After Jon’s quick trip to the graveyard he rode his horse slowly to the temple. He found that the gravedigger had taken his warning to heart and made his father’s final resting place look almost presentable. The headstone had been re-mounted, scrubbed clean of years of abuse, and a few flowers had even been laid on the grave. Jon was pleased, but not as pleased as the old drunk was when he paid him a whole royal to come by the manor after dark and quietly collect the bodies of the dead guards. Jon had piled them up in the shadow of the smokehouse, but he didn’t want them there any longer than they had to be. 

On the ride there, he’d thought about offering him a dwarven crown instead of the royal. Technically that would have been the right amount if he’d really wanted to pay him double, but Jon doubted very much that the gravedigger knew the difference between a human gold piece and a dwarven one. To people like him gold was gold and he’d seen precious little of it in his miserable life. Frankly Jon hoped he drank himself to death with the money - just not until after the bodies were buried with as little fanfare as possible. 

This time the villagers didn’t scatter before him on his ride through town. Nor did they bar their doors before his shadow could cross their threshold or brandish weapons trying to warn him off. They did look at him oddly though. He wondered if the change was because of the rumors that were spreading about him or because of the heavy silver chain of office he wore as he rode slowly through town. Did they know he was a Shaw, or did the rumors only go as far as to label him a dangerous miscreant? He’d find out soon enough. He was hardly popular here, but he still hoped he’d snag a few more supporters for the cause; as many men as he’d already attracted to his banner, it still was hardly enough for the showing he needed to make.

Today he’d worn the only decent set of clothes he currently owned: black trousers with almost no holes and a green tunic he’d taken from a noble during one his earlier raids this year that they’d carried out to start putting the fear into the powers that be. It was almost the same shade of green that his father had once favored. Shaw green, as Jon liked to think of it. It wasn’t much, but it made him look more like a footman or a messenger than a bandit at least. If he was going to make a speech in front of half of everyone he’d ever known he might as well try to look the part.

Jon didn’t trouble himself with trying to win any hearts or minds just yet. That would come later. First he needed to visit the gods. Before he could expect to receive another miracle from them he’d have to thank them for the miracles they’d already given, and with a pocket full of Boriv’s coins today was the right day for such offerings and prayers. The temple looked like it would need a lot more than prayers if it wanted to keep standing for more than another year or two. Jon sighed as he approached it. Every decaying aspect of Dalmarin he’d seen since he’d come back had saddened him, but nothing had disappointed him quite so much as the neglected temple. The plaster was sloughing off the bricks on the outside, and once he tied up his horse and walked into the building he found the inside in no better shape. 

Five years ago he came here in the wake of his father’s death to pay Bendona for his speedy trip across the threshold and into the afterlife. At the time it had been a fairly pleasant building. It was never going to be a beautiful home for the gods like you could find in larger cities or the private shrines of certain noble families. Even then the frescos had already been fading, but now it looked practically abandoned. If not for the few guttering candles in some of the alcoves, he would have believed that his people had turned away from the gods for some reason in his absence. It was a terrible thought. Even trapped beneath the earth he’d never forgotten the divine, so how could they have done such a thing in a paradise like the Dulcine valley? 

He walked around the room, inspecting each altar in turn before he offered any prayers. Of those in the room only Hestania’s showed any real care and devotion, which was fitting for the simple farming people that lived here. Once his circuit was done he came back and offered up each god a small prayer along with a silver eighth for each of them. It was as much as a farmer might hope to tithe for the birth of a healthy son. To Haden, lord of the gods, he prayed on behalf of his father’s soul and pledged him the lion’s share of the glory for the battle that was to come. For Ollasa he owed a greater debt. He offered her his thanks for helping to heal from all the terrible injuries he’d incurred in his journey. Jonathan’s body had become a roadmap of scars after all the battles he’d fought, but he couldn’t have asked for more.  Next he went to Bendona and thanked him for freeing Jon from the eternal darkness he’d been trapped in for years. The priest finally came out after that, but said nothing to Jon as he thanked Hestania, and finally found himself in front of Arvoz’s grim visage. 

Jon stood there a long moment just considering everything he owed the dark god. Even if Bendona was the god of death, Arvoz was his guardian, and stood astride the twin roads of vengeance and war that lead most souls to the afterlife. Jon had been walking down those roads a long time now, and he still had a little further yet to go, so for this altar he offered up a full crown, and spent several minutes in quiet reflection, think of all the terrible things he’d done and all the people he’d done them to, to get where he was now. When he was finally done, Jon turned around and started toward the back room, and the stairs that led to the belltower. That was the other reason he was here - there was no surer way to get the townspeople not already in the fields in one place than to ring that bell. The portly priest saw his destination clearly enough though, and adjusted his path to block Jon’s way. 

“Those are very generous donations, my son,” the priest said. His words were magnanimous but the disdainful tone he used didn’t match the words. 

“You’re welcome,” Jon answered, returning the man’s cool sentiment in kind while he studied him. Jon was sure that this wasn’t the same priest that had delivered his father’s funeral service, but he couldn’t say if he’d been here in some capacity while Jon still lived in Dalmarin, or if he’d come later. “Now if you’ll excuse me…”

Jon tried to walk around the priest, but with a small sidestep the priest deftly blocked the doorway again. “What is it you expect the gods to grant you for such generous sums? A great boon? Tell me, is it love or fame you seek - you obviously already have riches.”  

Jon stepped forward closely enough that he could smell the powdered skin of this godless man wearing the robes of the priesthood but said nothing while he waited for him to get tired of the sound of his own voice. “Perhaps it’s atonement you want then,” the priest continued, mistaking Jon’s silence for an invitation to continue. “No one would lay down such an offering on Arvoz’s grim altar unless they sought to atone for hands so bloody that they might never be clean again.” 

“We’ve both done terrible things, I’m sure,” Jon said finally, “but unlike you, the just have nothing to atone for.” 

“What could a stranger like you possibly know of me?” the priest countered indignantly. 

Jon smirked at that invitation, and gestured broadly to the room. “Alright, your holiness, tell me - why is the gods’ home such a disgrace? Surely even a stranger could see that you’ve been a poor servant to the most holy.” 

“Not all donations and sacrifices are as generous as yours my child,” the priest said defensively, taking a step back into the doorway. 

“It doesn’t look to me like you’re suffering from a lack of funds,” Jon poked his finger into the holy man's chest just enough to feel it sink into his soft flesh. “I wonder if your quarters are as austere or your plate as bare as the rest of the temple?” He saw a flicker of fear in the old man’s eyes, so he looked past him, to what had to be the door to his personal quarters. 

“What I do with the meager funds of this church is no business of an outsider like you,” the cleric backed away slowly like a man with something to hide. “So unless you intend to strike me down as you’ve already done to so many if the rumors are true, I’ll ask you to leave. Surely even a villian such as yourself has no wish to earn the enmity of the divine.” 

“Relax, holy man.” Jon said, taking advantage of the momentary distraction to slip through the gap, and head in the opposite direction, toward the rickety ladder that led toward the squat three story bell tower that was the highest point in the whole valley. “I only barely know what a word like enmity means, but your judgment will come from people that don’t even know how to spell it.”

The priest was left sputtering in his wake, and it sounded like he had more than a few things to say on the subject of guilt and judgment, but Jon didn’t hear what they were as he clambered up the ladder to the platform below a bell that was somewhat larger than his head. It was a simple affair that lacked the fancy wheel and mechanisms he might expect in a larger church. This was just a bell mounted to a chain with a rope attached to the clapper, but that was all this village had ever really needed. Jon grabbed the rope and started swinging it back and forth. Each of the rings was almost painfully loud in this position and Jon wished he’d brought some cotton or wax to stuff in his ears, but there was nothing for it now. Now he just had to endure the 30 seconds of ringing that the townspeople typically expected before any major announcement or emergency, and once that was done he could climb down and wait for them to gather. 

He didn’t though. Once he’d stopped ringing the thing he just stood there looking out the unglazed windows at what was certainly the best view of the city outside of the Shaw manor. Here he could see the entire valley spread out around him as he waited. It was a good reminder that this is where home truly was, and that after the fighting was done he wanted to come back here and enjoy the peace that he was due after all this time. 

The longer he stayed up there though, the less peaceful things sounded outside. A crowd was starting to gather, and Jon climbed down to meet it. The longer he made them wait the less inclined they would be to hear them out.