Wednesday May 19th, just after the body's appearance

[willyousee]

Travelers: if you were not at Thistle House tonight, you need to know. A face familiar to some as the Blue Illuminant has appeared at the door - unmistakably dead.

[The speaker's voice may be familiar, with its soft French lilt, but Alcuin is not precisely calm tonight. Indeed, he seems shaken and queasy.]

I can show you if you wish, but it is most unusual. And unpleasant.

Keep your wits about you and please stay in close contact with one another if you can. I would suggest not venturing out alone, and if you can manage to stay close with our infiltrator friends, so much the better.

Have any of you any expertise in unnatural deaths? We are going to need your help if we are to determine what has done this and how best to stop it happening again.

Comments

[unabatedly]

I can certainly imagine. Can you... [A pause.] If you're amenable, I'd like to see the body. But if it distresses you, Alcuin, it's all right. I can come there to see it myself.

[willyousee]

No, it's all right. They'll be less suspicious of me than of you coming to examine it. A moment--

[Alcuin's thought retreats and then there's the strange sensation of gentle hands cupping her mind and of something opening... and the low murmur of the crowd fills her ears, and she can see through his eyes. Paper-white ladies clutching to one another and to gentlemen, everyone shrinking away from an area around the open doorway. AlcuiNeria stands quite close to it, a little beyond the edge of the crowd, and turns to look at the terrible fixture hanging in the door. Poor Tobi clings to the frame and stares in, not as horrible, precisely, as Darkspawn, but still awful in its familiarity and twisted wreckage. Their gaze lingers over his hands, the lines of holes piercing his forearms, the dark bruising over his face, the haunting eyes.]

What is it that you wish to see more closely, Lady.

[unabatedly]

[Alcuin might feel the recoil Neria has when he shows her the scene, though it's only a fleeting emotion. The eyes are what strike her, hauntingly familiar to someone with Blight sickness...but the puffiness of his face, the bruising and the puncture wounds...those are foreign to her. She looks at his hands the longest, how they have clawed and attached themselves to the wood, before she speaks to Alcuin, her presence gentle. She wishes she could stretch the warmth of healing across the network to him.]

Can you look closer at the puncture marks?

[willyousee]

[Obediantly, Alcuin leans in for a closer look. Deep, narrow, circular holes pierce the bloodless skin. They don't have the right shape for a dagger or knife. A large needle, or a spine, or the thin point of a rapier driven straight down and withdrawn without twisting, perhaps, but they are carefully placed. Neria is a healer. Her knowledge of anatomy tells her that these wounds trace the paths of blood vessels. Similarly, most, but not all, the punctures on his chest follow veins and arteries. The others? It's hard to say.]

Would touching him be of any use to you? [He is trying to remain neutral about it, but he can't quite hide the swell of nausea at the thought. Still, his determination to help is strong.]

[unabatedly]

[Were they back in Thedas, she might cry blood magic. She might not be that far off, either. But this is all very strange. She examines them as close as she can, looking at the puncture holes. They're so deep, like the man's been purposely drained of blood. It's clinical, not haphazard. Someone was looking for something within him. Surely there were better ways than this.

Neria looks them over a bit more before she reaches out to Alcuin, touching his mind as gently as she may.]

No, that won't be necessary. There's nothing that can be done.

[His face is bloated, eyes wide. It could be because of the shock or something worse.]

Can you look at the way his hands are digging into the door frame, instead? Does he look as if he was placed there or if he was still alive when he arrived?

[willyousee]

[ Startled, the view flicks quickly from Tobi's face to his hands, then his feet and back to his hands. An apologetic brush of thought and it settles more firmly on the downward angle of the arms, how tightly the dead fingers grip the wood, putting shallow indentations into the frame. His hands are intact - not broken or braced in any manner - whitened either from blood loss or the strength of his grasp. But perhaps more interesting, Alcuin more slowly and deliberately looks at Tobi's feet, which do not rest flat on the pavement. ]

[ His knees are bent to perhaps a 45 degree angle leaving his toes brushing the doorstep. Below him is a very small puddle... and faint, damp footprints of bare feet. ]

[unabatedly]

[Neria's gaze follows Alcuin's to Tobi's fingers, his hands and arms, and she lingers there while Alcuin does. He couldn't have been placed like this...and yet, how else could he have died? It's supernatural, something she has seen in only the most horrific of deaths, typically by Darkspawn or demons. It's a corruption of the mind made flesh. But poor Tobi has been tortured physically, torn apart from the inside out. She can't imagine a single individual doing this.

Or, perhaps, she is too afraid to wonder if a person would be capable of such cruelty.

Her gaze finally falls to Tobi's feet and the puddle below him...and then the footprints.]

Those aren't his, are they?

[willyousee]

.......I think they may be. Look at the angle of the toes. [ Yes. Yes they are. ]

[ Oh he is not doing well right now. ]