"Excuse me, sir!" Captain Rashen shouted as he took up a spot standing next to a man that seemed to be working on making rope. "My name is Rashen Lujarda, I'm the Captain of the Four Winds. We've been deployed here to save this village from its Beastman problem. I'd like your help getting the information we need to do our work."
This man hadn't been around in the morning and he apparently hadn't heard of the groups arrival from anyone else since then, so this was his first time learning of the situation. He put on a relieved smile and set down his work for now, his full focus on the conversation.
"Bless you for coming to our aid, Captain." the man bowed his head in thanks. "I don't know how much I can tell you myself, but I'll help in any way I can."
Rashen let the man's reply hang for a bit as he made sure he understood exactly what was said, then moved on. "It's alright if you don't know that much. We're going to interview every member of the village. Once we have all the available information, it will be processed by our master analyst!"
The Captain made a brief gesture over to Kishaldam, who was standing with a grin on her face while placing her fingers against her forehead like she was going to teleport. She seemed to be very proud of her role in this whole operation.
"Okay then. Let's see..." the villager said, gathering his thoughts. "The first attack was on the potter's eldest son. It was twenty seven days ago, I remember it clearly because I was one of the ones who went to check out the scene. I wish I hadn't."
Nirou could see the man's shoulders shake and the shiver that ran down his spine remembering the picture. He clasped his hand in front of his face tightly to regain his composure. "There was only just enough of his head left intact to recognize him. We've all been terrified since then. People try to avoid leaving the village unless they're in big groups now, but it can't always be done. We can't have twenty people standing around at the lake while we fish, nothing else would get done. So people go out in smaller groups, or even alone if they have to."
"And that's when the Beastmen have been getting them." the villager was sweating at this point, the anxiety of the whole situation getting to him. He started to gesture with every phrase, swinging his hand down like an axe when he talked about the others being taken out. "They're slowly picking us off, until there's not enough to defend the village. Then they can bust right in and massacre all of us at once."
Nirou watched as the man recounted the rest of the dates of the attacks and his circumstances during them, though they were less descript than the first one. Kishaldam stayed focused the whole time on the answers, while Captain Rashen interviewed the man extremely thoroughly. The only conclusion Nirou could come to was that this was a well rehearsed procedure that the team followed quite often. Hamid and Ajandi looked a bit bored, but they were standing by without complaining.
"Thank you for all that information on the attacks." the Captain remarked before turning his attention to a topic that the man hadn't breached yet. "However, you said everyone has been terrified since that first attack. Haven't there been sightings of a tiger Beastman for several months before even that? I'd think things would have already been tense."
"Oooh, yeah. That too." the man was clearly only reminded of the matter just then. "Of course, when that started we were anxious. But nothing bad ever came of it. It would appear before a small group of people out of the village, do some growling, then scurry off if the villagers hadn't run already. Eventually people kind of got used to it. Figured it had set up a home somewhere and was trying to scare people away. We treated it more like a dangerous animal had taken up residence nearby than a Beastman. I think since our request was ignored for so long, we didn't have much of a choice. It was only once the attacks started that the fear set in for real."
"Is it not strange for a Beastman to act that way?" Laska asked, unable to stay quiet like the others any longer. "From what I hear of them, they're constantly out to kill humans. Your country puts so much stake into eliminating them, and it's only natural with the history of invasions. But after all that, would a Beastman that posed no threat be unprecedented?"
"It's odd behavior, but not completely unheard of." Kishaldam spoke up, taking a momentary break from just listening to inform everyone present of her knowledge on the topic. "So-called hermit Beastmen will rarely find a place to live deep in the wilderness and only kill humans that intrude on what they consider their territory. A regression to truly beast-like behavior, you could say. We don't know why it happens, but they're only less dangerous to people in the sense that they will less commonly come into contact with them."
Laska let herself be satisfied with this answer, and went back to waiting as Captain Rashen extracted the last details he could from the villager. Once that was finished, he thanked the man and headed off for another interview. He had been pointed to one of the village's hunters, who would hopefully have particularly relevant information for them to hear. Giving the same standard greeting as he had given the first villager, the Captain made his presence known as he approached.
"Aye, well met Captain." the hunter bowed his head as he took a break from carving up what looked to be a boar. "Those Beastmen have been terrible in many ways, but scaring away the local game is the most relevant to me. Had to go a long ways out to catch this boar, and I could have been jumped all the while. Looking forward to hunting in relative safety again. How can I help?"
Rashen had the man give his take on the timeline and circumstances surrounding the attacks just as the first villager had done, then got into more detailed questions. "As a hunter that's visited some of the scenes, I'd like your take on the attackers. We only know of the tiger Beastman from the earlier sightings, but no survivors exist that can tell us what type made the actual attacks. However, the report sent to us indicated that someone here believed at least two additional Beastmen were involved in the attacks. Can you give us your thoughts on that?"
"Us hunters were the ones that thought so." the man draws attention to his foot and then stamps on the ground a couple of times. "It's the tracks. Beastman prints aren't the exact same as the animal they resemble, but they can easily be told apart from each other. The attack sites always had two sets, and neither of them matched the prints from where the tiger Beastman showed up. Cause we looked at them back then, too."
The logic was solid, so the fact that they were dealing with three Beastmen became the base for everyone's thinking going forward. Nirou could see that the Four Winds were fairly content with this knowledge, likely happy that they wouldn't be stretched too thin when the fighting came around. He also hoped that meant that Laska wouldn't have a chance to get too reckless.
After finishing up with the hunter, Rashen kept going and interviewed villager after villager. Almost always the same set of questions, and eventually even the answers started to blend together. Ajandi was looking bored out of his mind, and Nirou could somewhat sympathize. It was getting to be a bit much.
"Captain... Can I just go do something else?" Ajandi whined. He looked over to the center of the village to see a bunch of kids playing around with a ball, and instantly got excited. "What if I go talk to the kids? Maybe they know something?"
Captain Rashen was less than convinced that Ajandi truly had the mission in mind with this suggestion, but he looked to Kishaldam and saw a shrug from her. Apparently that was a sign that he didn't have to worry about it either way.
"Children don't often have the most reliable information, but they could have picked something up. Go ahead." he waved off his subordinate for the time being. "In fact, only Kishaldam and I really need to be doing this part. The rest of you are probably bored too. Might as well go ingrain yourselves with the locals, right?"
Ajandi ran off immediately towards the group of kids, while Hamid didn't waste time sticking around either. She took up a spot in the shade of a nearby house to watch the scene. Laska considered staying with the Captain and Kishaldam, but Kishaldam shook her head.
"I know your patience must be tried by all of this repetitiveness." she admitted. "Don't worry about leaving us to handle it, we're used to it. You would be better off doing something that can keep your attention."
Laska was still a bit hesitant, but relented and let the two of them continue their interviews alone. Nirou meanwhile made no effort to decide for himself. Sure he was also bored by this point, but if Laska wanted to stick around he would have as well. He convinced himself that there was nothing wrong with just doing the same thing she did.
The pair followed Ajandi over to the small crowd of children, who were kicking a ball back and forth between two large rocks. The rocks were probably for scoring, if this was the same game Nirou had played before. After getting near one of the rocks, a kid tried to kick the ball up to his knee and hit it again, so it seems that this was indeed Taljit. Just a less skillful version, perhaps. This game area was set up in just about the middle of the village, near the fire pit which obviously wasn't burning right now. Nirou could glance around and see plenty of adults nearby keeping their eyes on the place. This was probably the safest it was going to get when it came to leaving your kids somewhere in this situation.
This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.
Ajandi had made his way up to the group of about twenty kids of various ages, and they stopped their ball game momentarily to look at the man. His wrapped up arm seemed to be a particular point of interest. "Do you guys mind if I play too?" he asked completely naturally, as if he was just another kid.
"You're too big!" one of the older ones replies immediately. "Whichever team you're on is gonna win for sure. It's no fair."
"What if you were all on one team against me?" Ajandi suggested. "That would be even. I'm pretty good, so one versus..."
The man stopped in order to point to each child and count out loud to himself. "Twenty-three is about what you need to beat me!"
Ajandi gave a beaming smile the whole time he had been pitching this idea, and the kids seemed to take to his attitude. Nirou wasn't surprised, he had seen stuff about how to deal with kids. Yet more material he had looked into back in medical school. Pediatrics this time. He might have been able to swing that without too much discomfort if he had just been able to graduate. Well, it was too late to think about such things now.
Laska and Nirou stood by to watch as Ajandi played his 1v23 Taljit game, not trying his hardest but not quite sandbagging either. He actually was having trouble keeping possession of the ball, since there were so many kids around that it was constantly being knocked away from him. He was plenty skilled enough to get the ball back since the children weren't coordinated enough to get it to the goal before Ajandi would take it, but the game was surprisingly even since neither team could make much ground.
After a while of standing around looking, Laska seemed keen to actually do something. She noticed a group of young girls that apparently didn't like Taljit all that much, as they were sitting in their own group away from the game.
"Nirou, I'm going to go talk to those girls to see if I can learn anything." Laska informs her companion. It was only natural, Nirou thought, that she would be compelled to try and make progress instead of goofing around.
As Laska went on her way to try and ingratiate herself with the girls, Nirou figured that he shouldn't just be standing around either. He wasn't contributing like Laska, and he wasn't even using the time to have fun like Ajandi. Standing around doing nothing was what Hamid was doing, and he didn't have the brazen temperament to pull it off like she did.
Nirou looked around to try and see if there was anyone that would be a good fit for him to interact with. Not every kid will like sports, right? There was probably some lonely introverted kid around that he could hit up. The odds that such a kid would know anything helpful were slim, but it's the thought that counts. At least Nirou could say that he did something.
His suspicions were proven right after a bit of looking around, as one boy was sitting up against a house far enough away from the ones playing that he wouldn't be involved with them. The fact that he was out here at all was probably just because the parents wanted all the kids in one place, if Nirou had to guess. The boy seemed to be messing around with some wooden object, content to play by his lonesome. It was somewhat nostalgic for Nirou to see.
Figuring that he had nothing to lose by trying, Nirou made his way over to the house the boy was up against and tried to get a look at what he was holding. Partly out of genuine curiosity, but also hoping he could use it as a topic of discussion. If this was the kind of kid Nirou expected, he wouldn't be able to just walk up and ask about the Beastmen. He needed to get the kid to like him first.
The boy looked a bit wary as Nirou approached, and for a second it looked like he was considering getting up and taking off. Nirou wouldn't have blamed him, but in an attempt to avoid that he sat down next to the boy to try and keep his towering over him to a minimum. Nirou still couldn't get a good look at what the wooden square the kid had was, so his only option to strike up conversation now was to ask.
"Hi. What, uh... What's that you're playing with there? It looks pretty neat." Nirou tried to act like he remembered kids doing. No formalities like introductions, they just got straight to talking about what interested them. He had a lot of experience only being talked to by other kids because he had something they were interested in. Snacks or video games, most of the time.
The young boy was hesitant to respond at first, but Nirou's sincere desire to know what the thing was seemed to get across. "It's a puzzle." he answered simply. The boy unclutched the object from his chest and tilted it so the face could be seen.
Nirou's eyebrows jumped in recognition at the sight, as the kid had revealed what looked to be a sliding tile puzzle made of squares with one empty space to allow for shifting them around. This one was eight by eight squares, a lot more complicated than the basic four by four that Nirou usually saw.
"Woah, I didn't know they had these here." Nirou stated with genuine surprise. "That's really cool. Was that made in this village?"
"No, my dad got it for me when he went to the city." the boy explained, his anxiety gradually disappearing as the conversation went on. "No one else in the village has anything like this."
Nirou watched for a bit as the boy slid the tiles around to display the picture correctly. As he got closer Nirou could see that the intended solution looked to be a drawing of one of those giant lizards, the Odolanna. After only a couple of minutes, the full picture came into view solved. It was still a ways away from being done when Nirou approached, so this kid must have done this puzzle countless times by now. He was probably just seeing how fast he could do it at this point.
"That was quick. Nice job." Nirou praised the boy, partially out of his need to ingratiate himself but also because he was actually impressed. "Looks like you've had a lot of practice. How long have you had that puzzle?"
"I got it five months ago. It was lucky timing for me, since the adults stopped letting us go out into the jungle alone." the boy answered Nirou's question with the perfect lead-in. "I liked to go out and explore by myself, so now that I can't do that I have to spend my time on my puzzle."
"They don't want you going out, huh?" Nirou tried to make his topic shift seem as natural as possible. "That's probably because of the Beastman sighting, right?"
"Yeah, but it's dumb. The Tiger never even hurt anybody." the kid latched right onto the topic and started spilling everything Nirou was looking for. "Most of the times it showed up was in front of us kids, and it never looked like it was going to attack or anything. At least, when it showed up for me anyway. It would just make a bunch of weird noises and then run away when more people would come. That's why I knew when the attacks happened that it was a different Beastman. Since the Tiger never even hurt us kids, it was never gonna hurt anybody."
While this was some pretty good stuff, the boy also had his face turned away from Nirou as he spoke. Hiding his face as if to indicate that he also had something else to hide. Something he didn't want to tell Nirou. What he said up to this point could have been guess already, but the hidden info is what Nirou really needed. Something that the others hopefully wouldn't have already gotten out of somebody else. Otherwise his contribution wouldn't exactly be notable.
"Is there something else you're thinking about?" Nirou pryed just a bit further. "It's probably about that Tiger Beastman, right? Even if it's just a strange thought you had, you can tell me."
The boy darted his eyes back and forth to check if anyone else was paying attention to the two of them. When he was assured that they were alone in their conversation, he leaned in close to Nirou. "You can't tell any of the adults about this. I don't know if the other kids noticed, but if they did they know by now to not say anything either. We'd get in big trouble."
"I won't tell any of them, I promise." Nirou insisted. "We don't actually need the villagers to know everything as long as we get the job done, if you think about it."
"A lot of the kids think the Tiger was trying to talk to us. But I'm even sure of it." the boy makes one last look around before lowering his voice slightly. "Because the Tiger has been around for a lot longer than the adults know. It just didn't show itself until now. I've been going out in the jungle to explore since I could walk, and I saw it hiding every once in a while. In the trees and stuff. I think it was watching people. But that's all it did, watch people. So it didn't just show up out of nowhere, I think it tried to talk to people it was watching for a long time."
The kid retracted from his lean and raised his voice back to normal. "Any one of us that knew about it but didn't say anything would get in trouble for sure. So don't tell any of the adults, okay?"
"I won't, you can count on me." Nirou reiterated with a grin. He would be unable to fight it off of his face even if he wanted to, as he was too pleased with his success. "Our team will have everything back to normal and you can go back to exploring the jungle. Of course, you can always keep up with the puzzle thing now that you're into it. Those are pretty popular where I'm from."
"Where is that?" the boy asked, finally taking a good look of Nirou. "You're not from Anjdrahm, right?"
"It's... a very very far away place. Not really a place you could visit." Nirou scratched his face anxiously as he made the decision not to get into the whole otherworld thing right now. "What I mean to say is you shouldn't get discouraged because you're the only one in the village with a puzzle like that. There's definitely more stuff like that out there, so you should check it out. Because you're pretty good at it."
Nirou was even surprising himself with how he was trying to encourage this random kid. He figured he must have been projecting himself again. He hadn't met very many people like himself at all in this world, so this seemed to happen at those times.
The boy looked back at his puzzle. "I want to go to the city next time with my dad and see if I can find more puzzles. They're fun. Maybe I can make my own puzzle, too."
"I say go for it. Since you like them, you can be sure there are other people that will like them too." Nirou shot the kid a thumbs up, but stopped when he saw that it just made him confused.
"Thanks, mister." the boy acknowledged for the first time that Nirou was an actual adult himself. "Good luck with the Beastmen."
Nirou parted with the boy and made his way over to Laska. She was standing around much like Hamid was, as apparently she had gotten all she could out of the group of girls by this point. She was watching Ajandi, who was still having the time of his life playing Taljit with the big group of kids.
"You look pleased with yourself." Laska noted as Nirou approached. "Did you discover something important?"
"Well, it might be. It's interesting, at least." Nirou admitted that he actually had no idea how much what he learned will come into play. But he could be sure that Laska would like to know regardless.
"Alright, then. You can tell me over a break. I think we've played our part in this endeavor." Laska started to walk off somewhere else, with the implication that Nirou should follow. "We can also get something else taken care of. I think I'm finally feeling well enough to make another tribute."