• PM To Join • Almund's Missing Children

[Balthazar Black]

43 Zi'Da 719

Well the arguing wasn't going to get them anywhere so Balthazar chose to completely ignore Vaid'ner and Oram's squabble about whether or not to sugar coat things for Mr. Marston. Personally, Balthazar had to agree with Vaid'ner. What did it matter to them? Was it not better to prepare Marston for the worst? Literally anything that happened now would be better than what he was expecting. To keep himself from their argument, Balthazar remained by Mr. Marston while he waited for Vaid'ner to answer his question about the contingencies. Marston seemed conflicted now. He was lost somewhere between despair and hope because of Oram's words of reassurance. He didn't believe his wife could be dead. He didn't want to believe it. But Balthazar didn't care, there was work to do and every trill their enemy seemed to become more clear to them.

"H-her name is Es-Esmeralda." Marston said with a stutter of nerves. He nodded to Oram when the hunter instructed him to keep back and stay quiet but his eyes never left his house down the street. Balthazar had seen that look in a few people but he didn't recognize it then just as he didn't recognize it now. Marston was thinking of running... but Oram quickly distracted him with a plethora of questioned Marston tried to wrap his head around while Vaid'ner's friends went off to investigate the house. Balthazar stood off to the side, keeping an eye on the area around them and listening to what Marston said to Oram. "I don't know. Everything seems... normal. I- I don't know... I'm sorry." So he was totally useless in terms of canvasing the scene. But what Vaid'ner said caught Balthazar's interest.

Three decoys? Balthazar gave a small glance to Oram and Marston then he looked back at Vaid'ner. "What if the decoys were meant to divide us? To buy the husks time to-" Balthazar got quiet and looked at Marston before looking back to Vaid'ner and continuing in a lower voice. "finish the job. The killer had to see us to know where to send the bees and the killer had to see Marston to know where to send the- well did he have to see? Do you know how autonomous the Necromancer's creatures are?" Balthazar's train of thought was derailed by a doubt. He'd spent some time with Necromancers in Yaralon and learned a little, but nothing he commit to memory. All he knew for certain was that every magic he had required eyesight in some form. Perhaps the decoys had been acting as eyes? Providing different views of the tavern Balthazar had very publicly summoned the investigators too? Then they'd fled when the investigators went for the bees but why flee if they didn't know they were being pursued? How could they know they were being followed? Too many unknowns.

Fortunately Balthazar was saved from his pondering by the return of the scouts. So the wife wasn't dead yet? Maybe that was a bold assumption. Vaid'ner seemed to expect Balthazar to go first and so the mage did. Marston trailed just a little bit behind Balthazar as they approached the house and when they reach it, Balthazar knocked on the door. Balthazar subconsciously readied himself to punch a zombie-bride in the face but when the door swung open, Esmeralda seemed very much alive. Her eyes were red and puffy, and a few tears had run down her face some time ago leaving behind little streaks in the makeup she wore.

"Who are you?" She asked Balthazar who stood in front of Marston.

"We're here to help find your daughter." Balthazar responded. "May we come inside?" Esmeralda looked to Marston who quickly pushed passed Balthazar to embrace his wife.

"Oh Fates! They told me you'd be dead!" Marston cried out as he squeezed his wife. Esmeralda seemed confused. Fair enough. Balthazar stepped into the building after Marston's forceful hugging of his wife gave Balthazar the space to slip through. Then Balthazar decided it was time to break up the hug. He cleared his throat loudly and nothing happened. He did it again to the same result. Then he had to actually pry Marston off his wife.

"Marston we don't have time!" Balthazar insisted as he pulled the two apart. "Start packing everything you absolutely need with you. Esmeralda, could you sit. We have some questions for you." While he was sure the group had more questions for Marston (chiefly, what had he intended to tell Balthazar and the gang at the Witchwoods) but Balthazar was more curious in the wife's story. He gestured for either Oram or Vaid'ner to go with Marston to ask him questions while Balthazar focused on the wife who left a whole plate of chopped vegetables in the kitchen unattended. "Are you familiar with any of these names? If so, how?" Balthazar asked as he held out his poorly scrawled list of missing children.

"Wait a trill, who are you again?"

"We're with the Elements. Now please focus. Do you know these families?"

"Well... some. We've known the Holdens and the DeGreys for a while. They're good people. It was awful to hear about their children. I don't know the Shiresons or the Barnes though." Esmeralda didn't seem confident in what she was saying but given the incredibly sudden interrogation it might not have been surprising.

"How do you know them?"

"Oh, well... it's a small town. I've just seen them here and there over the arcs. I had the DeGrey's over for dinner once but we've never gone to their side of town."

"And have you seen any of them since the disappearances began?" Balthazar asked and before she could answer there was another knocking at the door. Any and all scouts would report the same thing, two Land Troops standing outside the door with angry looks on their faces.

"Open up! You have no right to be in there! Come on out now!" They shouted from beyond the door. What got their nickers in a twist?

[Oram Mednix]

”Knock knock!” “Who’s there?” “Banana”

At Vaid’ner’s response, Oram could only shake his head and let out an aggravated groan. The hunter didn’t have the verbal means to express what was wrong with the feralmancer’s attitude. A more educated, gab-gifted person might point out that guessing aloud that Marson’s wife was probably dead constituted a conjecture and not a truth-claim; lying would only come into it if Vaid’ner had actually made a statement at variance with-oh, never mind. Trying to form an objection about such fussy things when he had neither the words nor concepts for them made Oram’s head hurt. Instead he just grumbled: ”No one asked you to lie,” and left it at that.

Trying to act as confident and supportive as he could, he clapped Marston on the shoulder.

”Esmeralda is a lovely name,” he told their hapless informant. ”And don’t say you’re sorry. You did good. You did good.”

Oram wouldn’t have minded if he had done better, but given all that had happened he didn’t think it could be helped. Marston was at wit’s end from shock and worry, and it was a miracle the poor man didn’t panic and bolt or break down completely; he managed to calm down enough to look around the neighborhood the way Oram asked and say he saw nothing unusual. With that, together with Vaid’ner’s scouting of the area, the traveler figured that they had taken as good a look around as they could. Nothing else for it now but to go on into the house.

Esmerelda didn’t look anything like the fairy-tale princess her name invoked in Oram’s mind, and what was more, she didn’t look like she had been expecting company. Her eyes looked red and puffy. Had she been crying? Or maybe she had just been cutting onions just now?

He didn’t get to look at her face long, though, as Marston instantly set upon her and embraced her with the frantic joy of a man who had feared to find her dead. And that was as far as the conversation could go for many a trill to follow. Thanks for that, Vaid’ner.

Balthazar pried them apart almost bodily and without preamble began peppering the wife with questions. It was pretty rude, to be honest, and Oram was surprised Esemeralda was as cooperative as she was under the circumstances. But he supposed it was all called-for, given both the urgency and the seriousness of their situation. After listening to hers and Balthazar’s exchange for a bit, he turned to Marston. ”These DeGrays, your wife says they live in another part of town, so how do you know them? Where do you guys normally meet up?” He would ask about the other families, too, if they had time.

…which, apparently, they wouldn’t. There was a knock on the door and an angry demand that they come out of the house. They talked like Elements. But were they? Oram didn’t like this one bit. He scooted away from the door, out of its line of sight, and looked at Marston. ”This is your house, and we are your guests” he pointed out. ”You should talk to them.” Guests was stretching it a bit, as they had all but pushed their way in, but it sounded like the right thing to say.

[Nir'wei]

They'd lost so much time already. So much time! Did they really have to sit down and have a lecture on what did and did not constitute proper formal etiquette with a complete stranger, whom could already be assumed to be living on borrowed time? His fingernails were biting into his palms and he desperately wanted to bark at Oram and Mr Marston both to be quiet. I don't want to know your wife's name. It breeds familiarity. Was it cold? Yes, it was. But it was also the way that they were going to be able to focus long enough to put the person behind this to justice. You can't watch your back if there are tears in your eyes.

Nir'wei shook his head quickly at Balthazar's suggestion. "If they wanted to buy time for the husks to finish the job, the decoys would have been used to attack us and hold us off from the husks... just as the swarm was used. They weren't noticed at all until after I attempted to trace the source of the husks. What use is a distraction if your enemy never even sees it?" None of it followed conventional tactics. Either they were playing a bigger game than any of them had pictured, or they'd used it to cover their escape. The sheer volume of resources and the distribution made it difficult, if not outright impossible to imagine that this had been little more than a miscalculation on the necromancers part. "I couldn't say. I didn't check them for wells." He had just enough experience with autonomous necromancy thralls to remember that was how they operated... but in the scurry, he'd been too focused on trying to save Mr Marston's life.

Speaking of which... Nir'wei entered the house last, thankful but unrepentant that Mr Marston's... Esmerelda, wasn't it?... was still alive and breathing. At least Balth had the good sense to pull them apart and get to work. Nir hounded Mr Marston instead, since the others were suddenly busy with the one woman who knew nothing about what had happened thus far... for some reason.

"Now's the time to spill everything. Tell us what you wanted us to know at the cemetery. I mean what you really wanted us to know that had to be so far away that your wife didn't hear any of it... and who might want you dead right now." There had to be more to all of this than what they were posing. "What can you tell us about the child they took from you. When you last saw them, what they were like, who they were in contact with, what their hobbies were." Right now, the only lead they had was him. There had to be something, perhaps something even completely ordinary on the surface, that could help them learn more about the child and where they likely were at the time of the abduction. "Friends from school, maybe... childhood friends, perhaps knowledge of any of the other children or something--"

A banging on the door. "Vabina." The Zephyrus was there at once, gliding through the floor and manifesting a mere foot from them both. A great, hulking thing, staling behind the two Land Troops with a deep growl rolling in the back of her throat. It was a simple but extremely effective shock tactic... after all, to have such a creature appear out of absolutely nowhere and with no sound or warning?

"Continue." Frankly, he didn't trust whoever it was, Land Troops or no... and to say they had no right to be there? Either they were referring to him, Balthazar and Oram... or either of the Marstons. Neither of which he fancied hearing at that moment.

[Balthazar Black]

43 Zi'Da 719

Well Vaid'ner certainly had an interesting method of dealing with the Elements at the door. An arc ago Balthazar would have approved but now he wasn't so sure. They were doing this for the Elements so if the Elements had come to stop them, perhaps there was something the trio of investigators did not know... then again Balthazar didn't like how angry the two Elements at the door sounded. Whatever their intention had been, the sudden arrival of Vabina certainly seemed to startle the Elements from their anger. They drew swords and leveled them at the beast that had appeared behind them. "Back! Away beast! " The Land Troopers shouted as the waved their blades at Vabina.

Meanwhile inside the house, Marston did his best to answer Oram's questions. "Gaston DeGrey came by our house when his younger brother disappeared. He was the first to go missing and Gaston was trying to recruit help to put up posters." Marston replied to Oram who seemed to have picked up an important clue. An astute individual might have noticed that there was no missing person poster on the outside of their house. At least, not anymore. "We were too busy so we couldn't and honestly... I think that was the last time we saw any DeGreys?" Marston was looking towards his wife for confirmation and Balthazar admittedly had stopped his questioning to listen to what Marston was saying.

"Well, no. Mr. DeGrey came by the trial after Tilly went missing to offer his condolences. He really made us feel... better." Esmeralda clarified. A lot of what she'd just said struck Balthazar as odd but he had too much to think about.

"What do you mean he made you feel better?" Balthazar asked to buy time while he mulled over what Vaid'ner had told him about the decoys. Vaid'ner had a good point. What was the point of the decoys if they hadn't been noticed? Then again Vaid'ner's words brought another thought to Balthazar's mind. Why attack the detectives at all? They'd have walked to the graveyard if not for the attack that put them on alert. If they'd walked they wouldn't have made it in time to save Marston... so why attack them? It seemed as if this trio kept finding pieces of the puzzle, but none of them fit together.

"I don't know but when he was here it was... I felt... different." Balthazar looked to Vaid'ner and Oram to see if either of them could make any sense of what that meant. Did she have a crush on the DeGrey that she was trying to hide from her husband? If so she was doing it poorly. Yet before they could really delve further into that, Marston had Vaid'ner's questions to answer. Balthazar took a step back to try and process the things he'd already learned while Marston told Vaid'ner the secret that had been so important that they needed to meet in a graveyard.

Marston's gaze shifted towards his wife and then back to the detectives. Vaid'ner rattled off question after question to the father who'd just lost his child and with each question, the sadness seemed to bubble over. Marston's eyes began to water and he looked to the floor to try and hide it. "My Tilly! Oh my poor girl!" Balthazar, nearing his wits end, crossed the room and slapped Marston across the face.

"Pull it together, man!" Balthazar commanded. "Your daughter may yet live if you answer the damn question!" Another slap, this time mostly venting on Balthazar's part. Remarkably, it seemed to work. Marston stood angrily after the second slap and Balthazar raised a fist in warning. He still had too much Yari in him. Marston seemed to collect himself and he looked to Vaid'ner, his anger towards Balthazar temporarily overriding his sadness. Esmeralda rose as well in shock that the detective had attacked her husband but she made no move to get closer. Balthazar turned and gestured for her to get back to packing so they could go. Once Esmeralda was out of the room, Marston spoke freely.

"It wasn't my idea to meet in the graveyard." Marston finally confessed. "I'd met with a few of the fathers who had talked to you," Marston turned towards Balthazar who had made the first rounds before putting up the flyer that Vaid'ner and Oram had responded to. "Most of them didn't want to go outside the Elements for help but I tried to convince them. I really did, and eventually Gaston, the oldest of the DeGrey brothers, said he would help. It was his idea to meet in the Witchwoods because he... well... it made sense when he was explaining it. It was supposed to be private-"

"More private than your home?"

"The killer already got into our house once to take our daughter! Who's to say he couldn't do it again?" Marston shot back angrily and Balthazar wanted to slap him again but they'd been given more than enough for Balthazar to start drawing conclusions.

"Where does Gaston DeGrey live?"

"I''m sure I've written it down somewhere. One trill." Marston crossed passed Balthazar and began looking through his drawers for his notepad. Balthazar took the time to address the other two investigators.

"This will sound bad but I think we should split up. You two go find DeGrey and question him, I'll get Marston and his wife back to the Element Hall. If the same necromancer took Gaston's brother, Gaston would probably be his next target." Gaston was, after all, the only person other than Marston who'd been willing to speak out... then again given how they'd found Marston it was possible Gaston was already dead.

[Oram Mednix]

Scooby and I will go this way

Oram’s head was ready to explode. This situation was getting fussy indeed, what with all the questions, answers, non-answers, crying, Marston-slapping, and door-knocking, there were too many things happening at once, too many trails that went off in every direction. Too many rabbits to chase down too many holes. Nothing was coming together. In fact, things were doing the opposite.

Oram needed to pick a rabbit. But which one? The more the hunter heard, the more suspicious he grew of this Gaston DeGrey. It didn’t help that he had a hoity-toity name, similar to Groom Peavers. He shows up in a strange neighborhood, and a few trials later, Marston’s daughter disappears? And the next trial, he comes by to express his condolences? Oh, and he not only knew about the Witchwood Cemetery meeting, but the location was his idea? For reasons? Why would he care about the location when it wasn’t even his meeting?

And apparently, he was quite a charmer, too. He’d really done a number on the wife, apparently, and he’d managed to talk Marston into meeting at the Witchwood without giving a rationale that made any sense to him. And he had other brothers that he lived with, it sounded like. So far, this sounded like the most promising rabbit-hole, with the likeliest rabbits. And so Balthazar’s suggestion that he and Vaid’ner go talk to Gaston seemed like a good one.

However, though many things pointed suspicion of some sort at these DeGreys, especially Gaston, that didn’t mean the Missus here was off the hook, in Oram’s mind. Esmeralda was acting and speaking oddly, especially when she talked about Gaston DeGrey. As soon as she left the room, Oram started counting trills. He didn’t trust that she wouldn’t go do something stupid while out of sight in the back.

His mind snagged on a couple oddments that came up during the babble of questions and suggestions. He decided to speak up and ask about one. ”You say whoever it was got into your house to get your daughter,” he asked Marston. ”Why do you say that? Was your house broken into? How do you know Tilly wasn’t lured out? By, say…” he nodded towards the door, ”somebody out in the street pretending to be Elements?”

Which brought the traveler to his other concern. ”I like the idea of going to talk to the DeGreys. I was about to suggest that myself. But don’t we have something to take care of first?” Once more, he nodded meaningfully towards the door. While he waited for the others, Oram’s fingers fidgeted on his spear, as his eyes moved back and forth between the front door and the one leading to the interior rooms where Esmeralda was doing…whatever she was doing.

[Nir'wei]

The others didn't seem to disagree with his methods of distracting the Elements - or at least, they didn't vocalise them. He could hear the distant sounds of scraping metal but Vabina was the most prepared of them all to handle something as simple as armed soldiers. She alone had received genuine military combat training. And she vastly outsized and outweighed both of the soldiers put together. Though she knew better than to maul either of them, whether or not they decided to take first swing, she was completely unfazed as they aimed their swords at her, and if anything took a slow step forwards, half-prowling and half-challenging.

Meanwhile, Nir focused on the conversations. Strange as they were. At least he wasn't the only one clearly feeling confused by the sporadic back-and-forth between Mr and Mrs Marston that answered very little and left him with even more questions than when he'd started. Eventually, at some point, it seemed they had a lead. "Gaston DeGrey." The name rang no bells; it felt like they still knew nothing about him besides the name and the fact that he had some very confusing ideas about what constituted 'privacy'. "I don't like any of this." He looked around to the others with a perplexed expression. "This DeGrey fellow seems shady, but... but less and less of this is adding up." If there was no other reason than to try and keep anyone from reaching his home, it felt like the man held no information beyond what he'd practically stumbled upon - which made no sense, considering how thoroughly organised things had already been, to avoid not only the Elements, but every other investigator before and including themselves. To what end? Who knew?

"Alright. Oram, let's go. We'll find another way out while he deals with that." Vabina was nothing if not a very convenient distraction to make their exit, after all. "Any windows around the sides or back of the house we can climb through?" he asked in a casual voice. "Something reasonably close to the ground and tall would be preferred, if we're going to make a quick exit." With the cloak of darkness to aid them, Vabina's loud and very threatening snarls to stranglehold the attention of the two armed officers, and a tactical retreat back into the street from the opposite direction, he was confident they'd be out of the way in only slightly less time than it would take for Balthazar to finish mopping up the Marstons and get their sorry behinds in motion to the Element Hall with haste. With luck, they'd meet up at the DeGreys place after all was said and done... and of course, the moment they were in the clear, Nir'wei gave the signal and Vabina suddenly vanished into the Beneath, leaving nought but traces of her spittle on the ground.

[Balthazar Black]

43 Zi'Da 719

Marston produced his notepad and ripped out one of the pages roughly in the middle. He held it out to Balthazar who took it to commit to memory while Oram asked Marston his questions. A new wave a horror and dread seemed to wash over Marston as he realized that Oram was right. His daughter very well could have been lured out by people posing as Elements. He'd tried to teach her to be respectful... what if they'd used that to bait her into the trap? Marston swooned as Esmeralda reentered, fortunately having missed what Oram said and the uncertain fear that it caused in the father. Balthazar thought little of it, they had no more time to mince words because of the second thing Oram pointed out; there was a more pressing issue at the door. The 'Elements.' How much trouble would Balthazar get in if he just knocked them both unconscious? Probably more than he wanted to deal with.

"Well children are missing, I didn't expect any of us to like it." Balthazar said to Vaid'ner, perhaps a little more curt than he should have. Despite that, Balthazar had to agree with Vaid'ner's assessment of the case. He was just a little more irritated that the case wasn't coming together clearly. Balthazar thought DeGrey might be another potential victim but Vaid'ner seemed to suspect him. Balthazar hadn't considered that Gaston might have had malicious intent when convincing Marston to go to the graveyard... but now that he was thinking it, it made a lot more sense than Gaston simply being a convincing idiot. But even if Gaston was innocent, Marston still seemed like he should have been smarter than that... there had to be something they didn't know. Something influential.

When Vaid'ner asked, Marston and his wife directed them to a window at the back out the house where Esmeralda had set some potted plants. It was reasonably close to the ground but it could have been a little lower. It was just high enough to trip up anyone not moving carefully through it. Marston quickly began moving the plants while Balthazar conferred with the other two investigators. "Here's the address. I'll meet you there once I've dealt with them." And once the two left, that was exactly what Balthazar did. He dealt with the Marstons.

Call it insensitive if you want but Balthazar found the two sobbing parents trailing behind him incredibly annoying as they traveled all the way back to the Element Hall. There were no attacks. Balthazar didn't even really feel a sense of urgency once they'd put a good distance between them and the two Element's at the door. It was as if whatever force had been hounding them had retreated to focus on something else. That was what Balthazar did not understand and what Balthazar tried to reflect on in order to ignore the Marstons walking with him.

If they were fighting a necromancer who could attack them with a swarm of bees while three decoys waited in the wings to stall them further so that a few husks could tear a man apart a little bit across the city, how could they ever be sure they weren't in danger? That was the most unsettling part about feeling calm. Balthazar felt like he shouldn't be calm. He thought that maybe he should have been panicking like the Marstons- though that thought only occurred to him as he handed the family off to the Elements at the Element Hall. He said nothing of the Elements who had come to the Marston residence and instead focused on the imminent danger the couple was in. Once matters were settled there, Balthazar set out to try and rejoin Vaid'ner and Oram at the DeGrey residence.

In the time that it took Balthazar to travel that distance, it was likely the Vaid'ner and Oram would arrive at DeGrey's house. The house, they would find, was seemingly devoid of life. It didn't scream murder house. It was a little smaller than the Marston's home had been on the outside. A single story tall with no light shining out through any of the windows due to thick curtains that hung over them, preventing anyone from looking inside without more supernatural means. However if they chose to venture inside they would find something much, much less pleasant. The house itself seemed alright. It appeared moderately furnished. Gaston was clearly not rich but he seemed to manage with what he had. His furniture was decent, his bookshelf was full, and he had drawings of his family hung around in places. It was all very bland. But in his kitchen things began to get a little more interesting. In the middle of the kitchen floor there seemed to be a trap door leading to some level beneath the ground.

When the incorporeal wolves pressed through the trap door they came out into a basement that did scream murder basement. It was clean, very clean. But the two children stuck together by a chain were less so. Tilly Marston and a little boy named Eddie Shireson were bound together at the ankle by a chain that was bolted into the wall. Across the room there was a chest containing well... earlier Balthazar mentioned a level of dismemberment... the chest had the missing pieces inside. Other than the two most notably things in the room, there was also a worktable with some mounds of dried out, hardened clay, some shelves with dozens of dead insects in jars. Atop the worktable sat a body held together by stitches that would confirm what they might have come to suspect. They'd found their necromancer... but he was not home.

[Oram Mednix]

I left Prince Tuesday in the M room buwahahaha!

Exiting out the back? Oram shot a dubious look at the front door, from beyond which came all sorts of ruckus and confusion. Yes, definitely exit out the back, the traveler thought, nodding his agreement with Vaid’ner’s suggestion. And moments later Esmeralda reappeared, and without any of his worst suspicions in tow: she didn’t bring weapons and attack them, nor reveal that Gaston DeGrey was with them the whole time, nor do anything else adverse or crazy.

And she even showed them a rear exit, a window. Peering cautiously out, Oram saw that it was a bit high, or rather that the alley was a bit low compared to the floor of the house, but nothing he couldn’t handle. As long as he went out feet first. Sticking his head a bit farther out, he looked up and down the alley behind the house. There didn’t seem to be any Elements or other potential interlopers waiting there. Could Vaid’ner’s friends ferret out any hazards that the hunter’s mundane human eyes couldn’t see? He shot his companion a questioning glance, but decided not to ask anything out loud. Vaid’ner didn’t seem to like answering questions, and besides, of course he would have his spirit animals watching the area. He just hoped the man would react, if he saw anything, in a way that would tell him how to react himself, should anything happen.

First, Oram dropped his spear out the window. Trying to carry it through the narrow opening would be too awkward. Then he hopped up onto the sill, sat with his feet dangling out, then slid out as carefully as possible, careful not to snag any of his gear on any ledges as he went. The packed dirt of the alley was just a bit lower than he had calculated, and he nearly sprained his ankle upon landing, pitching forward gracelessly onto all fours. So much for catlike grace and stealth. Anyone with keen ears prowling in the alley would have heard him for sure; however, nothing stirred in response. The Elements at the front of the house apparently did not have any fellows posted at the back. And those, from what reached Oram’s ears, were too busy making their own noises to have heard his.

The hunter rose and dusted himself off, then retrieved his spear and made way for Vaid’ner to follow him out the window. His feral companion had the address, which would tell him more than it would Oram, and so as soon as Vaid’ner had gathered himself in the alley next to him, the traveler gestured for him to lead the way. Amazingly, they were able to leave the alley and put distance between themselves and the situation at Marston’s house without any incident. Oram hoped that Balthazar would manage the situation on his own. Of course, the man could fly and fry a cloud of bugs with lightning, so chances were he could handle it. And yet, he did not like splitting up and leaving part of their merry band behind to face the danger alone as they had.

The streets of Almund were quiet and empty at this break; he and Vaid’ner got all the way to DeGrey’s house without encountering another soul. From the street that house was surprisingly ordinary. One storey -no larger, from what he could tell, than the Marston’s. And it was dark and completely quiet. Oram wondered for a moment if his companion had the address right. It was the sort of house you walked past every trial without notice. But then again, what had he been expecting? Tall pointed turrets with bats flying around them?

Oram had, when they first set out, been thinking that for all their suspicions about the DeGreys, that they should go knock on the door and ask to talk to Mr. DeGrey ordinary-like, as one concerned citizen to another. But as he stood before the dark, oddly ordinary-looking house, he began to have doubts. Even if the DeGreys were on the level, how would they respond to a pair of armed and rough-looking men showing up at his door unannounced in the wee breaks? The more he thought about it, the less sure he was that there even *was* a good way to go about this.

“There’s no one home.” Oram shot his companion a surprised look. Had Vaid’ner just said that out loud, or had those words popped into his head somehow? He wasn’t sure, and after that earlier embarrassing talking wolf thing, he didn’t want to ask. Casting a nervous look up and down the dark street to assure that no nosy neighbors were watching, he tried the front door. To his surprise, it opened.

The house within was dark, and Oram lit a candle to look around. The interior of the house was as unremarkable and unassuming as the outside. There were rushlights and lamps about, as there would be in any well-kept house, and after closing the door behind them to make sure no light shone into the street, Oram began to light them. It looked like there was indeed no one home, nor could he see any sign of anything suspicious-

There was a trapdoor in the middle of the kitchen. There was little or no dust on or around it, meaning it was used regularly. It was not locked, and when Oram tried it, the door opened easily. Mice squeaked more loudly than those hinges. There was something down there…

The cellar was dark, so Oram took a rushlight from its holder on the kitchen table, lit it, and peered with it down into the space beneath. From his vantage at the trap door, he saw nothing but a ladder and floor. Well, of course not. Still, he felt a mounting sense of dread. Vaid’ner did, too. His companion tensed up noticeably. Had he seen something? Had his familiars? Again, the hunter elected not to ask the scruffy man questions aloud. Instead, he climbed down into the darkness.

There was a lamp on a hook next to the foot of the ladder. Oram lit it with the rushlight and waited for the brighter light it cast to steady itself. Then he looked around. He saw movement and nearly dropped the rushlight. Setting the lit lamp back on the hook, he snatched out his hatchet (he’d left the spear in the kitchen, as the space down here was too confined to use it properly, anyway.)

The place smelled awful. It was remarkably tidy, even clean most places one looked, but there was no cleaning away the smell of death. Oram almost dropped the rushlight when he saw the thing sitting atop the table. He had seen enough gore, killed and gutted enough animals, knew enough taxidermists not to lose his lunch, but he was still shocked and appalled by it. The form was a stitched together chimera of human body parts. Children’s body parts, he guessed. There were other things in the basement as well, more mundane but just as strange.

He saw the movement out of the corner of his eye. Startled, he turned, brandishing his hatchet. Two children, filthy and soiled, were chained together, and they were alive. Hastily, Oram put a finger to his mouth to silence them; they would no doubt be as startled as he, and far more frightened. ”We’ve come to get you out of here,” he said to them quietly. ”We’re friends. Are you thirsty?” He offered the wretched kids his water skin, continuing to look around. The hunter noticed the chain bolted to the wall. How would he get them free? And would he be able to do so before the DeGreys came back? If they did come back?

While the kids drank, Oram looked around for a way to release the children from their chains. ”What are your names?” he asked, as he searched for a suitable tool or key. ”And do you know who was keeping you down here? Any idea where they are?” He looked at them again. ”Are you hurt? Could you walk if I got you loose? I want to get you home. Excuse me…”

Oram went to the base of the ladder and peered up. He heard something. He figured it was Vaid’ner, but waited for the man to appear in the hatchway to say anything. ”They’re down here,” he told his partner. ”They seem to be alright. I may need your help getting them out of this cellar, though.

[Nir'wei]

Incorporeal wolves traced every street and alley between them and the DeGrey estate. Briefly flickering into the world to sniff curiously at the corners of houses and small stretches of side-streets, before slipping into the cover of shadow to disappear again. Nothing. Not even a scent. Was it because they were on the wrong trail now? Or was Balthazar fighting off the full brunt of the necromancer's assault even as they strolled towards his hideout? The thought was enough to put an extra burst of speed into his steps, covering the damp cobblestones at a near-jog until they finally arrived at the house. An unassuming place, blending easily into the background, and utterly dark. Now what. Knock and try to talk things over calmly, or jump straight to the accusations and climb through the window?

"They could be asleep," he replied before Oram turned the door and found it unlocked. "... Or gone." Greyhide found the bedroom, empty. Cold sniffed through the living room, finding signs of recent activity but nothing more. Then, however... Myrth found something in the kitchen and slipped through the door without opening it. "... Shit." His hackles rose. Blood.

Thick, iron, tangy. Oram was bound to find it not a moment later but the wolf's eyes adjusted faster to the dim light of the basement and found the remains of the children. Two sacks of skin and bone, still breathing and doing little else... and an abomination of an unfinished project to reanimate butchered remains for some unspeakable purpose. Myrth could barely stomach the sight and turned away after just a few moments. Nir'wei didn't have the same luxury; his Enhanced Senses burning the smell and sight deep into his head as yet another reminder of the utter horror that could come from Necromancy. Disgusting, fetid parasites as its practitioners were, it seemed their callousness for human life truly had no bottom.

"Keys... keys..." The message rippled through the other wolves and in a moment, he held an answer. "Keys." Stashed in a cubby hole on the other end of the house, behind the bedframe of the master bedroom. Greyhide dropped the key through the trapdoor opening and Nir used it to unlock the two children from one-another and the wall behind them. "You take one, I'll take the other. We'll have to carry them out... and get them to the Element Hall, right now. If those two Elements turn out to be the DeGreys, they'll be coming back for us soon enough. And the last thing we need is them using these two as hostages or human shields." Damn it all, now he wished that Vabina really had torn them apart.

Without another word, he scooped his arms under Eddie Shireson, one behind the back and the other under the legs, and hoisted him back up through the kitchen's trap door and out of the house. Cold and Myrth materialised at either side, their heads turning in every direction, while Grey and Squeak appeared flanking Oram and his charge.

[Balthazar Black]

43 Zi'Da 719

By the time Balthazar arrived at the house in question, the other two would have discovered all that really mattered. The children were alive and the necromancer wasn't there... at least not there at the moment. He would arrive to find Vaid'ner and Oram with their wolf escorts carrying two children. Two. Balthazar slowed to a stop, watching with some hope another few children would come out of the house behind Oram and Vaid'ner. When he realized no one else was coming out, he thought that maybe there was a child locked up who the two hadn't been able to free. Then I'll help them. With that little hope, Balthazar surged ahead to reach the duo leaving the murder house.

Balthazar could assume the girl was the Marston daughter but he had to think a little about the boys who'd gone missing to try and figure out who the lad was. He couldn't think of anything to offer the lad but as Tilly came out with Oram, Balthazar said, "You're parents will be happy to see you." Some recognition flashed over her eyes but she said nothing. The children seemed generally non-responsive, which Oram had discovered first when he asked them his questions. They weren't crying or worried or excited, they both just seemed numb. Who knew what they'd seen? It would take better men and women than the three investigators to pry that information from them. The Elements would probably know who the children could talk to, they might even have someone with the training... but not Balthazar.

After a trill, Balthazar stirred himself from his despair about the unresponsive children and back to action. He quickly gave Nir'wei and Oram his report about the trip to the Element Hall with the parents. "The Marstons are waiting at the Element Hall and I wasn't attacked when I was alone." Balthazar said to the two as he began moving passed them into the house. "Is there anyone else inside?" But before either man could answer, Balthazar had already gone into the building.

Once Balthazar crossed through the doorway the smell rising from the open trap-door lead him to the pieces in the basement. He moved down the stairs, not thinking cautiously enough, and emerged to find nothing but the horror on the table and the chest. There were, indeed, no more children alive. Whatever had been preserving the flesh on the table and in the box had begun to fail. Balthazar could make all the theories about why later, but in the moment the only thing he saw were they eyes staring back at him. One blue and one green. The amalgamation's face was scared and stitched together to resemble a young boy but the eyes that had been used didn't match. Balthazar felt his stomach suddenly turned and he looked for something he hoped would catch his rising stomach contents but when he threw open the box in the corner and found more human pieces, Balthazar had to pivot quickly.

He grabbed a jar of dead wasps and let his lunch- and probably breakfast, go into it. Now the smell was overwhelming. He'd seen dead bodies before, heck he'd left quite a few in his wake, but never like this. Balthazar left the jar behind and came out of the building slowly and quietly. "So... no... no one... we should go..."