Stack of Dead

A Budding Historian
Posts: 3
Joined: Sun Oct 04, 2015 3:22 am

Stack of Dead

Post by A Budding Historian »

The woman's scream cut through the night, and those who came running found her running from corpse to corpse.

There were a dozen bodies, all bloodless and covered in cuts, all well and truly dead, all littering the streets between temples in Devardec. The woman sobbed and tried to get out her story, while Voderic tried to comfort her and Sliper checked on Fate's own people before vanishing. She eventually told what little she knew to Voderic. He escorted her home and returned to the scene to examine the corpses.

The rest of the city continued on with its day.
vodericknight
Posts: 83
Joined: Fri Nov 14, 2014 1:27 pm
Guild: Battlemages

Re: Stack of Dead

Post by vodericknight »

The City.

The City has a hundred thousand faces. A few of them even have souls. But all of them have a story.

The dame's story would have to wait. She was hysterical, burnt out on fear like a customer who's just tried the eggs at Koach's. It wasn't hard to see why. The corpses surrounded her like rats from the sewers. The unseasonable rain fell around them. Voderic stuck his hands in his pockets, wishing he'd worn his leather cloak to keep the water out. Someone'd bumped these poor stiffs off, and that Warlock wasn't going to do anything about it. He felt cold and small, a crumb of a dick, but he was all there was.

When she'd pulled herself together, it turned out she didn't know nothing. Found the bodies on her way home from work, she said. She was some kinda waitress over at a dive joint downtown, said she didn't recognize any of the stiffs. I left her to her misery, but noted her address, in case she was needed later. I had a feeling this case wasn't going to bust itself wide open any time soon.

Back to the corpusses delecti, or whatever the plural was. If the dame was right, these poor bums weren't local. But then how did they get here? I eyeballed the area, and sure enough, a trail of blood led my poor flat feet south along the street. But just as suddenly, the trail went cold. Well, even a dumb ex-knight like Yours Truly has a few tricks up his sleeve.

I hauled out Spellfire, my trusty hardware. Either some gorilla'd lugged those bodies halfway across Norland, or some scum had zapped them here magically. Alas, I may be a handsome if somewhat rough-around-the-edges ex-knight, but a finger-wiggler I would never be. Knowledge eluded me, as my exes often told me. But there were still a couple tricks up my sleeve. Hauling out my trusty looking glass, I scried images of the site and the corpses into the reflection for later.

One image caught my eye. I'm hardly the World's Greatest Gumshoe, but some things are obvious even to an old lug like myself. Those cuts weren't random. Some butcher'd carved them with purpose, not just to kill. Every cut came in a set of four, like claw marks. But not ragged like some beast. They were even, deep and identical. There was no accident here. Each body had been carefully cut and drained of its blood, not all at once, but over time. And it had been done methodically. Almost ritually.

I wished I knew more religion. I wished I knew more magic.

Well, I knew people who could help. Maybe wouldn't, but could.

I'd just have to make someone squeal.

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