Revolution || Narnia Fanfiction || thecallofnarnia & NaturallyNarnian

Chapter 3: Blend In

David began muttering aloud, annoyed as he strode around the rubble, housed within the entrance of charred walls. Sharp, pointed metal rods- what had survived of the weapon racks- stuck out at precarious angles from the ashes. Steel nails littered the ground, alongside overturned, discarded, now frost-laden buckets that had been used to extinguish the fire.

Thankfully, there were no obvious personal belongings in the wreckage, but the weight and the atmosphere that sat around where the building had been was still heavy with both foreboding loss and fear.

"You solved my arson puzzle!" David's annoyed voice cut through the area that had previously been as suffocating and silent as a funeral. "Where I burn down a building that's ridiculously hard to sort through because I think you're such an ass, and then you have to find out who did it...That's the- The puzzle is it sucks!"

Suddenly he paused, pushing on a blackened, crumbling door that led into a back part of the building.

David breathed deeply as the door fell away, exposing the store room's interior. "It's just like Marble Hornets, with...the red tower! Yeah...seems like nothing, but nope, it's got a ladder and a tape at the top...so what..." he muttered, absentmindedly knocking twice on a piece of a wall as he walked in, "...kinda goodies..." he continued, knocking again, "...do you have for me?"

There were weapons scattered- only a few, however- and there appeared to be some form of structure planned around housing them. This wasn't a simple house with a lone weapon on the table. The interior design contained even more scattered, burned, or otherwise displaced hooks, racks, and stations for various armament types.

Most of the arsenal was gone.

David looked down at the floor of ash, and began slowly swiping segments away with his feet as he walked.

Eventually, he found something under the ash that wasn't floor or materials- it almost resembled cloth, but not carpet. He wiped his feet to brush the ash away around it- whatever it was was definitely way smaller than a carpet, too.

David knelt down and rubbed his fingers on the surface.

"...That's interesting..."

//////

"A weapon house burns down with almost no weapons inside it...what's that tell you?" David asked the expanded court that now included Mr. Tumnus and the Beavers.

Rillingtoff scoffed. "I'm sorry, a weapon house?"

"Yeah...where they're stored...the weapons...a weapon house...a house for weapons," David replied. "Self-explanatory."

"Don't you mean a-"

"Far fewer weapons means that whoever did this didn't just pick a building to burn, they removed the weapons beforehand," David answered himself. "Think about it, the-"

"Awfully quick to come to an answer, there, Your Majesty," Rillingtoff cut in again. "How do we know you didn't plan this yourself? You seem to be on top of everything-"

"That sounds marginally near to an accusation, Lord Rillingtoff," David replied.

"Take it any way you like."

"Okay, then I'll take it and simply ignore it. Now, think about it- when you think of some sort of arsonist, they just pick a building and burn-"

"It is a, as you so eloquently put it, weapon house," the Lord interrupted again, "where something could've easily started the fire that wasn't malicious outside influence. It's like Your Majesty wants there to be some hidden foe that he can find and defeat to be the hero and dissuade us all of his obvious shortcomings!"