I Can Fight It

Genji comes back out of the mist, and there's a stranger waiting at the church. Hay-zel, a drow cleric of Eilistraee, got lost in the fog and followed the sound of bells to this hill. She tries to hide and everybody sees her. Beowolfe puts a bolt in the dirt at her feet. She answers with a sacred flame dancing in her palm, and Genji walks right up and says it's neat.

Inside the boarded-up church, Father Donavich is sobbing at the pulpit. Lucy talks him out on a natural twenty. His holy symbol is gone, and so is his magic. Then Mayla starts digging at the floor, and a voice comes up through the boards: Father, don't tell them. His son Doru came home bitten by the master, and the priest chained him in the cellar. He begs the party to put Doru down like a beloved pet, because he can't do it himself.

Doru crawls across the cellar ceiling and drops in front of Genji wearing his father's sun symbol. He tells them about a stranger called Victor who said he knew how to kill a vampire, a raid on the castle that went wrong, and his best friend Joseph killed in front of him when he refused to drink. Then he asks for a test. Genji cuts his own arm with the dagger from under Death House. Doru shakes and bites his tongue, the symbol blazes until it swallows him, and three minutes later he rolls over grinning: I think it worked. Hay-zel calls it a holy lock, not a cure. It holds as long as his will does.

The priest hasn't been ringing any bells. His bell has been cracked for months, and the only footprints in the tower are his own. Remi fixes it anyway. Outside, Parriwimple decides Remi is his new best friend, and Genji asks if he can punch him. Beowolfe and Nash head for the gate. The others walk down to the burgomaster's mansion, and somebody inside screams.