< The Dust Bunny | Red Ice Logs | Kinqueduran's Prelude >
<ST`> It had been a relaxing few weeks in Crystal, nearly three months. The ancient city had yielded a number of new stories and tales of the past, even a few hints pointing toward greater knowledge of the Primordial Age. Your correspondences with Xansha Niestro had been few and far between, but the most recent spoke of your new knowledge with interest. She had invited you to return home, saying she had something important to share.
<ST`> For three days you travel with a group of hired workers, their contracts finished and heading home with their purses fattened by their payment. Their village, Chizara, seems familiar as they describe it around the fire. One of them mentions it's a mere few days southeast of the Gelidi lands, on the border with the Algoran.
<ST`> You say your farewells and wish them luck returning home. One of the workers offers you some of the extra food, they'd bought supplies for another two men who had decided to renew their contracts at the last minute. He's the youngest of the group, probably not even old enough to shave daily. After departing the workers, you make your way to Xansha's citadel outside the Gelidi villages with some haste.
Anstice Cyzarine The usual motions come easily, stabling the horse, taking off the shoes at the entrance, and the like.
<ST`> Xansha's favorite mount, a husky and dark-furred snow llama, is no where to be seen. Normally the snow llama would whuffle greetings down your neck and chest, inspecting you for any tidbits of food or small insects. Xansha is likely out on some errand. There will be some sort of message inside the great stone house.
Anstice Cyzarine Of course. It's not like Niestro doesn't have her own important tasks.
<ST`> The foyer is deserted, typical when Xansha is out doing her various errands and tasks, as is the main guest hall. Oddly, the vast fireplace holds only ancient ashes. Days old at least. Could she have been gone so long? Such is not unheard of, but unusual. Further, no message makes itself known as you walk into the hall.
Anstice Cyzarine After he gets warmed back up, he'll probably check elsewhere, just in case the message was rushed and is in a guest bedroom or something.
<ST`> There is not even time for the frost to melt from Anstice's hair before he becomes aware something is seriously amiss. Normally, vermin are barred from Xansha's home by wardings and rituals of minor magic, but when something furry brushes against his leg and he looks down, a fat rat peers back at him for a moment. Then it scurries away, back the way it back. Back up to the stairwell that leads to the second story of the house.
Anstice Cyzarine thinks to himself, that's something new and very much unsettling.
<ST`> As Anstice rounds the corner in the stairwell, he discovers the answer to all his questions. A short, dark haired woman lays on the stairs, sprawled in a long-dried pool of blood. Little footprints spread out all about her and her fingers and exposed flesh are tattered and gnawed, eaten away for days by the rats. The stench is overpowering. The knife of blue-grey feathersteel in the back of Xansha's neck is the only wound not inflicted by rats, but a fatal one.
<ST`> In the large stone house, linen blankets and furs are easy to find. The knife is easily enough secured and, with some difficulty regarding the stench and the mess the vermin have made of Xansha's softer parts, the body is wrapped and moved. Xansha's distaste for incense and other such "smelly burnings and smokes" makes it impossible to clear the air any faster then simple wind and time allow for. Some of her scant supply of perfume may hasten the process, but the box she kept her jewels and finer items in has gone missing. A broken plate, snapped in half, is cluted in one of Xansha's hands. The other half is shattered, but the parts don't make up the entire half. Both the half in the corpse's hand and the bits on the floor bear traces of a blackish blood that is not Xansha's. Indeed, it seems to have...melted the porceline.
<ST`> There is no sign of the missing fragments of the plate, nor half the contents of Xansha's study. Books and scrolls have been shredded and scattered around to make reconstructing them almost impossible. Other texts seem to be missing entirly, except for a page here or there. Xansha's journal remains, on the desk, open. And covered in a massive corrosive burn, edged with blackened ooze.
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