When it rains...

[Suede]

The demon which bound to Aeryn had been subdued, the murderer taken to his final end by three of Myrken's finest. Thus safety and rest should return to the ever burdened province. Such conveniences rarely come to pass.

Come the dawn slaughter will have been found within the streets once again, a half dozen bodies of Myrken citizens piled into a heap at the mouth of an alley by the market place. They are stacked haphazardly, and blood stains each in the pile. Three men and three women of various stock and class from the town that bear nothing obvious in common beyond the lack of life in their eyes.

Each has been mutilated in some fashion. One has no eyes, another has had its chest torn open and the organs within are gone. One has had an entire leg cleanly cut from the body, and one has lost its hands in a similar fashion. There is no pool of red beneath them, whatever had taken them had done so elsewhere, and they'd long since stopped bleeding. Lastly, the walls to either side of the building had been marked with strange runes vaguely reminiscent of something horribly eldritch.

[channe]

Agnieszka Kaczmarek remembers only bits and snatches of her drunken conversation with Renea the other night. Her memories of the talk are enough to ensure her complete embarrassment, and enough to remind her of the terrible duty given to her by Constantine Kostroma that night in the Wailing Tower, high above glowing, bright Razasan and the crashing waves of the ocean. Maybe Renea now understands, just a little, what's going on behind Agnieszka's troubled eyes as she looks at the bloody remains of what used to be living, laughing beings.

She tries to convince herself that such a knowledge is not a bad thing.

"Summon Aleksei River," she says to one of the constables that had alerted her to the scene. If she can even trust the man any longer. He'd been the only person who knew how to hold back this darkness, and now he slogged through the darkness on her own. "... and get Renea. And Al'Nerun, if he'll come."

She looks back down at the dead people, her stomach churning. And it's all my fault, she thinks. All my goddamned fault.

[Caile]

Never to be a damned moment of rest. She had hoped that with Aeryn no longer pacing the world that they had perhaps earned a respite. She wasn't greedy, she'd even settle for a mere two days, but none of that was, apparently, to be. A pile of bodies in the middle of the town? And not one member of the constabulary seemed to have noticed the perpetrator? Unacceptable, and if it happened again Renea would petition for martial law. Despite her usual good humor of late the look on her face now as she approached the scene was dour, angry even. Someone was going to be held responsible for this, for allowing this to happen without witness.

"Is this more of the same? Or some new horror come to join the picnic?" She addressed her comments to Agnieszka as she approached, marshal badge shining brightly on the breast of her silken gree blouse over her folded arms. "Who the hell was responsible for this section of town last night? I want them front and center explaining how they let this happen." She was all drill sargeant right now, her voice sharp and clipped, loud enough to carry across two squares and where moments before her arms were crossed now one hand rested on the longsword she wore strapped to her hip and the other rested in a fist on her waist. She looks around to see what steps had been taken to cordone off the area, if any at all, to see if anyone was keeping the civilians back away from the gruesome discovery, to see if anyone was questioning those that lived and worked nearby. You know, cop things. She hadn't much experience with the constabularly yet and the way this scene was handled would form her opinion for good or ill.

[BetaFlame]

Aleksei looks.. tired. His arm in still in a sling, but the bruising is starting to fade down his neck. He still moves stiffly. He shoulders his way through the crowd, murmuring excuse mes to the offended as he makes is way on to the scene. Wordless he brushes past Renea and Agnie, going straight to examine the runes. A small notebook is produced from his cloak, and a stick of charcoal, and starts drawing the runes, one to a page, in the book to study.

"Any idea how they were killed? Or if the mutilation was done while they were alive?" Clinical. He's tired, and overly stressed, but he still does his job. He's reached a sense of detachment, separating himself from all the chaos and violence of it. He needs time within his own head to sort out what is going on, and he isn't getting it. Either all the forces of the lower planes were aligning against him, or he was just incredibly unlucky.

[Suede]

If Aleksei's knowledge of the darker magics and denizens of the planes were strong enough outside the eight he'd be able to tell quickly that the runes had nothing to do with them. They looked like they had little to do with any one particular nasty whispered about in dark tales. It appeared as if someone had taken runes at random from various sources and mashed them together into a senseless string of ramblings.

The bodies themselves showed no signs of struggle, and any damage done to them would appear to have been caused after death with the exception of the points of dismemberment. The victims were clearly alive when they were mutilated, they just hadn't chosen to do anything about it.