself into Vigora’s mane so she would sprint, wasn’t abandoned.

  It was conquered.