Post by Wolfe on Nov 5, 2020 20:47:34 GMT -5
”Ah, you must be the Haven group. Please, come inside. It’s not safe right now, with everything going on. Best to not make people more scared than they already are. I’ll explain on the way.”
Father Forrest was the requestor for this mission, on behalf of the Dust Ward Free Church. He was a middle-aged man of slightly below average height and rather stocky. The pastor was dressed in simple, dark gray robes befitting the occasion and had no ornaments or jewelry of any kind on his person. His shoes were disheveled and the soles were nearly worn out, and his clothes while well maintained were not of the best quality and obviously worn down over time as well. He had a beard that went down to his neck and an immaculately maintained handlebar mustache as well. Forrest had a noticeable scar on his left eyebrow, large enough to cause a break in the hair of the eyebrow permanently leaving a gap.
The Free Church in appearance was less of a church and more of an improvised town hall. The construction was good, or at least as good as could be expected from the area but the materials themselves were haphazard and inconsistent – wooden planks of varying sizes, barks, and thickness were used alongside metal boards and nails were used alongside makeshift metal spikes to keep things in place. The floor creaked as everyone stepped into the building, but not loud enough to make it hard to hear the man speaking.
”I’m not sure if you’re aware, but the Ground District has gotten a lot more… agitated recently. Much more so in the past month. You might know that the Peasant Party has their commune in the northeast, but what you might not know is that they’ve been getting into fistfights pretty often with the new group in the southwest – the so-called Kozaks. We try to stay out of politics in general, to try and accommodate everyone in the area and act as a barrier to the troubles of the outside… but I think I underestimated how big of an issue it was going to be.”
The man led the group across the building and eventually into a room with a trapdoor on the floor. The man opened it, revealing an entrance big enough for one person to go through rather easily. ”We built this a few years ago, so that people could flee from the violence if their houses were attacked. I’m going to warn you now that once we reach our destination, the sight is going to be horrific. I puked when I saw it, and frankly have been too scared to go back alone in case whoever did this comes back.”
With that frank admission of fear, the man walked down the makeshift stairs into an underground tunnel system wide enough for two people to stand shoulder to shoulder. ”We’re going to the house of the Allons, and to be honest with you I don’t exactly know what’s in there. I heard reports from the neighbors of some loud noises and yelling, and tried to open the front door but couldn’t. I came in through the tunnels, took one look at the scene… saw the Allons… and I just… Well, I ran back and called for you. I can’t… I just can’t deal with this by myself. I don’t know how.”
There was a pause there, even as he continued walking as the anxiety started to show more and more in his body language as he walked down the tunnel. ”I have a few ideas about what happened, but please don’t spread this around… the last thing I want is for more attacks to happen. We’re not fighters, and we don’t want any part of any fight between the groups around us. We just want to live in peace. I tried calling the police too, but... but they don't care about anyone down here. Not anymore.”
There was a deep, shaky breath before he continued: ”There was a man who came in almost a week ago, wide-eyed and almost feral. He was on death’s door and made it to the Allon’s house, severely dehydrated and emaciated from they thought was starvation. We had no idea where this guy came from or why he was like that, he could only speak in simple phrases and had smaller injuries all over his body that they were trying to patch up. He didn’t seem violent or anything, so we just thought he was just another soul down on his luck so we tried to provide him medical care, food, and a way to get him back on his feet… the trouble came about two days ago.”
”All the groups around us don’t really respect our neighborhood enough to not poke their noses in every so often. The Peasant Party come in and knock door to door trying to campaign, and the Kozaks are all loud and hyped up young men with hero complexes too big for their own good. Both cause trouble, but the latter are much more in your face. I don’t know exactly what happened, but what I do know is that the Kozaks freaked the new guy out and the new guy… well, I don’t know the specifics but he injured the Kozak guys pretty bad. The people I talked to said his jaw seemed to be completely unhinged – which I’m not sure I believe but basically one was apparently covered in blood and the other had his jaw unhinged. The new guy wasn’t touched, but the community was obviously very scared of reprisal attacks…”
”I didn’t know what to do. The Kozak leader is a hothead, sure, but I’m not sure they’d go this far. I have no idea if the new guy’s… well… I don’t know if the new guy is up there or not. I’m not exactly sure if anyone is up there, all I know is nobody knows where the Allons are and their front door is jammed up so bad nobody can open it.”
They eventually reached a point in the tunnel where the smell of vomit started to become pretty strong. ”Again, apologies about that. If it’s all the same to you, I’ll let you youngsters climb up and check the place out. I’ll come in when I have to, to clean the place up and give the victims a proper burial but… I just don’t want to see it for more than I have to. The Allons were good people, trying to help out a stranger. I want to keep that image in my head even after all of this, them volunteering in the community and them cheering their son on as he made it into Mistral University… not the image of whatever is left of their earthly bodies.”
It was obvious which ladder it was, on account of both the vomit at the base of it and the blood that had dripped down on top of that vomit which seeped through the thin trapdoor and dried up completely. The bottom rung was also broken, smashed by the look of it with splinters on the floor. ”I don’t think there’s anyone alive up there, but be careful just in case.” Father Forrest would caution, ”The wood on the door and the ladder isn’t very sturdy, so try not to kick it out from under you. It’s only a couple of meters, but a lot of us are old and won’t be able to climb that without the help.”
The scene once the trapdoor was opened was as horrific as described. Maybe even a bit worse, considering the decay had started to set in already and the smell was starting to become absolutely inhuman.
The house itself was less of a house and more of a one room structure. There was a bloodstained mattress in the southwest corner, a smashed and splintered dinner table in the center, a small kitchen area in the front scored with small but deep holes like someone inserted and then pulled out nails from the wood, and of course the bodies. Both were elderly, and the husband was bisected at the abdomen with the top half littering the east while the bottom half was slumped against the wall in the west. There was a look of absolute terror on his face, and his jaw was completely removed from his face. The wife fared little better, with her mouth and jaw filled with small puncture wounds that went cleanly through. The front door was barricaded with shelf and dresser, with the corpse of the wife face-down in front of the obstacle in a giant pool of blood with no wounds visible on her back. In lieu of wounds, however, was a pristine twill shoulder patch with the logo of a gray wolf’s head placed on the corpse’s upper back.
There were marks in the blood after it had settled, but it definitely looked like whoever did the job walked around quite a bit afterwards, and some of the footprints were washed away by the water leaving the now overturned makeshift tub in the northwest of the room – completely with bloodstained sponges and towel thrown to the ground beside.
Father Forrest was the requestor for this mission, on behalf of the Dust Ward Free Church. He was a middle-aged man of slightly below average height and rather stocky. The pastor was dressed in simple, dark gray robes befitting the occasion and had no ornaments or jewelry of any kind on his person. His shoes were disheveled and the soles were nearly worn out, and his clothes while well maintained were not of the best quality and obviously worn down over time as well. He had a beard that went down to his neck and an immaculately maintained handlebar mustache as well. Forrest had a noticeable scar on his left eyebrow, large enough to cause a break in the hair of the eyebrow permanently leaving a gap.
The Free Church in appearance was less of a church and more of an improvised town hall. The construction was good, or at least as good as could be expected from the area but the materials themselves were haphazard and inconsistent – wooden planks of varying sizes, barks, and thickness were used alongside metal boards and nails were used alongside makeshift metal spikes to keep things in place. The floor creaked as everyone stepped into the building, but not loud enough to make it hard to hear the man speaking.
”I’m not sure if you’re aware, but the Ground District has gotten a lot more… agitated recently. Much more so in the past month. You might know that the Peasant Party has their commune in the northeast, but what you might not know is that they’ve been getting into fistfights pretty often with the new group in the southwest – the so-called Kozaks. We try to stay out of politics in general, to try and accommodate everyone in the area and act as a barrier to the troubles of the outside… but I think I underestimated how big of an issue it was going to be.”
The man led the group across the building and eventually into a room with a trapdoor on the floor. The man opened it, revealing an entrance big enough for one person to go through rather easily. ”We built this a few years ago, so that people could flee from the violence if their houses were attacked. I’m going to warn you now that once we reach our destination, the sight is going to be horrific. I puked when I saw it, and frankly have been too scared to go back alone in case whoever did this comes back.”
With that frank admission of fear, the man walked down the makeshift stairs into an underground tunnel system wide enough for two people to stand shoulder to shoulder. ”We’re going to the house of the Allons, and to be honest with you I don’t exactly know what’s in there. I heard reports from the neighbors of some loud noises and yelling, and tried to open the front door but couldn’t. I came in through the tunnels, took one look at the scene… saw the Allons… and I just… Well, I ran back and called for you. I can’t… I just can’t deal with this by myself. I don’t know how.”
There was a pause there, even as he continued walking as the anxiety started to show more and more in his body language as he walked down the tunnel. ”I have a few ideas about what happened, but please don’t spread this around… the last thing I want is for more attacks to happen. We’re not fighters, and we don’t want any part of any fight between the groups around us. We just want to live in peace. I tried calling the police too, but... but they don't care about anyone down here. Not anymore.”
There was a deep, shaky breath before he continued: ”There was a man who came in almost a week ago, wide-eyed and almost feral. He was on death’s door and made it to the Allon’s house, severely dehydrated and emaciated from they thought was starvation. We had no idea where this guy came from or why he was like that, he could only speak in simple phrases and had smaller injuries all over his body that they were trying to patch up. He didn’t seem violent or anything, so we just thought he was just another soul down on his luck so we tried to provide him medical care, food, and a way to get him back on his feet… the trouble came about two days ago.”
”All the groups around us don’t really respect our neighborhood enough to not poke their noses in every so often. The Peasant Party come in and knock door to door trying to campaign, and the Kozaks are all loud and hyped up young men with hero complexes too big for their own good. Both cause trouble, but the latter are much more in your face. I don’t know exactly what happened, but what I do know is that the Kozaks freaked the new guy out and the new guy… well, I don’t know the specifics but he injured the Kozak guys pretty bad. The people I talked to said his jaw seemed to be completely unhinged – which I’m not sure I believe but basically one was apparently covered in blood and the other had his jaw unhinged. The new guy wasn’t touched, but the community was obviously very scared of reprisal attacks…”
”I didn’t know what to do. The Kozak leader is a hothead, sure, but I’m not sure they’d go this far. I have no idea if the new guy’s… well… I don’t know if the new guy is up there or not. I’m not exactly sure if anyone is up there, all I know is nobody knows where the Allons are and their front door is jammed up so bad nobody can open it.”
They eventually reached a point in the tunnel where the smell of vomit started to become pretty strong. ”Again, apologies about that. If it’s all the same to you, I’ll let you youngsters climb up and check the place out. I’ll come in when I have to, to clean the place up and give the victims a proper burial but… I just don’t want to see it for more than I have to. The Allons were good people, trying to help out a stranger. I want to keep that image in my head even after all of this, them volunteering in the community and them cheering their son on as he made it into Mistral University… not the image of whatever is left of their earthly bodies.”
It was obvious which ladder it was, on account of both the vomit at the base of it and the blood that had dripped down on top of that vomit which seeped through the thin trapdoor and dried up completely. The bottom rung was also broken, smashed by the look of it with splinters on the floor. ”I don’t think there’s anyone alive up there, but be careful just in case.” Father Forrest would caution, ”The wood on the door and the ladder isn’t very sturdy, so try not to kick it out from under you. It’s only a couple of meters, but a lot of us are old and won’t be able to climb that without the help.”
The scene once the trapdoor was opened was as horrific as described. Maybe even a bit worse, considering the decay had started to set in already and the smell was starting to become absolutely inhuman.
The house itself was less of a house and more of a one room structure. There was a bloodstained mattress in the southwest corner, a smashed and splintered dinner table in the center, a small kitchen area in the front scored with small but deep holes like someone inserted and then pulled out nails from the wood, and of course the bodies. Both were elderly, and the husband was bisected at the abdomen with the top half littering the east while the bottom half was slumped against the wall in the west. There was a look of absolute terror on his face, and his jaw was completely removed from his face. The wife fared little better, with her mouth and jaw filled with small puncture wounds that went cleanly through. The front door was barricaded with shelf and dresser, with the corpse of the wife face-down in front of the obstacle in a giant pool of blood with no wounds visible on her back. In lieu of wounds, however, was a pristine twill shoulder patch with the logo of a gray wolf’s head placed on the corpse’s upper back.
There were marks in the blood after it had settled, but it definitely looked like whoever did the job walked around quite a bit afterwards, and some of the footprints were washed away by the water leaving the now overturned makeshift tub in the northwest of the room – completely with bloodstained sponges and towel thrown to the ground beside.
1541 words.
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