"Is . . . . is the deck clear of people, Siesta?" Montmorency asked solemnly as she knelt on the Ostrand's deck, beside the corpse of her mother.
Siesta nodded carefully, ignoring that Montmorency was not looking toward her. "It's clear. The only other people who know are the two third years you asked along, and they're currently keeping watch at the Ostrand's entrance."
"I see. That's good."
Siesta looked at Montmorency and could see the near impossible sadness trying to find a way out of her body, and she couldn't take it anymore. "Dammit, Montmorency, cry already! Holding it back isn't helping you at all!" Siesta nearly yelled, tears forming in her eyes.
Montmorency turned to look at Siesta, tears falling down her face, " I- I can't. I have to stay strong so we can find out how this happened, who did this!" Montmorency screamed, failing to completely hold back her sobs.
Wiping her eyes Siesta glanced over to Mr. Colbert's body and then the bodies of the two elves they had found on the deck as well. They had not moved a single body from where it lay as they knew it could be important. "I- I'm no expert on magic," Siesta said just loud enough for Montmorency to hear her. "But I don't think the elves attacked them.
Montmorency looked to siesta with a sniff. "Why do you say that? It's completely possible that elves would do such a thing!"
"No, it isn't, Montmorency, "Siesta said sternly. " I know you don't want to, but look at the wounds."
Sniffing again Montmorency looked to her mother, and at her wounds. Across her entire body were multiple holes that had massive burns at their edges. "They're the same wounds on Mr. Colbert's body, all that proves is they were killed the same way!"
Siesta looked at Montmorency for a moment before speaking sternly. "They're the same kind of burns as we found on the wall of the kitchen when Maria disappeared."
It took a moment, but realization quickly painted Montmorency's face. "Wait, then, that means that-."
"That whoever made Maria disappear also did this." Siesta said as she walked over to the corpses of the two elves. "That doesn't follow for these elves though. It looks like their faces where clawed off or bitten into perhaps."
"How do you know?" Montmorency asked as she stood up and walked over to Siesta's side, tears still falling down her face.
"I've seen wounds almost like this on animals around my hometown of Tarbes," Siesta explained. "Wolf and bear bites can look similar, but it doesn't look quite right. It looks more like extremely deep claw wounds, but I've never heard of anything with claws that long."
"But, then what-?" Montmorency began before being interrupted by a cacophonous sound that could only be compared to the cries of a thousand dragons all dying simultaneously. "What in Brimir's name was that?"
Siesta looked around, and after a moment she ran over to the edge of the Ostrand's deck, Montmorency close behind her. Looking out over the camp and toward the excavation, both of them opened their mouths in shock at what they saw. In the center of the excavation, the ground around the Nightscreamer's corpse was cracking. The entire corpse seemed to shake, causing dust and dirt upon it to fall off. And the entire surface of it pulsed with strange purple light, its base coloring darkening by the second. In a second the entire corpse began moving up and out of the ground, displacing even more earth and causing all the students near it to run in sudden shock and fear. It took only a matter of seconds for the corpse to pull almost completely out of the earth, and fall to its side with a crash, covering the camp in a thick cloud of dust and dirt. "That, that can't be normal," Siesta said loudly.
Montmorency nodded. "Let's head down and figure this out, we- we'll have to keep my mother's death a secret for now."
Siesta nodded, "Alright, let's go."
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Kirche opened her eyes as a series of vibrations shook her. Looking around she realized she could move her head again (thank Brimir), but noticed that she felt oddly stiff. The vibration did not stop and instead became more resounding until a massive crash echoed all around her, and she was flung out of the depression in the wall she had been captured in.
Looking behind her as she got up, Kirche finally got a good look at the depression that she had been in. unlike the one where the first year had been in, hers seemed awfully wide, and had massive tubes or pipes hanging from above. How had she not noticed them before?
Kirche shook her head madly, ignoring how stiff her body felt. She was free and she needed to get out of, wherever this place was, she had to tell everyone what Louise was!
Quickly leaving the sickening laboratory Kirche entered a long hall that like the lab, made of the strange silver, black, and purple metal, and pulsing with purple lights. The hall seemed to go on forever without a single door or window along its length, until at last Kirche saw its end. A flat black plate with purple pulses across it stood in her way, but opened automatically as she went to touch it. Weird.
Kirche stepped through the doorway and into a large oval room made of the same material. In its center, suspended above her in the center of the room was a large silver disk. Across the room to her side however, was a large recession with a similar black plate across it. A large door.
Stepping in to cross the room Kirche then realised she was not entirely alone. Far above the room was a moving mist of silver. No not a mist, bugs maybe? She could not tell what they were, but they buzzed around quickly, completely ignoring her.
Shaking her head Kirche crossed the room, ignoring the bugs as they ignored her. She stepped up to the large black surface, which now seemed even larger, and went to touch the door. The door groaned and began opening like a circular iris, the opening becoming larger as it slowly opened and light filtered in. The light felt fantastic as it struck Kirche, but for some reason while she could feel the light, she also felt like she couldn't feel it, weird. Stepping through the doorway Kirche found herself fall out into a large pit. Getting up off of the ground Kirche looked around to get her bearings. Above her the dreadnaught sat on the dirt instead of being stuck in it, and she was in the pit that had been being dug around it. How did it get out of the ground?
Shaking her head again Kirche climbed up the edge of the pit, though it took a while, and found herself standing a couple dozen feet from a few first year students who wore looks of horror on their faces.
'Hey where's Lady Montmorency! I need to speak to her immediately!' Kirche tried to say, but instead of her words coming out of her mouth, a short low pitched drone did instead, though she did not realize this.
"Ah, a monster came out of the corpse! Kill it!" A student yelled as he pulled out his wand and pointed it toward Kirche, letting out a dozen small bolts of fire toward her with not a hint of accuracy.
'Ah, wait stop what are you talking about? Stop!' Kirche tried to scream in a panic as she raised her arms to protect herself. As she did two pink beams of energy shot of from her sides, and struck two of the students, blowing their heads into pieces in less than a second.
Looking on in horror at what just happened Kirche went over it in her head. She raised her arms to protect her head as she didn't have her wand. Pink energy struck the two first year head and killed them. So that meant . . .
Kirche looked down and raised her arms, hoping she was wrong. She wasn't. Instead of her light brown skinned arms and skillfully manicured nails, were large dark purple limbs with large glowing tubes sticking out of them, glowing angrily in the sunlight.
Suddenly, as if her arms were being controlled by a will not her own, both of them raised up and pointed toward two more students and quickly ended their lives. Looking on in horror Kirche could only watch as her 'arms' moved again to target two more students, until startling pain assaulted her body. Looking back to her right she could see Montmorency and Siesta standing nearby, Montmorency holding her wand ready as columns of water ripples beside her. Before she could react the columns of water tuned into torrents and fired toward her, blasting her with pain that only lasted a second.
Kirche had closed her eyes to deal with the pain, but as it subsided she opened them, and regretted it. She was on the ground, back at the bottom of the pit, and above her at the pit's edge was a pair of dark purple leg-like objects connected by what looked like a waist. Oozing out of it was sickly green liquid, and Kirche could not stop watching as the legs fell over with a heavy thump.
Kirche looked up at the pits edge, attempting to figure out what had happened, but she knew. As she felt feelings of horror well up inside her, the silver clouds of bugs she had seen in the dreadnaught poured out of the ship and across the pit, directly toward the students.
Before Kirche's consciousness blacked out, she heard the cries of horror of dozens of students, and the screams of pain as they were ripped limb from limb by the silver swarm.
