Chapter 29
Officials
Erik, Isaac, Clara, Elith, Dusty's room
They all turned to face the door and looked between each other for a moment, Dusty eventually moved and opened the door. Behind the door was a rather tall man wearing heavy armour with a greatsword strapped to his back. He had brown eyes and short greying hair, and a few faded scars were on his face. Dusty immediately stepped back a bit and kept his hand near his shields, the hunters-in-training took similar preparations.
"Hold, I'm not any harm to you outsiders." The man said. "The names Char, I'm captain of the guard here in Carvail and a member of the city's council."
"Sorry about the welcome sir, can never be too careful." Dusty said.
"It's no issue, I have enough scars to understand the need for caution." Char said.
"So, I was informed you were all on an investigation here and I wanted to know what it was so I could provide assistance."
"Great, we do have a few questions that we need help answering." Elith said.
"Do you know where a man by the name of Pewter is?" Isaac asked.
"Old Pewter?" Char asked. "He was a member of the guard, haven't seen him as of late."
"Where do you think he may be." Dusty asked.
"He lived outside of town, I fear his overconfidence has betrayed him in the form of Grimm." Char said. "I can lead you to his place, maybe you Hunters will have a good chance of reaching his house."
"Why would it be hard?" Erik asked.
"I said he was overconfident not stupid, he didn't just live in a log house with an open door." Char joked. "His house is surrounded by hidden traps of his own make, and he was very good at making traps."
Erik, Pewter's household
When Char had said that Pewter lived outside town, I thought he meant a good quarter mile. What outside of town meant to this guy was two and a half miles out on the road and another half mile down another path. Why did Char have to be so unnerved about riding Clara's Ursa, it beat walking to ride that thing. Pewter was either a loner to a flaw or some grade A badass to have the gall to be out this far alone. And Char was not wrong about the traps being hidden, I could only spot one or two defensive measures if I looked closely.
"Now I didn't know Pewter too well, so I'll preface that I have no idea where to start looking for the safe path." Char said.
"Don't worry, between me and Elith we can probably spot and disarm a path." Isaac said. We all split up to circle the house to check for any signs of life in the house, I went around the back. What I saw there did not bode well for our friend Pewter, not well at all. At the back I saw a beeline of various triggered traps leading up to a broken hole in the side of the house. Looks like Grimm had sacrificed a few of themselves in order to reach the house, a surprisingly smart move on their part.
"Hey guys, I think I found the easy way in." I called.
"What is it?" Isaac said as he ran up to me. "Oh dear."
Clara, Pewter's household
We held a match of rock, paper, scissors to determine which of us would walk up the path first. I lost and begrudgingly trudged up to the path, I got about halfway up before I stepped on some dirt that made a neat little clicking noise, I looked up to see a log swinging quickly down at me. I froze up because I didn't want to dodge into another trap trigger, and my aura could tank this shot so I wasn't too concerned.
"Well shi-" I muttered before the log slammed into my chest and sent me flying backwards.
"You ok Clara?" Dusty called.
"Fine as sand." I called back, I pulled myself up and made it the rest of the way with no issue. The others followed suit and we all entered together, the sight was not pretty. In the center of the room was the corpse of Pewter with a sword in his hand. Pewter did not seem to have died from Grimm though, the sword in his hands was also being gripped by his chest.
"Oh, this is, is not what I expected." I heard Char say, Elith was the only one not frozen in shock. Elith quickly went about the business of photographing the contents of the room, unfazed by what was in here..
"Why would he have killed himself?" Char asked. "Looks to me like he won the fight." Gesturing at how Pewter only had a spare few nicks on him from the fight.
"That's what I hope to find out." Dusty said.
While Elith documented the room I trailed behind her and searched around, specifically for the signal booster. Eventually I found it, pieces of it. What I'd initially marked off as being scrap I realised was all the pieces for a signal boost jury rigged together, or at least it had been. It now had three large gashes in it, rendering it unusable.
"Found the signal boost." I called, Isaac came over and investigated it.
"Looks like it was hardly holding together before it was hit, but why was it hit in the first place?" Isaac said.
"Probably a stray Grimm slash." I pitched in.
"Yeah, I can understand one stray attack hitting this." Elith said as she came up behind us. "But I count three separate strikes."
"It's odd." Isaac concluded. "Anyone else find anything?"
"Just some books and broken furniture." Dusty said.
"What I'm wondering is why the Grimm attacked in the first place." Char said. "Pewter never struck me as the type to draw in Grimm, he was pretty chipper for a loner."
"Seeing as he seems to have killed himself, I think you may have to rethink what you know about Pewter."
Elith, road to Carvail
We'd searched around Pewter house for a good hour, but it was to no avail. Just some scratched up furniture, books, and a diary that had nothing relevant to the investigation in it. Even Pewters corpse had been useless, a few non lethal Grimm slashes and the obvious wound from his own sword were evident on his body. I was starting to think this was all nothing but a rash of particularly bad Grimm attacks. Despite that I couldn't help but feel that there was something else happening, Pewters message wasn't about Grimm attacks. We hadn't gotten all of the message, but what we did have didn't say that much about the Grimm. He'd said something about finding something on one of the bodies, and he'd also said that the concerning part of all this wasn't immediately obvious. I groaned, I'd helped my sleuthing teacher solve a convoluted murder of some rich twat in Atlas involving hired assassins and business rivalries, and that case was easier than this.
"You holding up Elith?" Isaac asked.
"I'm doing fine, this case is just getting more confusing." Elith said. "Now we have to figure out why Grimm attacks are increasing, what Pewter found on one of the bodies, why Pewter killed himself, and why it made him feel unsafe."
"Elith breath, if you get more worked up over this you're going to have a heart attack." Isaac said. "Try to focus on something else for a second." I took a deep breath, but I still couldn't stop focusing on the questions buzzing in my head. I tried to fixate on some other question that someone here could answer, it took a moment before I finally thought of something.
"Hey Char, why do these paths take such a long detour around the mountains?" I asked. "Wouldn't it be more efficient to have made the roads closer to them if not through them?"
"You would not want to be anywhere near those mountains." Char said simply. "It's a death trap up there, lots of Grimm."
"Why haven't hunters come and cleared it out yet?" I asked.
"We have, and they're either dead or taking their sweet time clearing it." Char said. "We stopped trying after we lost a whole team of hunters to that mountain, so we eventually decided to go around it instead." At least I was able to answer one of my questions, albeit with an unpleasant answer.
Isaac, Carvail main
We travelled without incident until we finally reached the walls of Carvail main, Clara's Ursa sitting nearby with two guards watching it closely. The gate opened for us and we started moving for the inn before Char stopped us.
"Hold on, I think we'd better speak with the council about this." Char said.
"What is the council?" I asked. "You didn't really explain that earlier."
"The leaders of our towns, three humans and three Faunus that are in charge of managing the day to day operations." Char explained. "As I said before, I fill one of these positions." By the time we'd finished discussing this we'd arrived at the largest building in the town, he opened the doors and we arrived in a mostly empty waiting room with three doors. He led us through the center door into a simple room adorned with a long table and six chairs. Four of these chairs were occupied and the two humans and two Faunus that occupied them looked up from their conversations to look at us. One of the humans wore green robes and the Spider eyed Faunus next to him wore matching robes, the other human and Deer horned Faunus had a similar situation with yellow robes,
"Hey, where's Coal?" Char asked, pointing at one of the empty seats.
"He went to get food." The deer Faunus said. "Who are these people with you?"
"These are the hunters that have been asking around about Pewter and CCTS signals." Char said.
"I guessed as much, seeing as the Grimm tamer is with them." The spider Faunus said.
"You mean me?" Clara said.
"No, they mean the other person who has a white Beowolf and an Ursa under her control." Elith said.
"We heard reports about a cat Faunus and her,,,, pets." The yellow robed human said.
"Moving on from that, tell us what your investigation has brought forth so far." The green robed human said.
"We found that Pewter killed himself after a Grimm attack and the signal booster he built was destroyed in the midst of the attack." Char explained. "I don't know what they know past that."
"And we aren't at liberty to say, I want to wait until I have a backed theory before I make a statement." Dusty said.
"Seems like a simple case of Grimm attacks." The spider Faunus said.
"I have a hunch to the contrary, but I won't deny that yours does seem more likely." Dusty said. "But we're going to verify whether that is what is going on before we leave town." With that we left the courtroom, waving goodbye to Char.
Elith, inn
I sat down on my bed, I'd been trying to fall asleep for a few hours now and it still wasn't happening. This whole case and was occupying to much of my bought process, I get to worked up over mysteries. I flopped back down and closed my eyes, finally weariness seemed to outweigh my stress and I slipped into sleep. It was dreamless for a while, just calm and thoughtless, before I woke up again all of a sudden. It took me a moment to try and figure out what had woken me, I eventually noticed the creaking noise outside my room. I opened my door and looked out to see that Clara's door was slightly ajar and a breeze was wobbling it back and forth. I poked my head in just in case she'd left it open for the breeze or something, but I didn't see her or Dakota in the room.
"I really hope she went for a walk." I muttered to myself, I went over to knock on Dusty's door and tell him about Clara's absence.
Clara, ?
My eyelids felt heavy, it was difficult to open them. For that matter, everything felt heavy. My head started to throb painfully as I woke up more and more. I felt like I was being carried, this was odd enough for me to try and open my eyes. With lots of effort I managed to pry my eyes open and what I saw was concerning and alarming to say the least. I was being carried between two people, one of which was clearly a Faunus due to his boar tusks, wearing Grimm masks. I made an attempt to say something along the lines of 'who are you?' or 'put me down or I'll kill you.', but it came out as an incoherent groan.
"She's awake." The Faunus said. "I thought the dose was enough to get us there."
"I must have miscalculated, or maybe I accidentally swapped her dose with her Beowolf's seeing as it's still asleep." The other one said. "I don't have any more on me so just knock her out the old fashioned way." Before I had any chance to register what that meant I was struck by the fist of the Faunus and consciousness fled.
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