Agatha H and the Voice of the Castle

PRELUDE

“As we passed through the last of the great Iron Gates and approached Mechanicsburg for the first time, the Bishop was struck anew by the grandeur of the surrounding cliffs, the majesty of the encircling mountains, and the awe-inspiring fury of the River Dyne as it roared far beneath the Bridge of Thorns.

As we crossed toward the town, he rhapsodized at such length that I feared it would take a double dose of poppy-juice tea to settle him in for the night.

The more strategically inclined Captain Van der Vheer pointed to the same features and glumly explained why, for the last thousand years, the Valley of the Heterodynes deserved its reputation as unconquerable.

I am already resigned to never leaving this place, but I take some small comfort that, at the very least, my last memories of Earth will be filled with some of God’s finest landscapes.”

—Excerpt from the journal “The Building of the Red Cathedral, or Why God Now Hates Us” by Brother Martanus, “The Unkillable.” Located in the Papal Library of Banned and Forbidden Books, Avignon, France.