Vaesen : Of Stone and Steel : Finale
In Stora Tuna, a neighbouring town to Grängshammar, the Society had taken shelter in a small, weathered inn. Rain traced silver streaks down the windows, and the hearth burned low, casting wavering shadows across the room. The four of them sat gathered around a heavy oak table, their damp coats draped over the backs of their chairs. Gottfried, slightly drunk but eating steadily, appeared the most in need of rallying.
A distant church bell tolled, its low note carrying clearly through the walls, followed by a sharp crack of thunder that seemed to rumble through the floorboards. The sound drew a brief, uneasy silence.
They had already confirmed there would be no transport—Hilma had left the horses behind. Gottfried muttered irritably at Sebastian, still sore over the repeated confiscation of his alcohol. Then, with sudden resolve, he decided to send a message and called the innkeeper over.
The man was heavyset, a white apron stretched across his middle, and a proud, carefully groomed moustache above a genial smile. Gottfried complimented the moustache, drawing a visible flicker of pride, before requesting writing materials. Before the innkeeper could return, Sigrid quietly produced a pen and paper from her own bag, setting them on the table.
While the innkeeper went to find a messenger, Sigrid urged Gottfried to be quick—they needed to depart soon. He scrawled a brief note: Forward all packages to this address, slipping a coin inside for the recipient and setting aside another for the courier.
Moments later, a boy of about twelve stepped through the door, rain clinging to his hair. The innkeeper directed him over. “Sir, you wanted to send a message?”
Gottfried nodded. “Send this to… Sebastian, what’s the village?”
“Grängshammar, sir,” Sebastian answered.
Gottfried turned back. “To Sven at the forge.” The surname eluded him, but the boy nodded, saying he knew the place. A coin changed hands, the boy bowed sharply, and then darted off into the rain.
As the door closed, Celeste’s thoughts returned to Hilma’s warning—that she could “go between worlds.” She searched her mind for the key to unlocking this power, but no clarity came; if the knowledge was there, it remained buried.
Sigrid shifted impatiently, eyes drawn to the window as the echoes of the bell and thunder faded. “We need to leave,” she said.
Gottfried responded with a loud, deliberate snore. Sebastian, pacing, agreed with Sigrid’s urgency but pointed out that Gottfried was in no state to travel.
“How do we get him in a state?” Sigrid asked.
“Coffee,” Celeste blurted—and almost instantly the innkeeper appeared, a steaming pot in hand.
Celeste offered thanks and an apology for her volume, then poured a cup for herself and two for Gottfried, the delicate porcelain cups looking absurdly refined for their purpose.
“It doesn’t have to be hot,” Sigrid remarked.
“It has to be caffeine,” Celeste replied.
Between them, they coaxed Gottfried into drinking. Slowly, he roused—not so much hungover as burdened by something heavier.
Sigrid took the opportunity to ask the innkeeper about transport to Grängshammar. He promised to speak to local farmers and was confident he could find someone within minutes.
Turning back to Gottfried, she pressed him on his habit of drinking during investigations.
“We have failed. I have failed,” he confessed.
“Not yet we haven’t,” she countered.
“I’ve been fooled again. Schwartzwald… Hinterwald Manor… terrible, terrible things.”
“Do you want those to happen again?”
“Of course not. But what is there to do?”
“We have a plan. Your plan. The bell.”
Gottfried withdrew his handbell and rang it once. The sound was thin. “That’s tiny.”
They revisited their options: the large bell Sebastian carried was cracked, and repairing it would take too long. Gottfried mentioned someone who could fix it—but they lived in a town the Society was barred from.
“We’re going back,” Sigrid said with certainty.
“Bold,” Gottfried replied.
“Desperate,” she countered.
“Dangerous,” he agreed, “but bold.”
Sigrid leaned forward, her voice firm and precise, the tone of someone determined to ensure nothing was misunderstood. “The plan is simple,” she said. “We find where the Vaesen lives, we get a working, protected bell, we say the Lord’s Prayer, and we drive it out of its home—permanently.”
Across the table, Gottfried’s eyes narrowed as though disparate pieces were beginning to align in his mind. “It is starting to make sense again,” he murmured, his voice still heavy with the residue of drink.
“Here,” Sigrid replied, sliding his coffee toward him, “drink more.”
Gottfried peered into the cup, swaying slightly before suddenly blurting, “Gottfried! No, wait—I am Gottfried. Sebastian!” He leaned forward with sudden urgency. “The special wake-up powder!”
Without hesitation, Sebastian tore open a small folded paper packet and stirred its fine contents into the steaming coffee. Gottfried drank deeply. Almost instantly, the slump in his shoulders vanished, his eyes snapping into sharp focus as a feverish energy lit his expression. “Ah! Let us challenge this Vaesen! Let’s go!”
Sigrid raised an eyebrow. “Could protections be drawn onto your bell?”
Gottfried turned the handbell in his palm, examining it. “It’s not very strong,” he admitted.
They considered their options. A proper blessing would be needed—serious, priestly work. Technically, they already had a priest in their midst: Gottfried himself. His grin widened with unrestrained enthusiasm. “Or,” he suggested, “we could visit our friend in town and grab some extra wine.”
Even sanctified, the bell’s small size meant its range would be limited. That left three possibilities: the cracked large bell, which would require time to repair; the small bell, which could be blessed; or the great church bell, which would have to be rung by someone else at precisely the right moment.
Sigrid proposed leaving the large bell behind entirely and arranging for someone in the village to ring the church bell on cue. Celeste added, “We’d need to help them raise the bell before they can ring it.”
Sebastian remembered it had already been raised—it had rung recently. That meant the challenge was timing, not preparation.
“We need to coordinate the exact moment,” Sigrid said, glancing at her watch. The hands were frozen. Celeste confirmed all their watches had stopped during their earlier encounter.
Gottfried, undeterred, launched into a rambling but oddly passionate discourse on the nature of time and space, gesturing wildly between sips of coffee. At one point, he leaned in close to Sebastian and whispered something in confidence.
A deeper roll of thunder rattled the walls. The storm outside had thickened, heavy and foreboding. The innkeeper returned, his expression grim. “I’ve secured you a cart, but the weather’s turning fast. If you must go, go now—or stay the night.”
“If we stay, the weather will get worse. Come,” Sigrid replied without hesitation. She thanked the innkeeper for his kindness, then began hauling Gottfried to his feet. Keenan barked sharply, circling the group and nudging them toward the door.
Celeste quietly collected a few extra mugs of coffee for Gottfried, noting once again the fine porcelain cups the innkeeper had provided. Gottfried, meanwhile, scrawled an incomprehensible equation—E = MC4—onto a napkin before scratching it out.
“If I get an opening, Sir, I will certainly try it,” Sebastian said dryly.
“I thought we were past that,” Sigrid muttered.
Sebastian leaned toward her. “He just said to shoot Bergs-Erik in the head.”
Sigrid shook her head and guided Gottfried toward the exit.
Outside, a farmer stood beside a wooden hay cart hitched to a single workhorse, eyeing them suspiciously. “You the ones who called for it?” He extended a calloused hand.
Sigrid placed a few silver coins and one of Gottfried’s flasks into his palm. The farmer nodded, handed over the reins, and stepped back.
“We’ll have someone return it. Thank you,” Sigrid said.
They all looked upward. Above Grängshammar, black storm clouds churned in a vast, unnatural spiral, swallowing what little daylight remained. The air was oppressively heavy, the stillness almost suffocating.
“That’s our cue,” Sigrid said sharply. “We need to go. Come on, everyone.”
“That is a tomb,” Gottfried muttered darkly to the farmer, who remained silent as Sigrid pulled him into the cart.
The cart jolted forward, its creaking wheels rolling faster than they could have walked. An unnatural quiet smothered the road—no birdsong, no rustle of wildlife, no distant voices. The humidity clung to their skin, while a bone-deep chill seemed to seep into their very bones. Shadows pooled thickly along the roadside, growing denser as the village drew near.
“Is this the road that passes near the crack?” Sigrid asked.
“No,” came the answer. “We have to go through the village first.”
Her eyes turned to Gottfried. “Professor, is there something we can learn from your past experience?”
Gottfried stared toward the dark horizon. After a long, heavy pause, he began to speak of the past, his voice carrying the weight of memories not easily shared.
The cart jolted over the uneven road as Sigrid’s question to Gottfried lingered in the damp air. He shifted in his seat, eyes fixed on the roiling black clouds ahead. When he finally spoke, his voice was low and steady, each word carrying the weight of something long buried.
“Always use silver bullets on werewolves,” he began. “That’s the first rule. But this… this was more than wolves.”
He told of his nephew, a boy bitten during a wolf attack, hidden away in the bowels of his family’s manor. “When I arrived,” Gottfried said, “he wasn’t in his room. They had locked him in the dungeon. He was no longer human. My uncle claimed it was to keep him from harming the villagers. But the truth was far worse. They let him out. To feed.”
Sigrid’s voice was hushed. “To feed?”
Gottfried nodded. “My uncle had made a pact with something dark—a demon, a Vaesen. I found the summoning book. I believed I could use its power to save the boy. But it tricked me. His body was lost forever. Only his soul could be freed.”
His tone hardened. “I sacrificed three lives to that creature: my uncle, his butler, and an old woman who may have been innocent. I thought the exchange would bring my nephew back. In a way, it did—his soul was released from its curse. But his body remained lifeless.”
The creak of the cart and the hiss of rain on the canvas filled the silence that followed. “A week later,” he added quietly, “my aunt threw herself from the parapet. That is how I inherited Interwald Manor. My second greatest tragedy. The first… I will never speak of.”
Sigrid swallowed hard. “So… the lesson is not to trust the Vaesen.”
“And to shoot them in the head,” Gottfried said firmly. “If iron is their weakness, they cannot dodge every bullet.”
“Maybe combine that with the Lord’s Prayer,” Sigrid suggested.
Sebastian smirked faintly. “I wonder if I can get that etched on my gun.”
“Better still,” Sigrid replied, “bless the bullets.”
“I can do that,” Gottfried said. Sebastian handed him the rounds, and Gottfried spoke the Latin blessing over them, each word deliberate and solemn. The bullets returned, Sebastian loaded them carefully back into his revolver.
The cart slowed to a stop. A landslide had buried the road into Granshammar beneath jagged stone and slick earth. They could send the cart back and go on foot, or try to cross with the horse. Sigrid chose the latter, speaking calmly to the nervous animal, guiding it step by step over the unstable terrain. By the time they rejoined the road, the village was close.
Though it was mid-afternoon, the sky was black as night. Lanterns were lit as they entered Grängshammar. The mist had gone, but an unnatural silence lay over the place—no hammering from the forge, no voices, no movement.
They found Margareta at the tool forge, filing an axe head. She greeted Celeste warmly. Sigrid whispered that Celeste should lead; she was best at sensing possession. Inside, Sebastian produced the broken church bell and asked if she could repair it.
“Never worked on a bell,” Margareta said, “but I’ll try. I have mild steel and iron.” Iron would suffice.
Celeste stressed the urgency. Margareta wasted no time, firing the forge. Sebastian took up the bellows while Celeste paced with her crystal ball, searching for signs of Bergs-Erik. She found none—Margareta was entirely herself, focused and precise.
Sebastian steadied the bell as Margareta hammered glowing iron into the crack. The final strike rang with a clear, silvery tone. Thunder answered from above, and a distant church bell chimed in unison.
The forge door swung open. Gottfried stepped inside, Sigrid close behind.
Celeste froze, hand to her temple, words caught in her throat—until Gottfried thundered: “Everything you know is a lie. You’re the child of a monster.”
A violent thunderclap shook the forge, blasting Sigrid across the threshold. Margareta’s expression went blank—no emotion, no recognition. She shoved Celeste aside and strode toward the door.
Gottfried lunged with a vial of laudanum. In a brief struggle, he forced it past her lips. She staggered into the yard, faltered, and collapsed onto the gravel. Rain poured down in sheets.
Celeste and Sebastian ran into the storm, dragging her back inside. Outside, townsfolk crawled through the streets—Sven among them—chewing grass with vacant, feral eyes.
Sigrid slammed the door and locked it. Her voice was sharp, urgent. “We have to do it now.”
The forge smelled of rain-soaked earth and hot metal, but the clear, resonant tone of the repaired bell still hung in the air like a silver thread. Celeste studied it, feeling the blessing woven into its form. The crack was gone—this was a weapon now. She turned to Gottfried. “You should be the one to ring it.”
Sigrid shook her head. “Last time, it wasn’t the priest who rang the bell—it was the assistant. This time, all of us speak the Paternoster together while it’s rung. Every voice.”
Celeste hesitated. “I’m not sure how to ring it properly. Is there some special tool?”
Sebastian gestured at the benches. “Hammers everywhere.”
The bell was heavy—thirty pounds at least—too large for casual use. Normally, it would be hung by rope, but here they’d have to improvise. Sigrid suggested threading a metal rod through the loop, suspending it between supports, or having Sebastian and Gottfried hold it while Celeste struck it.
They debated where to ring it. Did they need sacred ground, an altar, or would any space do? The ritual steps came back to them: walk backwards through the entrance, clothes inside out, speak backwards, ring the bell seven times while reciting the Lord’s Prayer. The forge, thick with iron, was no place for Bergs Erik’s lair. All eyes turned toward the old cabin in the woods.
Before leaving, Sebastian coiled iron wire loosely around Margareta’s wrist—a crude charm, but it might help. They checked the bell, gathered their gear, and stepped into the storm.
The clouds pressed low, turning midday into midnight. They avoided lighting Sebastian’s hurricane lamp, moving single-file through the underbrush with Gottfried leading. He recognised landmarks in the dark, steering them unerringly to the cabin’s ruined remains. There was no path forward until Celeste, frustrated, recalled the ritual. Sigrid turned her jacket inside out; the others followed. The air’s resistance eased, and Celeste spotted a narrow track winding deeper into the trees.
They climbed into a rocky rift, cliffs on either side. At its end, a massive boulder formed a shadowed archway. Beyond lay only darkness.
“This is it,” Sigrid said. Celeste took the lead, followed by Sebastian, Gottfried, and Sigrid at the rear. Keenan faced backward as a rear guard.
They stepped backwards under the arch. A cold presence swept over them, searching, then letting them pass. The forest vanished.
They stood in a moss-draped cavern lit by hanging candles. Beads and trinkets swayed from the ceiling. Celeste, suspecting wards or glamours, cut them away with Margareta’s dagger, revealing a mural—trolls marked with Xs, all but one towering figure. Bergs Erik.
The chamber seemed to contract around them, the fire’s glow flickering against damp stone as if the cavern itself held its breath. With the situation escalating, the Society moved as one. Gottfried slid his cane sword free with a metallic hiss, Sebastian readied his pistol, and Celeste gripped Margareta’s dagger in one hand while keeping the restored bell within reach.
Celeste felt it first—a rapid build-up of magical energy prickling over her skin, making her hair stand on end. The air was charged, heavy with the promise of violence. Their plan was clear: ring the bell seven times, each strike paired with the steady cadence of the Paternoster. Together, they would drive Bergs Erik out.
As they closed in on the sound of the chanting, the air shifted—no longer confined, but opening into the vast breath of a much larger space. A draft brushed their faces, carrying the heat of a great fire. The air smelled faintly of charred herbs and wet stone, an unsettling blend of the sacred and the profane. The passage widened into a towering chamber, its walls disappearing into shadow. The oppressive atmosphere seemed to hum with a living power.
At the heart of the cavern sat a massive cauldron atop a roaring fire. Beside it loomed a hulking shape, easily three men tall, stirring the bubbling contents with slow, deliberate motions. Coils of steam rose toward the vaulted darkness, as though the cavern itself exhaled in time with the creature. On the stone floor lay Margareta, unmistakable even in the flicker of flame, her iron bracelet glinting faintly.
Sigrid’s voice was steady, her eyes locked on the creature. “I think it’s showtime.”
Gottfried acted first, hurling a vial of holy water into the cauldron. It shattered with a hiss, and a wave of acrid steam billowed upward, the sharp tang of sanctity burning in their nostrils. The droning chant faltered and died. The ground shuddered underfoot, dust drifting from the cavern’s heights. Bergs Erik turned toward them, recognition sparking in his eyes before it flared into molten rage.
Celeste swung the bell’s hammer. The chime burst through the cavern like a silver tidal wave, its resonance setting every hanging trinket trembling. Bergs Erik’s roar cracked against the walls: “You turn everything against me!”
“You don’t deserve her!” Celeste’s voice cut like steel, her gaze locked on Margareta’s still form.
Sigrid’s voice rose, unwavering, the cadence of the Paternoster shaping a fragile but stubborn fortress in the thickened air.
Bergs Erik’s will slammed into Celeste’s mind, a tide of alien visions twisting and warping her thoughts. She staggered, knuckles whitening around the hammer until Sigrid’s hand closed firmly over hers. Together, they drove the second chime into the air, and the troll visibly flinched as the sound struck deep.
Gottfried advanced, eyes cold. “Did you think it would last forever? Nothing does—not even for your kind. Immortality will slip from your grasp. Sooner or later… and that later is now.” The troll’s fury bellowed back at him, but Gottfried’s mind stood firm. “You’ll have to try harder,” he added, his tone like ice.
Sebastian jammed the bell’s rod into a jagged crack in the stone, freeing his pistol hand. Celeste struck again—the third peal—and the very floor quaked. Bergs Erik staggered, then lunged forward in a blur of movement. A splinter of stone clipped Gottfried’s arm, drawing a line of crimson.
Bergs Erik swept toward Sigrid, crushing beads in his palm. They shattered with a sound like breaking ice, releasing a mist so cold it stole her breath and voice in an instant. Without missing a beat, Gottfried’s baritone took up the prayer, keeping the fragile rhythm of the ritual intact.
Celeste’s fifth strike rang out, forcing Bergs Erik to dissolve into a smear of shadow and reappear across the chamber. Sigrid, mute but unyielding, slammed her knuckles against the bell, each mouthed word of the prayer making the air thrum with defiance.
Gottfried’s runed sword carved into troll flesh, scattering more beads across the floor. Sebastian seized the opening and fired—six perfect, blessed shots hammering into Bergs Erik’s face. The howl that followed was raw, ancient, and entirely inhuman.
Celeste delivered the sixth note, its vibration peeling away strands of dark magic from the very air. Sigrid’s final, seventh blow sang out—a deafeningly pure tone that filled every crevice of the lair. Somewhere above, a ghostly owl called, and every flame guttered and died. The cavern was plunged into total blackness, and for a breathless heartbeat, there was only silence—then a deep, rolling rumble, the sound of something vast and terrible coming to its end..
Sigrid’s voice returned in a rasp. “It’s time to go. Let’s get Margareta and get out of here.”
Sebastian lifted Margareta in a fireman’s carry. Celeste steadied her, and Sigrid hauled Gottfried upright. As the cavern shook, Gottfried snatched a strange spindle, Sigrid a heavy sack. They fled through the arch into the rift, the storm gone, replaced by golden sunset. Behind them, there was nothing—no cave, no trace of the lair. Only the stillness of the forest, as if Bergs Erik had never been there at all.
