From being an Abandoned who had rarely left the Hollowed Grounds, to embracing the call of adventure, to dying and being reborn first as an Ascended and then as an Ancient, Maea has gone through quite the amount of changes in her life. One thing remains common, though, in her attempts to find out just where she belongs; she’s always had a craving for knowledge which has brought her to so many places and to meet so many people here in Caido. We can’t wait to see what else is in store for her!
Congratulations, Maea!
Credits
Court of the Fallen was created in October of 2018 by Odd, Honey, and Crooked.
Skinning and hosting by the epically talented Kaons, and functionality fanciness by the coding magic of Neowulf. If you ever see either of them around, make sure to show them some love!
The thought floats through Finn's mind before he can help himself, and he spends the trip out to the Silk Houses lecturing himself about it. He has been dreaming too much with a certain demi-god, he thinks. He will have to begin keeping more detailed notes in his dream journal, and ensuring he takes regular breaks from his pseudo-crime solving, lest this become even more of a problem.
The days stretch long in Stormbreak at the height of this season, but when darkness does fall, it is warm and absolute, and in between the garish lanterns and ruddy light from window panes, it is very difficult to see indeed. Finn has been told of a theft from an antiques store that (conveniently, he might add) is both hidden away and difficult to get to, and he's picking his way across broken glass in pitch blackness to reach the busted window soon enough.
It was a large, heavy duty envelope and Tal didn't know what was in it it was sheet music but he'd been instructed to deliver it to Stormbreak and one Finn Rosencrantz at his earliest convenience. Finn was... kind of a friend? Maybe? There weren't many other people that Tal had shared a half-naked picnic with on Caido, so he dubiously supposed that made them friends. He owed the other man his life, at the very least, so he grabbed his gear and a few changes of clothes, tucked the envelope into his Bag of Holding, and headed off to take the portal to Torchline and the skyship from there to Stormbreak.
It wasn't the red-eye, but it was still dark when Tal arrived and Boreal padded along on the ground at his side, unwilling to fly in the uncertain terrain at night.
Unfortunately, Finn wasn't at the address the courier had. Fortunately, a passerby saw him standing in front of the private detective's door and mentioned some sort of crime having been committed down in the Silk Houses that the man might be investigating, so away Tal went. Interested eyes occasionally strayed from the path to admire the wares on display, but the courier was on the job and he was as tenacious as a bulldog as he followed the rumors to a dark alley that had Boreal's hackles up and Tal adjusting his goggles grimly before he padded into it. Ten feet was a good distance, but he really, really wanted more, especially in situations like this...
"Oh! Hey, Finn!" The man appeared at the edge of Tal's enhanced vision, standing amid broken glass and looking very detective-y as he examined a busted window. Tal grimaced and patted Boreal's head so she'd stay back while he began to pick his way over on tip-toe. "Got a delivery for you!"
Finn, who does not have very clever goggles to rely upon in the darkness (he has his aura spectacles, but here's a funny thing - they don't help with people sneaking up on him) reacts... well. Badly could be a word for it. It could also be an understatement.
Later, the detective will look back on this and wonder when his reflexes started to sharpen, but for now, Tal will merely find himself staring down the barrel of what will one day be known as a gun, whipped out from beneath Finn's coat. He stands, tense and uncertain, until his eyes slowly adjust and start to tease familiarity out of the velvety aura nearby.
"Tal," he says slowly, lowering the firearm. "I am so sorry. You... have a delivery for me?"
He felt a little bad when Finn jumped and whirled; he hadn't meant to startle the man, but he was starting to forget that other people couldn't see as clearly as he could in the dark now (well, within a limited radius, at least). He took a reflexive step back, boot crunching on glass, as something whipped around to point at him-
Fortunately for Tal, he had no idea what the hail it was. It didn't look like any weapon he knew, and he peered down at it curiously without taking offense as soon as he didn't see metal glinting or magic swirling. "Oh, uh, don't worry about it. An' yeah, Ms. Cally Oberweis sent you some... paperwork, I think?" The kindly old music teacher couldn't have fit much else in the slim envelope. Tal fished it out of his Bag and offered it to the detective, peering over Finn's shoulder at the busted window and a few feet into the interior of the antiques shop as he did. "Have y'figured out whodunnit yet?"
Thankfully (though not for the reasons Finn might think) Tal doesn't seem offended by having a weapon pulled on him, and proceeds with his delivery as if they aren't standing in an active crime scene. And because Finn is just as much of a social... worm? (is that the opposite of a social butterfly?) he takes it in his stride, eyebrows raising to hear who the package was from.
"Paperwork...?" he begins, before opening the envelope and peeking inside as best he can given how black it is outside. "Oh," he says, warming instantly, "it is some sheet music. That is very kind of her - please give her my thanks?" he murmurs, before tucking the envelope under one arm and returning his attention to the crime scene.
"Not yet," he confesses. "I wanted to take a look around before making it obvious that someone was investigating." Hence the lack of light. "All I can say for sure is that it was an Accepted." That's what the aura trail leading out of the shop window tells him, anyway.
Even if Tal had recognized it as a weapon it wouldn't have been the first time, and the mail still had to go through. They might have been standing in a crime scene, but as long as the recipient of his packages wasn't dead the courier was bound and determined to see his duty to its end. (Caterpillar was the word for them. Social caterpillars who would one day spin protective cocoons to wall themselves away from society and then probably end up eaten by something before they finished figuring out the rules of interactive niceties that others found so natural).
Not that Tal needed to know what was in the package, but he couldn't help but be a teensy bit curious about what he'd carried over hill and dale and the entire damn breadth of Caido so he stuck around while Finn peeked inside. Sheet music? Well, it made sense, but it was disappointingly prosaic, especially in the face of their nocturnal investigations and the courier soon turned his attention to the violence around them.
"Looks like he used a loose brick t'knock the window open." Tal pointed helpfully to where one lay just inside the shop, well hidden by shadows that could do nothing to stop his Goggles. "Probably took it from that corner, there." A dark space on the wall beneath the outside window ledge would reveal a missing brick to anyone brave enough to stick their hand underneath it to feel around. "How d'you figure it was an Accepted?"
And thus Finn and Tal begin the first meeting of the Stormbreak Division of Social Caterpillars, which is naturally in the most socially inappropriate setting, and is likely to break records in terms of its awkwardness. "Hm...? I - oh." Following the other man's gaze to what he absolutely cannot see within and without the building, it dawns on the detective (who, despite this current oversight, is usually a very intelligent man) that at least some light ought to have been appropriate to see by.
"How do you know...?" he begins, before the same question is fired back at him, and he gives a sheepish smile and a half-shrug. "Oh, it's... these help me to see what races have been in an area for a period of time," he explains, carefully removing his spectacles from his nose. "Although, they don't seem to work for anyone else, so..." Another shrug. Maybe it's just him. Maybe he's crazy.
Tal hadn't been around very many active crime scenes before, and now that he'd completed his delivery he felt perfectly justified hanging around to indulge his curiosity. There was something very dashing about looking for clues, piecing together the evidence, and forming a brilliant deduction that pointed to the culprit and Tal was looking forward to getting to see how it all worked in action.
He had a lot of faith in Finn after the guy saved his life.
Tal peered at the spectacles curiously before reaching up to tap the side of the goggles that were resting firmly over his eyes with a cheerfulness that was terribly out of place standing amidst broken glass outside of a recently-pilfered shop. "These help me see through weather an' dark an' stuff," he confided in return. "Dunno if they'd work for anyone else. Safrin gave 'em t'me." And he hadn't loaned them out to anyone since. "What other clues have y'found?" he asked eagerly instead. "Knowin' it was an Accepted probably doesn't narrow it down much around here, huh?"
Tal has a lot of faith in Finn and Finn has a lot of faith in absolutely nothing (except Frey, obviously, but they don't tend to be of much use at crime scenes) so this should be a laugh. He glances up - putting his glasses back on, of course - as the other man taps at his goggles, Finn tilting his head and smiling. "That is very useful," he says (no duh), wondering whether he might upgrade his own spectacles to be able to do something similar.
"No, as you can imagine Accepted are quite common in Stormbreak," he agrees, strolling around and peering in through the windows, straining to try and see if he can make anything out from inside. "Well," he says, "it is very early to begin forming a hypothesis, but if I didn't know better, I would say that this was an inside job." Literally.
He nods down at the ground within the little shop. "If you wouldn't mind checking, can you see if there is any glass inside?" he asks. "I couldn't see much, if any, suggesting the window was actually broken from the inside out." Gasp.
Tal followed on Finn's heels, peering over the other man's shoulder to try and figure out what he was looking at. He almost ran into him once or twice when Finn stopped suddenly, but at least the courier's reflexes were good enough to prevent the investigation from turning into a pair of bumper cars yet.
"An inside...?" The courier's brow started to furrow, wondering how the detective had come to that hypothesis already, but he obediently tiptoed back to the window and peered inside, looking for the telltale shards of irregular crystal on the floor inside--
"Hey! There's almost nothin' there! Just the brick!" he confirmed before he turned around, eyes shining in his goggles as his opinion of Finn went up another notch. "So the brick was just to fool people?"
And luckily for Tal, it's still too dark for Finn to notice how often they almost turn each other into falling dominos. And with the ground covered in glass, that's definitely a good thing.
Even though he'd already thought as much, it still comes as something of a relief to hear that he's correct about the trajectory of the brick, and he's smiling back at Tal as he gazes up at him. "It must have been," he agrees, peeping one last time into the shadowed store window before deciding that, since the odds of a perpetrator fleeing are quite low given the latest information, he can light some lanterns now.
Doing just that (he'd set up a couple ready for when his initial investigations are over), soon enough the detective's face springs up in flickering detail. "I suppose from here I will need to take a look inside to check what was taken, if anything. And then tomorrow will be some further investigation about the shop owner. Why would he want to pretend to be robbed or vandalised?"
09-22-2022, 04:22 PM (This post was last modified: 09-22-2022, 04:40 PM by Talyson.)
Tal beamed at being correct in his guess, just like a real junior detective! Or, well, detective's assistant. Look, he was helping and it made him feel very important and smart. He had no intention of leaving now, not when the investigation was getting good! So he helped Finn light the lanterns and look around a second time.
He helpfully pointed to the brick inside now that Finn could see it, too, but at the other man's question Tal's face pulled into his thinking-scowl; nose and brows wrinkling up and a baleful thousand yard stare landing on the brick in question. "Uhhh... wellll... what if heeee... hmm." It was a strong start, but there was something missing... "Promised somethin' t'one person an' then someone else came in later and was willin' t'pay more for it?" He thought his sister had mentioned something about that once; an unscrupulous merchant's trick. "If the first person was important or powerful or someone he can't afford t'piss off, he pretends the piece is stolen so he gets out of the contract an' can slide it to the other guy without any trouble?"
An invisible tail was practically wagging behind him as he waited eagerly for Finn's reaction to his brilliant deduction.
Tal decides there is no way he is leaving now just as Finn is deciding there is little more he can achieve tonight while it's pitch black and everyone (mostly) is asleep. So that's sure to be hilarious. Already the detective is moving to a side door which someone has helpfully unlocked for him, heading into the antiques store with the intention of seeing if anything is immediately out of place.
Tal's explanation has him glancing back through the broken window at the other man, tilting his head this way and that as he considers it. "It could be," he admits, because, well, it could, "but making it up won't make it true. I will need to speak to the shop owner and his neighbours, perhaps look at his books..." Narrowing his eyes behind his glasses, he's finding it annoyingly scrambled to separate auras within the shop, given the number of people who would have been there that day.
"This is going to leave me with a headache, I can tell."
Should Tal be following a hired detective into an active crime scene? Absolutely not.
Was he doing it anyways? You bet your ass.
Tal pouted a little as Finn pointed out that his wild conjecture had zero proof or basis in reality, but then scampered around to the side door to slip inside so he could continue helping from the most convenient location.
Right behind Finn, of course.
"What if he has separate books for under-th'-table deals?" Tal suggested eagerly. Again with a complete lack of evidence. "I bet they'd be written in code!" ...Though why he'd write them in code if he expected to be the only one seeing them was certainly a leap of faith. "Does it really matter if th'people who were in here today were Attuned or Accepted?" A question asked with genuine curiosity as Tal peered around for more clues. "I mean, most of 'em were probably just window shoppers, right?"
