Dawn
Reija Bogovil breathed a deep sigh. The clouds were only just taking some colour from the sun peeking over the horizon and already her nose was full of the stench of blood and dung. The contents of the warehouse reported by the guard patrol, that was woefully far from their assigned route she might add, had been destroyed. Shelves had been torn down and clawed viciously in so many ways that it looked like a whole marketplace had been let loose. The floors of both storerooms were covered in piss and shit. But most importantly, all the grain sacks stored for the coming winter had been destroyed. Torn open, emptied of their precious contents and strewn about the room. Here and there Reija could see single pieces of grain scattered about the rooms, but even if you cleaned and bagged all of them there would barely be enough for a single loaf of bread. Months of winter supplies reduced to a few meals in a single night. Even the grain on the shelves had been taken. Reija went back into the adjoining corridor and grabbed the nearest uniformed sentry. The woman nearly balked at her when she turned around but before the sentry could say anything, her gaze darted to the Dawn Officer insignia pinned to Reija's uniform. Her expression mellowed quickly.
"Reija Bogovil, Canton of Investigation." What happened here?" Reija flashed her Canton insignia. She knew that the sentry had noticed, but procedure must be followed.
The guards-woman affected a quick salute. "Ma'am. We believe some creatures slipped past the walls and got at the supplies stored in this building."
"Well that much is obvious," Reija replied rather more curtly than intended, "What creatures?"
The guards-woman nodded, though now her expression seemed more guarded. "We have only found 4 of the beasts so far."
"Only?" Reija replied whilst screwing up her nose at the stench in the room. She could swear there was the briefest hint of a smile on the guard's face.
"They are very big, easily the size of the bears that come down from the mountains-"
"But you're thinking that even 4 big cave bears couldn't eat 2 whole storerooms worth of grain." Reija interjected. The guards-woman just nodded.
There was a moment of silence between the two as Reija looked about the scene. How had a herd of beasts the size of bears gotten past their walls and patrols?
"If you want to see the beasts, they're still where we left them out in the alleyway through that door." The guards-woman said, pointing at the door opposite from where Reija had entered. "We tried to shift them, but we would be at it all day." She added, rubbing her shoulders absent-mindedly.
Nodding and thanking the woman, Reija left the stench of excrement in the warehouse to find the alleyway stinking of blood. A welcome change, if not by much. The morning sunlight was only just showing on the roofs of the buildings opposite the warehouse. Most of the alleyway was taken up by the 4 beasts the woman had spoken off and the guards that were standing around them, crossbows ready. The guards-woman had been right; the beasts were indeed the size of cave bears, if not even larger. Reija had never seen nor heard of creatures like these. They had a mangy-looking brown fur tinged at the tips with what looked like flecks of gold. Dust. Reija had seen the substance a few times before. Their maws looked more rat-like than bear and bears did not have long naked tails like these beasts did. Lastly, she noticed a smaller pile a little way removed, covered in linen and a lantern and broken crossbow placed beside it. A youngster perhaps?
She introduced herself to the guards much like she had to their colleague inside. At first, they greeted her like a colleague, but the atmosphere cooled when they saw her Dawn Officer insignia. When prompted they explained that they had arrived at the building slightly before sun-up and had initially seen nothing amiss, till one of the beasts had burst from the warehouse with a maw covered in blood. It is fortunate that during night-time, Vanzograd patrols are properly armed. Two of the guards from the patrol had been clawed in the fight but they had quickly received medical attention. After they had dispatched the beasts they had sent for backup, which was why Reija was present, and had explored the carnage in the warehouse. They had found a sole guard that must have run afoul of the beasts during their feeding. He had been savagely killed and partially eaten.
Reija held a hand over her nose and mouth as the guards showed her the body. She had to fight her revulsion to register what they were saying to her. The body was gone below the upper torso. The uniform had been shredded and ripped, presumably by the claws of the mysterious beasts. The lantern was broken, the metal frame crushed, and the glass shattered. The frame even had bite marks on it.
She took a deep breath and pointed and prodded at the corpse, asking both the guards beside her and her own intuition for answers. She could not keep that up for long. After a little while Reija had to look away to keep her composure, eyes lingering on the massive bear-like beasts instead. Mind wandering, her eyes spotted something she hadn't noticed looking only at the body of the dead guard. Gathering herself, she looked back down at the mutilated corpse, pointing at a wound just above the collarbone.
"That looks different." It was dead centre above the protective collarbone. The torso area was not without a mass of cuts and punctures, but none were higher than this single puncture wound. Beyond a bruise on the forehead and some grit, the head was untouched.
"Just an errant claw I suppose. Some of them have grown a little funny."
Alexander had always said she should be grateful for her continued revulsion at seeing the dead. That it showed it wasn't getting to her soul, making her jaded. Right now, she simply feared she would lose her breakfast.
She wished Alexander was still with her. The times since the Great Quake had been tough. Many had not come out of the Vaulter tunnels as the mountains turned against them, and many more had not survived the winter that followed. Thinking back, she also wished Jalmar had not been exiled. As much as she was loath to admit it, Alexander had been a poor replacement for Jalmar. Jalmar had been her husband and a great friend of Alexander's until Ogmar Laine's exile, when he and his disciples, Jalmar included, had been exiled from their world. From her world. They had been branded heretics to the Order of the Great Orrery and in breach of many laws and ethics of their society. Reija and Alexander, suddenly bereft of someone important to them, had found some solace in each other's company. The purges and restructuring that came after the exiling kept them both busy. Time had nurtured the wounds of their shared loss and still they were together. Until the Quake. For weeks after, Reija had searched for information on his whereabouts but had turned up nothing. She had lost 2 people important to her in the space of a year.
She left the alleyway and its loathsome stench behind to emerge onto one of Vanzograd's larger streets. With the sun up and the cold of night slowly receding, but very much still present, the day's work was beginning. Reija stepped into the flow of the crowd and followed the pace. Something nagged at her as she kept the meandering pace of the crowds, some small itch she couldn't quite place.
"If there are more of those beasts hiding in the city, the granaries will be at risk." Reija thought to herself. The proper resources would be distributed once the Central Canton was alerted, but Reija felt it unnecessarily risky to wait that long.
She needed to get to the Canton of Supplies, turning about to head the opposite way. For a moment the flow of the crowd worked against her but her increased stature and visible status as a Dawn Officer parted the crowd quickly enough. Reija was not a short woman to begin with and the powered armour of the Officers increased that height further. She walked in her own little bubble on the street, a good arms-length of space to either side. The nagging feeling remained even as she arrived at her destination and strode up the steps of the Central Administration. Being both the seat of local government and the centre for research and administration of the city, it was built as a cluster of towers, dominating the centre of the city and offering a view over the entirety of Vanzograd. Windows on the tall towers glittered in the day's sparse sunlight. Reija just wondered how people could stand ascending that many stairs every day just to get to their office.
The guards at the door recognised Reija's outfit immediately and opened the door for her. Snapping a quick salute, she strode in. A bell above the doorway made a soft tingling sound at Reija's passing, announcing her arrival to the sparsely-furnished entrance-room. Wooden benches lined the walls and a long oak counter-top sat by the far wall, otherwise the room was bare and cold stone.
An elderly woman emerged through a door in the uniform of the administrative staff, all harsh grey lines with a dark-blue sash. "Good day to you officer. What brings you here this day?"
"Good day to you as well miss. I'm here to speak with the Canton of Supplies." Reija placed her Dawn Officer-insignia on the counter-top.
The clerk examined it for a moment then handed the titanium insignia back. "If you would follow me, I'll take you to one of our registrars." Reija simply nodded in way of a reply. Another door was opened by a guard from the far side and Reija followed the woman. The corridor beyond had a multitude of doors, marked with the various symbols of the Canton.
The woman opened a door with a symbol of a quill and invited Reija to enter. "Please take a seat inside, a clerk should be with you shortly." A row of chairs sat along the wall of the room past the door. The woman left while Reija sat down.
The waiting room she had been put in was another affair of dull, grey stone with little ornamentation. Thankfully she did not have to wait long; A broad man with the blue sash of the Canton of Supplies came to fetch her, introducing himself as Bratsla and enthusiastically shaking her hand.
"So pleased to meet a Dawn Officer." Bratsla said as the he led Reija out of the waiting room and into another set of offices where bland-faced clerks sat shuffling abacuses and papers about. This room was much larger with a tall ceiling to accommodate filing shelves and rolling stairs to store the ever-expanding archives of the Canton. Bratsla's table was a shining example of order-in-chaos, 3 stacks of papers competing in which would grow the biggest before toppling.
The clerk indicated a chair opposite where he sat at the table. It was more comfortable than the chair in reception, but the stuffiness of the room accounted for the difference in the end.
"So, what do you wish to discuss with the Canton, Lady Officer?" Bratsla had retrieved a fresh sheet of paper and a pen from the chaos of the table.
Reija glanced around the room at the other clerks, each of them seemingly absorbed in their work and uninterested in their visitor. "Anywhere with a touch of privacy?"
"Any business with the Canton can be said in this chamber," Bratsla replied with a hint of sternness, "We are all employed clerks of the Canton here."
Reija nodded in response. "Well then. There will be an official guard-report on this, so for now this is simply on the word of a Dawn Officer, but a warehouse down in the south-eastern Wallside district has been emptied."
Bratsla wrote as Reija talked. "Emptied?"
"All the grain was eaten." Reija responded.
"By criminals? All in one night?" Bratsla asked, disbelief plain in his voice.
"Not by criminals," Reija continued, "But by creatures somewhat like cave bears with features of rats. We are not sure how they came in or how many more are in the city, but the Canton should take steps to secure all the other warehouses in the city immediately." If not for her position as a Dawn Officer, she doubted anyone would have believed that.
"There must have been a great many of these beasts for them to be able to empty a whole warehouse." Bratsla said with a tone of scepticism.
"The patrol that made the discovery killed 4 of them and did not report meeting any more of the beasts in the area."
Reija made a motion as if to wave the doubt away then continued. "Their numbers matter little. What matters is that there might be more and if so, the warehouses would be in danger, something we can ill afford with another winter approaching."
Bratsla stopped writing for a moment, tapping the point of his quill on the inkpot. "Indeed. The previous winter nearly depleted our stores and there is no indication that this one is going to be any shorter."
Reija nodded. "Just so. The official report from the Watch should arrive today I imagine but I see no need to wait for that in planning how to respond."
Bratsla looked briefly at the piles of work on his table then sighed. "I'll see what I can do but I cannot promise anything."
"Do not concern with promises to me, this is not for my own good but that of the city. Hopefully your superiors will see that." Reija responded with a chuckle.