The Shattered City: Chapter Two

[NeoTiamat]

Chateau Malchance, Quartier Marchand, Port-a-Lucine; March 24th, 770
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It was snowing. Fat, wet snowflakes fell from the sky, covering Port-a-Lucine in a layer of frost. It had been nearly twenty years since the last time it had snowed so late in March, but this year, the people of Dementlieu had other things to talk about.

It had been two weeks since the night of March 11th, and in that time, Dementlieu healed. The orgy of violence and madness had brought out the worst in people, but it had also brought out the best in them. Nevertheless, by morning of the 12th, the worst was over, and Port-a-Lucine began to rebuild. The property damage alone was immeasurable, with chunks of the Quartier Ouvrier going up in smoke, and only pure luck had kept the entire city from disappearing in an inferno of fire.

Still, it was done, and now life began to continue its former paths. The University of Dementlieu had cancelled lessons for a few days, and then begun them again. Stores and markets were opening once more. Business started again. Something may have happened, something strange and alien and unfathomable, but people still needed to eat, to sleep, to pay rent and get educations and carry out the myriad rituals of daily life. So... life carried on.

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"What time is it what time is it what time is it?" Cerise was saying as she crashed down the stairs, hopping on one foot and trying to put her shoe on the other. Her hair had half fallen out of her normal bun, and the shawl she was wearing was haphazardly wrapped about her like a Forfarian sash. A flutter of papers escaped from her book bag and spiraled down the stairs after her, as she staggered into the dining room. "Does anyone have something I can just grab to eat for breakfast I will be so super grateful and pay you back later!"

Professor Lessard folded the broadsheet he was reading down from his face, calmly raising his eyebrows at the excitable young woman before him. "It's only eight o' clock, Mlle. Rondelet," he said, politely. "I didn't believe your classes started until ten."

"It's what?" Cerise asked, blinking her eyes behind her large glasses. Richard, sitting in a nearby chair with parchment and quill pen, helpfully indicated the clock on the wall.

"Huh," was all Cerise said after a moment. "I could have sworn I'd overslept. There must have been a localized time disturbance centered on just my room, catapulting it two hours into the future! I've got to go check this out!" Cerise began to make her way back up the stairs, more likely to make herself presentable rather than to investigate any temporal warps, before something else occurred to her. "Are you staying in today, Professor? Usually you're gone waaaay before I even get downstairs."

Wordlessly, Lessard folded the broadsheet in two and handed it over. Cerise looked puzzled for a moment, but took it. Her eyes turned as wide as saucers as she read the headline.

"Holy... you're kidding me! I mean you have to be kidding me!" she exclaimed. "Oh man, that is not going to end well. Wait. Oh no, don't tell me you're in trouble too?"

"Not that I know of. Not any more than we all are," Remy sighed. "But, I decided I rather not go in early today. I'm going to meet with Professor M and Professor Theroux instead. We finally managed to get Professor M to take a sabbatical to recover, on the condition Bertram and Bertriz weren't allowed within fifty meters of his room."

"Well, it doesn't name my parapsychology professor. Guess I'm still going to class," Cerise observed. She folded the broadsheet and set it down on the table, settling herself down next to Richard. "Hey Rich, didn't you say you wanted to visit the Hazlani district at some point? Do you want to walk down there with me before class? We could pick up something for breakfast. Most the mess has been cleaned up, and I'm pretty sure they got all the magical goo out of Rue Carlotte..."

"I, I, I would very, very much like to, Miss Rondelet," Richard said, with a kind smile. "But I, I am afraid not, not today. A, a week ago I recieved a letter from, from my family. I, I am, I have been shameful in, in not answering until now."

"Oh, yeah, they must be really worried about you!" Cerise replied. "I guess the train tracks are still broken down, huh? You'd have to take a carriage down to visit them and tell them you're alright."

"You, you would, yes," Richard distantly agreed. "My, my father wishes for a, a, more than a visit. He, he has, he has demanded that my sister and I return, return home."

"O-oh." Cerise was silent for a moment. "Well, I guess I can understand that. It has been really twitchy around here, sort of an understatement really. Do you think maybe you'll go study at the Grand Cathedral in Borca instead?"

"I'm, I'm not going," Richard said, simply.

Seeing Cerise's wide-eyed expression, Richard returned it with an earnest, sincere gaze. "I, I can do so much more, more good here. I am, I am quite aware that, of the the dangers here, but I, I feel I witnessed what I did by the, the Grand Scheme of things. To, to leave now would to turn, turn back on the Lady's call. And, and there are so, so many who stay when they have, have little reason to. I, I couldn't leave, with them still, still here." Perhaps Richard's eyes might have flicked upstairs for a moment, and then returned to his letter. "I, I must confess, I must admit I have been, been putting this off. My father does, does not approve of, of the path I've chosen in, in life, and my, my mother is, my mother is very, very worried about me."

He dipped the quill in the ink and set it to paper. There was a knock at the door. Professor Lessard, raising his eyebrows slightly, went to the main hall and opened it.

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It was Captain Cedolin. The gendarme captain had seen better days, this much was obvious. His uniform was crumpled, his scarlet cap was askew, and he hadn't shaved recently. For that matter, it didn't look as though he had slept recently either. Exhaustion was visible in every line of the man, but nevertheless Cedolin had come here instead of to sleep, for reasons you could only imagine. Then he spoke, and his reasoning became deathly clear.

"I think you are in danger." Were the first words out of Cedolin's mouth. "I think everyone who was at the Tessier Gallery is in deadly danger, and you're the only ones I can ask for help who aren't stark raving mad."

[Cronax]

Looking up from his modest breakfast of sweetened cakes and coffee, Mr. Agale studied the flustered captain for a moment before responding. "That we are in a danger I would not doubt captain." he said matter of factly. "But I would wager it not so immediate that you might not take a seat and join us in colazione." He stands and gestures to an empty seat at the table.

"Now then, what news? Has the our erstwhile arsonist recovered sufficiently to provide an account? I must confess, I would find it unusual were he proven more than an unwilling pawn." He then takes a bite of cake.

[The Whistler]

“Good morning, fellow-lodgers!”

You had more or less become accustomed to Celeste’s inveterate morning-person-ness; she switched on at around 6:15 each day, fresh as a daisy, and made a characteristically enthusiastic procession down to the first floor to greet whoever was already up. Today, she was rather late by her standards—longer than average toilette, maybe, judging by the particularly elaborate winter-white morning dress. If possible, though, she seemed doubly pleased with the universe: practically waltzing down the grand staircase while humming along to some tune in her head.

“A crisp breeze at the window-pane, trees bedecked with new-fallen snow…O glorious Nature, that allows us to witness such a day! I have always considered myself partial to springtime in her classical aspect, you understand, but one cannot help but find this present atmosphere to be most refreshing…a timely reminder that other seasons, too, have charms just as entrancing.”

She sighed deeply and happily…and only then noticed the gendarme on the doorstep. Heaven knows who specifically she had been talking to for the past twenty seconds.

“Why, Captain Cedolin! What an unexpected surprise! I hope that you have remained well these past weeks, and that constabulary duty rests more lightly upon your capable shoulders than upon our last meeting. I am sure that I need not speak for the others of the Chateau, but you have remained thoroughly within our sympathies following the events of the eleventh!”

She paused for a moment, reading his face; apparently, she hadn’t heard what he’d said upon his entrance. “Oh, but Sir: you are troubled! Please, unburden yourself, that we may provide assistance in whatever newfound plight besets you!”

[Nathan of the FoS]

Darius (also a morning person, in his way, although he keeps very odd hours) enters from the back garden, tapping his boots free of snow and leaning his sheathed sword against the wall. Going to the stove, he ladles up an absurd amount of cracked-wheat porridge into a mixing bowl, puts half a bottle of cream and a roughly equal amount of honey on top of it, and seats himself to eat, muttering a benediction before setting to with a will.

He is about half-way through his repast when Captain Cedolin enters and makes his doomful pronouncement. Standing, he makes a quarter bow and says, "My brother and I are at your service, Captain." Since the gendarme has already been invited, at some length, to expand on his reasons for asking their assistance, Darius sits back down and continues eating, waiting for the expected rush of descriptive verbiage. The captain isn't a bad fellow for a Dementlieuse, from what Darius knows of him, but all these westerners talk too much.

[Rock of the Fraternity]

Lia, who had been perusing a broadsheet identical to Remy Lessard's in the drawing room, emerges from behind its pages and walks to the door.

"It seems to me," she says, lightly tapping her knee with the folded newspaper, "that the web of killings may go further than just those of us who were at the gallery. But yes, do come in. It's a trifle cold to be talking in the doorway."

'And no telling whether anyone or anything has followed you here,' she adds to herself. 'Best get you inside the wards.'

[DocBeard]

Huh, Tomas Eisenwald thinks to himself, struggling with the extended brush and only half paying attention to his job. Captain Celodin. The odd hours some of the residents keep have made caretaking a little less lonely; as...unique as Celeste's attitude was in the middle of a crisis, it was honestly a bit refreshing at six in the morning when you'd just gotten in from cleaning soot and snow out of the chimney. As far as his own hours, well, the man has to sleep occasionally, but probably takes cat naps instead of a straight six hours, a relic of his traveling days.

There's a SLAM, then, as Tomas leaps down from his scaffold on the roof, landing with a thump behind Celodin. "Guten morgen, Herr Kaleun." Tomas greets, soot faced and grinning, glad that the Captain wasn't here on the day Eisenwald found a nest of squirrels living inside the roof. That was...embarrassing.

[lostboy]

You had noticed over the last few weeks that any signs of life from the room of Msieur De Castaigne before noon was an event rarer than a solar eclipse in the dead of night. Yet on this morning, there indeed was Nicolas drifitng down the stairs looking rather dishevelled behind smoked glasses, although thankfully this time actually fully dressed.

He pauses slightly at the sight of Gendarme, "ah one of Dementlieu's finest has paid us a call I see... shall I get my coat then?" He adds with a wink and a smile to the Captain, holding out his hands briefly as if ready for the cuffs. With the smile still in place he nods greeting to everyone else up at this ungodly hour, and helps himself to a steaming cup of coffee and collpases onto the nearest chaise longue.

[NeoTiamat]

Chateau Malchance, Quartier Marchand, Port-a-Lucine; March 24th, 770
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"Thank you everone. Good morning Mme. Viardot, good morning M. Eisenwald, good morning everyone." Cedolin took off his scarlet cap and ran a hand through his hair, then took Agale's invitation and sat down at an empty chair. "I'm a mess, I know, but it's been one of those nights."

Cedolin looked at Nicolas with a complete lack of recognition. "Uh... if you wish, M'sieur."

"But first, and this is important, have any of you seen anything suspicious?" Cedolin asked. "Have you been threatened or attacked?"

"Now then, what news? Has the our erstwhile arsonist recovered sufficiently to provide an account? I must confess, I would find it unusual were he proven more than an unwilling pawn." He then takes a bite of cake.

"You're right. He's a dupe who had a grudge against the nobility over something involving his sister." Captain Cedolin said. "His information is of limited usefulness. He'd been approached by someone in a tavern whom he didn't see but who had a 'smarmy voice', I believe was his term. Recieved a lot of gold to leave a door unlocked, and that was the extent of it."

"The fire seems to have been his idea. He heard the unfortunate M. Tessier say that the culprit would be found with magic, so he panicked and tried to cause a distraction." Cedolin sighed. "He's a dupe, but the arson is enough to seal his fate. The gentlemen at Montmort will see to him in due time."

"Mme. Chastel's papers have also been singularly unhelpful. Although I think we have you, Mme. Mournswaithe, to thank for them." Cedolin nodded to Lia. "Or at least in part. You'd spooked the guard enough for her to get all the documents and everything else out in time. Narrowly averted an investigative disaster. So from the Gendarme of Port-a-Lucine, you have our gratitude."

"It seems to me," Lia says, lightly tapping her knee with the folded newspaper, "that the web of killings may go further than just those of us who were at the gallery. But yes, do come in. It's a trifle cold to be talking in the doorway."

"That's exactly why I'm here. Someone is working his way through the few sane priests at Ste. Mares des Larmes." Cedolin looked up, then backed up a bit and explained. "As far as we can determine, the madness afflicted almost everyone in the city, but not evenly. Some people were affected more, some less, and there's scattered cases of people being completely unaffected, as nearly as can be told. You can imagine this isn't a precise science. But the two largest pools of those unaffected were those who were in the Cathedral of our Lady Ezra, and those in the Tessier Gallery at the time of the magical assault."

"I should also note that whatever this madness is, it hasn't gone away. It's still there, if much quieter. More insidious..." Cedolin said softly. "It's harder to recognize in people now, but it hasn't gone away. I don't think it ever will, though some of the other mages in the department disagree. But there have been enough cases of people still acting strangely recently to convince me. We've had more violent crime, close to double or triple the old rates, for one thing."

"For the last week I've been liasing with Bastion Armand Pineau and Warden Alphonse Giraud to figure out what exactly happened and why was the Cathedral spared." Cedolin gazed at the rest of you, his voice deadly serious and deadly earnest. "But these last two days, we've had priests disappearing."

There was a clink as Richard put his pen down. He was listenening to Cedolin closely, all thoughts of breakfast forgotten.

"As of this morning, three of the priests we'd identified as 'sane' have disappeared. The Gendarmerie is badly understaffed now, and we've precious few people unaffected." Cedolin sighed. "I think... I think you're all in danger, and I think you're some of the few people who can help."

"Please..."

[Rock of the Fraternity]

"Mme. Chastel's papers have also been singularly unhelpful. Although I think we have you, Mme. Mournswaithe, to thank for them. Or at least in part. You'd spooked the guard enough for her to get all the documents and everything else out in time. Narrowly averted an investigative disaster. So from the Gendarme of Port-a-Lucine, you have our gratitude."

Lia makes an offhanded gesture. "You are welcome, for what the papers are worth," she says. "And as to that worth, I hope you do not mind if I ask you to tell us what there was of interest - or disinterest - in the late curator's papers. Something foul and confusing is afoot, and who knows whether a different point of view may yield different facts from the same paper?

As for helping you to fight this malevolence ... Speaking strictly for myself, you need hardly have asked. If I can do something to fight this madness, I shall.

Possibly the religious wards surrounding la Ste. Mêre des Larmes kept out a part of the insanity. If the University was similarly spared, that might be due to its own arcane wards. Our own safety, I would still like to attribute to having been in a safe zone erected around the epicenter of the insanity to allow the miscreant who started it all to remain safe."

Lia pauses for a moment, then shakes her head. 'The alternative, that we were spared on purpose, would be either ludicrous or open up a most unpleasant line of speculation,' she thinks to herself.

[DocBeard]

"Come off it, Castaigne, you haven't written anything worth arresting you for in nearly a year." Tomas winks at Nicolas's position, rubbing a kink out of his left shoulder and listening to the Captain. He grows more and more serious as the threat makes itself plain...

Its not like the old days, where Tomas could sign a group of travelers up for whatever chaos was besetting a civilized region with a grin and a wink. Half the people here are students or professionals, and they're all so young, it seems obscene, for these children to get involved in this oncoming storm. So Tomas does what he does best; slaps on a grin, pats Cedolin's shoulder and says, "Of course I'll help. I may not be much of a mind, but I can stand around and look imposing with the best of them, ja?"

"There are...predators, in the sewer and elsewhere." Tomas adds, wiping the soot off of his face with a handkerchief he once stole from Sebastian Renier. "They would grow bolder as the strength of the city watch dwindles; this could all be coincidence. Ran into a little trouble myself with a fish monster the day of, to be honest."

[Kaitou Kage]

Cyrus came back in from the back garden shortly after his brother. He wiped his brow and set his sword by Darius's and then he, too, headed for the kitchen. His glasses were still neatly in place, though he pushed them a little further up his nose.

Where Darius made a huge bowl of porridge, Cyrus helped himself to eggs, sausage, and biscuits. He made a delicious gravy out of the sausage grease and then brought his steaming, piled-high plate into the front room.

"Ah, Captain," the older Hazlani twin bowed to Cedolin, "As my brother says you have our full cooperation in this matter. If there is anything the Lawgiver can do for you -- and I am certain there is -- it shall be done."

The dommer smiled his snakelike smile. He wolfed down another bite of breakfast and continued. "Where have the priests disappeared from? If this is to be our current investigation perhaps we can learn something by looking at where they were last seen. If the Ezrans need our help, we will gladly aid them."

After all, Cyrus mused with a smile, It is the duty of those in power to ensure their lessers are able to do their jobs.

[Rock of the Fraternity]

"I wonder whether any of the Lawgiver's clergy in the city have vanished," Lia mutters. "If not, at least we know whoever is behind this insanity does not consider them a threat."

[lostboy]

"Come off it, Castaigne, you haven't written anything worth arresting you for in nearly a year." Tomas winks at Nicolas's position,

Nicolas pauses to light a cigarette and blow a cloud of smoke ceilingward, before returning Tomas' wink with a mock grimace, he really was in an upbeat mood this morning. "Ouch...too true, too true Im afraid. Still I have enjoyed the perks of my liberty and the food here is vastly better than slop they serve at Montmort." He takes another sip of the hot coffee to underline the last point.

However like Tomas on hearing the gendarmes report the levity evaporates from Nicolas' demeanour. This was serious stuff and the poet wasn't about to miss out on any more of the action.

Looking intently at Cendolin, Nicolas speaks slowly in a serious voice that carries across the room. “I’ve been deep in this insanity as much as the rest of this city” he pauses to absently scratch at his chest, “and although I missed the soiree at the gallery I would be more than pleased to lend my assistance in any way I can.”

[yalenusveler]

"Possibly the religious wards surrounding la Ste. Mêre des Larmes kept out a part of the insanity. If the University was similarly spared, that might be due to its own arcane wards. Our own safety, I would still like to attribute to having been in a safe zone erected around the epicenter of the insanity to allow the miscreant who started it all to remain safe."

"It was the soul of the place if anything." Came a voice from the stairway, Kerrian descending with a half eaten apple in hand. With the weather and the madness, his job was currently in a delightful state of flux where he wasn't quite sure if he had one at the moment.

"The Chapel's soul is strong...but there was something else there too, but I think that was isolated. I'm not certian, but I'm betting places that weren't affected besides the Gallery and the Cathedral were places that have strong souls." Another bite of his apple as he finally nodded to the member of the Gendarme present.

"So...where and when do we start investigating? The most recent disappearance, or the first?"

[Cronax]

"The fire seems to have been his idea. He heard the unfortunate M. Tessier say that the culprit would be found with magic, so he panicked and tried to cause a distraction." Cedolin sighed. "He's a dupe, but the arson is enough to seal his fate. The gentlemen at Montmort will see to him in due time."

Mr. Agale sipped his coffee, considering the situation. He neatly places his cup in the saucer and daubs his lips with a napkin before speaking. "Not to mention severely wounding Professor Marchand-Renier in the process. Still, this is more to work with that I anticipated." He gingerly stirred the beverage lost in thought before snapping back into the conversation. "Did he specify which tavern, and when the exchange took place?"

"I'm fairly certain I speak for all here when I say we have a vested interest in the city not descending into chaos and we will do what we are able to uncover this plot." Agale said gravely. With a some eagerness in his voice he continued, "Will we carry the authority of the gendarme for the duration of this investigation?"

Possibly the religious wards surrounding la Ste. Mêre des Larmes kept out a part of the insanity. If the University was similarly spared, that might be due to its own arcane wards. Our own safety, I would still like to attribute to having been in a safe zone erected around the epicenter of the insanity to allow the miscreant who started it all to remain safe."

"A interesting hypothesis madam. If verified, that would support the conjecture that the mastermind was present at the gallery opening. It may be tedious, but if the guest list can be recovered, we will have a serviceable, albeit reasonably long list of potential suspects to begin thinning."