The Journal of Onet Bynalor

Curse of Strahd - Sessions 5 & 6

Scrawled into the back of an incomplete spell book, following several other pages scribed in a tidy, quick, tight lettering very unlike the elegantly precise hand that formed the forward section.

Mother,

I’ve calmed some this morning. The Roaming People are… quite decent. The music and drinking the night before might have played a hand in my head feeling heavy, but the food they’ve served up to breakfast has sorted out whatever hangover I might have earned. We were all tucked into a tent together, but none of us were particularly chatty. We all needed to think, and to rest, and it seems to have done us some good. We’re full of questions this morning. That is, all but Caine. As much as he tends to be full of them, he is impatient to be on the road and after our query.

Which, one of many things I forgot to mention the night before. We left Barovia Proper and headed west for Vallaki on the trail of Ireena Kolyana, the adopted sister of Ismark Kolyanovich, the new, young Burgomaster. Caine had attempted sending a letter to the pair after the death of their father, begging a meeting with them. We waited, they never arrived. The next morning, it was Ismark that found us and begged we chase down his errant sister. I have mixed feelings about wasting our time tracking down a grown woman who does not want to be found, but such is currently our cause. And if we are stuck here, I can admit that carving a life for ourselves will become a necessity.

Kiara and Cain were squabbling again. When we first met, I suspected it would be me that each would battle with, not each other. It seems strange, and yet… their arguing is oddly comforting. We saw the Horseman again, von Holt. And after a short chat between he and Wallach, he rode off to seek ahead of us. He was journeying toward Vallaki anyway, and when told that Ireena was missing, he became suddenly much keener to help us. I hope it was right to trust him and that those damn cards held some kind of truth that we can trust. He mentioned seeking the Blue Water Inn before he left, and gave us a warning not to cross Baron Vargus Vallakovich – called him, ‘a disagreeable sort.’ In this place, I imagine that means we will be under the authority of a tyrant in short order.

We are setting onto the road now; I will write more later.

--

Following night.

We shall begin at the Windmill.

While following in Ireena’s wake, we chanced upon a Windmill. After I spotted the footprints of a woman and child leading up the hill, it was decided that we’d take a look, perchance to take a short rest and get a bite to eat. A raven croaked out at us. Being familiar with Korban’s croaks and squawking, I noticed an odd urgency about the bird’s cries. I hadn’t had the need to before this point, but decided to have a chat with the bird… much to the confusion and amusement of my unwilling traveling companions.

The raven was… something more than a simple bird. Much like Korban, she was far too sharply intelligent to be the average raven, but I didn’t have time to ask her about herself. Asking her what she was upset about, she warned that there was danger ahead of us, that things where not what they seemed. I inquired to the woman and child that had passed that way some hours before us, and if they were alright, and the raven told me the child was a boy, and he was in a cage. The woman, she said, was not to be trusted.

Recalling back to Barovia Proper, and the old woman that tried to kidnap a child and then utterly vanished as if she had never existed to begin with. I realized who it might be, and asked if her sisters might be with her. The raven said there were two in the mill, and that the third was away. Sharing this information with the others, a quick plan was developed. Wallach gifted Kiara invisibility and she flew to follow the ravens into a window three stories up. Unfortunately, she could not unlock the boy’s cage, but she secured a rope and lowered it down. I have some skill with my hands, but no knowledge of thieves’ tools. Caine, however, took up the task, climbed up (after a slightly embarrassing mishap at the beginning that left Kiara beaming) and proved himself more than skilled at picking locks.

The hinges of the old cage nearly gave him away, however. My sharp ears caught the sound, and fearing he would be caught, I banged on the door to the Mill. Caine made it out the windows and down the rope faster than I could have imagined, and just as he landed outside, one of the hags opened the door. I, Wallach, and Gimner remarkably managed to pass off our search for Ireena (without mentioning her name, of course) as our only reason for being there. And just in time for the sister to be heard screeching upstairs about the boy missing. It feels unreal that we all walked away unscathed. I admit being just the tiniest bit proud of that particular deception.

Byron became our newest companion then, and we kept him at the heart of the group, sharing food and water while we walked. For some time, there was a relative peace. Gimner and Kiara even shared a bit of a chat about themselves along the way. It seems a book brought Kiara to Barovia, one with a riddle that she solved. She seeks some holy relic, and apparently, she will find it here. Curious, isn’t it? I thought this very spell book I am scribbling in now had brought me here, but it was nothing like she described. I was screaming out with mind, body, and soul for answers. For something, anything to hear me and answer me -- 

The writing ends abruptly in an odd blotch, as if the quill had been set

down heavily, and then hurriedly yanked away from the page.

No, there is no time for that. But it does move me on to a more important and critical moment of our journey. Caine and I have something in common. Upon the road we came upon a dead horse. We feared for von Holt at first, but it was not his. It seemed a pack of wolves took down the horse, ravaging it, but not staying to eat their kill. Predators acting unlike themselves is always an unnerving sign of nature gone wrong. A pair of people fended them off, their tracks and splashes of blood, as if made from the slash of a sword or dagger, continued toward Vallaki. Something on the air disturbed Caine. He sniffed like a hound after game, and then snarled about something being familiar. He readied his weapon and bounded off. I took after him, close on his heels. Feeling his rage, I told him to keep his wits, stay aware of himself.

“I didn’t come here for fucking games,” he told me. “I came for answers. And I will get my fucking answers!”

How could I not commit myself utterly to his cause? Answers. Explanations for what we have faced, and what we are still facing. I want them more than anything. He does, too. In that, we have common cause above and beyond the obstacles and distractions we tackle along the way. Then the truth of his curse was made clear. We were ambushed by wolves, two that seemed to recognize and target Caine. One of that pair stood up on his hind legs and suddenly seemed much as a man. Then Caine became the same thing.

Caine is no beast, but he houses one, and it unleashed itself. I heard them speaking, Caine and this other wolf, but I couldn’t understand the language they used within their snarls and growling. I can’t say I’ve ever heard an animal speak in a language other than that of its creation, and it was neither entirely beast, nor entirely human, but both – much as the men themselves. The battle was short, but fierce. Korban shred two wolves wounded by Wallach, Gimner I think wounded several wolves and slew another. Kiara similarly wounded some of the wolves, albeit after overcoming a flash of fear I can greatly understand. And Caine, he savaged the other werewolf, utterly ruined him. And when the wolf became a man and tried to crawl away to safety (he said something about the western woods), Caine ripped out the man's throat with his teeth.

I will not for a moment claim I didn’t feel horror and revulsion at what I witnessed, but this wasn’t the first time I’d seen a predator shredding chunks out of his prey. When he stilled, I treated him as I would any other wild beast of the woods that crouched in fear and growled its warnings. I spoke to him, but I don’t know if I he heard me, or if he simply came back to himself on his own. Caine was tattered and bloody, but whole. I did not invade his space, but checked him for injury. For all the blood and gore he was coated in, there was not a scratch on him.

Gimner and Kiara rushed forward like children to a wounded animal. Did they not just witness what Caine was capable of? I shouted at them. I shouldn’t have. It could have been just as likely to unravel Caine’s mind back into the mind of a beast, but I could think of no better way to stop them quickly. Gimner backed off, giving me a look of what I think was some amount of disapproval, and perhaps some shade of a warning as well. Kiara offered to calm Caine, ease him, but he bid her that there was no help she could offer.

After time to collect ourselves, we continued on. Battered, bruised, but far from broken, and with the boy, Byron, remarkably calm and sweet as we reached Valaki. First business being first, we took the boy to his uncle. However, upon meeting Balinsky – a toy maker by trade – we learned he wasn’t the boy’s uncle at all. Apparently, all the children of Valaki call him uncle, but the man has no family. While he asked the boy what had happened to him, Byron mentioned his father had given him to someone.

I’ve never felt such a wretched and cold fury in my belly before. A father gave his son away to hags that turn children into meat pies! Boros is his name, and after promising I wouldn’t kill the man, Balinsky, gave up where I might find him. Although, given how Byron flinched at the idea of going home, I might break my word and murder the bastard anyway. Some part of me knows that does the boy no good. He needs a home, and I imagine we cannot simply leave him to Balinsky and expect him to take on the burden of a child. I offered to pay for the boys keep for a time, at least the toy maker seems genuinely kind. And we certainly cannot take Byron ahead with us. It’d be almost as cruel as leaving him to the filth and rot that is his own father.

Explanations. Answers. I will have them from the man. Part of me hopes they will come loose from his lips while I twist the haft of an arrow lodged deep into his knee.

But not now. Not tonight. Wallach bayed me to restrain my wrath. Not, it seems, because he had any issue with what I wanted to do, but because it could get in the way of achieving other goals. With a somewhat cooler head now, I realize there could be much more at stake than simply our goals. What came over me that fury whispered murder into my soul? Mark me, I still want answers and I still want to make the man suffer, but mayhap by morning some of my will to cause him harm will fizzle.

As it would carry, seeing our way to the Inn did result – in round about ways of peculiar and confusing hijinks on part of Caine – that we did reach out goal and find the missing Ireena. Woe that it is to have found her. I think I hate her. What drives them, the idiots that abandon their love ones in some misbegotten notion of saving them? Further, the woman had a confrontation with Strahd. It sounded truly terrifying, but she learned a valuable lesson that hasn’t yet sunk in. He said himself, if he wanted to, he could have taken her by force. But he did not. Which means he doesn’t want her by force, he wants her to go to him of her own free will. Which means he will be hounding her, and us, to make that happen. He won’t kill her, for reasons I can only begin to speculate, and I don’t believe he means to kill us. At least, not directly. Not if we are his “latest playthings,” as seems to be the case.

Mother, I know you cannot answer me, but I must ask all the same.

Did you know this Strahd? Is that why Uncle Volker loathed you so much? What dealings could you possibly have to mingle and barter with an undead? Questions. They are piling daily, and despite getting ever closer to whatever your secrets were, I feel answers growing ever scanter by the second.

I don’t understand you. I can’t understand father and his abandonment when I needed him most. You left me. You both did. With nothing in your wake for me to sustain myself but so many questions.

To close the important events and then sleep – We found Irenea, she has joined us. Korban did a bit of scouting and tells me of Ravens that are more than they seem. I wonder if they are like those wolves on the road. Not like Caine, or the one he battled that is as himself both man and beast, but that pack he seemed to control. What might influence Ravens in such a way? Perhaps I’ll even find answers to Korban down that line. I must keep an eye out for Nikolai & Karl Wachter, thanks to Caine’s attempted cleverness. Never in my life have I felt so utterly foolish. Their mother – in league with Strahd, mind you – is scholarly, and I may find things to learn there. There is an amiable man also in the Inn, Rictavio, to whom we may have another avenue of some information or aide. Strahd called Ireena, “Tatyanna” – we should learn the importance of this name.

And now to bed between Ireena and Kiara. While I warm to the latter of the pair, I find I would rather bunk down with the men.