Chinese New Year Special: A Visitor Awaits
Captain Raini liked field operations. She was always a tried and true follower of gritty work– the work that often puts her directly at the scene. She was never an office woman or a house cat, and she always needed a few hours of field work just so she could should hold her feet to the fire. Fortune awaits itself to the bold and brave, she often told herself in the mirror. But on this particular day, there was nothing brave about surveying dead children and their grief-stricken parents. The horror of seeing a visitor and the immediate aftermath that follows was always a terrifying experience.
Parents huddled themselves to open body bags in the dead musky air of the Windfire district. Still air defied any semblance of a sound beyond continued cries from parents. The visitors sought two families tonight, and they visited them two times throughout the night. Raini broke the silence, "How did this happen? You had reports of visitor incursion in the early hours of the night, and stolen belongings sent an alarm in my sector." Her subordinate, a lanky but upright man in patched leather armour, replied solemly, "We sent guards to record their lost belongings, but we didn't think the visitors would err to visit the same household in the same night."
She sighed at his lackluster response. Her steel boots felt sticky on the ground, blood has begun to dry on her boots. The blood of innocents. Every step felt like stepping on a landmine of chains. "A philosopher is dispatched by court to sooth the parents' grief," Her subordinate continued before Raini interjected immediately, "Block him from entering. What we have here is worse than a crime scene and I want no interference from rhetoriticians and soothsayers. Not a single one of you will see an ounce of sleep until I have this case properly buried and the parents adequately avenged. Victims are entitled to feel what they feel without someone breathing a word on their ear."
She knew that finding the actual visitors who did the deed is now impossible, but she ought to do better. She sent words to rouse all of her available knights under her command to form three person squads to root and find creeping visitors anywhere in the district. She'd have wanted the parents to involve themselves in this, but better they see Visitor corpses by tomorrow's end at her barracks.
In the meantime, she opened a torn door on the second floor of the victims' house. No forced entry and it looked like the door was accustomed to being detached from its joints. Inhabitants within Windfire never saw luxury or any kind of wealth. It was strictly a game of survival. A lifestyle where crumbs of bread were sought after through begging and labouring. A surprising finding among the scholars of the queendom was the Visitors' tendency to thrive off desperation, wealth and sin, and yet, they almost always choose to target helpless victims than the affluent ones in the capital. It's almost as though that they are "alive and actively targeting the helpless," Raini exclaimed after examining a necklace with an empty socket. She called after a seargent outside the house to order a district-wide directive to treat every visitor as a being borne out of human freewill, and to assume the worse if another has arrived in the not too distant future. Blood splattered everywhere in these rooms. Torn fingernails, a blunt toothpick and a broom remained stationary on each corner of the room. A pattern? Or was this simply an uncipherable message that fortold the fabled return of Lord Ghael?
She struck three oil lanterns on each corner, casting a deep glow in the room. In the distant window of the room, She saw three of her knights working their way on top of the roof opposite the victims' house. They looked to be scouting for movements. But their swords are drawn and their shields at their breasts. Just as she opened her mouth to say "What is going on?" A screech happened in the distance, a sharp and undulating cry of pain and terror, like a monster has awaken from its slumber. Her oil lamps fluffed out and the room basked in instant DARKNESS. Her rooftop knights descended and disappeared into the waiting night.