A collection of memories and events surrounding Augustus Fayriver, Druid from Gothic Earth
The First Letter, sent November the 23rd
My dearest little Sister,
By the time this letter reaches you, I shall be long since gone from our father’s estate. Events as they transpired, have led to this, however the fact that you will be well, and are recovering is satisfaction enough. Muddied as events are, and as rumors of what I have done reach your ears they shall become more muddied, so I shall attempt to explain why I left, and what happened as best I can.
You were poisoned, dear Sister, with a poison most dreadful. You may not remember, but it was I who found you collapsed in the sitting room. Your eyes dilating, your body wracked with fever. I knew at once that the culprit had to be Detrick Knowles. That slimy businessman would stop at nothing to acquire our Father’s estate, he knows of the minerals and metals that lie beneath the soil we call home and would profit off it whilst seeing us homeless with a ruined reputation. You know of the events in which he attempted to coopt the Queen’s favor in acquiring our land. Fortunately our Father’s influence runs deep, and his own favor with her highness greater than that of Mr. Knowles. Failing that attempt he crossed my path in the Queen’s palace and warned me most sternly that if he was not to get what he wanted then he wished our family to fall to the Red Death. I sarcastically wished him well, and continued on my way. Three days later, I found you in the sitting room.
Physicians and Priests came from far and wide at the call of our Father’s fortune, none could bring you from your comatose state and were it not obvious that you still breathed life, we would have assumed the worse. As it was, your condition became weaker and weaker each day, unable to eat, and barely able to drink. You were dying, my dearest sister, and neither doctor, nor God, seemed able to stop it. Our eldest brothers were still away at the war, our Father still has a limp from the war before that. God or Lucifer seemed to have given us more of a load than I could bear and I was not going to stand idly by whilst you slowly passed from this life. I was not going to be still whilst that man spat in the face of justice, as I knew in my heart for it to be true, even lacking evidence, and by the fourth night of your weakening, our father had given up hope. He confided in me that he would be sending for the Priest in the morning, that you may receive your last rights before death.
I could not accept it. I would not accept it. I refused to let your life fly in the face of justice, so I ran. I fled from the estate out the back yard, through the garden maze, and into the forests beyond. As I ran my mind recalled all of the sweet memories we had growing up together. You were closer to my own age than I to our elder brothers. I recalled the trouble we got in when we were exploring the very woods I ran through, when we became hopelessly lost in the woods and were guided home by the old lady of the forest. The Witch of the Woods. It was not difficult to find her from my memories of childhood. Her hut was still on the other side of the meadow, left at the tree that looks like a man, right across the creek, and follow the cliff face down. The memories in my head seemed sharper, with the grief, but I could not lose you. Perhaps God was guiding me to an alternative way in which you might still have life, perhaps I’ll never know.
When I found her, I discovered she was very old, and near death herself. In spite of that I implored her aid in the matter of your life, and in the candlelight and incense of her hut, I learned what must be done. Her powers had grown weak with age, her witchcrafts faulty. She explained that with this new age of Christendom, none were believing in the old ways any longer, but that if her powers were gifted to one younger, if her ways were passed on to a new generation of witch, then it may be possible to save you, my dear Sister. But if that was to happen, it needed to happen that night, and it needed to be me. I want to say I hesitated in giving up myself to possible damnation, I want to say I considered the words of God and his commandments in the matter, but I did not. I took the oaths she gave me. I drank the potions she offered me. I smelled the incense burned for me and in a trance, I saw a vision. I saw Mr. Knowls paying off our food servant and offering the man a vial of poison, I saw the servant add some but not all to your evening’s tea, and I saw you drink of it in the sitting room, and fall.
By the time I recovered from this trance, the sun was beginning to alight the horizon, and the Witch of the Woods was gone. Dawn would be soon, I had not time to debate where she might have gone or what she might have done to me, and all I knew was that I felt different. The world felt different around me —as if it were speaking to me in a language I could understand, one that had always been there, but that I was just now noticing. I made my way quickly through the woods, back through the garden maze, and into the house. I found you right where I left you, in your bed, Father by your side. He had stayed up all the night. I told him to not send for the Priest just yet, but not yet of what I had done or of what I had become over the night. I placed my hand on your forehead, I could feel the poison within your veins, the unnaturalness of the fluids in your blood. But I am different now. I am the Witch of the Woods, and the first spell I ever cast, was one to purify your body of the poison that beset you, and your body instantly relaxed, the pain in your face vanishing. You rested peacefully then. Not answering the how’s of our Father just yet, I set out into the house and found the servant who had betrayed us. He was made to speak the truth to our Father. The Sherriff was then contacted and present at our house when Mr. Knowles made an unexpected visit to ‘check on the wellbeing of our family’. He now rots in the castle dungeon, as he should.
However, there is still the issue of myself. The Church will not approve of what I have become to save you, and our Father’s reputation could be forever ruined if what I am gets into the public. To prevent both of these things, Father and I have come to the agreement that I need to forever leave the estate that is our home. Do not be hard with Father, I made this decision of my own free will, and with clear conscience. I still believe in our God, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. However it seems his plans for my salvation are taking a detour, as the Witchcraft I have taken an oath for with the Witch of the Woods still lives in me. So I leave, to protect everyone from myself. For now I travel north, and I write this letter in a shabby tavern, which I shall be departing from come nightfall. I shall write you as often as able, my dear sweet Sister. Let not thy thoughts be troubled by me, for I am a man, and I can care for myself as well as others. I shall endeavor to use my new powers to help others, as I travel, and above all else I shall retain my honor, so that when the day comes that I shall stand before our lord, I shall do so with a clear conscience.
Be well, my dearest Sister, Elizabeth. I shall write thee again soon.
~ Agustus Feyriver
*That very night, whilst traveling north into the mountains and forests towards Ireland, the Mists appeared, and Augustus was taken from that world unto the Demiplane of Dread*
