Little Gaius woke up with a smile. A blue sun kissed the house he and his parents lived in, and he knew that it would be a very special day. Because it was his birthday! Now, birthdays aren't celebrated in every culture across Tamriel but little Gaius had the fortune of having been born into a loving, Imperial family. Even amongst their kind it wasn't ubiquitous. But for little Gaius, every year he would get to have his very special day where everyone who loved him would come together to celebrate his slow coming of age. And this year, he would be visited and celebrated for the fifth time.
Gaius pushed away the blanket and stumbled through his room. When he rubbed his eyes, he could barely believe what he saw: Overnight, someone had decorated his room with immaculately cut paper ornaments and strands of coloured fabric! What a nice surprise that was. He passed by his emptied toy chest, grabbing his guar floof by its tail in the process and proceeded to head towards the door of his room.
A flight of wooden stairs led him down into the parlor. His parents weren't up yet, but Gaius saw that every precaution for his special day had already been taken. Beautiful flowers in ornate vases, paper ornaments hanging from the walls and ceiling and the biggest sweetroll he has ever seen! What a great day this promised to be.
When he looked out the window, Gaius observed with curiosity that the light that came in from the outside was, in fact, a shade of blue he had never seen before, but the position of the sun in the sky told him that it must have been well past noon already. "How odd", he thought. Because his parents would have been up already. And all the guests he was expecting were missing, too! Surely, they must be somewhere and just haven't started the celebrations yet because he was still asleep. Yes, that's what it must be!
Dragging his guar floof on the floor behind him, little Gaius stumbled through the empty rooms of the house. A lavishly decorated living room with many wrapped presents beckoned him to turn right and see for himself what they all brought. But Gaius restrained himself, not opening all the presents yet while no one was around. Also, he was still in his sleeping clothes! Now, what a strange sight that would be!
Some presents were as big as he was, some as small as his tiny hands. He wondered so very much what lovely things were inside them. And as he kept looking for all the party guests, he noticed that some must have spilled his favourite snowberry juice all over the table and walls! "How sweet", little Gaius thought with a smile, "they must have become impatient for me to wake up!". So whoever opened the bottle to begin the party must have been clumsy indeed.
Dragging his favourite floof along, little Gaius exited the living room in his holy quest to find the missing guests and his parents. Next was the kitchen off to the right of the doorframe. "Surely", he pondered, "all the people must be there!". Because he knew that it was universal practice among families to gather at the food source and have chats while snacking on tasty treats. He shoved open the door with his tiny arms and beheld an empty room. A knife covered in mashed fruit lay on the counter. "Yes!", he thought. Because mashed fruit on top of a good cake was his favourite. He was overjoyed that his parents thought of that. But finding the kitchen as empty as it was, now that was curious! Were they purposely hiding from him for a surprise? Maybe so! This had little Gaius excited and with a little laugh of fun and joy, he continued his search. He was ready to play a game of hide and seek. His friends must have had that idea and he was so happy everyone played along!
"Come on Flewfs, let's find them together!" he whispered to his guar floof and held it tight in his hand, its head pointing the same direction as him so Flewfs might help looking for the guests.
Quietly, he snuck out of the kitchen and headed down the hallway to the guest room. His eyes immediately caught a large spill of juice underneath a closet door when he entered the room. "Good work Flewfs!" he said to his toy, patting it generously on its head. He approached the closet door and pulled at the handle, but it was locked. "A clever way to hide the broken bottle!", he thought. He turned around and knew where all of them must be hiding: in his parent's bedroom.
He gently climbed the stairs to the first floor as to not make a sound. He didn't want them to know he was coming, after all. Across the hall was the door to the bedroom, slightly ajar. Gaius encroached and peeked through the small opening. There they were! He saw a few shoes and legs but nothing else, for he quickly retreated when he saw one of the pairs of legs move and come for the door. Now, he thought, it was HIS turn to play.
Little Gaius ran for his room, closed the door behind him and looked for a place to hide. "The chest, kiddo!", he heard Flewfs say in his mind. Of course! The emptied toy chest was such a clever hiding spot. And he could just fit in, too!
He listened close and steps were approaching his door quickly. So he did act and climbed into the chest, having to curl up quite a bit to fit in, but he managed. He closed the lid above him and even though it was uncomfortable, he knew that it won't be long until his mother would find him and lift him onto her arm to wish him a happy birthday.
The door opened. Gaius snickered with quiet hilarity, trying to contain his excited laughter. The steps came closer. There was a click noise from the outside, and then the steps faded into the distance once more. Laughing, Gaius thought "How silly of you not to look for me here!". And so, Gaius waited to be discovered. Because if they could play this game, he could play it too. And if it got too uncomfortable in his toy chest, he would just crawl out again and present himself openly. Can't delay his very special day for too long! Flewfs was with him, and he resolved to wait until someone would open the chest, excited about what a great day lay ahead of him.
Then, Flewfs spoke to him once more.
“Rap. Tap. TAP”.
*****
Thorus Blackward sat at his table in the bureau in the White Gold Tower when he opened a letter that would turn his skin pale with horror. After reading it, he would grab his gear without hesitation and ordered two of his agents to come along. "We're off to Anvil", he said sternly but with a shaky voice. Without questioning him, his agents followed him out of the tower, onto the street, boarding the nearest Imperial carriage.
"We've been summoned by the city guard to the Aurelius residence. Apparently, something took place there that goes way over their heads so it is up to us to investigate", he told his colleagues. A man of short brown hair and muscular stature and a woman of long, curly blonde hair, slender in appearance, nodded with understanding and acknowledgement at Thorus' withholding of detailed information. After an hour, they arrived at the residence. Two guards were posted on either side, looking pale and ill. Recognising the uniform of Thorus and his associates, they made way. Thorus opened the heavy doors to the estate.
Before him was a whimsical scene. Colourful decorations littered the hallways and rooms of the house. Presents big and small. But something wasn't right. He already knew, of course, the extent of the iniquity in this place. At least he thought he knew. He ordered his colleagues to have a look around and collect and record evidence, to see if the perpetrator had left any traces of themselves that they could follow. Meanwhile, Thorus was headed straight for the heart of the incident. He passed by the bloodstained living room and wondered what gash must have been necessary for the size and direction of the stain. He walked by the kitchen and caught a glimpse of what he assumed to be the tool with which the splatters were inflicted. He walked straight ahead, up the only flight of stairs in the house and traversed the hallway on the first floor. At its far end was the discovery that the letter had mentioned.
He dared not go near that unconsecrated door, yet he was drawn to it. The darkness had always beckoned him to plumb its depths in spite of his natural reluctance to experience it. Thorus was helpless. It was his job as much as his calling. And this was precisely why he was so good at it. He had been appointed head of his department for a reason.
The cursed air sucked him in. As he approached, there was nothing. Only the door, slightly ajar. Promising dark secrets. In pushing it open they revealed themselves to him. To Thorus, seeker of darkness.
First came the smell. The odour of death and flesh decay. The pile of bodies that filled the room slowly began to melt into one clump of rotten meat, if not for the venerable raiments of the deceased, this would have already happened. Thorus inspected the bodies carefully, soaking in all the little details that he could. The cause of death for many of them was a sizeable gash in the throat, inflicted no doubt with the knife from the kitchen. Slashing wounds on the hands and forearms, severed fingers and removed nails told him that all of the victims were fighting for their lives. In fact, upon taking a closer look, he discovered blood, bits of flesh and pieces of skin not only under their fingernails, but in and around their mouths and teeth, too. What happened here? Were they killing each other? For what reason?
Sifting through the bodies he discovered, too, that whatever clothes and jewellery they had worn during the incident had been severely compromised. This was no calculating killer. If they didn't murder each other, which seemed unlikely due to lack of evidence, then surely some kind of beast must have mauled them and, for reasons yet to be discovered, dragged all of them into that room. The latter of which, however, is highly unusual for any predator to do in an enclosed space such as a house. But the more Thorus tried to piece together as to what had actually transpired, the more confusing the matter became. For instance, if there was a predatory creature present that was to blame for the tragedy, and if that creature had somehow developed a hoarding mentality of sorts, then how come it was nowhere to be found? Such a thing would guard and protect its hoard, no doubt.
But a creature seemed to be the theory most likely. By the looks of the house interior there was a birthday being celebrated, most likely for a child. An unorthodox setting for some form of rogue frenzy to take hold of all its participants such that they would begin to destroy one another. Not altogether impossible, but unlikely at best. And, even if some wild madness drove these people to commit murder, then how come all of them were piled up inside a singular room? Why weren't the corpses strewn all about the place of tragedy? This made no sense, unless a singular killer, a murderer, was to blame. But given the state of the bodies this, too, seemed highly unlikely unless the murderer themselves were a Khajiit or Argonian, out for human flesh.
The bloodsoaked carpet underneath the pile of death revealed nothing of import other than the absence of more clues. In fact, an absence of something that should by all rights be present stood out to Thorus. In this moment, the riddle became far more complex. If this was a birthday celebration, all evidence found within the house suggested this, and if this celebration was intended for a child according to the decor, then… where was the child? Or all the children, for that matter? Thorus hadn't found any in the pile and his associates didn't report anything of the sort either. Where, by the Divines, were the children?
But their total absence, either alive or dead, seemed to rule out a very hungry predator. If any animal was to blame, then it must be extraordinarily large. Predators pick the most defenseless prey first, which would be the children. Perhaps the parents died in their attempt to protect the children. Their total absence, however, suggests that the creature must have been large enough to swallow all of them whole, clothes and other items they might have carried included. In this case, the sheer immensity of the entity must have left traces of itself around the house like imprints on the floor or claw marks. But all telltale signs of an animal like that were absent. And even if it would have been a smaller predator and the children somehow managed to hide somewhere it remains a mystery as to why the dead adults’ bodies showed no signs of partial consumption. If it attacked, it was hungry. But if it was hungry, why didn't it eat?
So a creature was ruled out, Thorus concluded. There was no longer any evidence to support this. He concluded also that his next step must be to find the missing children. Since there were no other points of reference, finding them was his best bet to gather more information as to what it was that took place.
Thorus emerged from the death-stained room and brushed himself off instinctually. On the other end of the hallway there was another door that he had missed. He decided to approach it, turn the knob and push it slightly ajar. He proceeded with caution because he did not know if a possible threat might have hidden there. A quick peek through the opening revealed nothing suspicious, so he proceeded to quietly push it and slip inside.
Thorus let down his guard and let his expert gaze wander from left to right, top to bottom. It didn't take much guesswork to figure out that this room belonged to the child of the family. Toys on the floor, expensive, dyed bed sheets. The decorations hung from the walls and ceiling also told him for whom the party was. It must have been for said child to commemorate their birth. The rest of the furnishings and decor also told him that the child couldn't have been older than seven years.
Thorus espied small footprints that led to a closed chest, not much bigger than a child, sitting in the room's center. A lock on it indicated that the chest was sealed. However, a wave of panic struck the seasoned investigator when he realised that all the toys that would probably belong inside that chest were lying about in a half-circle around it. Yet, it was locked.
Upon fully realizing the space he was in, a peculiar sense of familiarity struck him. Panic rose in his chest and his heart pounded. Some primordial fear overcame his being when he looked at the chest. For reasons unknown to him Thorus was convinced that there was the body of a dead child inside of it.
He mumbled "Nononononono" as he hurried towards the toy chest. Maybe, if he was just quick enough, there was yet a soul to be saved? He feared the worst. But Thorus was clever. A quick thinker when a situation called for action. He did not hesitate and drove the tip of his sword in between the lock and the locking mechanism. With some leverage applied to the hilt, he managed to break the lock and unseal the chest. His hand lost grip of his trusty blade and he touched the lid. Thorus pushed it upward, the wood creaking from not having been used in days.
A giant, disembodied forearm made of some strange, silvery metal shot up and the hand took a hold of Thorus, pulling him somehow inside. His vision went dark for a moment. When next he opened his eyes, he was floating in a space made of blueish-green, swirling energy. From out of its depths, a deep voice boomed:
“VOULL. NE. XATA. VOK?”
Thorus got forcefully ejected out of the chest, back into the room again. Visibly shaken, he laid on the floor, gazing at the now glowing opening. Out of it, two words screamed and filled the otherwise empty air.
“VEH. LOHK.”
The chest burst and the arm from before emerged from it, attached to a piece of rubble at the shoulder. It violently crawled forward in an attempt to crush Thorus underneath its metallic palm. He rolled sideways, catching his blade and got up to fight the thing. Roused by the commotion, his colleagues stormed into the room, weapons ready. One of them, the slender woman, rushed the creature but got backhanded and thrown against the wall. This was enough of an opening for a counterattack. The remaining two combatants struck the thing until it crumbled to dust.
“What… was that?”
— — — —
In the following days Thorus filed his report. He was unsure if he should include the part about the chest or not. But since no trace remained of the incident other than a silvery stain on the floor where the chest stood, he merely ended his report on the missing children and a great search was initiated.
The search went on for days but nothing came of it. Of the seven children, none were ever found. However, strange reports of unusual magical injuries and blue lights in the forests mounted and sooner rather than later, a curious case would find its way onto Thorus’ desk that would call to him.
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