El Diablo de la Cruz

Once, in the service to the king of spain, a conquistador came across a road, the sign of which was wrote "El Camino de Real". He knew there were two church missions on this road, and he was to cross from one, the mission San Bruno, to the other, the mission San Eduardo. Travelling south, he felt unable to accompish his orders, and by dusk he was lost. So, he stopped and slept, next to the road. He was going to the southern mission to burn it down, for it held a record of a birth to a bastard son to the king of spain. Having to kill all the priests weighed heavy on this man, a soldier chosen by his broken heart and ruined soul in the many lands he had been, where plague followed him everywhere. In court, he was called "Coraz�n Olvidado", for he knew nothing of his sorrow, seaming to have left it behind on the plains of south america, a land of death in his time. He dreamt on the roadside, and found that he must go on to complete the mission, if only to see the end. Upon reaching the mission, the priests begged for their lives, and told him he should see the birth record before he decided to kill them all, believing it would deter him and save their lives. Upon reading it, his sufferring was both complete and at an end. He told the priests that the king of spain would die, and that the birth record should be burned. A fire was made, and in that fire was laid the decades old parchment, and the heads of every priest, and their limbs stoked that fire, until the mission was consumed, and everyone who knew of the record save those in spain that had sent him, was killed.

At the dawn, he vowed, before the shadow of the cross that rose from the smoke, that the king of spain would die, his father would die, and God would know it.