A testament concluded upon the last segments of a frayed parchment scroll…

  They’d begun the day at level three or four at most, their captors another four or more levels above that. Judicious application of pilfered level-up baubles, and the bounty of experience gained from the slain guards, meant that their Shackles raised all surviving prisoners above the level of their weakest jailer now. Slain were the demonic asylum masters, undone by their own tools.

  Gustavo, meanwhile, stood at an impressive level eleven. He’d scratch-scathed nearly every guard and the warden, reaping experience and looting privileges from every demon in the gaol. Indeed, it was he who won the claim to the Asylum Master Key. Roland took off running back up the length of the prison pit just as soon as the fighting quelled. Better to keep Gustavo true to oath, discourage him from locking the door behind him and sauntering off alone. But when the grenzritter and healer reached the top floor, they found the doors to the ‘guard quarters’ – just an annex devoid of bedding or tables, for demons did not sleep – wide open. Another plain door (overlarge for a human but a fair fit for a demon) beckoned beyond another squat stairwell.

  “That’s where they dragged me in after my scouting attempt past the barricade.” Roland motioned towards the door.

  Mia stifled a giggle. Is that what he called jumping clear through the plain wooden boards?

  “Are you ready?” queried Roland.

  The lands beyond the asylum spire beckoned. Hopefully her dire-bees would survive another year in the annex untended. Curiosity and desire to see the world beyond the demon gaol overwhelmed the healer. Certainly, she could stay here no longer. Demons would return in time, and their wrath would be focused on whoever was left, or whomever they happened to recapture in the wilds.

  “Ready.” The gaol-priestess nodded.

  With a turn of the Interface, Gustavo unlocked their prison. The door swung open upon an early sunrise. Even this soft glow force Mia to avert her eyes. The Interface hung an adjusting shroud over her eyes, dampening the blinding light for the gaol-born. Yet still she groped around half-blind until Roland offered a hand, then led her up the steps, one foot at a time, outside.

  The oubliette was in fact a great tower. Built into the heart of a stone pillar amidst a long and flat forested plain. A river flowed in the distance, though Mia hardly knew what to look for or what to call flowing water of that measure until Roland pointed it out and provided her vocabulary.

  Atop the prison there was only the reverse side of the welkinhatch dead center on the platform, and a squat altar where the Shackling of prisoners was performed. The Southern Shackled Asylum was, per the name, on the far southern end of civilization, after all.

  Still, most prisoners eyed the vast wilderness enviously, planning on heading into the woods, out of reach of their demonic masters. For with their Shackles they, and any offspring forever more, would be marked as brand-thralls forevermore. On the lam, perhaps they could live out their lives without fear of being dragged back to the asylum.

  Roland gazed to the north, through another large swathe of woodland interspersed with these winding ‘rivers’ as the outlanders called them.

  “Where will you go?” Mia asked.

  “Have to get back to the Fort.” Roland fastened the rebar club to the back of the ramshackle armor he’d managed to loot from the sentry barracks.

  “Got a village a day or two north of here,” said Gustavo. “My own hometown is along the coast between here and the capital. Guess we can travel together out of necessity until then. I don’t mind.”

  You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

  The smuggler said this with a dull and disinterested I’d-rather-not tone.

  Demon Sentry #1 yet lived. It had run off to the north, into demon lands. No doubt it would return with reinforcements. Time was of the essence.

  “And you?” Roland turned to the healer.

  Mia looked out over the dizzying heights and wide-open sky of the outer world. She owed this first view from beyond the gaol to the Shackled newcomer from the outland marches.

  “With you, brave grenzritter.” Mia took the knight’s hand. “For as long as need be.”

  The gospel concluded, with the ancient heroes marching north towards what had to be Riverglen. The fire pit had naturally run its course in their delta-side camp.

  Much of the testament maintained the basic shape of official church history. The Ancient Heroes of Yore met in a cave of dire-scorpions (well, dire-scorpionbees) where they harnessed the divine blessing of the Holy Menu to strike back against humanity’s demonic oppressors. Now possessed of sacred powers, the crew headed north to Riverglen, the first town on the pilgrimage path.

  Everything else, however…

  Rather than a nest of dire-scorpions, the scorpionbees were cultivated by the holy priestess as a rare source of sweet honey in the dingy oubliette. These creatures were long-extinct in these lands, though dire-wasps still roamed. The heroes did not in fact clear the spire of dire-scorpions to spare the fledgling village of Riverglen of a persistent pest.

  Demons, at least, took the familiar form from Riverglen murals: muscular beasts with too-small bat wings that nonetheless flew, wielding fiendish instruments of torture. Their role as jailers and oppressors of humans meshed with the sermons. What's more, prisoners and gaolers both were Interface-compatible, meaning even demons possessed the Brand. This was a known possibility following Calaf's ill-fated encounter with living relic of the old times Piper, the ascended and feral demon. But something about the testament's terms for human demon's thralls, the Shackled, left an uneasy static sense in Calaf's mind. Like he already knew some tragic truth his consciousness was actively avoiding.

  Use of baubles for leveling was something that had instigated a crusade and heretic purge last pilgrimage season. Here their own ancient heroes performed the heretical deed without reservation. It would certainly explain why this more, for lack of a better term, 'gnostic' rendition of events was excised from church canon, if it wasn't suppressed from the get go.

  The team magician, patron hero of Battlemages, was also not present. This represented the most drastic formulaic difference from Pryor Yordan's old sermons back home.

  Further compounding matters, the whole testament was steeped in ancient verbiage and concepts the party was otherwise unfamiliar with.

  “There’s no record of any oubliette or prison south of Riverglen,” Jelena said. “If there were a shrine near the fabled dire-scorpion cave, surely it would be the first stop on the pilgrimage, not those dingy Riverglen sewers. No offense, honey.”

  Unless…

  “Deacon’s old post,” Calaf said as soon as the thought came to him.

  Jelena looked at Calaf with a puzzled expression. This would require elaboration.

  “After you killed Pryor Yordan.” Calaf grimaced, recalling their past, less friendly, history. “Deacon and a handful of church clerics came up from a monastery to the south. I had not known of any church station south of Riverglen at the time.”

  Given the geography of where this ‘Southern Shackled Asylum’ was located, it could only reference this later-day monastery.

  Port Town remained nearby, though it was deemed too risky to return to the cathedral to ask this friendly face for more details about this southern cloister.

  Zilara checked the back of the scroll.

  “What’s this?” She tried grabbing the sensitive document, nearly tearing its frayed parchment as Calaf held onto it.

  After much deliberation, she took the document into her Inventory. She then summoned it into her hands again, the back of the scroll visible to the rest of the party.

  “Seek out the True Testaments,” the scroll said in the same mechanical reproduction as the text on the front side. “Seek artifacts of Gustavo along the path.”

  “Got ourselves a treasure hunt,” Jelena declared.

  “Where could we even begin to look?” Zilara asked.

  “Well, we have to head south. I want to see this southern spire. Never stuck up a monastery before. There’s got to be all sorts of rare artifacts near there.”

  An uneasy knot lodged itself tight in Calaf’s gut. He hadn’t traveled south of Granite Pass in nearly a year. Not since a certain ill-fated betrothal severing. It was not a place Calaf would prefer to return. He hoped they could dodge the town proper.

  As for the next batch of testament, the squire had a hunch regarding the whereabouts. It could wait until after they checked out this Southern Shackled Asylum.

  “One last thing.” Zilara scanned up the scroll. “What’s a grenzritter? The document keeps talking about it. There doesn’t seem to be a modern equivalent.”

  “I know what that is,” Calaf began.

  It was said Fort Duran’s namesake was the first of a long line of foreign warriors come to establish freeborn marches on the border of demon territory. Little was known of the predemon age, older even than this revealed gospel. But this story remained. The kingdoms these marches were built as antidemon militant buffer states for were long since fallen, their remnants integrated into the church’s lands. Languages, too, were melded into Menu Standard, but militant traditions endured. And the order of grenzritters…

  “That’s a Paladin,” Calaf said with a smirk.