back from the void of yr 12.
Chapter#5 "A Red Letter Day"
Lynx was lost for words, Winter had brought her to see the Humans, and the first thing that had occurred was a murder in broad daylight with some kind of explosive weapon.
"WHAT THE FUCK" Lynx shouted as the shot rang out, Humans bellow breaking into a cacophony of screaming. Looking over at Winter she expected some kind of immediate reaction, though instead he simply stared down at the bloodied corpse of the human he had called Ben.
"He killed Ben…" Winter finally said trailing off.
"Winter I… don't know what to say." Lynx responded, trying to process what had happened.
"EXPLAIN YOURSELF!" Winter roared down at the orange human as it ran down the street disappearing into an alleyway, "what did Ben do this time?"
Lynx awkwardly sat next to Winter as he drifted back into silence, watching the remaining scavengers put a burlap tarp over Ben's body as he was carted away. He began to tremble slightly as three other bodies were removed from the building all in similar condition. Lynx twined her tail with Winter's as he calmed down, simply giving him time to process the situation.
"they're not normally like that" he said after a moment "they don't just kill each other…"
"I know," Lynx said softly, "neither do dragons… but sometimes they do."
"Yeah" Winter replied, "I just didn't want you to see this the moment I showed the sanctuary to you again."
Fuck… how do I cheer him up? "Lets go to the lake," Lynx said abruptly, "we can look for clues as to where the metal thing came from."
"The Borealis." Winter replied, mumbling.
"The what?" Winter knows what it is?
"The words on the side said Borealis, it was some kind of massive boat, humans build them to cross over water, I have no idea how it just appeared." Winter glared down at his talons. "But the orange one knows… he showed up just after I woke up on the beach."
"So to find out we need to find the human who just murdered four others." lynx groaned.
"Yeah." Winter sighed standing up and opening his wings, "you wanted to look for evidence by the lake?" He asked, bringing the conversation full circle, though his demeanour notably still wilted.
The lakeside was mostly picked clean of debris, vendors and other curious dragons having taken the most notable pieces of the ruined vessel that had washed up, this left the main lead available to Winter and Lynx, that being the remaining bulk of ship now mostly submerged, landing on the exposed back portion Lynx was forced to acknowledge one major point of failure in any investigation of the vessel; she and Winter would almost certainly drown if they tried squeezing into the tight compartments of the Borealis, and even with Riptide in town, there was no guarantee that the openings ripped in the various sections of the ship would still contain anything relevant, if they contained anything at all.
"This is set to be quite the ordeal" she muttered to herself as Winter hovered over a separate side portion, staying aloft with the occasional beat of wings. She looked over at Winter's returning iconic frown and decided to take a less than ideal course of action. With a deep breath she dove into the pristine water and began to descend, looking through the dark water for anything whilst she still had breath. There was a chilling hum, less a sound and more a physical sensation, Lynx's eyes darted around to identify the source, and just as she decided to go up for air it happened again, this time a blue wave which bent the silhouette of the Borealis. What could only be described as fleeting blurs of humans could be seen, walking around her, no acknowledgement of the water, simply acting out false life as they interacted with each other before fading away, this repeated throughout every pulse of the ship until Lynx now desperate for air recognised what would have in life been the orange human.
there he is! Thoughts racing she watched him and a female human accompanied by a larger mass of scrap metal given life by what Lynx could only assume was animus, tore through leagues of other "humans" within the exposed interior of the vessel, fading away as the last of the adversaries perished. This time however there was something left she previously hadn't noticed, a body, badly mangled and with some kind of mask, but a body nonetheless. Lynx surfaced gasping for much needed air before diving back down and retrieving the human corpse, grasping it in her talons as she surfaced and flew up onto the metal exterior where Winter looked over at her concerned.
"Where did you go?"
"Oh you know *cough just for a little dip" she stated nonchalantly, as he prepared to speak she cut him off, placing the body on the ground, "oh I found this too."
"By the moons." Winter mumbled prodding at the corpse, "I've never seen a human dressed this way… and that's not even mentioning whatever this mask is made of."
"So it's a lead?" Lynx asked, more excited now.
"Well we need a human coroner who can examine the body to find out anything… though we'll never really know exactly what happened to it."
"Well" Lynx started, "there was some weird visual stuff down there in the ship, I could only describe it as animus, but there was an altercation with the orange man, an animus construct, another human, and a few of these guys." Winter raised an eye ridge once she mentioned it.
"You didn't nearly drown did you?" he asked, earning a deadpan stare from Lynx.
"No, no I didn't" she lied. "You can go for a swim yourself if you want to check!" This seemed to amuse Winter and he politely declined with a shake of his head. "I think we have a coroner to find, and an autopsy to request." Lynx smiled as he took off and she followed, body in tow.