CHAPTER 16 A LEAD
The walk over to the nearby village was just as uneventful as everything else we’d done so far, which only added to the weirdness that we were experiencing with everything going on. Nobody wanted to talk with us despite their friends and/or family disappearing which just didn’t sit well with any of us. But we weren’t about to try and force them to talk, all we could really do was stick our noses to the ground and see what we could turn up. Which so far had been a whole lot of nothing.
We pulled up to the nearby village of Poulten. The town was a bit smaller than Muldren, but had a completely different vibe within the village than Muldren. People were walking around talking to each other, and generally seemed to be more alive. There also wasn’t a guard at the entrance unlike Muldren.
Garrus walked up to the nearest group of people, a couple of women talking to each other doing laundry. It had a very cliche feel to it.
“Excuse me misses, do you know where we could find the inn or somewhere else we’d be able to stay the night?” Garrus spoke calmly and politely, doing his best not to seem overbearing after our last experience actually talking with someone properly.
“Oh sure sure, it’s a few buildings down on the left, you can see the sign from here. Who are you all by the way? We don’t get many new people around here, ‘specially not elves.” One of the ladies said nodding towards me, she seemed friendly enough despite the fact that I wasn’t a human.
“We’re the Earth Raiders, a sapphire party from Vinwood answering the request about Muldren. The one with all the disappearances recently. Do you ladies know anything about that? None of the people down in Muldren wanted to talk all that much about it.”
“Well, can’t say we know too much about it, but Clayton knows one of the people who disappeared. You could go talk with him, he’s sat a little ways outside of town to the north. Might be hard to get him to say anything, he's usually pretty withdrawn, it’s why he’s not sat within the town in the first place.”
“Thank you.” Garrus said simply and moved on his way
We finally had a lead, something we could act on and hopefully it would continue from there. It was starting to get late so Garrus picked up the pace, probably wanting to talk with Clayton before night fully came around and people started going to sleep. We talked with a few more people and got a few more directions pointing us to where he lived and found a well worn path people had described to us just outside town.
We followed it down for a few minutes, and eventually we found a shack on the end of the road. It seemed to still be in relatively good repair despite how shoddy the overall craftsmanship of the building looked.
Garrus went ahead and just marched right up to the front door and knocked on it. We waited a few moments before we heard shuffling inside and things being knocked over. If I were to guess this was the typical village drunk that lived outside of town. And when the door opened I could see that I was correct. The man looked like he had drunk way more than he should’ve already and had the appearance of a homeless person. Unkempt beard and hair, body odor that really stuck out, the whole 9 yards.
“Whaddya want? Can't you see I'm busy here?” He slurred over his words and leaned heavily on the door frame barely able to stay standing.
“We’re here about the disappearances and we heard you knew someone involved and wanted to see if you had anything you could give us to help us end this as quickly as possible.” Garrus just jumped straight into it without any hesitation.
Clayton sat there for a moment trying to parse what Garrus had said to him.
“Disappearances? Disappearances… uhhh… Oooooohhhhh yeah. I think I know what you’re talking about. Yeah, I don’t know a whole lot of anything meself anyways. I used to live in that village you know. Everything was going well for me, I had a girlfriend and a steady job. Her father didn’t approve of our relationship though. So when she poofed he blamed it on me, said I took her to get back at him or something. Everyone believed him even though he couldn’t prove it, they pushed me out of the village and now I’m here.” He raised his hands gesturing to his current situation.
“You’re lying.” Penny spoke. She was calm and confident about it as well. “I have skills that allow me to get a general feel on people, know their moods and their proclivities. I can’t tell which part, but I know you’re lying about something. So start telling us the truth. The sooner you do that the sooner we can help you by getting to the bottom of this.”
The man just stared at her before he started laughing, a deep hearty laugh. “Missy, I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
Penny glared at him, but didn’t say anything about it. She had said her piece and was willing to just let Garrus handle it going forward.
“Listen man, if you don’t want to help us that’s fine. We aren’t gonna give you grief over it and we’ll move on and try to find another way of approach. But.” Garrus lifted a finger to emphasize his next sentence, “If it comes out you knew something or were involved in any way with the disappearances and you didn’t give information that could’ve saved lives. You’ll be held accountable for that. If you know something, telling us now is the best way to end all of this and stay out of trouble. If you want everything you tell us to stay quiet, we will keep it anonymous. If anyone asks, we figured it out on our own if that’s an issue to you.” Garrus stared him hard in the eyes, not even breaking eye contact by blinking.
This standoff remained for over a minute before the man let out a huff of air and leaned his back against the door frame.
“Karif if you would please.” Garrus said with a quick glance behind him.
Karif began casting a ward to protect us from people eavesdropping, Penny would’ve told us if anyone had been nearby listening. But you never knew if someone had a way to go by undetected or if they just happened to be a higher level than her so she wouldn’t be able to detect them. I looked around with both my sense skills as well but didn’t see anything out of the ordinary either.
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“So what can you actually tell us about the disappearances?” Garrus asked.
The man's appearance changed drastically, he still seemed a bit hungover, but his stature was more straight and he seemed more in control of his motions than he had initially let on.
“Not a lot. All I know is that I left town for one day and came back to my entire family missing. I had a girlfriend at one point, but I married her. The town didn’t necessarily push me out. I was just forced out by circumstance. When my family was taken a note was left behind. I was to get into the nearby town and relay whatever information I had back to whomever took them. I have a drop point where I leave my information and I assume they pick it up from there. But that’s it, I don’t know anything else.”
Clayton no longer slurred over his words and spoke clearly and concisely.
“Why would no one in Muldren talk to us about this? They practically ignored us when we tried to talk to them about anything.” Garrus asked. I had been wondering the same thing.
“That’s… I’m not sure. That doesn’t make sense to me either. The whole town had been in a panic initially when all of this started happening. And you’re telling me they won’t even talk about it? That doesn’t seem right.”
Garrus stroked his beard. “Strange. And you don’t have any idea about why anyone would be doing this at all? No potential enemies, people with grudges against the town? Anything like that.”
“Nothing. It’s a small town, hell there’s not even petty crime in the place. Last crime that was committed was over 5 years ago, and it was just someone that forgot to pay their tab on a meal. Not exactly a lot of people that could build up grudges.”
Garrus nodded his head, “I see. I appreciate you for speaking up Mr. Clayton. We can work with what you’ve given us, and we’ll make sure no one knows you told us anything.”
Garrus didn’t even wait for a reply, he just turned around and started walking away. I glanced over at George standing next to me, he met my eyes and just gave a small smile before turning around to follow Garrus.
As we heard the door close behind us and put a dozen or so feet between us and Clayton’s shack Garrus spoke to us, “Let’s go back to town and get a room and talk about our next move. I’ve got the startings of a plan.”
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We all sat in a single room in an inn, warded to prevent eavesdropping in any capacity.
“Okay, so what we know so far is that people are disappearing from Muldren,” Garrus started, “A man is currently being blackmailed to assist and no one in town is talking about the situation. They were apparently alarmed enough at first to put a guild request out, but now no one wants to act on it, people are still disappearing and we have no known motives or suspects.”
Garrus looked at each of us before continuing
“My main assumption about what’s happening here is that the entire town is compromised in a similar way to Clayton. That’s pretty much the only thing I can come up with that makes sense, these people are being blackmailed in some way to not talk about it and not seek any more help than they have. In fact I’d wager they never even wanted a guild request to go out in the first place, but something happened that one made it out anyways. Anybody disagree so far?”
Everyone shook their heads, I agreed with Garrus. I couldn’t think of a single reason why anyone would refuse to talk unless they were being blackmailed to keep quiet.
“The real problem is going to be getting any further with what we know, we know someone is giving information and where they drop it off too, but the big thing is going to be trying to ambush them in the midst of that. If it’s even going to be possible, on top of that I doubt we’ll be able to convince anyone to talk to us still despite the fact that we know they’re being blackmailed. In fact, I believe they’re more likely to act aggressively in order to protect their families if they know how much we know about the situation.” I spoke up for the first time practically all day, I’d remained pretty quiet content to let the rest of the group handle the talking that had come up.
“I agree, which is why tomorrow we’re going to work on infiltrating the town. If they don’t want to speak up, we’re going to have to catch them in the act. So that’s why my plan is going to be splitting up and one group acting as bait and the other watching them. It’s not the best plan in the world, but it’s probably our only option to get any further.”
I nodded slowly, it was a pretty risky idea. If the person acting as bait got caught and the rest of the team couldn’t bail them out, that person could end up dying. And unfortunately, the best person to act as bait was me. I doubt the rest of the group would force me to do it if I didn’t want to. I also wasn’t going to lie, the idea of being the bait terrified me. I wasn’t normally a very courageous person anyways. But at the same time, I couldn’t in good conscience ruin what might possibly be our only way to get to the bottom of this.
“I’ll do it.” I said before anyone else could interject. “If we’re looking for someone to act as bait, I’m the best option. I’m the lowest level of the group, but I’m way stronger than my levels indicate. I'm also a unique person due to the fact that I’m an elf, so I’ll stick out like a sore thumb. It’ll be pretty easy to spin up a story on why I’m not with you guys as well. Like it was getting too annoying to take me places because of how hostile everyone acted all the time or whatever.” I looked at Garrus as I finished, in the end he’d have the final say whether or not he’d be willing to let me go.
“Are you sure about this, there’s a very real chance you’ll die.” He didn’t sugarcoat it, he laid it out plain and simple. If anything even went remotely wrong, I was toast.
“I am. I know that I’m the most likely to die if there’s any sort of conflict. But I also know that I’m the most likely to succeed and survive this plan. I won’t lie and say I’m not scared to do this. But if someone had taken my family, I’d want someone to stick their neck on the line to save them if I couldn’t.”
Garrus nodded at me, maintaining his serious disposition. “Alright then, Alex will be our bait. Karif you’re going to enchant something that you can keep tabs on. Like a rock or his sword or something so we can follow him. Penny, you're going to be his shadow. You’ll be the only one that can watch him from a distance without being seen along with Karif.” Garrus then turned to look at me again, “Alex you’re going to go back to the town by yourself and mingle with the locals a little bit. Spin a story as to why you’re no longer with us and why we wouldn’t want to associate anymore. You’re going to stay in town for a couple of days before moving out into the forest. If they don’t act within three days we’ll meet back out on the road towards Vinwood and plan our next course of action. Sound good to everyone?”
Garrus had rapidly fired off his instructions but paused to make sure everyone was on the same page still before. When everyone nodded he spoke again. “Good, let’s eat and get some rest, you especially, Alex. You’ve got a rough couple days ahead.”
I did indeed, and honestly I was not looking forward to any of it. Penny placed a hand on my shoulder. “Don’t worry Alex, we’ll make sure nothing will happen to you. I swear it.” She gave me an encouraging smile.
“I know. If I didn’t trust you guys, I would’ve never agreed to this in the first place.” I patted her hand before she removed it from my shoulder.
I trusted them to do their best to save me if anything went wrong. I just had to avoid thinking about the very real possibility that their best could potentially not be enough if they faced someone that was stronger than them. And in a world of magic, there was always someone stronger. Always.