Iscladon Breaking (Book One in the Cerios Chronicles)

Chapter 12-King

Chapter 12

King

Slikver had soon enough gotten into a full-on investigative mode. He had gone through and asked questions on the details and found absolutely nothing useful.

He wasn't sure if it was a social thing, but Metya's people (who he had finally learned were called the Drachamar) seemed to have extremely low observational skills. After asking more than a dozen people, the only useful piece of information he had gotten was that all the victims had never once ventured out of the village. Which unfortunately was a commonality in the village, so that gave him very little help.

He was somewhat astonished that these people lived below a jungle that they never visited, but he supposed it wasn't for everyone. They had discovered some years ago that they could grow whatever food they needed inside shelters, as it wasn't actually that cold in the village. This allowed them to be a completely self-sustained village. The overall impression he got from them was a lazy, contented people.

It was clear enough to him that Bonte, Keicha and Metya were the rebels of the group, the only ones who had a paticular desire to search for anything outside of their small village. Arsene seemed to be the voice of support for them, but Slikver suspected he considered himself too old to follow in their footsteps, so he simply tried to help them as much as he could. Eventually after thoroughly questioning and somewhat irritating virtually every citizen of the town, he was forced to admit defeat and resort to the original plan of tracking down where they had been. He and Metya worked together to catalogue every thing on every single victim until they had simple lists that could be compared.

Why only the two of them were working on this was a mystery to him, as the rest of their travelling group seemed to insist on getting some form of sleep. He had found himself completely energized by this new mystery and didn't seem to need to recuperate from having gotten no sleep the night before. Metya didn't seem to want to waste time on sleep when her people had a killer among them, so she was helping however she could.

After finishing their lists, they found several things actually in common, most of which were more attributes of the Drachamar than anything else, but one thing stood out.

"Dirt," Metya said incredulously, "that's the best you can do, they all had dirt on the soles of their shoes."

Slikver shrugged, "Well, where did they pick it up? They live in a village full of perpetual snow, the only exposed dirt is in the farm complexes."

Metya sighed, "We get our own food from the complexes, Slikver, they must have just gathered something."

"All of them?" Slikver questioned, "Ten dead, and not one had the dirt brushed of their shoes, or had it turned to mud in the melting snow? Another coincidence that seems far too..."

"Coincidental?" Metya finished exasperatedly.

"Exactly," Slikver crowed, "perfect word for it."

Slikver stood from where they had the ten lists scattered around them (some multipage, as Slikver felt the need to point out the direction of their leg joint in every single list, along with a number of other traits) and went to the door, gesturing to Metya to follow him.

Metya groaned, "Where to now?"

"The farm complexes of course, I want to take a look around."

So they went to the farm complexes and found little of use there apart from some elderly citizens who gave them rather irritated looks. Metya and him both looked at the tracks surrounding the simple irrigation system, but there had been so many coming and going that it was impossible to tell who may or may not have been the victims. Momentarily stumped, Slikver decided to see if a new perspective might change things, so he changed to his panther form and began to climb the walls. Metya followed him and they continued moving up in the large half dome that covered the small corn field. At one point they ended up hanging nearly upside down, which was actually fairly easy for Slikver as his claws were almost ridiculously long. He looked down at the field and was momentarily disoriented by looking at it upside down before he got used to it.