09-06-2015, 11:43 AM
The scene at the residence of Dobson’s father was gruesome, even by the sorcerer’s standards. He’d never met the former Commander Skendor, but Shang doubted the man had accumulated enemies who would deliver such a terrible fate upon him. Parts of the late commander could be found throughout all three rooms of his living space. Two maids who attended to the deceased, who apparently suffered from a disability acquired on the field, had been found torn half apart and left to bleed out in a closet. A bodyguard, decked out in full plate armor, had been decapitated and nailed to the wall. His head was in the toilet bowl.
Shang Tsung followed Dobson into the crime scene and watched immediately as the other man’s youth got the best of him. With something close to a wail, the acting commander of Darkshire’s military dropped to his knees next to a chunk of his father’s corpse and started to sob. The sorcerer found himself trying to recall memories of his own father. All he remembered was an angry-looking man who had never achieved a think in his life with a passion for rice booze and hitting his wife. Shang had never looked back when he opted to run away to the monastery.
Turning away from the younger man, who would need some time to properly grieve, Shang confronted the soldier who had guided them to this location. “Who did this?”
The soldier walked over to the shattered window pane and picked up a scrap of fabric. It took the sorcerer a brief moment to realize that Darkshire wasn’t going to have a forensics unit. “Drow, Sir.” The soldier handed over the shredded piece of clothing, which appeared to be a cloak bearing part of a foreign insignia sporting a spider motif. “We also found one of their curved swords in the other room, and a few crossbow quarrels that match some we’ve collected in the field.”
Something didn’t sit well with the sorcerer. While he wasn’t acquainted with any drow, he doubted anyone planning to murder an important, albeit handicapped, official wouldn’t leave behind all this evidence. “How fresh is all of this?”
“Very.” The soldier shuffled uncomfortably after glancing back at the nightmarish tableau.
“Give us some time,” Shang replied. For a moment, it appeared that the soldier was going to second-guess the grounds with which the man could order him around, but before the words could leave his mouth, he nodded his head. Once the soldier was gone, the sorcerer walked over to his associate and crouched down next to him. “I need you to give me some time in here by myself.”
The remark—a statement more so than any sort of soft question—broke the young commander’s sobs. Turning to glance at Shang, Dobson furrowed his brow and brushed the tears that stained his face. “What?”
“I’m a sorcerer,” Shang Tsung explained as he lifted up a hand and summoned a ball of fire. He let the other man watched it slowly rotate for a few moments before willing it back out of existence. “If you’ll give me a few moments, I can see what happened here. After that, you can sob all over the broken bits of your father for as long as you please.”
Although the comment clearly rankled Dobson, he maintained enough clarity to see that Shang was speaking the truth. After a final glimpse at the piece of his father’s corpse, he rose to his feet, brushed himself off, and went outside to go issue instructions to the men who waited outside.
Once Dobson was out of the room, Shang walked over and drew the cloth curtains over the front-facing windows. With some privacy ensured, he returned to Commander Skendor’s bloody chunks and focused on all the corpses that filled the apartment. In the ‘normal’ world, it would have been impossible, but these sorts of rules in the Omniverse weren’t the same. As he focused his thoughts, Shang reached his mind out to all the bodies that lay in the apartment.
It took longer than he would have liked, but eventually, the sorcerer felt that familiar sensation in the air around him. His eyes popped open to watch as the corpses around him shuddered with an array of lights. In a flash, the colors of the rainbow flared out from the bodies before the green clouds slipped free from the slain individuals in the apartment. As Shang grinned, the clouds sunk into his body, warming him as the essence—the ominilium—from the recently deceased became one with him.
There was a silent lull, and then the sensation flooded over the sorcerer like a wave crashing against a beach. Images flashed through his mind: Fragments of memories, emotions, and knowledge from the recently deceased. The late Commander Skendor had been privy to hidden information… knowledge that could have been used against Mayor Boone to unravel the status quo in Darkshire. As the images settled into the background of his mind, Shang turned and walked toward one of the broken windows.
One of the soldiers had stood here just a few hours earlier when someone had knocked at the door. The man had turned to make his way across the room when the window broke open and was flooded by figures in cloaks.
But they weren’t drow assassins. No… a glancing blow had knocked away the attempted disguise to reveal an all-too human visage beneath the cowl.
From a few feet away, Shang heard the door open and turned to see Dobson slip into the apartment before shutting the door. “Discover anything?”
The sorcerer beckoned Dobson to follow him into the small area where the dead commander once took his meals. Once the younger man had joined him, Shang cleared his throat. “This was an inside job. They were murdered by normal men who planted the evidence to try and make it look like a drow assassination.”
Dobson glared at the sorcerer and spoke with a venom in his voice that his associate didn’t appreciate. “How can you tell?”
“I am a sorcerer,” Shang barked. “I’m good for more than just shooting fireballs.”
“Then tell me who killed my father,” Dobson growled, but this time his anger wasn’t directed at the other man in the room. “I will wring their neck with my bare hands.” In his fury, the younger man’s age showed through with far more clarity than normal, but he softened when Shang shook his head.
“I’m not certain… at least not yet.” It was partially true. Shang needed more time to mull through what the dead had to offer him, but right now, he knew that Dobson’s father had been killed for his closeness to the mayor. The fact that the dead Commander Skendor knew that Mortimor Boone was a slowly decaying necromancer made the soldier a loose end. What better way to preface removing the city council than to upset the entire population with the death of one of its folk heroes to outside attackers? On some level, Shang respected how brilliant a maneuver it would have been. “We can’t let this get out.”
“What do you mean?”
“We need to control how this information goes public… otherwise it’ll be used against us.”
Dobson’s features twisted up into a scowl. “You speak of my dead father like he’s some sort of chess piece!”
“He is!” Shang shouted back into the other man’s face. “Why do you think they killed him? Your father was one of the mayor’s closest confidants. He died because he knew information. What do you think would happen if people really believed that drow slipped over the walls and murdered the Commander of the Guard? Tell me, Dobson.”
Although he was flustered and possibly still reeling from his earlier drinking bender, Dobson had enough clarity to stop and process what he’d heard before addressing the sorcerer. “It would shatter any belief the public may have that the Guard can protect them from the Moors…”
“Especially if reports show that those trusty skeletons killed a few drow last night.” Shang added. “Who’s to say they didn’t stash some fresher corpses for just this occasion?”
The soon-to-be official head of the Guard let out a groan as he dropped his head into his palms. When he spoke next, his voice was partially muffled. “We’re being outplayed.” He muttered before looking up at Shang. “We need to make sure we control how this story reaches the public or none of our earlier conversations will matter, because we’ll have lost already.”
Shang Tsung grinned, realizing that Dobson was starting to catch on to the situation. “We turn it against them.
“How?”
“We find someone to confess to stealing that equipment from the armory and killing the Commander.”
Dobson shook his head. “Who is going to agree to that? They’d be hung in the public square.”
A predatory grin spread across the sorcerer’s visage. “I’ll find someone… just give me an hour and the name of a councilman who is publicly in the mayor’s camp. I’ll do the rest.”
Shang Tsung followed Dobson into the crime scene and watched immediately as the other man’s youth got the best of him. With something close to a wail, the acting commander of Darkshire’s military dropped to his knees next to a chunk of his father’s corpse and started to sob. The sorcerer found himself trying to recall memories of his own father. All he remembered was an angry-looking man who had never achieved a think in his life with a passion for rice booze and hitting his wife. Shang had never looked back when he opted to run away to the monastery.
Turning away from the younger man, who would need some time to properly grieve, Shang confronted the soldier who had guided them to this location. “Who did this?”
The soldier walked over to the shattered window pane and picked up a scrap of fabric. It took the sorcerer a brief moment to realize that Darkshire wasn’t going to have a forensics unit. “Drow, Sir.” The soldier handed over the shredded piece of clothing, which appeared to be a cloak bearing part of a foreign insignia sporting a spider motif. “We also found one of their curved swords in the other room, and a few crossbow quarrels that match some we’ve collected in the field.”
Something didn’t sit well with the sorcerer. While he wasn’t acquainted with any drow, he doubted anyone planning to murder an important, albeit handicapped, official wouldn’t leave behind all this evidence. “How fresh is all of this?”
“Very.” The soldier shuffled uncomfortably after glancing back at the nightmarish tableau.
“Give us some time,” Shang replied. For a moment, it appeared that the soldier was going to second-guess the grounds with which the man could order him around, but before the words could leave his mouth, he nodded his head. Once the soldier was gone, the sorcerer walked over to his associate and crouched down next to him. “I need you to give me some time in here by myself.”
The remark—a statement more so than any sort of soft question—broke the young commander’s sobs. Turning to glance at Shang, Dobson furrowed his brow and brushed the tears that stained his face. “What?”
“I’m a sorcerer,” Shang Tsung explained as he lifted up a hand and summoned a ball of fire. He let the other man watched it slowly rotate for a few moments before willing it back out of existence. “If you’ll give me a few moments, I can see what happened here. After that, you can sob all over the broken bits of your father for as long as you please.”
Although the comment clearly rankled Dobson, he maintained enough clarity to see that Shang was speaking the truth. After a final glimpse at the piece of his father’s corpse, he rose to his feet, brushed himself off, and went outside to go issue instructions to the men who waited outside.
Once Dobson was out of the room, Shang walked over and drew the cloth curtains over the front-facing windows. With some privacy ensured, he returned to Commander Skendor’s bloody chunks and focused on all the corpses that filled the apartment. In the ‘normal’ world, it would have been impossible, but these sorts of rules in the Omniverse weren’t the same. As he focused his thoughts, Shang reached his mind out to all the bodies that lay in the apartment.
It took longer than he would have liked, but eventually, the sorcerer felt that familiar sensation in the air around him. His eyes popped open to watch as the corpses around him shuddered with an array of lights. In a flash, the colors of the rainbow flared out from the bodies before the green clouds slipped free from the slain individuals in the apartment. As Shang grinned, the clouds sunk into his body, warming him as the essence—the ominilium—from the recently deceased became one with him.
There was a silent lull, and then the sensation flooded over the sorcerer like a wave crashing against a beach. Images flashed through his mind: Fragments of memories, emotions, and knowledge from the recently deceased. The late Commander Skendor had been privy to hidden information… knowledge that could have been used against Mayor Boone to unravel the status quo in Darkshire. As the images settled into the background of his mind, Shang turned and walked toward one of the broken windows.
One of the soldiers had stood here just a few hours earlier when someone had knocked at the door. The man had turned to make his way across the room when the window broke open and was flooded by figures in cloaks.
But they weren’t drow assassins. No… a glancing blow had knocked away the attempted disguise to reveal an all-too human visage beneath the cowl.
From a few feet away, Shang heard the door open and turned to see Dobson slip into the apartment before shutting the door. “Discover anything?”
The sorcerer beckoned Dobson to follow him into the small area where the dead commander once took his meals. Once the younger man had joined him, Shang cleared his throat. “This was an inside job. They were murdered by normal men who planted the evidence to try and make it look like a drow assassination.”
Dobson glared at the sorcerer and spoke with a venom in his voice that his associate didn’t appreciate. “How can you tell?”
“I am a sorcerer,” Shang barked. “I’m good for more than just shooting fireballs.”
“Then tell me who killed my father,” Dobson growled, but this time his anger wasn’t directed at the other man in the room. “I will wring their neck with my bare hands.” In his fury, the younger man’s age showed through with far more clarity than normal, but he softened when Shang shook his head.
“I’m not certain… at least not yet.” It was partially true. Shang needed more time to mull through what the dead had to offer him, but right now, he knew that Dobson’s father had been killed for his closeness to the mayor. The fact that the dead Commander Skendor knew that Mortimor Boone was a slowly decaying necromancer made the soldier a loose end. What better way to preface removing the city council than to upset the entire population with the death of one of its folk heroes to outside attackers? On some level, Shang respected how brilliant a maneuver it would have been. “We can’t let this get out.”
“What do you mean?”
“We need to control how this information goes public… otherwise it’ll be used against us.”
Dobson’s features twisted up into a scowl. “You speak of my dead father like he’s some sort of chess piece!”
“He is!” Shang shouted back into the other man’s face. “Why do you think they killed him? Your father was one of the mayor’s closest confidants. He died because he knew information. What do you think would happen if people really believed that drow slipped over the walls and murdered the Commander of the Guard? Tell me, Dobson.”
Although he was flustered and possibly still reeling from his earlier drinking bender, Dobson had enough clarity to stop and process what he’d heard before addressing the sorcerer. “It would shatter any belief the public may have that the Guard can protect them from the Moors…”
“Especially if reports show that those trusty skeletons killed a few drow last night.” Shang added. “Who’s to say they didn’t stash some fresher corpses for just this occasion?”
The soon-to-be official head of the Guard let out a groan as he dropped his head into his palms. When he spoke next, his voice was partially muffled. “We’re being outplayed.” He muttered before looking up at Shang. “We need to make sure we control how this story reaches the public or none of our earlier conversations will matter, because we’ll have lost already.”
Shang Tsung grinned, realizing that Dobson was starting to catch on to the situation. “We turn it against them.
“How?”
“We find someone to confess to stealing that equipment from the armory and killing the Commander.”
Dobson shook his head. “Who is going to agree to that? They’d be hung in the public square.”
A predatory grin spread across the sorcerer’s visage. “I’ll find someone… just give me an hour and the name of a councilman who is publicly in the mayor’s camp. I’ll do the rest.”
![[Image: Shang.jpg]](http://www.omniverse-rpg.com/images/Shang.jpg)