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Ice Tulip
6cbace
"So how's the wife?"
"Eh. Ain't so happy since I've been assigned to the outer districts." Stanford shrugs. "Tells me I spend more time here than with my son. What about you?"
"Same old same old. Too much paperwork to bother with a night life."
He hums, jotting down details about the scene as I relay them to him.
"You sure you don't want me to hook you up with someone I know?"
"What, with your brother?" I wince.
"He's a nice guy behind all that gruff."
"Behind all that gruff is vulgar."
I run a hand across a nearby slate, feeling the crushed gouges across the stone marker.
"Whatever this was is at least a D rank."
"That's not going to go well with the boss. Having something that dangerous should have been spotted long ago."
I grunt in agreement, dusting my gloves clean of the dirt.
"Well, lets get this over with." I take a breath and raise my hand straight, "Gather before my eyes and reveal yourself, [Lesser Mana Sight]."
A flicker runs though my eyes as mana lights up around me.
"Shit."
"What's wrong?"
"It left behind a huge trail, whatever this is." I point out the path the creature took, "Trail leads from the over the fence towards the graves and towards the shack. It's then a straight path back towards the fence. Probably rank C with something this size. Get in touch with central intelligence, check if there has been other sightings of large creatures around. Someone has bound to have notice something this big."
"Hopefully whatever this is prefers the dead rather than the living." Stanford grimaces.
I take one more look before my sight painfully returns to normal.
"Nothing seems to be left behind, not even footprints."
"That can't be right, the groundskeeper said it walked on two feet."
"That's not what the trail says."
Sargent Stanford walks forwards to inspect the slates, marking down the names and details of the evicted dead. A minute spent and a frown enters his face.
"Discovered something?"
"Whatever this was, it knew what to look for." He points towards the disturbed ground, "These graves all held mages," and then pointed to the undisturbed ones, "and these didn't."
I check the slates for the mark that depict ones who had mana stones in them, and he's right.
"So this thing is after dead mages?" he asks.
I shake my head, "Mana stones. It's after mana stones. That doesn't make much sense though, the shrines handle the dead and remove them for preservation and to prevent necromancy."
"Doesn't that mean this thing might head towards the shrine next?"
I recall where the trail ends at the fence, and realize that it heads straight towards the city walls.
"Stanford, head back first and report that we might have a creature on the loose in the city."
"Yes Captain." He salutes before jogging out of the cemetery.
Investigate:
Shack
Attempt to retrace trail
Attempt to follow trail
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