Memories at the Gilded Lilly

In the middle of a small dark alley you find the sign you have been looking for. It is hanging askew and the paint is chipped and fading. "The Gilded Lilly, what an unlikely name for an inn such as this," you think to yourself. You open the door and step into the dark common room. No one looks up at your arrival and even the innkeeper himself barely pays you any mind. Looking around at the patrons you realize that this is not a place of good natured cheer, this is a place where serious drinkers go to forget about their problems. Looking across the room you can make out a familiar face sitting at a table in a dark corner. Its a woman with short dark hair, an eyepatch covering her right eye. The hammer and holy books strapped to her side mark her vocation as though in were written across her forehead. As you walk over to her she raises her eye and looks at you.

"Oh my friend, I am surprised to see you here. Here to drown your sorrows? Or pehaps for a bit of a chat?" she asks you. "I know, I know. Its unseemly for a person of my calling to be drowning herself in drink but sometimes its the only answer," she tells you gesturing for you to have a seat. As you pull out a chair and sit down she fills her mug from the bottle at the table. You notice that the bottle is more than half empty and that there is another on the floor at her feet.

"Yes, you are right," she says in response to your statement, "Sometimes it is better to get things of your chest. Right now you are the closest thing I have to a...no, you are my family." Lifting a mug and drinking deeply she seems to steel herself against the telling.

"The memories of my life are hard to deal with. Days or weeks may go by with them staying safely in the back on my mind. But then something, it could be anything, the feel of the hammer, the face of a corpse, the smell of a burning village...will bring them crashing back into my mind. When that happens there is little I can do but drink myself into oblivion. Yes, yes. I will unburden myself upon you." She drains her mug, carefully filling it again and begins her tale.

"I was raised in a small village in the north, the name is not important for it no longer exists. My family was poor but I believe we were happy and I remember I was as happy as any young girl I had met. My father was a woodcutter and would set traps in the forest to put at least a small amount of meat on our table. My mother tended to a small garden that she grew beside our house. I remember that she would sing as she went about her work. My three brothers and I didn't have many material possessions but we had love. That I remember truly.

I remember nights when my father would come home after going to the market with stories, horrible stories of a new plague that turned men and women into beasts, murderous beasts that would kill and destroy without reason. My father would whisper these stories to my mother at night when we should be asleep. I couldn't help but listen to them. He would pace and worry until my mother’s tender care would calm him and they would drift off to sleep.

Then one day my father came in early from the forest. I saw him stagger out of the forest and I could tell something was wrong. I yelled for my mother and brothers as I ran out to my father.
My mother brought him in and cleaned his wounds. He told us his story, that he had been attacked in the forest by some strange beast. He hadn't killed it but he had wounded it enough that he could escape. He was burning with fever. Through the night my mother sat by him trying to ease his pains. I remember him shouting in the night, words that I couldn't understand but that sounded fearful yet angry. Over the course of the next week his fever never broke and he yelled and wept in a state of delirium. My mother never left his side.

I remember...
I remember that morning. I remember hearing my mother scream out in pain. I remember running to throw open the door my brother Fritz right behind me. I saw the beast, the beast wearing my fathers shape. I saw it standing over my fallen mother, the blood flowing down his beard. I looked down and saw the ruined husk of my mother, blood pooled around her ruined throat. Fritz threw me out of the way as the thing that had been my father charged toward us. Brave Fritz. The father-thing grappled with my brother slamming him against walls, clawing at him with razor sharp nails. I watched from the ground as the father-thing slashed open Fritz’s belly with his claws. Fritz fell to the ground, his lifeblood flowing freely from his ghastly wounds. I saw the face of the father-thing as he looked over at me. Never have I known the terror I felt then as the thing that until now had been my loving father looked at me and smiled. I heard my brother Derek running down the hallway but I knew he would be too late. I could feel its murderous glee as the father-thing looked down at me. He took one step towards me but that was all. Dear, brave Fritz had wrapped his arms around the father-thing’s leg. The beast gave Fritz a vicious kick and as Fritz shuddered I saw the light in his eyes go dim and fade. The father-thing looked at me and I could feel the heat of his anger. I knew now, that this was the end. I don’t know which of us was more surprised to see the axe cleave through the air and into the creatures neck. With a screech of anger and pain the father-thing turned around. That was all it had time to do before the axe struck it again with a blow so savage the beasts head was chopped completely off. As it fell to the ground dead I saw my savior, Derek. Fritz had spent the last of his life buying time for Derek to come to my rescue.

After that things were never the same. The plague I had heard about had finally shown itself to be completely real. Derek took my youngest brother and I into the woods to stay at the woodcutter’s cottage my father would use in the winter. We took what food and supplies we thought we would need. For over two months we stayed hidden, not letting anyone know we were alive or what had happened that day. Derek took care of me and I took care of my brother Karl, who was still a baby. After that time Derek went back to find out what had happened to our small village. It was a frightening time, waiting for Derek to come back, hoping and fearing the news he would bring. He returned two days later bringing news. The plague had taken many of our fellow villagers and the beasts they became took even more. A unit of the Imperial Army had arrived at our village and cleansed it of the beasts and was now using our village as a base in the region. It seemed like the village was safer now than it had been before.

Derek rebuilt parts of our house that had been burned either in the chaos of the plague or in the cleansing of it. He took over what had been my father’s job, as a woodcutter and trapper to support Karl and I. In memory of my mother I planted a small garden next to the house and tended it while also tending baby Karl. Though our new life was hard, things got better. Derek did well in the forest, my garden flourished and with the army using the village as a base we were protected. Again, I felt a growing happiness. I wondered if it would last..."

She seems to look out into space for a moment as she falters in her story. Realizing she has finished what was in her mug she fills it with what is left in the bottle, spilling a dark stream onto the table. She throws the drink back making quick work of what was left.

"Girl!" she shouts to the server, "Another bottle here." She looks at you, "If I were a better person I would invite you to share a drink. To share your own stories of loss but, unfortunatly I am not." As the server brings over another bottle the priestess stands up digging a fist full of silver out of her pocket. "Take what I owe for the drinks and something for yourself. As for the rest of it, serve your other patrons on me until it runs out," she tells the girl half slamming half placing coins on the table.

With a seriousness that only someone drunk can obtain she says to you, "As for me, I need to be alone for a while. Im going up to my room to see if I can find any answers at the bottom of this bottle." She puts her hand upon your shoulder and says quietly, "Good travels to you my friend and may Sigmar bless you."
With that she walks away on leaded legs and disappears up the stairs.

(be kind, Im fragile and not a great writer)