Wed Mar 14, 2007 11:23 am
The guard found the manor house the elven wizard had purchased in shambles.
They had always received numerous complaints from the mage's rich neighbors that strangely-colored lights flickered in the windows at nighttime, that the ground around the demesne sometimes reverberated, and sometimes two strange little pseudodragons, about the size of cats, were wont to steal pies off of sills and frighten normal household pets. They had mostly disregarded it all, had never really investigated, because the houses were spaced so widely apart, and, for the most part, the mage was quiet and kept to himself.
The line had been drawn, though, when explosions rocked the upscale neighborhood.
Half of the roof of the large three-story building was missing - purportedly because of the gigantic blast of flame that had carved it and half of the home away in an inferno. Observers noted that, more than once, they had heard the crack of thunder and lightning, and indeed every window in the house had been blown outwards by shockwaves of noise. By the time the fires had been put out (both the wizard's house and the manors next to it), an innumerable amount of books, potions, furnitures, pieces of art, and other magical trinkets had been blackened almost beyond recognition; nothing of value remained. In a few places, for minutes after the first explosion, tendrils of electricity still ran over a few patches of the manor - other parts seemed to be melted away, as if by acid, and others still simply shattered by brute force.
Most disturbing, however, were the corpses - or rather, what was left of them.
There were about eight of them (the term "about" is used because some pieces here and there were missing), charred or melted beyond recognition - most of them were nothing but stringy, black pieces of tendon clinging to the wispy remnants of bones. Broken weapons, both staves and swords, littered the place, some nothing more than stilled pools of cooling metal on the floor - curiously, among them, was the shell of an instrument, a lute. It was hard to tell what race they had been (although the remnants were roughly the size of humans or elves), what clothing or armor they had been wearing, let alone what they had looked like or who they had been.
The wizard, who had called himself Airestorm, and his companion, she who had named herself Lute, were dead - either by their own spells, the collapsing debris of the manor, or the murder by a third party.
The nobles who lived in the immediate houses have already moved out, either of the city or to other locales. The building is now in the process of being demolished. Arrest warrants have already been established for the off chance that any externally involved with the explosion are found.