Baron Humphrey of Mercy’s Hazard paced the great hall of the keep. The keep was not his. He didn’t have a keep of his own, not yet. This keep’s name was Haven’s Dawn, but lately it had anything but a haven, and it had been full of darkness rather than light.
For the past few months people had been going missing. About one person a day, and then the past month they had begun being found, or rather, their remnants had been. There was a party of adventurers that had found their way into town and had done some investigating, and when they realized what the implications of their findings were, they had sent for him immediately.
Mercy’s Hazard was a penal colony in the North Ranges. As the baron of Mercy’s Hazard, Humphrey had the unique position of having both investigative authority and judicial authority, when granted to him by the Crown. He hadn’t actually waited for the permission to go through, because was hoping to catch Viscount Dawn before he caught wind of the investigation and fled. Apparently, he’d still been too late, and the viscount had vanished.
The adventurers that had sent word of the keep’s plight were clustered nearby, looking disgruntled. He wasn’t exactly sure who was who, but they were a standard group of six. Two elves, two dwarves, a dracan, and a human. Not exactly a standard ethnic composition for an adventuring party in these parts, but it was technically the edge of the Human Kingdoms, so it wasn’t unheard of. The keep’s viscountess perched elegantly upon an ornate throne at the head of the Hall. Viscountess Dawn put on an air of being unconcerned, but the baron could tell it was only skin deep. There was a rigidness to her poise, and a very calculated way that she raised her goblet to sip. He’d already been questioning her for some time. She was unraveling.
“Tell me again, when did you last hear from the Viscount?” He prompted her.
“He’s been gone this past fortnight, as I told you before.” She spat back. She was clearly getting agitated.
“Surely such an important man as he ought to at least have sent word back in his absence, no?” He again prodded her for a reaction.
“I don’t know what you want me to say Baron Hazard, we do well enough without him.” Viscountess Dawn replied. The baron felt like he had her now, but he wasn’t quite sure how to close it off.
“So, you admit that he never spent much time on the day to day of the operation of the Viscountcy, correct?” That was a leap, but she didn’t refute his claim, “So, what did he spend all of his time on?”
The viscountess paused, clearly troubled, and at last released a sigh. She then collapsed back into her seat with a grunt.
“Immortality, alright? He was always a bit of a fool, caught up in his books, but his Chief Arcanist had him convinced that through the right means, it wasn’t impossible. They spent far too much time together in the library researching this and that, and then a fortnight ago they both up and disappeared on me. Are you happy now? Now that you’ve gotten me to admit that my husband is a fool?”
That wasn’t what the baron was expecting. He shot an eyebrow at his adventurers. There was a great shuffling of feet among them, then an elf that the baron thought of as the leader shrugged. Great, not going to get a lot of help there.
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“Viscountess Dawn-” he began, “I’m not sure you are aware of why I am here… I should have been more frank.”
She gave him a stony look but said nothing.
“You are aware of the attacks that have been happening in your viscountcy. It had been put to my attention that there were some implications that your husband was involved. I don’t know about any kind of mythical path to immortality that he may be searching for, but I came here to investigate those implications. So, you’re saying that rather than time unaccounted for, he actually spends most of his time in the library?”
“Yes, the library,” the viscountess sighed, “we’ve actually invested a lot of time and money into that blasted library, even before my husband became enamored with that fool of a wizard of his. Before immortality it was interdimensional portals or some such nonsense. There are logbooks, and librarians who have spent far too much time helping him who can vouch for his whereabouts. I, too, have been worried about the murders, but my husband isn’t the culprit.”
The baron of Mercy’s Hazard gave the adventurers a withering look, and they did have the decency to look abashed, but he didn’t really blame them.
“Well, Viscountess-”
“Violet, actually,” she interrupted him, "I feel I've been a bit too revealing with you to bother with formalities anymore. Just call me Violet.”
He couldn’t help but smirk in sympathy. It probably wasn’t easy having a husband like hers.
“Well then, Violet, call me Humphrey.” It wouldn’t hurt to be on casual terms with the local hierarchy. If he wasn’t going to be arresting the Viscount, he would have to verify the details with the librarians, but he had a gut feeling now that the Viscount was innocent, he was going to have to work with them both a lot in order to find out what was really going on.
“Really, Humphrey? Isn’t that name a little-”
Humphrey never found out what she was going to say, because with that an alarm bell started to clang in the keeps tower, with echoing bells all over the castle town clanging in response.
Guards appeared, and immediately started escorting the viscountess somewhere else. In most keeps, Humphrey would have assumed that it was somewhere to be protected, but he had already seen that Viscountess Violet of Haven’s Dawn was the one who really kept the viscountcy together. Most likely she was off to a parapet to oversee whatever was happening.
The adventuring party was also on the move. Likely headed to the walls, if he knew their occupation as well as he thought he did. He loosened his arming sword in its scabbard and joined them. It seemed there was an attack coming, maybe he could do something useful today regardless of his investigation.
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Viscount Quincy of Haven’s Dawn stood gazing awkwardly at the army of orcs rushing towards his home in the distance. Well, it was too late to do anything about that now. Violet would have an easy enough time sorting them out, he was sure, she was always so much better about that sort of thing than he was. He knew she looked down on him. For that matter, he sort of looked down on himself. He’d realized at an early age that he was hopeless at things like troop marches, logistics, economics, anything most of his peers thought of as practical knowledge. When he first married Violet and realized that not only was she interested in that kind of thing, but good at it, he had been elated. It was the biggest perk of being married, really. She could boss around his keep and peasants, and he had time to devote to things that were really important, like the secrets of the universe.
His wife thought him a fool, but Quincy knew that he was onto something, and as soon as he got this last marker into position on the crest of the West Ridge, it was all going to pay off. People would finally give him the respect that he deserved. Adrian, his Chief Arcanist, had told him that-
There was a sudden boom of lighting, and a white arc flashed in front of his eyes, causing him to drop the marker at his feet. It must be one of the orcs’ shamans beginning to summon a lightning storm, and it almost hit him for being so high up and nearby. He looked down at his marker in worry, and heaved a sigh of relief. It was a carved of rough stone, the shape of a man with sapphire gems for eyes. It looked like it was still in one piece. Adrian had told him that its proper placement, along with several others at high points surrounding his castle, was one of the key steps on their path to immortality. He wasn’t sure what would have happened if it had broken.
Then he noticed a hairline fracture going across the figure from shoulder to hip, and the fracture started to glow. Then the entire figure began to glow. Then the world went white, and he was no longer on the West Ridge.