After saying thanks to the team we all decide to call it a night and start to head outside, due to how this world measures time it's about 1am while on Earth it would be closer to 11pm (I think?) so not too late, but due to all the reading and discussion we have been slogging through it feels like 3am to me.

Master Naaf apparently has a room upstairs and so retreats to get some rest, we as a group grab our things (In my case my confiscated Adventuring Gear) and leave through the front doors, I am finally a free man.

As we exit the Guardsmen Headquarters the festival is wrapping up for the night, there are a few eateries still open and a couple of bars but most everyone else has either moved on home or is sleeping it off. Speaking off, some people have been dumped outside the front door and are being moved onto stretchers and taken inside, guess they are too drunk to go home.

“Hey Locky, what's this festival about anyway, and it goes on for how long? I thought you said it was a night market.”

“Ah, yea I kinda forgot that this was on, it's the mid year festival. Ten days of fun. We’ve got a few days still before it's over.”

Before I ask a question about markets and cool things to do at this festival I hear a commotion from one of the open eateries, from a small outdoor table a small kid sprints forward towards us, with two people in tow at a slow jog, as he gets closer I notice he has very red and puffy eyes and looks tired.

“Lee! What are you doing here?” says Adoazze as she steps forward to hug him, he’s short and about 10 years old with light brown hair and as of right now very red, puffy eyes wearing a loose shirt under a oversized coat several sizes too big for him.

“Zeze, Kiphesh isn’t home yet. Is he here?”

“No sweety, Kiphesh isn’t here. He left hours ago, are you sure you haven’t missed him?”

“Investigator” says the Guardsmen who approached. “Junior Guardsmen Brentvons, I found Lee here wandering through the streets, I brought him to the eatery here to calm down and get a statement but he’s been crying. All I could find out is that his father’s missing. I was actually just about to head inside. This is the owner of the.”

“Where did you find him?” Asks Adoazze, waving to the apparent owner of the eatery to leave.

“The Waves of Hingmagne Street, he was heading in this general direction and I sent my partners to look at the house, they are on their way back and reported that the house is empty.”

“What, why would Lincastle?...”

“This is about Lincastle? Who’s Kiphesh?” I ask surprised.

“Kiphesh means something like daddy.” Says Lock, I note that down for later. Need to study more.

“Could he be inside and we didn’t know it?” Says Lock, Adoazze picks up Lee and starts walking inside. “He might be, but he would have let Lee know.”

We walked back in and talked to the Guards on duty at the gate, Capitan Lincastle did not come back and had left earlier in the afternoon, he should have long ago arrived back home.

Adoazze sends a silent communication to Master Naaf and proceeds to tap into the city crystal camera network at her desk to trace his path back. Lee has calmed down slightly and Imi is currently holding him on her hip away from the desk while Adoazze shows us the cameras as we crowd around her.

We see Capitan Lincastle leave the Guardsmen Headquarters, move down a few streets and then come to a stop just before the street he lived on. We see him pause for a moment, shake his head and move on towards the docks. We watch as he enters an older, more run down part of town. Which is where we run into trouble, cameras are on the fritz or not working, some have been moved to face buildings or windows instead. We quickly reach a dead end.

“What's he doing down here, there should be nothing down there but, Terrenberg Docks? Why go there?” Says Adoazze, literally and figuratively scratching her head.

“Has there been any reports of crime or stuff down there?” Says Milrich, Master Naaf replies, “Only the usual, nothing that would warrant Lincastle to go there today.”

Stolen story; please report.

“Could it be something new?” I ask. “Back home we can report crimes and stuff anonymously, maybe he got a direct report?”

“Hmm, we can check.” Says Adoazze who looks at Master Naaf for a moment who nods. Getting up from her chair she heads upstairs towards Lincastle’s office as we follow, Imi staying behind to calm Lee.

Adoazze reaches the door and places her hand on the crystal to open the door, she frowns for a moment before opening the door.

“It’s unlocked?”

We follow through as the lights turn on and move around the desk, there's nothing else in here aside from the desk and a few chairs. Not even a poster on the wall or stacked papers on the desk, spartan isn’t the right word, empty is better.

Adoazze sits in his chair and touches some crystals, filling them with mana. She quickly frowns and a holographic image appears over the desk as the lights dim leaving us in near darkness, it’s a flat image of Captain Lincastle sitting at his desk with a bottle and glass filled with an amber liquid nearby. An unspoken command through the crystals and the recording plays.

Lincastle starts the recording in a mellow tone. “Hello, I don’t know how to start this but I’ll start at the beginning. I was a damn good Guardsman, me and Shernia, we did so much. Fighting to keep this city safe almost no matter what, taking down bad guy after bad guy, from minor drug busts to crime lords.”

“We made a lot of friends and quite a lot of enemies… Too many. As some of you might know, Senior Guardsmen Shernia Holywick died… in the line of duty almost twenty years ago. It was an ambush, some scum from the old Ogegus Cartel decided to get rid of us after we raided one of their warehouses. Ambushed us not three blocks away from my own house. Twenty seven of them versus us two, we drew swords and started cutting them down, Powers flying, civilians getting hit in the crossfire, missing death by a hair's length.”

“It was down to the last two, each of us covered in blood, theirs and ours. We fought, flying around the street trying to get the upper hand. Shernia got pushed back and rolled a few paces at one point in the fight and the scum ran at me, nearly got me in the back but.” Lincastle pauses to take a sip from a small amber cup on the desk.

“But, she activated a teleport Power and intercepted it, the sword went right through her and I didn’t even notice. I killed that final scum and turned to find her dead behind me and her murderer nowhere to be seen.”

“I tried to help but it was too late, and next thing I know I’m waking up from a surgery to fix my inners. She, didn’t make it. I, failed her when she needed me the most. I…” Lincastle wipes his eyes, takes a breath and looks back at the camera again, his face with a slight unnerving smile.

“Afterwards there was a whole ceremony and funeral and all I could think of was, Where is the bastard who did this, why is he free?”

“A year later he’s found dead in a back alley, a single sword thrust through the front and out the back. Of course I was talked to by Guard Affairs but they couldn’t find anything. Ruled it as Inter-Cartel business and left it at that. A clean death, scum killing scum.”

“It wasn’t a clean death, my partner was barely starting her life, twenty-five years old with a kid on the way. I had been tracking him for weeks between my duties, just waiting for the right moment to get him alone, and there he was, walking out of some Souscrobre House without a care in the world, no protection either.”

“He saw me, he knew why I was there. You could see it, in his eyes. So I smiled at him, just before my sword went through his back, looking him in the eyes before dumping him in that alley.”

“I didn’t regret what I had done, felt it was righteous. By then, I was doing a job for the Institute, someone had broken into a laboratory and they wanted to know who. Sir Falgus of Haven Isle called me up to his office asking about the case. The next thing I know he’s showing me a recording of me killing off that scumbag from the day before. He said, that if I don’t do him any favors when he asks then he’ll release the video and me, and Shernia would be stripped of our ranks.”

“I couldn’t do that, so I went into his pocket, and for every day after that I regretted it. Regretted murdering a piece of shit who deserved it more than anyone. But, that was only because I got caught.”

“Today I realised that, I was always becoming increasingly hostile towards them, the scum of the city despite her trying to help. On and on she would try to slow me down but I just kept ignoring her. She saved my life, she saved me from myself and I didn’t even realise it, or thank her for it, nothing!” Yelled Lincastle in anger, banging his hand on the table.

“So I’m going to set things right, Falgus told me to direct Guards away from the Terrenberg warehouses. He was also worried about something with Michael Hayes, one of his duplicates finding something or other. I don’t know what but, I am going to find out if it’s the last thing I do.”

“I’m sorry for breaking your trust in me, for all these years, and yes Falgus also told me to arrest Hayes. I suspect that the killing was also set up by him but I can’t be sure. I was just given a name to tie it to that case. I am… very sorry.”

“Master Naaf, I am sorry for what I have done. But I hope you can understand that my telling you this now is not something done out of necessity, although it did start out like that but, it's been something I have wanted to get off my chest, without even realising it for some time now. All I ask is that my son isn’t told. He shouldn’t have to deal with his old man's mistakes… That’s all.”

The holographic image cuts off, leaving us behind in the darkened room, an unspoken question speeds through our minds. “Where is Capitan Lincastle?”