Posted by: Bons
« on: February 21, 2005, 02:56:10 PM »~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The noon bell rang and became a memory before Aegisfield left the garrison, the burden to visit the Cowled Wizards in the Government district growing heavy. He indulged in one last errand enlisting little Faraji’s aid, taking the boy with him to visit Bel, the merchant.
Most men would perhaps showers their lady in flowers, but Pandor had other ideas. “We shall fill your basket with apples, Faraji. The sweetest, prettiest ones of the lot.”
“Then we’re gonna use them in target practice?” the boy asked hopefully.
“No,” Pandor explained. “Then you will deliver them to Miss Rose for me at the garrison. Afterwards, you can seek out Mandiq. He has agreed to demonstrate the bow and arrow for you if promise to mind his instructions faithfully.”
“Inspector! A blessing to meet you like this!”
It was the cleric from the day before. “Greetings... Verlaine, was it?”
The cleric nodded. “We ran across a beggar who said he found a piece of thick leather by one of the crime scenes. Bel has just identified it as elephant hide.”
“Elephant hide? If it had been that alone, I would have considered questioning the animal tamer from the circus, but with the tannin you discovered yesterday...” Pandor measured the evidence, feeling his blood quicken as the pieces fell into place. “Likely only a tanner would have both such things. The fluid is of little use to the average citizen, and I know of no one else that might have elephant hide.” He gave a triumphant nod, certain they had finally made a breakthrough. “I'll make a personal trip to the tanner's and check this out. Thank you again. Perhaps we can work together again sometime.”
Aegisfield checked Faraji’s progress, commended the boy for his assistance, and paid for the apples. The cleric had yet to leave, but mingled with her companions as they murmured in low voices.
“He’s certainly in a brighter mood than yesterday,” Verlaine observed. “Don’t you think, Jaheira?”
The other woman’s voice was doused in caution. “I'm not sure the Lieutenant should go alone. We have evidence of the culprit, but we know nothing of his ability. There may be danger we are not aware of.”
“There’s always danger we’re not aware of, Jaheira. We’re overdue for a meal, remember? A crust of bread, at least, then we can check out the tannery.”
Aegisfield watched as the group wandered in the direction of the Five Flagons, still debating among themselves. The older woman had made a good point about the potential for danger. With such gruesome murders involved, he could easily justify storming the tannery with a full battalion. On the other side of the coin, he knew Rejiek Hidesman fairly well; the tanner had supplied the garrison with a healthy amount of equipment over the years. The evidence pointed to questioning him thoroughly, not destroying his reputation out of turn.
The tanner’s shop was unlocked when he arrived, yet Rejiek was not present. “Hello? Hidesman!” he called. “It’s Aegisfield!” He heard no answer.
Pandor estimated the last time he had spoken with the tanner. It had been a full month, before the killings had started. Odd that he hadn’t considered it before, especially when Rejiek had made a habit of calling on the garrison every tenday to inquire about new orders. Such was the way of the trade, dependent on a consistent flow of business.
He walked among the shelves, examining the stock on display. Wiping one hand over the shoulder of a cuirass, he found his fingers caked with dust - another peculiar occurrence. Rejiek had always taken meticulous care of his goods, oiling older pieces to keep them in prime condition for sale. The shop felt as if the proprietor had abandoned it.
The Lieutenant continued toward the stairwell, pausing with one hand on the rail. Hidesman could have been on the level below, too far away to hear his earlier call. Pandor looked down the stairs, feeling something ominous about the dim landing beyond. He should shout the tanner’s name, call to Rejiek as a harmless acquaintance seeking information might, but some instinct stilled his tongue.
He began a cautious descent, moving with quiet deliberation so that his approach would remain as silent as possible. He could hear his own breathing, the steady drum of his heartbeat amplified by his headgear. Suddenly his helmet made him feel closed in, cutting off his vision, so he ripped it off, clasping it under his left arm, while he rested his favored hand on the hilt of his weapon.
Halfway down, he began to pick out the smell, an odor of decay that he recognized. The morgue back at the garrison carried the scent, despite a thorough scrubbing after each body was taken for burial. It was as if the sour stench of rotting flesh took root in the stones, keeping a record of the lives taken out of sequence as surely as his logbook.
There was death here. Pandor knew it, heard the toll of warning in the back of his mind that he should turn around. He should flee to the garrison and return with a heavily armed file of soldiers. Pandor reasoned, planned and nearly gave in, but he had reached the bottom of the stairs. He was at a blind corner and had no idea what could be waiting around the turn beyond the ripening foul smell. His choices were limited: he could slowly retreat the way he had come, or round the bend, his sword at the ready.
The merciless silence made up his mind. The stench of the tannery harkened too strongly of the garrison morgue. It was a smell of old crimes and forsaken victims, of lonely endings and killers long gone. This stubborn idea pushed at him, burrowed and festered.
Aegisfield turned the corner.
The scene was a shock at first glance. Whatever he had imagined, it couldn’t sink to the level of carnage that had infested the tannery. He closed his eyes, risking one heavy pause to test his vision. When he opened his eyes again, it was all still there. Real.
The wooden floor that he could see was stained a deep rust, blood soaked into the boards like watered paint. The walls were bloodstained as well, but selectively: smeared handprints and violent splashes of crimson. The blood alone made a distasteful panorama, bit it did not begin to match the bodies.
They littered the floor, one after another, each stripped of its casing. Unlike the victims he’d encountered from the streets, these pour souls had been scalped, their very faces carved apart. He could not recognize them.
The state of decay varied from body to body, even from a distance. Some were bloated from the buildup of gases as the flesh began to break down. Others lay like limp dolls of desiccated tissue stretched between bones. One body, though, looked freshly skinned, giving Aegisfield another faint tremor of foreboding that questioned if he was really alone. He saw another flight of stairs leading downward, debated momentarily, and resolved to not venture down them without reinforcements.
The Lieutenant gave the newest victim a second look, calculating how long it might have been since the victim’s death. A recent killing, for certain, but within the past eve?
It was the corpse closest to Pandor, just a few steps to his left. He approached with steady care, weighing the condition of the victim as his view improved. The skinned flesh had an unusually moist appearance, brimming with a deep, red sheen. The floor was stained underneath the body. Blood had been spilled here, but it had long since dried. The Lieutenant recalled the flooded cobblestones surrounding Nadir - the blood would have remained pooled there yet had it not been washed into the sewers with buckets of water.
Aside from the shortage of newly spilt blood, a peculiar feature of this victim’s hands captured Pandor’s attention. The nails were long and curved, with a blackish tint to them. He knew that hair and nails sometimes appeared to grow even after death, as the skin and flesh began to dry out and pull away from the root, but this instance bore a faint resemblance to talons.
Pandor glanced at one of the neighboring corpses, comparing its condition. Intrigued anew, the Lieutenant set aside his helmet and gingerly lifted one of the body’s hands for a detailed study. He scraped the nail along the reinforcements of his gauntlet, jumping slightly as the sheath snapped. It deposited a dust of fibers on his glove, coupled with a dark, oily substance. Pandor checked it for a scent, but detected nothing.
He turned his gaze back to the broken nail. It looked to have a hollow cavity with a residue of the same oily substance. He studied it for a long pause, wondering if he could get a better sample for the sake of testing.
Pandor unsheathed a small dagger from his boot, turning the victim’s hand palm side up so that the trimming would be easier from his vantage point. Delicately, he began to slice through a second nail, trying to not spill any of the mysterious fluid. The wrist, a stringy amalgamation of sticky tubing and bones lay on the periphery of his focus.
Out of the corner of his eye, he noticed the pulse.
Strangely, Aegisfield did not freeze instantly, he did not leap to his feet and attack, and he did not drop the hand out of shock. He continued to work with his dagger, his eyes wide as he caught onto the rhythm of the vein pounding slowly, just beyond his grip, and accepted that it, too, was real.
He did not blink. He did not look away from the corpse, but, slowly, torpidly, allowed his gaze to drift toward the victim’s face.
Its eyes were open. White. The mouth opened next, the pulpy crevice spreading unnaturally as it screamed.
Aegisfield shouted a curse as the creature leapt at him. He sank his dagger into its back, and the fiend shrieked in pain. It reacted spasmodically, gouging its claws down Pandor’s face, and he felt a burning, stinging as they drew his blood.
He spun with his full force, throwing the creature off of him as he unsheathed his sword. The Lieutenant assumed a defensive stance, ready for the next attack, but the creature paused, watching him in macabre glee.
“You should not have come here,” it hissed, its gurgling voice faintly resembling that of Rejiek Hidesman. “You cannot stop my work.”
Aegisfield realized too late that the creature was toying with him, a cat with its mouse. He should have taken the attack the moment his sword was free to cleave the fiend in two. He should have...
He swayed, his arms growing too numb to support the weight of his weapon. The blade clattered to the floor, his hands dangling uselessly at his sides.
“No!” Pandor tried to shout the word, but his throat produced nothing save a faint wheeze.
The Lieutenant collapsed onto his side, twitching as he struggled to crawl, to move away.
“Yes, you cannot stop my work,” the creature said, casually trailing bloody footprints to the workbench, “but you can do me a service.” It held up a short, curved blade, a tool meant to cleanly peel the hide from an animal.
The creature rolled Aegisfield onto his back. The Lieutenant was now no more than a wide-eyed puppet, aware but paralyzed, as the fiend began to unfasten his armor, baring his torso to its carnal scrutiny.
The creature shivered feverishly as it raised the knife. “Let us see what you have for me!“
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The pounding on his door came before dawn. Rose woke with a start, disoriented as she scanned the still-foreign room.
The mattress shifted, and Rose looked down at the dozing Faraji, still clutching a half-eaten apple to his chest like other children would hold a stuffed bear. She gently eased the fruit from his grip as the pounding resumed.
Rose scrambled off of the bed, adjusting her gown with one hand as she padded to the door. “I wanted you here,” she muttered groggily under her breath. “Pandor, Pandor, it was inevitable someone would raise a fuss. Confrontation is so much more difficult alone.”
She opened the door. In a glance, Rose saw an ugly picture painted by the guard’s stark eyes. “Mandiq! What is it? What happened?”
“The Lieutenant... They found the Lieutenant. He’s dead!”
Rose faltered, the half-eaten apple tumbling from her grip to thump crisply on the floor. “Where is he?”
She moved to brush past the soldier, but Mandiq blocked her path. “You cannot see him.”
“I have to! You don’t expect me to just believe...” She shook her head, protesting the inescapable thought. “Who found the body?”
“A group of adventurers: Verlaine of Candlekeep, Kelsey Coltrane of the Deepwash, Minsc, a warrior from Rasheman, and a druid named Jaheira. She wouldn’t give her origins, only said that we had more important tasks at hand than geography lessons.” The soldier shifted uncomfortably at the recollection. “Oh, and there was a bard. Ke...” Mandiq returned to grasping for names. “Ke-something.”
“Keto. That would be Keto,” Rose supplied, her voice breaking. “She... she once told me... the most incredible story.”
Rose gave Mandiq a plaintive look. “Please. Can I see him?”
The soldier appeared distraught. “It’s a terrible thing, my lady.”
“I know. I know,” she said, wiping at her eyes. “Let’s go. I’m ready.”
FIN
The noon bell rang and became a memory before Aegisfield left the garrison, the burden to visit the Cowled Wizards in the Government district growing heavy. He indulged in one last errand enlisting little Faraji’s aid, taking the boy with him to visit Bel, the merchant.
Most men would perhaps showers their lady in flowers, but Pandor had other ideas. “We shall fill your basket with apples, Faraji. The sweetest, prettiest ones of the lot.”
“Then we’re gonna use them in target practice?” the boy asked hopefully.
“No,” Pandor explained. “Then you will deliver them to Miss Rose for me at the garrison. Afterwards, you can seek out Mandiq. He has agreed to demonstrate the bow and arrow for you if promise to mind his instructions faithfully.”
“Inspector! A blessing to meet you like this!”
It was the cleric from the day before. “Greetings... Verlaine, was it?”
The cleric nodded. “We ran across a beggar who said he found a piece of thick leather by one of the crime scenes. Bel has just identified it as elephant hide.”
“Elephant hide? If it had been that alone, I would have considered questioning the animal tamer from the circus, but with the tannin you discovered yesterday...” Pandor measured the evidence, feeling his blood quicken as the pieces fell into place. “Likely only a tanner would have both such things. The fluid is of little use to the average citizen, and I know of no one else that might have elephant hide.” He gave a triumphant nod, certain they had finally made a breakthrough. “I'll make a personal trip to the tanner's and check this out. Thank you again. Perhaps we can work together again sometime.”
Aegisfield checked Faraji’s progress, commended the boy for his assistance, and paid for the apples. The cleric had yet to leave, but mingled with her companions as they murmured in low voices.
“He’s certainly in a brighter mood than yesterday,” Verlaine observed. “Don’t you think, Jaheira?”
The other woman’s voice was doused in caution. “I'm not sure the Lieutenant should go alone. We have evidence of the culprit, but we know nothing of his ability. There may be danger we are not aware of.”
“There’s always danger we’re not aware of, Jaheira. We’re overdue for a meal, remember? A crust of bread, at least, then we can check out the tannery.”
Aegisfield watched as the group wandered in the direction of the Five Flagons, still debating among themselves. The older woman had made a good point about the potential for danger. With such gruesome murders involved, he could easily justify storming the tannery with a full battalion. On the other side of the coin, he knew Rejiek Hidesman fairly well; the tanner had supplied the garrison with a healthy amount of equipment over the years. The evidence pointed to questioning him thoroughly, not destroying his reputation out of turn.
The tanner’s shop was unlocked when he arrived, yet Rejiek was not present. “Hello? Hidesman!” he called. “It’s Aegisfield!” He heard no answer.
Pandor estimated the last time he had spoken with the tanner. It had been a full month, before the killings had started. Odd that he hadn’t considered it before, especially when Rejiek had made a habit of calling on the garrison every tenday to inquire about new orders. Such was the way of the trade, dependent on a consistent flow of business.
He walked among the shelves, examining the stock on display. Wiping one hand over the shoulder of a cuirass, he found his fingers caked with dust - another peculiar occurrence. Rejiek had always taken meticulous care of his goods, oiling older pieces to keep them in prime condition for sale. The shop felt as if the proprietor had abandoned it.
The Lieutenant continued toward the stairwell, pausing with one hand on the rail. Hidesman could have been on the level below, too far away to hear his earlier call. Pandor looked down the stairs, feeling something ominous about the dim landing beyond. He should shout the tanner’s name, call to Rejiek as a harmless acquaintance seeking information might, but some instinct stilled his tongue.
He began a cautious descent, moving with quiet deliberation so that his approach would remain as silent as possible. He could hear his own breathing, the steady drum of his heartbeat amplified by his headgear. Suddenly his helmet made him feel closed in, cutting off his vision, so he ripped it off, clasping it under his left arm, while he rested his favored hand on the hilt of his weapon.
Halfway down, he began to pick out the smell, an odor of decay that he recognized. The morgue back at the garrison carried the scent, despite a thorough scrubbing after each body was taken for burial. It was as if the sour stench of rotting flesh took root in the stones, keeping a record of the lives taken out of sequence as surely as his logbook.
There was death here. Pandor knew it, heard the toll of warning in the back of his mind that he should turn around. He should flee to the garrison and return with a heavily armed file of soldiers. Pandor reasoned, planned and nearly gave in, but he had reached the bottom of the stairs. He was at a blind corner and had no idea what could be waiting around the turn beyond the ripening foul smell. His choices were limited: he could slowly retreat the way he had come, or round the bend, his sword at the ready.
The merciless silence made up his mind. The stench of the tannery harkened too strongly of the garrison morgue. It was a smell of old crimes and forsaken victims, of lonely endings and killers long gone. This stubborn idea pushed at him, burrowed and festered.
Aegisfield turned the corner.
The scene was a shock at first glance. Whatever he had imagined, it couldn’t sink to the level of carnage that had infested the tannery. He closed his eyes, risking one heavy pause to test his vision. When he opened his eyes again, it was all still there. Real.
The wooden floor that he could see was stained a deep rust, blood soaked into the boards like watered paint. The walls were bloodstained as well, but selectively: smeared handprints and violent splashes of crimson. The blood alone made a distasteful panorama, bit it did not begin to match the bodies.
They littered the floor, one after another, each stripped of its casing. Unlike the victims he’d encountered from the streets, these pour souls had been scalped, their very faces carved apart. He could not recognize them.
The state of decay varied from body to body, even from a distance. Some were bloated from the buildup of gases as the flesh began to break down. Others lay like limp dolls of desiccated tissue stretched between bones. One body, though, looked freshly skinned, giving Aegisfield another faint tremor of foreboding that questioned if he was really alone. He saw another flight of stairs leading downward, debated momentarily, and resolved to not venture down them without reinforcements.
The Lieutenant gave the newest victim a second look, calculating how long it might have been since the victim’s death. A recent killing, for certain, but within the past eve?
It was the corpse closest to Pandor, just a few steps to his left. He approached with steady care, weighing the condition of the victim as his view improved. The skinned flesh had an unusually moist appearance, brimming with a deep, red sheen. The floor was stained underneath the body. Blood had been spilled here, but it had long since dried. The Lieutenant recalled the flooded cobblestones surrounding Nadir - the blood would have remained pooled there yet had it not been washed into the sewers with buckets of water.
Aside from the shortage of newly spilt blood, a peculiar feature of this victim’s hands captured Pandor’s attention. The nails were long and curved, with a blackish tint to them. He knew that hair and nails sometimes appeared to grow even after death, as the skin and flesh began to dry out and pull away from the root, but this instance bore a faint resemblance to talons.
Pandor glanced at one of the neighboring corpses, comparing its condition. Intrigued anew, the Lieutenant set aside his helmet and gingerly lifted one of the body’s hands for a detailed study. He scraped the nail along the reinforcements of his gauntlet, jumping slightly as the sheath snapped. It deposited a dust of fibers on his glove, coupled with a dark, oily substance. Pandor checked it for a scent, but detected nothing.
He turned his gaze back to the broken nail. It looked to have a hollow cavity with a residue of the same oily substance. He studied it for a long pause, wondering if he could get a better sample for the sake of testing.
Pandor unsheathed a small dagger from his boot, turning the victim’s hand palm side up so that the trimming would be easier from his vantage point. Delicately, he began to slice through a second nail, trying to not spill any of the mysterious fluid. The wrist, a stringy amalgamation of sticky tubing and bones lay on the periphery of his focus.
Out of the corner of his eye, he noticed the pulse.
Strangely, Aegisfield did not freeze instantly, he did not leap to his feet and attack, and he did not drop the hand out of shock. He continued to work with his dagger, his eyes wide as he caught onto the rhythm of the vein pounding slowly, just beyond his grip, and accepted that it, too, was real.
He did not blink. He did not look away from the corpse, but, slowly, torpidly, allowed his gaze to drift toward the victim’s face.
Its eyes were open. White. The mouth opened next, the pulpy crevice spreading unnaturally as it screamed.
Aegisfield shouted a curse as the creature leapt at him. He sank his dagger into its back, and the fiend shrieked in pain. It reacted spasmodically, gouging its claws down Pandor’s face, and he felt a burning, stinging as they drew his blood.
He spun with his full force, throwing the creature off of him as he unsheathed his sword. The Lieutenant assumed a defensive stance, ready for the next attack, but the creature paused, watching him in macabre glee.
“You should not have come here,” it hissed, its gurgling voice faintly resembling that of Rejiek Hidesman. “You cannot stop my work.”
Aegisfield realized too late that the creature was toying with him, a cat with its mouse. He should have taken the attack the moment his sword was free to cleave the fiend in two. He should have...
He swayed, his arms growing too numb to support the weight of his weapon. The blade clattered to the floor, his hands dangling uselessly at his sides.
“No!” Pandor tried to shout the word, but his throat produced nothing save a faint wheeze.
The Lieutenant collapsed onto his side, twitching as he struggled to crawl, to move away.
“Yes, you cannot stop my work,” the creature said, casually trailing bloody footprints to the workbench, “but you can do me a service.” It held up a short, curved blade, a tool meant to cleanly peel the hide from an animal.
The creature rolled Aegisfield onto his back. The Lieutenant was now no more than a wide-eyed puppet, aware but paralyzed, as the fiend began to unfasten his armor, baring his torso to its carnal scrutiny.
The creature shivered feverishly as it raised the knife. “Let us see what you have for me!“
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The pounding on his door came before dawn. Rose woke with a start, disoriented as she scanned the still-foreign room.
The mattress shifted, and Rose looked down at the dozing Faraji, still clutching a half-eaten apple to his chest like other children would hold a stuffed bear. She gently eased the fruit from his grip as the pounding resumed.
Rose scrambled off of the bed, adjusting her gown with one hand as she padded to the door. “I wanted you here,” she muttered groggily under her breath. “Pandor, Pandor, it was inevitable someone would raise a fuss. Confrontation is so much more difficult alone.”
She opened the door. In a glance, Rose saw an ugly picture painted by the guard’s stark eyes. “Mandiq! What is it? What happened?”
“The Lieutenant... They found the Lieutenant. He’s dead!”
Rose faltered, the half-eaten apple tumbling from her grip to thump crisply on the floor. “Where is he?”
She moved to brush past the soldier, but Mandiq blocked her path. “You cannot see him.”
“I have to! You don’t expect me to just believe...” She shook her head, protesting the inescapable thought. “Who found the body?”
“A group of adventurers: Verlaine of Candlekeep, Kelsey Coltrane of the Deepwash, Minsc, a warrior from Rasheman, and a druid named Jaheira. She wouldn’t give her origins, only said that we had more important tasks at hand than geography lessons.” The soldier shifted uncomfortably at the recollection. “Oh, and there was a bard. Ke...” Mandiq returned to grasping for names. “Ke-something.”
“Keto. That would be Keto,” Rose supplied, her voice breaking. “She... she once told me... the most incredible story.”
Rose gave Mandiq a plaintive look. “Please. Can I see him?”
The soldier appeared distraught. “It’s a terrible thing, my lady.”
“I know. I know,” she said, wiping at her eyes. “Let’s go. I’m ready.”
FIN