Chapter Text
For lack of a place to sit, you squat on your haunches. Gwen follows suit, brushing herself up to your side. She looks pointedly at Arch, as if to hammer in the point that you’re hers’. Not jealously. Just a statement of fact. You drink in the warmth of her touch, as she drinks in yours’.
“So, uh,” awkwardly, you consider how best to open this dialogue. It might be best to place the ball in his court for now, so you know better what you’re walking into. “I’m helping a friend- Raine-” his ear flicks in recognition. “He has a friend named Angelo who’s missing, and he said all of you were part of a group who were, w-well, Angelo was helping all of you look for some missing people nobody else was looking for?”
“That’s right, yeah,” Arch bobs his head up and down. His big cheeks are slightly elastic, and flap a little with the motion. “Now Angelo is missing too?” Ears peel back. The farmer’s back twitches and turns as another field begins to smoke, threatening to catch fire. The heat, the smoke, it is a pain you were born to fear. Parting, a loss of connection.
Is the farmer awake?
>Murdoch Intelligence: Advantage, Lucid Dreamer (5, 1/8)
You cannot tell. It is active, but so is the Burdensome Hollow in its sleepwalking.
“Do you know what happened, or… have a guess?”
“We’re… working on that,” fins flicking, you glance aside. “But I was looking at some other cases he was doing, and uh, stuff. I wanted to know more about Victor and if Angelo found anything out about him, or if there were any leads he was following?”
Pulling himself onto his hammock, Arch sits on the edge, balancing himself as he swings back and forth. “Victor was another librarian. Five years ago, around the start of the last Guild competition, he won a place as one of the castle’s maids. He was really excited about it.” There’s a bittersweetness to the memory. “I was proud of him. He can get in his own head a lot, talk himself down, but this one he saw through.”
“Was that when he disappeared?”
“No,” a kicking paw brushes against the wooden flooring, Arch’s nails clicking against the lacquer. “He’d come visit us at the library. Then, three years ago he just stopped. I tried going to see him at the castle, but he was always busy, or nobody could find him. Finally the King himself caught wind of my asking and came to see me.” Stepping down from his palace to lock away escaped little secrets. “He said Victor was feeling,” the Pawmi waves his forepaws around, as if looking for the exact word. “Choked here. By the stone walls of the city. He said Victor left to move to Grandarbor, for fresher air.”
“But you didn’t believe him?”
Arch cocks his head. “Huh? No, I don’t think he was lying. The King’s always been really honest and down to earth-” you fight the urge to gag, “-but, when I sent letters for him there they kept coming back cause they couldn’t find him. I’m worried outlaws captured him along the way and have been doing horrible things to him all this time.”
A pupal soul pulses, filled with images from a recent dream. Ancient memories dredged up, of an empty mother bound in an empty room.
And so, the blame washes off King’s back, like water off a duck. The idea of suspecting him doesn’t even register. All that energy, the want to find Victor, it’s still there. Just pointed in the wrong direction. You want to reveal the answer and free him from this horrible question, but that will get things too sidetracked. First thing’s first.
“What about Angelo? Were there any leads we was following about Victor?”
“I’m afraid not,” folding his paws in his lap, Arch looks down at the floor. “He said he would go check for Victor in Grandarbor if he ever got the chance, but his duties as a knight’s squire wouldn’t allow the time.”
>Murdoch Intelligence: Advantage (17, 20/10)
You remember seeing a sign. A literal sign. Above, on the bridge, there was a sign marking it as the road to Grandarbor. If Angelo had been spooked into running, and was going that way to his hiding place, he might have skipped town in that direction. If he’s as stubborn as he sounds, he wouldn’t pass up the chance to chase down a lead even as he’s being chased out. Seeing the sign could have incepted the idea into his head.
“What’s Grandarbor like?”
“It’s a city built into and around a tree, a massive one,” Arch stretches one of his paws towards the ceiling, nearly losing his balance on the hammock. “It’s the second biggest city out there, next to Tallspire obviously. A lot of books say otherwise, but I think they’re exaggerating.”
>Murdoch Intelligence: Advantage (1, 11/10)
That sounds like horseshit. A tree large enough to build a city into it would dwarf this little medieval faire by far. You have no doubt he is petty enough to lie about a municipal dick measuring contest.
Another lead, that would take you even further from home. But if Angelo is there, he’s away from here, which means he’s safe. So if he’s in Grandarbor, he’s the least of your immediate worries.
Time to bandage the wound. “Arch, I wanted to save it for last because, uh, you’re probably gonna be really excited to hear this,” you smile, “Victor is actually a part of my Guild. He’s living with me in Stepstone Village.”
Looking at you, wide-eyed like a Stantler in the headlights, Arch’s face spreads into a joyous beam of light. “Serious! You’re serious?” You nod. Deadly serious. Roots twitch beneath a burnt field. A farmer clutches a watering can tightly. “Is he able to come and visit?”
“Actually,” you roll a claw in the air, “He was hoping you’d come out and visit him. You could come back with us, how about that?”
“Absolutely! I’ll just have to put in some notice for my leave at the library tomorrow,” dropping off of the hammock, Arch punches up into the air. “I guess he really did move out into the country for some fresh air, hey? I was just looking in the wrong place!”
“I guess so,” you say, flatly. You exchange a glance with Gwen, whose expression remains solemn.
You run a claw up and down her side, and she leans in, holding your head in the crook of your neck. “Speaking of tomorrow,” you speak up, recapturing Arch’s attention. “We do need a place to crash for the night. Do you know the way to this uh, Z-Zigzagoon named Hustle’s old potion shop, or maybe a cheap hotel? On… what was it, Night Street?”
Eyes wide, the Pawmi shakes his big cheeks. “Don’t stay there! Night Street is so shady. I don’t mind if you stay here, it’s a little cramped, but…” tilting his head back, he taps his chin. “Hustle, wasn’t he wanted for something?”
>Murdoch Charm: Circumstances (11/8)
“Oh, he was just someone else missing Angelo was looking into,” you shrug it off dismissively.
After you find somewhere to stay, you’ll contact Victor again to get an update on how things went this week and plan next week’s projects. Then, you hopefully won’t die in your sleep…
>Stay with Arch (you can be certain you won’t lose track of him)
>Find a sleazy place to stay on Night Street (you remember hearing the King’s knights don’t go there)
>Look for Hustle’s shop (you might get lost, but you can collect his things and mail them back to him in the morning without consuming any extra time)