The Sacred World

Chapter 19: Investigation

Chezray walked into the Disciplinary Committee's assigned office. A slight limp on his step and him favouring his ribs a little too much. He was quite annoyed by the fact that he had not fully healed by then. He stared at the other's as he took his usual seat.

"What took you off so abruptly?" asked Aizen, staring at him.

"I think the real question is how you could be roughed up this badly from a first-year school excursion," said Chad in a mucking tone.

Chezray ignored this and looked towards Kevin who sat at the head of the table as always. He also noticed Shania's gaze at him. Obviously worry filled her face, but he couldn't be bothered about what anyone in that room thought. He had to relate the information as quickly as possible. He had no real interest in going to meetings, but what he had encountered during the excursion wasn't something he could just hold back on. Other first-year classes would also be venturing down the caves for their excursion and if anything like what he experienced were to happen, he was worried that no one would make it out of that trip alive.

"I thought that the next meeting we'd have would only happen later in the month. After the test series," said Shania breaking the tension, "Could you perhaps fill me us in on who called this meeting?"
She looked towards Chezray. Her eyes beaming at him.

Chezray folded his arms and looked up at her and replied, "It had to do with something I found in a cave on the first-year excursion."

"Something you found?" she asked, tilting her head to look at him, much so like how a dog would.

Kevin placed his heads on the table and sat up properly, everyone knew that it was time to start the meeting and hear what he had to say. Paying attention wasn't something anyone there liked, especially to someone like Kevin who was often a joker and couldn't keep a serious conversation with anyone.

"Since the meeting was called on short-notice, I will skip the formalities. The reason why we have been called here is because the headmaster has decided to withdraw you all from your current duties and stop all excursions into the caves. We recently have found out pressing matters involving a new level of the cave being discovered."

"What?!" said Aizen, almost leaping to his feet.

"Traces of an entire herd of wendigos," said Kevin, looking towards Chezray to indicate that it was now his time to relate his findings from his trip.

"In spite of having just found out of the layer, it seems that the herd of wendigos in the deepest layers of the cave are all working together. Which is very uncommon since they are greedy hunters. They even had a queen among them," said Chezray shutting his eyes to rest them.

"To my understanding, wendigos are highly powerful creatures in general, what is an entire nest of them doing, just roaming around a newly found layer of the caves?" asked Chad.

"Well, just simply because the creatures usually don't like being in groups doesn't mean that it never happens. In fact some rare occurrences over the centuries have popped up. They are highly intelligent, so they probably decided that it would be to their best interest to stay in groups. What doesn't make sense is how they'd all just sit there for years and have nothing to feed on," Chezray looked towards Kevin, "Has the material been confirmed?"

"The piece of cloth that you ripped from the decaying corpse of one of the wendigos is composed of polyester fiber that has only been used in modern times. It's very common," replied Kevin.

"That's..."

Chad was cut off when Aizen said, "That either means that they had been recently in contact with humans whom they devoured, or the worst case scenario, they were humans who recently turned into wendigo."