Fable - Ask Sinister Tricks A Team

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Houri

Vel Anir's Favourite Weather Girl
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"Come on Marcella!" Houri called over her shoulder when she saw the girl hesitate between the two groups. She didn't know much about the other girls talents but Zaire, whether by design or happenstance, had already 'picked' his team and so she had the odd initiate who was left last.

"We've got the much better mission," the older girl carried on once Marcella had caught up with her and Lumen. "Whilst those guys are trying to find some lost kids, we'll be doing what the Proctors sent us here to do. Just wait till we get back to the Academy," the Proctors would be so pleased! Perhaps they would let her go on another mission, one without quite so many to 'keep an eye on her'. As she was a year older than these initiates, she thought it should be the other way around, but she admitted she was five years behind in terms of studies and that she might - might - in fact be able to learn something from those with her. Lumen and Marcella - she was sure - were the best out of the group to learn from and so she was pleased they were on her team.

"Let's go check out the sight of the last incident, perhaps there will be some clues the locals over looked," Houri suggested as they weaved their way through the celebrations still taking place in the middle of the streets.

* * *

Lumen Marcella
 
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Oh. She'd been lost in her own head for a few seconds but being picked last was a fairly common occurrence.

When the revolution happened they got to play new games every other week. They let the initiates form into teams by having captains and picking students one-by-one to form teams. Marcella almost always went last. Not that it bothered her, she'd pick herself last if it was up to her too.

But she wasn't sure if she agreed with Houri about this being the best mission. Looking for a lost orcish boy sounded better than tracking down a serial killer. "Yeah, the Proctors will be upset if we fail." That was probably why it was such a bad idea for Houri and Lumen to bring Marcella along.

"Oh. Ok, that sounds good. I'm sure we'll find some clues." That was a really good call. Marcella's plan was way worse than that one. Pretending to be the Doll Maker probably would've caused more trouble than it was worth and she wasn't even sure if they'd get the killer's attention doing so.

Marcella hurried to catch up to the two other girls, feet pounding against the stoneworks of the city and pushing through the crowds.
 
Lumen finished off the meat stick and tossed the garbage in the trash like a good citizen in a foreign land. She was glad Marcella was with them. One, she was going on a mission with her crush's sister. Like that wasn't all sorts of awks. Two, Marcella could fricken heal.

Maybe they'd have a higher chance of not dying.

Yeah, yeah Marcella tortured a bunch of the classmates but that was before. Plus everyone knew she hadn't wanted to do it. Well, Lu hoped she hadn't. Especially cause she'd just gotten those anti-neasious pills from one of the few healers in their class.

"What if the Doll Maker is just some fae being..well, fae." That was being a punk. Mischievous. And in this case, a lot twisted. "Did any of you bring iron or silver?"
 
Houri scrunched up her nose at Lumen's suggestion. The fae, in her opinion, were as bad as elves. Though apparently they weren't allowed to think that anymore. Seeing the Elven Quarter has perhaps been the most jarring of shocks when she had returned to Vel Anir and she still couldn't wrap her mind around it. Fae, at least, everyone seemed to agree were still dangerous and to be killed on sight.

"I think there'd be more obvious signs if it were fae..." though of course she couldn't be certain. "Proctor Maars said that the magic was similar to one of the Sjælden," which was why they had been sent so far North to a land whose troubles really did not concern Vel Anir. Not in anyway Houri could see anyway, though her sister had made some exclamations about funding some project in these lands to fasten trade or something.

"Safest not to assume until we find more," she said with a bit more confidence, striding through the crowd.
 
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"I heard the fae don't even own dolls," granted that intel was from a particularly outspoken guardsman who rubbed at his stubble far too often. Still, Marcella found the intel compelling. "This dollmaker is almost certainly a dwarf."

That same guardsman, she believed his name was Donald or perhaps Donric, claimed that dwarves were excellent craftsmen.

Experts with their hands, fine-tuning specific portions of fabric or weaving intricate designs of metalworks. If some crazed serial killer was hacking away at the faces of his or her victims then they were probably a dwarf. Or, at least, from what little information Marcie had gathered that seemed probable.

"But," she started with a hard swallow of saliva, "I agree with Houri. It's best that we don't jump to conclusions before we discover more information."

The information about Sjælden wasn't lost on her. Though she figured they're reach answers soon as the crowds thinned whilst they approached the latest crime scene.
 
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"Wait, hold up," Lumen looked to Houri, brows pinching together. "Ssssj. Ssssjay-el-dehn? Um, what's that?" Lumen had no qualms about admitting what she didn't know. Especially if it was critical to know in order to succeed.

Apparently, noble-blooded families were better educated. The rumors were true. A boy with spiky-dark hair and cold-blue eyes jostled into her, carrying a giant plume of pink cotton candy.

"Oy, watch it!" He yelled at Lumen as he scurried off.

Lumen frowned. Wasn't it past his bedtime? Tawny-eyes followed him for a moment before he disappeared.
 
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Houri flashed Marcella a smile; Proctor Amore had said rewarding - no, encouraging - other students who obeyed listened to you was a good way to make friends. It was the same lesson she had been given long ago by another Proctor, though he hadn't used the word friend then. But now they were all friends in the Academy and that was much better!

Is it? Muttered Ahdvi but Houri paid him no mind.

To Lumen she gave what Proctor amore called 'patience'.

"Sjælden," Houri said very slowly so the other girl could pick up how to pronounce it. "They're these great enchanted items Princess Rhea created hundreds of years ago. They belong to us, she was a Dreadlord after all - one of the first. There's a few records left about them detailing what certain ones did, though my sister believes there was more never recorded hidden somewhere in Vel Anir."

As she explained they wound their way through the town and off the beaten path to quieter parts of town where families had made their homes. One house stood out with its boarded up front.
 
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Understanding was beginning to take hold as they approached the homesteads. "So, does that mean whoever finds the Sjillden gets to keep it?" If they were property of the Dreadlords than surely something akin to finders-keepers would apply.

Not that it mattered, Marcella was never any good at finding things. Or keeping them.

It was hard for any of the homes to catch ones eye after spotting the home in disarray. Layers of misshapen wood clumsily nailed to the door frame blocked any entrance. A few pieces of cheap lumber and driftwood were used to board up the windows, almost as if they were an after thought.

"I guess we should go inside, right?" Marcie did not wait for a response. Instead she drew her hand-axe and wedged it underneath one of the pieces of wood that blocked a front window. Whilst the door would've made for a more comfortable entrance there was far less wood blocking the window and the sill wasn't so high that each of the three girls couldn't lift themselves up.

Not even a moment after she easily pried the first plank off did a woman come running out from the home next door. "What in the name of the Holy Maiden are you doing!?" The older woman's face was beet red in anger, "you children can't just go rummaging into that home! Have you no decency for what happened there!?"

Initiate Iteius gulped hard and looked at the irate neighbor with doe eyes. As usual she was screwing everything up.
 
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"Why would they have been hidden in the first place," Lumen asked as they approached the boarded up house. If there was a reason then they might be better left unfound. Were they cursed? And Marcella promptly took the action of breaking-and-entering.

Whelp.

Head whipped to the irate neighbor. Tempted to say she didn't know that girl with the doe-eyes. And children? Now she could imagine how Caeso Diemut felt when Evie called them kids in her exercise note. Hands lifted in a placating gesture as she stepped forward. She'd always been good with people.

"We mean no disrespect, Miss. We're investigating a crime. I'm Lumen and this is Marcella and Houri. Would you mind telling us what happened in here." Thumb hooked to the window still boarded up that was one less board now.

The neighbor narrowed her eyes for a moment then exhaled. "It's where they found them."

"Who?" Lumen pressed gently.

"More of a what," the elderly woman said.

Lumen waited.

"All the children's eye balls." The woman finished as if that explained everything.
 
Houri listened with the lollypop still in her mouth, leaning casually against the boarded up door whilst she listened. Despite her eyes drifting from the woman to the house and the surrounding street, which gave the appearance she wasn't paying the slightest bit of attention or cared one ounce, the initiate was making a detailed note of everything. Even the minute details about how the Doll Maker had arranged the children as though they were at a tea party, their lips pinned open into gruesome permanent smiles as they stared sightlessly at pretty cakes and carefully made tea.

"It's a shame they've been moved," Houri sighed and the woman shot her a dark look, but the girl was already turning her back to her and towards the door. "Move," she said in a sing-song manner by way of warning to Marcella, before holding at her hand. With a powerful focused blast of wind the boards splintered inwards.
 
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Not just some of their eyeballs, all of their eyeballs.

Despite the warmth that Marcella felt as Lumen intervened it was quickly extinguished as the elderly woman spoke of the abhorrent truths that had occurred in the home she attempted to break into.

Luckily, the awkward girl wouldn't have to wait around to see what happened. Houri took charge and stepped forward. Marcie did as she bid, stepping away from the window with a meek nod towards the elderly woman who was glaring at the trio of girls. In an instant a blast of wind created the entrance into the home.

"Why, I never," the old woman croaned, "I'll be alerting the town guard first thing in the morning!"

Clearly even the nosey neighbor was too afraid of being out at night to go request aid at this hour. As she departed Marcella peeked her head into the hole that was once a window to reveal a home abandoned with furniture overturned. "This is a pretty ominous looking place," she admitted as she waited for Lumen or Houri to hoist themselves inside first.
 
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"Hang on," she stepped forward to the hole first, holding out her hand in front of her for a moment. Nothing seemed to happen and she lowered her hand just as quickly. "Hmm, a few smaller heat signatures inside. Probably rats or mice but it seems like we're alone."

So they had until dawn to get gone. Getting the attention of local authorities was one more thing they didn't need right now. No one would be coming to bail them out of jail.

Pulling herself up and inside, she took a knee and offered a hand to the next person. "Hope none of you are scared of spiders," she said idly.
 
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Houri stepped back as Lumen ducked her head in to do whatever it was she did, and fixed her eyes coldly on the woman who had threatened them.

Erase her, the voices agreed, tempting her with her own magic and the rush that came with using it. It wouldn't be hard. She had rarely seen a body survive a direct hit of her lightning. Lumen went in first of course and Houri motioned with one hand that Marcella should go next - there was no point having the weakest link at their rear. Best to keep her in the middle where she could cause the least accidents. But there was a darker reason for her wanting both girls gone.

As the woman strutted off towards her home, her head reaching for the door, a wind smashed into it pinning it shut. Startled, she turned bug-eyed towards Houri.

"I wouldn't say a thing if I were you," she spoke softly but the wind carried her voice to sickeningly caress the woman who went rigid at the feel of small tendrils of air brushing her cheek. "It would be a shame for the street to lose more lives," the woman gulped and scrambled at the door. The wind vanished and she went tumbling inside. Houri merely turned her back, put her lollypop back in her mouth, and joined the others inside.
 
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Houri made a motion and Marcella obeyed. Hoisting herself up and grabbing ahold of Lumen's hand for support. Houri was just so very kind, always looking out for others and being generous in a way few other Dreadlord Initiates did. Sure, the weather-manipulator took a bit longer to rejoin them but she was probably just trying to help the old lady back into her home.

"Whoa."

Marice's singular word cut through the silence of the abode as she looked around. A fear of spiders was a correct statement as a few cobwebs in the high walls of the home pointed out. But what really became apparent upon entering was the wanton levels of disarray.

Bookshelves overturned. Couches with stuffing ripped out. A coffee table shattered, splinters scattered upon the floor.

This place had either been ransacked or the family had resisted the vile magics of the dollmaker as ferociously as they could. It was almost impossible to tell which. "This is going to be a challenge..."

Marcella gulped as she thought on how much paperwork the trio of girls was going to have to fill out once this was all over.
 
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"Yeah," Lumen agreed as she carefully squatted down next to the overturned bookshelf. Picking carefully through the bindings and scrolls. She found a few interesting titles:

Voyage of the Midnight Treader
Scarlet Fanny's Collection of Short Fantasy
(the way the cover was Lumen quickly realized it wasn't normal fantasy but something else)
Adventures of Fuckleberry Hinn

But nothing that was related to what happened here or the case. "I wonder where they found all the eyes," she mused, standing up and looking around. Hand fell to the hilt of her sword out of habit. Tawny eyes saw a narrow set of stairs that lead downwards. She began moving toward them.
 
Houri's feet made barely a whisper when she joined the others inside the room. Her eyes scanned the upturned furniture and then dismissed it almost instantly.

"This is probably where they were grabbed," she explained to Marcella specifically; the girl looked as though she was going to sick up. "Remember the woman said it was staged like a tea party. They'll either be in the bedroom or the dining room," somewhere children would naturally play something like that. As she explained she rummaged in the pockets of her tailored coat until she found what she was looking for. Proctor D'Amour said that one of the things she should do when her team looked uncomfortable was not to cut them off like the dead limb they were, but to try and make them feel better. She pulled out a sweet and handed it to Marcella then stroked her hair.

"You're doing really good," she praised then followed after Lumen.
 
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Marcella considered suggesting that they look for the eyes in the various books scattered upon the floor from the overturned bookshelf. The one about Scarlet Fanny (what an interesting name, she must’ve been Elbionese) caught her attention, however she refrained from the suggestion.

Instead she looked at Houri as a rabbit stares up at its owner. Nodding occasionally as the girl explained the most basic things of the case that Marcella had already forgotten about. By the end of it she took a piece of candy handed to her and immediately unwrapped it to set it into her mouth.

”Ofh,” she said, her words impacted by a hard candy that tasted like oranges, ”thfank yfou.”

She was doing ‘really good’ according to the oldest, and thus most experienced, initiate. For a brief moment she considered whether or not she should go into The Vestigare, the specialized branch of the Guard that did detective work.

”Maybe the dollmaker took them to a tea shop.”
 
A quick glance over her shoulder to make sure neither of them got too far separated. She was, perhaps, worried the most about Marcella. Although, Houri was an extreme wild card. She'd heard rumors about where they'd found the older girl. And what had been done.

It only made Lumen clench her jaw harder.

If she ever found any of the adults that had done that to a fellow, albeit older, classmate. She'd bring them to justice. And down the stairs she went. They creaked and groaned, a testament to hold out-of-use they were. The walls were oddly bare. No family painted portraits or art of any kind. Just two small streaks of red that started midway down the stairs and out into the small landing that separated two dark rooms. One had a door adjar and the other had no door at all.

"Marcella, stay close," Lu called up the stairs, a shared look with Houri before she went to the right. The room that had the door adjar.
 
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Inside the room was what remained of the tea party. The bodies had been moved like the woman had already told them but everything else was like a perfect painting of a tea party right down to the sandwiches cut into perfect triangles. Houri picked one up and sniffed it before taking a bite.

"Pretty good," she commented and finished off the slice as she wandered round one half of the table. Each perfect porcelain plate had a perfect slice of cake on it with whipped frosting and a glazed cherry on top. "Whoever this was put a lot of thought into it. Had a vision of some sorts," she commented, pausing by each chair to see if there was anything different at this place setting or that. "He either broke in before to set this up before killing them, or he left them dying or dead whilst he did all... this." That suggested someone calm and in control, confident that he wouldn't have been disturbed in the middle of the act. Someone who had done this before.
 
Marcella moved in closer to Lumen. It was a surprising request, most of their class wished to put as much distance between themselves and Marcie as they could.

Sticking close the three bore witness to the tea party. It was eerie, seeing the empty seats with an elegant affair on the table before them. Seeing Houri snatch up a finger sandwich Marcella followed suit and ate one herself. "Wow, I've never tasted ham that was this good."

Likely because it was prosciutto.

A finger came up to rub her chin as she snagged a second of the little sandwiches to save for later. "He probably did it after." Breaking in to do it beforehand carried a lot of risk. "Does that mean he killed them and then," it was a macabre thought. "He posed their dead bodies around the table??"

Marcie dropped the second sandwich on the floor, deciding she didn't want to eat something prepared by someone so sick in the head. Not matter how good the ham was.
 
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"Really? That's unsanitary," she admonished them both as they munched on days-old murdery sandwiches. "And what about the childrens' eyes, like the neighbor said. She said they found them all here? I wonder if it was the other victims, too. Not just from this," she frowned, as she moved one of the chairs.

"This tea party."

Lumen took a slow walk around the room, studying the scene from different angles.

"Killers like these usually leave a breadcrumb of some sort. A signature. Was the doll-maker's signature just this sick set-up? Or maybe he, or she, left something else behind," voice trailed off as she stared at some of the paintings on the wall down here.

They were all of mildly famous Corsairs captains in the Vel Anir navy. There was Reginald Mustard. Leeway Cornstars. And Betsy Darnburry. That was strange. But stranger was the painting of a sphinx between all those.

Lumen pointed it out. "So that's weird, right?"
 
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"It tastes better than rat," Houri shrugged but she put the sandwich down. Proctor D'Amour had said it was not nice to do things other found uncomfortable. At least, not around them.

"Yeah, why would you hang portraits of Betsy Darnburry?" Houri scrunched up her nose. The woman had been a 'hot mess' - a phrase she had once heard Zaire say - and had ended up getting half the Oban fleet burned down by pirates. It had been an embarrassing disaster and most local histories completely ignored the fact it happened whilst other historians agreed it was one of many reasons women had had their rights stripped so severely in the Delradia Kingdom.

"I guess the sphinx is a little weird too, though it could have been a family pet?" she offered with a shrug. For someone as creepy as this she would have expected a skull or a bloody rose as a calling card. Not a portrait of their... pet?
 
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For a brief moment Marcella wanted to respond to Lumen's admonishment. That had been the best ham she'd ever tasted in her life. But it was her next statement that caused her to feel sick. What if the reason the ham was so good was because it had been made with the victim's eyes?!

Had Marcella just eaten an eye sandwich!?

Luckily Houri rescued her by indicating that whatever they'd eaten tasted better than rats. That gave her some modicum of comfort.

"Betsy Darnburry got a lot of people killed," she mused, "just like the dollmaker."

A loud hum came next as she took in the sphinx. "Maybe the dollmaker is a religious fanatic." Or a twisted 'historian' or some other faux academic. "They think they're doing some greater good."

She picked up yet another sandwich before realizing they could contain human eyes and dropped it.
 
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It tastes better than rat,

A quiet look back at Houri. No sympathy. Perhaps just assessment.

Gaze shifted to Marcie.

"I've got some biscuits in my pack," voice trailed off in an offer. Lumen always came prepared - including with snacks. And she's rather see her partners eat food that she knew was safe rather than murder-scene old food. A quick turn back to the paintings as she stepped up to Reginald Mustard.

"Yeah but we're outside Vel Anir. So why have all these Anirian historical figures?"

Reginald Mustard was a little off center, like if someone had knocked it. Reaching out, she went to straighten it, hearing a soft-click against the wall.

Uh-oh.
 
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"GET DOWN!"

Not that either initiate got much choice in the matter as the torrent of wind sent both girls sprawling to the ground with Houri already there upon her belly. Overhead bolts suddenly thudded from small slots in the wall and buried themselves in the opposite wall the length of the hallway. The noise was deafening as some mechanism behind the walls whirled and wood shattered which then rained down upon the girls covering them in debris and dust. In the aftermath the silence was almost as loud.

Tentatively Houri looked up. All the bolts were at about chest height for an older teenager or adult.

"I think he knows we're here," Houri murmured and picked herself up off the floor. This had been calculated and prepared, a trap for initiates.
 
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