Fable - Ask The Less Dead

[Talus]

Vel Anir - Outer Slums

It had been raining for two days straight now, never letting up even briefly.

Some called it the Cortosi downpour, an annual storm that was often hailed by farmers as the reason they could grow anything at all. Talus had no idea about that of course, he wasn't a farmer, but he'd never much minded the rain himself. Anirian climate meant that even the worst storms were never really cold, and it was easier to sleep with the sound of falling rain.

Of course, on this night it wasn't helping anything.

The muck he found himself trudging through on the Slums outside of Vel Anir seemed to have grown a foot deep. Wooden planks had been placed down, but it was clear the efforts were half hearted.

Out here the grandeur of Vel Anir didn't seem to flow quite as freely. Those who lived outside the Walls didn't have the money to build true roads, barely holding enough together to afford a roof. The Houses weren't inclined to help either, mostly because a large portion of the residents were either forgotten about, or not 'true Anirian'.

Talus never cared much about that, half-breeds and even other species didn't bother him, but it did some others.

That was why he was out here. Tonight had seen the fifth murder of non-human, all of them killed in the exact same way, all found with a strange symbol carved into their forehead. Normally Talus wouldn't have cared about that either, but he was a Guardsmen now, and that meant he had to care. The Eastern Army was the Garrison of Vel Anir, but they were also a police force of sorts.

Talus and a detachment of the men he trained with had been here meeting with General Aldwaith when news of this killing had gotten out. The General had gotten nowhere with his investigation, so Talus had offered to help.

That was why he and the others were here, why as he turned the corner into the alleyway he found the others already waiting. "What have we got?"

He asked, his voice stern as always.

 

[Donric Mannir]

Donric hated the rain. He hated the annual downpour even more. The sound of endless rain in a crowded barracks was the shit icing on top of a shit cake. If the snoring wasn't bad enough, the endless pitter-patter made it nigh on impossible to catch a good sleep. Thankfully, at least for him, he knew a few creative uses for some of the medical rations to aid sleep. Equally, he'd ensured he got a bunk far from the leaky roof of the barracks that dripped endlessly onto the unlucky few.

Walking about in his heavy armour wasn't too much of a problem. For the most part, it was waterproof and insulated him from the deluge and, because they were still roughly in Anirian territory, it meant he didn't have to worry about sinking into the mud. While the roads in this territory were ill-maintained they still worked sufficiently to ward off any mud.

He paused momentarily. Wondering how he could have become so numb that the weather and concerns about mud could be more important to him than the corpse that was plunked down beside him. It was an interesting debacle, the corpses seemed to show no sign of injury aside from the rune that was carved onto their foreheads. Without any major wounds or injuries, his knowledge was limited and with the elements against him, he wouldn't be able to make an accurate guess regarding the time of death. That and the fact he wasn't a mortician.

"5 dead halfies, but no consistency when it comes to race otherwise. We weren't sure if the rune was magical, we tried poking it but nothing happened." He sighed. He didn't know Talus enough to have a judge on his new commander, it was difficult trying to read him, but he continued regardless.

"I'd say the rune was carved while they were still alive and kicking, so maybe someone's heard something." He fell back in line with the rest of his comrades as he'd finished talking.

 

[Colette]

Colette loved the rain. The annual downpour was almost like a festival for the girl. Falling asleep at night to the lullaby of pitter-pattering raindrops was one of the most soothing experiences in Vel Anir. She doubted that anyone could ever catch a better night's sleep than during the symphonic downpour. If you were truly lucky a bit of the rain would seep through the ceiling of the bunk and serve as a gentle alarm clock in the morning.

Today they were working with the Eastern Guard on a mystery of sorts. It was a nice change of pace as Colette had grown a bit homesick and they were permitted to wear glistening platemail when operating within the city instead of the more dulled armor they wore up North. Colette particularly liked the decorative peacock feathers and other frills added to the edges of the armor. It should be noted though that the city armor wasn't any more protective, it was explained to her that glimmering steel and decorative ornaments made it harder to blend in when venturing throughout the Savannah. Whereas within Vel Anir proper they were expected to maintain a certain level of decorum.

Unfortunately, they were investigating within the slums. Colette's family had been middle class which afforded her a life closer to Anir Square and the heart of commerce. They certainly hadn't provided the girl with a privileged upbringing but she was afforded a life where she'd heard things like, 'nice girl like you shouldn't set foot in the slums.' A bit ironic now.

The straw haired girl listened as Donric explained to their commanding officer his findings. She had been leaned against a wall of the alleyway, not wanting to dirty her hands by poking and prodding at a corpse as the field medic had. She was "keeping watch" while he investigated the dead body of that destitute half-elf in the corner. Not really much to keep watch of other than the rain and the beggars in the streets.

"Wait," she chimed in as Donric seemed finished speaking, "some sicko did that while the poor things were still alive?"

Whatever they were looking for here it was obvious this person, or persons, needed to be stopped. "Hopefully some human witnesses, not sure the others will be too interested in being involved in an official investigation." Though Colette herself wasn't explicitly racist she was aware of the prejudices of Anirian society and the disdain that some of its downtrodden had for the empire.

 

[Talus]

He listened quietly to Donric’s words, crouching down besides the body to inspect the Rune carved into the man’s forehead. A frown touched his lips, and he ran a soft hand over the wound to measure it’s depth.

Someone had gone through a disturbing amount of effort to make the sign, and if the man had been alive…

”It’s not magic.” He was more than certain of that. Rune Magic left tell tale signs after it was used, and none of them were on display here. ”I think it’s a calling card, maybe a name.”

The Dreadlord had never been the most studious, and what he knew of Rune Magic did not go into as much depth as many of his compatriots. Lips thinned for a brief moment and he motioned to Donric. ”Help me turn him over.”

Talus grabbed one side of the corpse, starting to pull in order to get him onto his stomach.

 

[Donric Mannir]

Donric sighed. He'd tried to avoid touching the corpse, in fact, when assessing the body he'd simply kicked it over onto its back - although he wouldn't tell Talus that. Carefully, he slid his gloved hands under the body and heaved.

"Remember, lift with your knees - not your back." He nodded, bent his knees and hoisted the body onto his front. While he'd been quick to dismiss this new paper-pushing safety and health policy, he had to begrudgingly admit that it worked.

He wasn't quite sure what Talus had wished to find from flipping the body, he certainly hadn't seen anything. "Nice clothes." He said, unsure of what else to say.

 

[Colette]

A calling card? "So whoever did this is not just sick but also thinks they're the greatest thing walking around Vel Anir." Colette had never done any sort of detective work but she had read plenty of stories as a child. The killers who left calling cards or gave themselves fancy nicknames were always egomaniacs.

Donric flipped the body over as instructed, causing it to make an unpleasant squish.

"Ugh. It stinks," the fair haired girl complained while pressing her fingers around her nostrils.

This had certainly been the worst assignment of her time in the guard thus far. Maybe Donric or Talus enjoyed frisking the dead in the slums but Colette hated every second of this. Had these murders occurred in the square or near Vel Aerelos the squadron could've at least gone and gotten a decent meal once their investigation concluded. Instead it would likely be military rations, again.

The younger soldier shook her head in disapproval at Donric's comment, "nice clothes? Where do you buy your clothing to think that's nice?"

 

[Talus]

Talus smiled briefly, though he realized that finding any sort of amusement in this moment was a bit grim. Still, he couldn't help but find the discourse between the two somewhat amusing.

Despite himself, the two Soldiers and some of their compatriots had actually grown on him quite a bit. Though they at first had seemed...well, incompetent, it was quickly becoming clear that all of them had their own quirks and upsides.

Talus was coming to like that. "Here."

He said as he pulled the man's collar down and revealed a small cut along the base of his neck. The wound hardly seemed large enough to be noticed, but Talus had had an inkling.

"Could be a poison blade. Paralytic to make sure he didn't move." It was what made the most sense to him. "I think we need to look at the other bodies."

He glanced up at Donric, as if wondering if he knew where the morgue was.

 

[Donric Mannir]

Donric shot daggers at Colette, he had forgotten the pampered princess of the Guard was here. He sighed, recalling the time she had rebuffed someone's Creme Brule for not being sufficiently torched on the top. "What I meant, is that they're nice clothes compared to the rest of the slum."

His tone was exasperated, but also slightly pained. He had quite liked the outfit the victim was wearing, it was simple and made of nice natural wool. That said, anything was better than the multi-coloured monstrosity he was forced to wear. After all, how was anyone meant to fear the guard if they had sodding peacock feathers?

He nodded at Talus' explanation, he'd spotted the cut and assumed it had just been a small nick off one of the loose bits of gravel - there'd been a few suspect rocks around the corpse. He supposed Talus' theory made sense too though.

After a few seconds of silence, Donric realised he was suddenly the centre of attention and clocked onto Talus' implication. "Haha, the morgue, yeah we do our training there - stabby Joff does the funniest thin-" He paused. Swallowed audibly and chose not to carry on the story with his superior regarding stabby Joff and the corpses.

"Yes sir, follow me... sir!" He baulked and swiftly walked off in the direction of the morgue.

 

[Colette]

"A paralytic blade?" she questioned while ignoring the medic's continued notion that the victim was dressed finely, "paralysis so that he could carve... whatever that symbol was without all the... screaming."

She wondered briefly if the others had met a similar fate. Seemed like an awful way to go. Paralyzed and then some weirdo is hacking into your forehead while you just have to sit there and watch. The notion was giving Colette goosebumps and caused a shake of her shoulders, as if she was trying to throw the idea off her back. Then Donric chimed in with where they were headed off to next.

Great! The morgue.

And stabby Joff.

If she hadn't already fulfilled her quota for complaints this morning there'd be a few dozen more flowing off her tongue. They'd been there earlier, the field medic insisting, 'c'mon Cole you gotta come with us, you'll like stabby Joff he's a riot!' To Colette's complete lack of surprise Joff was not a riot. He was kind of a creep. It was to be expected when your day job is to play with dead bodies all day.

She rolled her eyes and fell in line behind the medic and the Major.

 

[Talus]

Talus smiled briefly, then motioned for some of the other Guardsmen who had been stationed around the block to ensure no one disturbed the body. "See that he gets taken to the morgue as well."

Both of the soldiers nodded in silent affirmation of his command.

The trip to the morgue was a surprisingly short one. For some reason Talus had thought it would be located on the inside of the city, but of course the corpses of half-breeds would not be afforded the same care that a 'true' Anirian would get.

"Are both of you from here?" He asked. "Vel Anir itself I mean."

The Dreadlord had realized he had absolutely no idea.

 

[Donric Mannir]

Donric trotted away through the various streets and side-alleys on the way towards the morgue. His sour face and cutting looks stopping people in their tracks and halting any jokes about their ridiculous peacock armour.

"Nah I'm from Vel'Luin, lived there with my 9 brothers before my draft day. My parents bred rats to fight in the pits, it's how I started gardening." He smiled contentedly as he reminisced on the good old days, completely oblivious to the fact what he said made very little sense.

While they were still a ways off, Donric found himself giggling. Stabby Joff was a riot, always stabbing corpses for no reason - partly why he'd been demoted to the slums - and making the bodies talk with his elaborate pulley system.

"What about you? Do... uh... Dreadlords have parents?" He'd heard a few rumours that Dreadlords were produced by the houses in a factory, but he was pretty sure they were taken at birth. Either way, he wasn't aware of any people around him to be taken.

 

[Colette]

With a pep in her step the thin guardswoman kept up with Talus and Donric. She let the larger medic speak his piece first, his answer a bit surprising to her. Vel Luin? They bred rats? Rats were disgusting. She couldn't imagine breeding the things much less going to watch them fight. On the bright side, several of the citizens within the slums kept eyeing her peacock feathered armor. She hoped they'd get more assignments within the city itself going forward so they could dress so lavishly again.

"I grew up here. Been in Vel Anir my entire life. My father has a store front for his masonry business on the fringes of Anir Square," she gestured towards the left with one hand, imaging a map of Vel Anir itself and the location of her father's storefront towards the west of the square. It likely looked a bit silly. "He's quite good, even done some work for a few of the Great Houses. Not their palatial manors mind you but some of their businesses within Vel Anir proper." Swallowing and realizing she was rambling again she decided to cut the rest of her story short, "we lived a few blocks from the square. Nothing too fancy but my parents provided a nice life."

Donric started giggling a few moments later. Colette was unsure if she was mocking her or doing that thing again where he thinks of something that's just so funny but he doesn't share it when their superior officers were around.

At his question of Major Talus' parents the blonde girl froze up. She had been told by Talus previously that he was taken. Part of her wanted to smack Donric for asking, it was inappropriate. But, no, best to let the dreadlord handle the question as he deemed fit.

 

[Talus]

Talus listened intently to both of the soldiers nodding along and finding a small bit of surprise in the fact that Donroc was from Vel Luin.

No shock reached him when Colette spoke of her birthplace. She had always seemed like an Anirian to him, though it wasn't like Donric didn't pass that particular test. He was just a little bit...rougher around the edges than some of the other Guardsmen.

"That's quite an achievement, masonry is hard work." Talus said to Colette as though he would know such things.

He offered her a small smile before regarding Donric.

"I was also born in Vel Luin." He remembered that well enough, he even remembered his parents farm just outside the city walls. There was a distinct memory of his father taking him fishing on the docks, one of the few he had. "But I was taken to be trained at the Academy at the age of five."

He explained as they reached the morgue. "Most of my memories of childhood are from there."

Talus spoke as he knocked on the heavy wooden door.

 

[Donric Mannir]

"A fellow Luinanian, I knew you were a man of character." He smiled wryly towards Talus, the Dreadlord had seemed increasingly human over the short time they'd served together. His superior was far from the idea of a conditioned weapon that he'd come to view Dreadlords as in his head.

The door swung back with an eerie creak and a pasty rounded figure leaned cautiously from behind the door. Eventually, after spotting Donric and Cole, he relaxed and stepped into view - scalpel in hand.

"Donric! I see you brought the dazzling Colette with you." He said with a wink towards the young woman. Stabby Joff paused, staring at Talus for a long while, before continuing.

"Have you come for training or my puppet sho-" Donric didn't give the man a chance to finish that sentence and, instead, cut him off - although perhaps a bit too late.

"Stab-... Joff. Joff. Doctor Joff, this is Major Talus - the newly appointed attaché of the Guard. He wishes to inspect the recent murder victims." Donric spoke loudly, talking over Joff and hoping he got his message across before the fellow incriminated himself.

Joff's eyes widened and he grew noticeably paler. He nodded, then scurried off towards his lab - beckoning the group to follow him inside.

 

[Colette]

"It is hard work, he built the whole thing from the ground up," Colette replied to Talus returning his smile. Once they arrived at the morgue they were greeted by Joff. And, well...

Stabby Joff was the absolute worse.

Last time they had come he rambled about her looks too. This time it's the first thing out of his mouth. Colette couldn't understand why Donric liked this guy so much. He spent his entire day playing with dead people, making bad jokes, and going on-and-on about how this joint can bend that way or the kinds of gasses that accumulate in a corpse as it bloats up.

The blonde girl issued a half-hearted wave and a slight frown in response to his greeting. Hopefully Talus and Donric would get whatever information they wanted from the other corpses quickly so they could be on their way.

At his mention of puppets the thin soldier's mouth fell open. Luckily Donric had interrupted before Colette had the chance to reprimand the creep for playing someone the dead body of someone's dearly departed. Just no sense of right or wrong with this guy. Completely insensitive to the hardships the families were going through if he could get a cheap laugh out of it. Or worse, some extra coin on the side.

With an annoyed look on her face and in her voice she queried, "can we take a look and be on our way quickly? This task is of the utmost importance."

She was pretty sure this task was actually not that important. Vel Anir just couldn't let a bunch of dead bodies pile up, even in the slums, without at least pretending to investigate it. But, Colette didn't want to spend any more time around Joff than necessary.

 

[Talus]

Talus gave a simple nod of hello and then followed the Mortician inside.

This was not the first time that he'd been inside of a morgue, at the Academy it was one of the few places one could actually get away from the Proctors. Of course there had been the fourth level Dreadlords, but most of them hadn't really cared all that much about the students. Not as long as they weren't annoying anyway.

Still, there was something off about the place. Perhaps it was the smell of formaldehyde or the lingering scent of rotting flesh. Talus didn't like it. Reminded him of the necromancers he'd encountered.

"Are these them?" He motioned to the corpses on the slab.

A quick nod was sent back to him.

For a brief moment Talus peered down at the bodies, noting immediately that each one of them was a nonhuman or a half-breed. A frown touched his lips, and then he pulled down one of the sheets covering the corpses. "We found a cut on the latest body, I believe a paralytic was applied. Do any of them carry a similar wound?"

He asked with a glance to a mortician.

 

[Donric Mannir]

Donric followed the group slowly from behind. It was an odd feeling being here under such sober and harrowing circumstances. Normally they'd have a few beers, do some light medical training, then place bets on stupid things. He'd never been here for work - not really.

Stabby Joff - or Joff in this situation - seemed almost another person. Sleek, refined, intelligent. Far from the knife happy hunchbacked human he had come to befriend. In but a moment he had transformed into this professional. Laying each body carefully before them - not even considering using the strange pulley mechanism to make a puppet.

"Now that you mention it. I had thought it a minor detail. Each body had a wound inflicted in separate places... I suspect with your theory in mind, with different weapons too." He paused, considering the details he'd overlooked.

Carefully Joff gestured towards almost insignificant cuts, nicks and gashes - each looking markedly different from the others - that would have otherwise gone amiss.

"I suppose... If the paralytic were potent enough, in theory... each of these would provide sufficient to deliver it." He pondered silently.

Donric sat quietly. This was beyond his training. Instead, his mind wandered and drifted towards thoughts of his allotment back at the barracks. He hoped he wouldn't be here all day, he needed to prune his wild berry vines so they'd ripen in time for Colette's coffee morning.

He sighed. A part of him knew he'd be here all day. The straw-coloured girl was just going to have to settle with a less than ideal harvest. He thought, glaring at the Colette briefly.

 

[Colette]

Joff seemed a lot more pleasant once he was in the presence of someone like Major Talus instead of Donric, Colette, and the other rank and file.

He seemed professional, like he knew what he was doing. He didn’t seem like a strange creepy outcast that played with dead bodies for fun.

”So, how’d they die?” Colette wondered aloud.

It was certainly interesting that a paralytic agent was applied to all of them. It was interesting that they all had an unusual mark cut into their foreheads. But how, precisely, did they die? Was the mark a rune that ended them?

The shorter guardwoman crossed both arms and scrunched her nose as she thought on it further. Finding out the how might point them towards the who.

Or, at least, that’s what the hero detectives in her novels would’ve said.

 

[Talus]

Talus thought for a brief few moments, his eyes closing as he rested a hand on his chin.

The Academy taught many things about killing, poisons being one of them. Such tactics were incredibly rare within the Dreadlords, but the Prcotors had always made sure to educate them on such subjects. A frown touched his face, and then he remembered something.

"It could have been the paralytic itself." He offered as a thought.

"It would stop their ability to breath." Talus scowled. "It'd be an incredibly slow and painful death."

Conscious, your vision going black, lungs not able to pump enough air into you. The Horror of impeding death lingering in your eyes.

Crafting a poison like that would be...difficult.

 

[Donric Mannir]

Joff flitted around the corpse, prodding it and poking it with various utensils in light of the new theory.

"I concur, a paralytic able to function from such a small delivery point would have to be very strong... presumably strong enough to snuff someone out entirely." While he was busy with his re-examining of the corpse, a small idea wound itself into Donric's head and he spoke for the first time in a while.

"If all the wounds are different but small... What if he's practising? Seeing what the smallest thing he can get away with it?" He shuddered, the idea of someone using Anirian civilians for such cruel experiments made him uncomfortable.

He'd served with some of the half-breeds in his time. The superior human half always won out and they were some of the best comrades he'd ever had.

This monster needed to be stopped. Although quite how they'd go about it, he was unsure.

 

[Colette]

Nothing about this was pleasing to Colette.

A paralytic that caused the victim to die slowly and painfully? That sounded like the stuff of nightmares. Plus Donric's theory that the murder was likely to be practicing on these poor people. The blonde guardswoman felt a wave of nausea overcome her. Whether it was the thought of the murders themselves or the corpses surrounding them she couldn't be sure. Likely a combination of them both.

Her knees got weak, head pounded, and a hand grasped onto the nearby gurney. Luckily there was enough clearance so that she wasn't directly touching the corpse housed atop it.

In a weak, disheveled, voice she summoned, "I think I may go grab some air."

With that she lifted herself off and slowly walked towards the door. Not even waiting for an acknowledgement from the other three nor paying mind to whatever quip Creepy Joff had to say. Once she opened the door and felt the rain on her face her nerves started to settle a bit, feeling returned in her legs, but the pit in her stomach just seemed to grow larger.

She needed to catch whoever was behind all of this.

 

[Talus]

Talus shook his head slowly as he watched Colette walk out the door, a frown touching his lips before he looked back towards Donric.

"A poison like that would be hard to make." Even for someone with the skill.

He knew of at least a handful of Dreadlords who could make such things, one in particular stood out to him though. Nerim Val, a poisonmancer. The man had an incredible skill with throwing knives, and he could produce poison like regular men did sweat.

Talus doubted he was responsible for this, but he could perhaps be a resource.

He glanced at Stabby Joff. "Can you give us a list of herbalists in the city?"

With a glance he motioned to Donric.

"Maybe go check on Colette." The Major suggested quietly.

 

[Donric Mannir]

"Right you are sir, I'll give her bonk 'round the head - fix her right up" Donric spoke calmly, grinning slightly and left quickly before Talus had a chance to respond.

Joff paused, nodding carefully towards Talus and produced a notepad and pencil seemingly out of nowhere.

"A paralytic of this calibre requires some exotic ingredients. I know of no herbalists within the slums that could produce this. Even if we consider the whole of Vel'Anir I would posit there's only a handful or so who possess such supply lines." He spoke confidently, writing away the whole time, before handing Talus a note of roughly 5 individuals.

Donric strode out of the vicinity, his face stony and dour as ever. Carefully, he drew up beside Colette.

"Not a nice thing this, but don't let it get to you. We'll see this monster taken down, but for that, we all need to be at our best." He smiled warmly towards the girl and passed her a small canteen he carried around his waist.

It wasn't alcohol, Donric didn't drink on the job, but it tasted and smelled like it. He'd often found that a swig of liquor - or mock liquor in this case - helped to calm even the jitteriest of nerves.

 

[Colette]

Colette breathed in slowly, heaving the oxygen into her lungs as she tried to calm herself. She realized now that she was outside that she had caused a scene and it likely reflected poorly on a member of the Anirian Guard. If she couldn't handle a bit of death how was she ever going to ride into a battlefield?

The only real calming thought that came to her was that the idea that her comrades and her would catch this guy. Talus was more clever than he let on and Donric knew how to talk to the less savory individuals that this perpetrator would be forced to work with. They'd get to the bottom of it all. They had to.

Her nausea and panic attacks were abruptly interrupted by a thoughtful sentiment from the field medic. She looked at him, concern still on display in her cerulean eyes, and apologized, "I'm sorry. It's so embarassing. I'm meant to be a part of the Anirian Guard and I'm being unsettled by some murderer in the middle of morgue in front of Stabby Joff." Part of her wanted to cry from the embarrassment but the idea of crying in front Donric abhorred her.

Instead her cheeks went red, her eyes went serious, and she simply said, "I'll take just a sip. Don't tell the major." Whatever liquor he presented tasted harsh but a quick shot was all she needed to settle her nerve.

 

[Talus]

Talus took the note with a quick word of thanks, turning on his heel and wandering towards the door.

There he stopped for a moment, overhearing the conversation between Colette and Donric. His fingers rested against the door, waiting for a moment before the two finished speaking and only then stepping out through the door.

"I got a list of herbalists." He told the two Guardsmen, folding the piece of paper and tucking it into his armor to shield it from the rain.

"There's also another avenue." Talus told the two. "A fellow Dreadlord I know who may help us."

He doubted either of them would like that much. "Not the most pleasant man but..."

Talus trailed off.