The Inferno of St. Andral

5th of Octyavr, 737 BC

Town of Vallaki, Barovia

Over the heads of dozens of Vallakians, Obor, Duncan, and Drakthar saw plumes of black smoke rising over the rooftops in the direction of St. Andral's Church.

Screams of fear quickly turned to cries of despair!

The three vampire spawn they had followed from the coffin maker's shop were nowhere to be seen—they had surely already slipped inside the church.

At the top of the wide stone stairs leading up to the church's doors, two city guards were in a panic. They were pushing uselessly on the massive, iron-bound oak doors of the main entrance. The metal handles were glowing dull red from the heat inside.

"It won't budge!" one guard screamed over the roar of the fire, coughing as smoke poured through the central seam. "Something’s blocked it from the inside!"

"Out of the way!" Duncan roared, sprinting up the steps. The guards looked up, terrified, ready to argue, until they saw Obor charging up the stairs behind Duncan like a runaway boulder. They scrambled aside just in time.

"Obor!" Duncan yelled, pointing at the center seam of the doors. "Make a path!"

The goliath barbarian didn't break stride. He roared, a sound that rivaled the fire itself, lowering his shoulder and throwing his entire armored bulk against the reinforced timber. The sound of splintering oak was deafening. The massive lock mechanism sheared clean off inside the frame. The doors didn't just open; they exploded inward, torn from their upper hinges by the impact. Obor stumbled forward with his momentum, skidding to a halt just inside the threshold. Duncan and Drakthar crowded in behind him, weapons drawn. They froze. Weapons lowered slowly.

The entire interior of St. Andral’s was a swirling vortex of fire. The roof beams were ablaze, raining burning debris down into a churning pit of orange and red. The heat hit them like a physical blow, searing their eyebrows and forcing the air from their lungs.

The heat inside the church was a physical weight, pressing against Heymadood’s chest.

"Stay down," Heymadood yelled at Yeska and the little girl beside the altar boy. Both were hiding beneath a pew as a vampire spawn frantically tried to claw at them both.

"Little morsels," the spawn hissed, its pale hand grabbing the little girl.

The girl screamed as Yeska desperately tried to cling to her. But the vampire spawn was too strong. It pulled the screaming girl to it and dug its fangs into the girl's throat. Yeska screamed.

The interior of St. Andral’s was a vision of hell.

The fire roared in the rafters, dropping burning tapestries like fiery shrouds.

Through the smoke, Heymadood caught a glimpse of the altar. His heart sank.

Father Lucian lay draped across the stone steps, his throat torn open. A gnomish vampire spawn stood over the priest's body, wiping blood from its chin, its eyes scanning the room for fresh prey. To the left, near the burning confessionals, a third spawn was finishing its grisly work. Three townsfolk lay in a heap, motionless, their lives extinguished before they could even scream.

"Stay behind the statue!" Heymadood yelled to Ireena. A glance showed Ireena behind the marble effigy of Lathander the Morninglord. She was crouched there, hidden from the beasts for the moment.

"Now!" Duncan’s voice cut through the roar of the fire. Duncan and Obor charged through the ruined doorway, diving into the inferno. The heat was blistering, singeing their hair instantly. Duncan raised his shield, deflecting a swipe from the spawn near the townsfolk, and thrust his sword, Sandwhisper, in a riposte.

Obor roared, ignoring the flames licking at his boots, sighting the spawn attacking a nearby townsfolk.

Near the entrance, Drakthar anchored his feet. The smoke was thick, swirling in unpredictable eddies. He drew his bowstring to his cheek, narrowing his eyes as he tracked the spawn moving toward Obor’s blind side.

"I have you," Drakthar whispered. He loosed the arrow. At that exact moment, a burning rafter crashed down between the archer and the melee, sending a billow of black smoke across his line of sight. Obor lurched to the left to avoid the debris.

"GAAH!" Obor bellowed, stumbling mid-stride. 

The arrow hadn't hit the vampire. It was buried deep in the meat of Obor’s right triceps.

Drakthar lowered his bow, his face draining of color. "Oops..."

Obor didn't look back. With a snarl of pure rage, he reached across with his left hand and snapped the shaft of the arrow off, leaving the head buried in his muscle. The pain seemed only to fuel him.

"You hit me, Drakthar!" Obor roared over his shoulder, his eyes wild with battle fury as he swung his mace one-handed at the undead horror. "And I even saved you in the coffin maker's shop!"

"Less talking, more killing!" Heymadood yelled, scrambling out from under the pew to attack the vampire with a psychic spell. "We're cooking in here!"

"Over here! The glass!" a ragged woman screamed, pointing to a lower pane of stained glass depicting St. Andral’s benevolence. A burly man, his face streaked with soot and sweat, grabbed a heavy, fallen candelabra. With a grunt of desperate strength, he swung it like a battering ram. The colorful glass shattered outward, inviting a rush of cold, wet rain that drenched the hungry flames behind them.

"Up! Now!" the woman cried. The man dropped the candelabra and scooped up the terrified little girl.

"Grab my shoulders, lass!" he yelled. With the woman pushing from below, they hoisted the child up and through the jagged frame. She tumbled out into the soft dirt of the graveyard, coughing but safe.

"Don't look back, sweetie! Run!" the woman sobbed, collapsing against the wall as the heat intensified.

In the center aisle, the battle had turned desperate. The vampire spawn Obor had engaged was a blur of unnatural speed. It ducked under the barbarian's clumsy, one-armed swing and lunged, its claws raking deep across Obor’s unarmored chest.

Obor dropped to one knee, blood pouring from the jagged wounds, his vision swimming. The spawn hissed, rearing back to deliver the killing blow.

"Leave him be, devil!" The man and woman who had just saved the girl, emboldened by Obor's attempt to save them, rushed forward. They wielded burning lengths of pew like spears, jabbing at the vampire to drive it back. The creature shrieked, swiping the makeshift weapons away, but the distraction was all Obor needed.

Gritting his teeth against the agony in his chest and the arrow in his arm, Obor raised his left fist. The iron ring on his finger—the Ring of the Ram—pulsed with a sudden, violent white light. A ram-shaped bolt of pure force exploded from the ring. It slammed into the vampire’s chest with the force of a siege weapon. The creature was lifted off its feet and hurled backward, soaring through the air before crashing directly into the roaring inferno where several pews were burning. The vampire screeched as the fire consumed it instantly.

Near the altar, Duncan was locked in a duel with the gnome vampire spawn. The small creature hopped atop Father Lucian’s corpse, chittering with glee, its mouth smeared with the priest’s blood. It sprang at Duncan, aiming for the jugular. Duncan didn’t flinch. He dropped to a knee, letting the creature sail over his shield, and thrust Sandwhisper upward in a vicious arc. The blade caught the spawn in mid-air, piercing its back and exiting through its chest. Duncan stood, slamming the creature down onto the stone steps of the altar. With a wet crunch, the monster went limp, pinned to the stone by cold steel before bursting into ashes.

"Rest now, Father Lucian," Duncan whispered breathlessly.

High above, the last surviving spawn realized the tide had turned. It scuttled up the stone wall like a spider, its limbs contorted at impossible angles, desperate to reach the open gaps in the high ceiling to escape the heat.

"Not this time," Drakthar muttered from the doorway. He ignored the stinging smoke in his eyes, blocking out the chaos, the screaming, and the roar of the fire. He focused on the shadow crawling against the illuminated stone. He adjusted his aim, accounting for the updraft of the heat. He exhaled. The bowstring sang.

The arrow struck the climbing vampire square in the spine, shattering bone. The creature lost its grip and plummeted twenty feet. It crashed into a burning pew with a bone-jarring thud. Before it could even attempt to rise, the holy wood of the church and the disruption of its form caused a violent reaction. It didn't just burn; it detonated into a cloud of sulfurous gray ash, scattering across the burning floorboards.

"Clear!" Drakthar yelled, lowering his bow. "Everyone out! The roof is coming down!"

Outside, the cold rain bit at their exposed skin, a sharp contrast to the furnace they had just escaped.

As the roof of St. Andral’s finally gave way with a thunderous crash, sending a pillar of sparks toward the dark moon, the Legends of Greyhawk stumbled out of the church, coughing and blackened by soot. Near the graveyard gate, a piercing cry cut through the roar of the fire.

"Marina! Oh, thank the Morninglord, Marina!" The little girl who had been shoved through the window broke away from the soot-stained baker who had caught her and sprinted into the arms of a weeping couple. They fell to their knees in the dirt, clutching her as if she were a ghost returned to life.

But the joy was an island in a sea of misery. Beside them, an elderly woman shrieked the name of her husband, clawing at her own face as she realized he hadn't made it out. A man stared blankly at the burning doors, holding the shawl of a daughter who now lay among the ashes of the pews.

Duncan wiped blood from his brow, his eyes hard as he scanned the rooftops. "There were eight," he rasped to the others. "We killed two at the coffin maker's shop, and three in the church. The other three spawns... they’re still out there." He gripped the hilt of Sandwhisper, ready to hunt.

But as he stepped forward, the mood of the crowd shifted. The survivors' relief curdled into something ugly.

"It’s them," a voice hissed from the gathering mob.

"They brought this upon us," another woman spat, clutching at a pink and white wooden disc shaped like a sun that hung around her neck. "The church stood for hundreds of years! They come to town, and in two days, it burns!"

"They brought the monsters with them!" Hostile eyes bored into the adventurers.

"We just saved your lives," Obor growled, clutching his bleeding arm, the arrow shaft still protruding from the muscle.

"We should go," Heymadood whispered, tugging on Duncan’s cloak. "We’re not winning any popularity contests tonight, and I’m low on spells."

Duncan nodded grimly. He gestured to Yeska, the traumatized altar boy who was shivering violently nearby. "Come, lad. Let's get you somewhere safe."

They moved quickly through the muddy streets to St. Andral’s Orphanage. Headmistress Claudia Belasco met them at the door, her face pale as she looked past them toward the orange glow consuming the sky in the distance.

"Is it true?" she asked, her voice tight. "Father Lucian?"

"Dead," Duncan said softly. "He died defending the altar."

In the corner of the entryway, a hulking, shovel-lean teen stiffened. It was Millivoj. The grave digger’s face crumbled. He slid down the wall, burying his head in his hands.

"It’s my fault," Millivoj sobbed, his voice thick with guilt. "I stole the bones... the Hallow... the protection was gone because of me. I killed him."

Claudia placed a hand on Millivoj's shoulder, her expression stern but sorrowful, before turning her attention to Yeska. The boy clung to her apron, silent and broken.

"He has no one left," Duncan said. He reached into his pouch and withdrew ten heavy gold pieces, pressing them into Claudia’s hand. "For his care. And for whatever the other children need."

Claudia nodded, pocketing the coin. "He will be safe here. We look after our own."

"We need a place to rest," Duncan said, looking at his battered companions. Obor was leaning heavily against the doorframe, and Drakthar was swaying with exhaustion. "Can we stay the night? Just the floor is fine."

Claudia looked at them, then outside, where the angry mob could be seen gathered in front of the burning church. She shook her head slowly.

"I cannot keep you," she said, her voice regretful but firm. "The town is terrified. They need someone to blame, and they have chosen you. If the mob finds you here, they will burn this orphanage down just to get to you. I will not risk the children."

Duncan looked at the faces of the orphans in the adjacent room, then back at his friends. "I understand."

"Let's return to van Richten's tower," Heymadood offered as they stepped back out into the cold rain. "Before leaving with Rudolph, Ezmerelda told me to have us meet them back at the tower once our business in Vallaki was done."

Duncan looked toward the west, away from the burning church and the hateful whispers of Vallaki.

"To the tower," Duncan said. "We regroup, we heal, and we plan."

Under the cover of a stormy sky, the Legends of Greyhawk slipped out of Vallaki, leaving the town behind them.