Terrify Her

At the edge of city, where there still was the remnants of destruction from the assault so long ago, people built small makeshift homes and tents. They were too poor to afford proper roofs over their heads and too poor to move anywhere else. While no one sole person own any of the property in the old ruins of the city, it was still land that was owned, so the people who built these small homes made them to be temporary. Many began to migrate around the edge of the city, trying to avoid the authorities who would have to pull them down. A roaming shantytown, filled with people who were just trying to make it by. As it stood, they had enough hardships on their plate to last a lifetime, but life is never so kind to cut even the most misfortunate a break.

Around the edges of a still standing, yet long destitute factory, one of these shantytowns found a new misfortune in a shape that they were not prepared for. One that would come in the night and drag unsuspecting victims into the depths of the factory. They couldn’t leave this side of the city yet either, patrols were still in their other stomping grounds and to go there would mean they would lose their makeshift properties, potentially torn from their families, or thrown in jail. Some did seek that option out, a roof was a roof after all, but those who wanted to stay together were forced to stay put. Those that stayed would only have hope that whatever came in the night would come for some other.

Talk, whispers really, began to spread. Nicknames and legends spread. They called it the Harvest Man, though many doubted it actually was a man. Some people described it as a shadow that didn’t belong to anyone that would drag you away into the darkness. Others said it was a serial killer. That it was a tall, gaunt man who would string you up in bowels of the old factory and do unspeakable things to you. Others would call it demon, a spirit of someone who had died there and held bitter feelings towards the world, wanting to see them pulled away and torn apart. In the small, makeshift town in the center of a destroyed city, in the shadow of an old factory, everyone could agree on one thing alone. Whatever stalked them was a monster.

Melody now stood at the edge of the shantytown, hands in her pocket as she stared up at the large looming factory. She let out a small whistle and shook her head. To her, it looked like the epitome of a scene from a horror movie. The sun was slowly setting over the town and long shadows crept towards her. She could see, only briefly before they ducked away out of sight, the faces of dirty and scared people who tried to catch a glimpse of her. The streets themselves were empty, minus the trash and debris, not even animals seemed to linger around narrow streets. And what was worst of all was the encompassing silence. The kind of silence that buzzed in your ear and made itself known, which each quiet breath you took in felt like a shout that would draw all attention to you.

She let out that breath. “Okay!” She said, almost a bit chipper, sounding unworried. “Best get at it…” She said, starting to stroll forward, seemingly unafraid of whatever awaited her here.

This misery of destitution was not lost upon the reaver, rather the stench of squalor reminded her of home. The shanty town was very much like the streets of dis where beggars fought to cling to the very lives they were cursed with. She didn’t know who had it worse, the poor or the reavers.

Grimmorah’s hooves splashed through a puddle of muck as he passed by the tents of the shanty town, grumbling a steaming breath every so often and a startling snort at the occasional scared wretch who didn’t duck into hiding quick enough. Each outburst at the people earned a reprimand from Rai in the form of an unloving pop in the jaw with the reigns. To normal human eyes the path she took seemed random, but to Rai she traced the small traces of glimmering human blood through the mud as the rains tried to wash it away. Someone had been injured recently, spilling blood in the streets as he ran frantically. An occasional spatter here, a smear on something there, all dull to normal sense, but gleaming a bright silver in her eyesight.

She suddenly stops as the trail leads to a dried pool of blood. He’d collapsed and bled for a while. Rai slides off Grimmorah’s back for a closer look. Hunched over in the street she takes notice of every detail for any clue about whatever horrible monstrosity had her blood running hot for a fight. Strips of clothing fabric scattered about, shorn in a manner that suggested a wickedly sharp blade or claw. The occasional torn out hair or scrape in the mud asserting that the victim did put up a fight so hope of him or her being alive was not completely lost, although the trail continued but rather than a splatter of blood it became a drag site from here, clear to the underbelly of the factory looming like some form of haunted castle.

She grew angrier the longer she stared into it.

Letting out a breath she heard footsteps a bit more steady than that of a wretch, someone more well fed and fast paced. Her hand rests on her scythe as a soul clears into view. Bright and bouncy… with ears that towered over the silhouette of her head. How strange. Easing up her stance she relaxes a bit. “Are you here for this thing too?” She assumes, realizing she’d been running into more and more people chasing the same kinds of creatures she did.

When she turned the corner there was a lot she was ready to face. Serial killers, a monster of some kind, a supervillain...hell, a big bear or some kind of wild animal. She stared at the woman who she had found standing there. Over a body. With a scythe. She stared for a long, quiet moment, leaving the question unanswered as the gears in her head turned.

It couldn't be this easy. She couldn't have run into the killer this quickly. That would've taken all the fun out of this. No...no no, this had to be a misunderstanding. That's what she kept telling herself at least, but the images of body, person standing over body, and dangerous weapon, all sprung up in her mind and contradicted that thought. Any normal person would see this, call the police, and that would be it. Case closed. No need for doubt or reason to suspect there was more to be found here.

Finally, she opened her mouth, though shut it before replying giving the woman one last hard look. Then finally...again, she began, "So..." She pressed her hands together and then pointed a finger at the woman and then brought it down to point at the body, "You uh..." Her ears flicked a bit as she was finally putting words to the situation. "I'll give you a moment to think about this situation." She said, her eyes now locked to the scythe. "The only saving grace you got right now is the fact that thing doesn't have any blood on it, so you at least have that going for you, but I'm still gonna need some kind of answer or like...reason not to suspect you?" That felt more like a question than a demand, but honestly she was still pretty taken aback by the scene.

"While you talk about that, let me take a closer look at the body." She said, now striding forward kneel down next to the potential murderer and looking at the victim. She reached over and grabbed a random stick on the ground and started to poke it. She nodded knowingly as she did, "Yep...this is a corpse..." She murmured very insightfully. She really was checking for the kind of wounds this fellow had, but found herself not really focused on this as her attention was split between this and...her eyes went back to the scythe.

Who used a scythe as a weapon? That was just plain edgy...

Rai couldn’t help but stare blankly at the rabbit lady, whatever was she getting at? It took a few minutes of intense thinking before she realized this woman thought SHE had done this. “Because I did not.” She asserts, sure that because she didn’t kill this man and it was the truth that it should as much of an explanation as needed. Her accent thickly laced, but hard to place. Latin? Maybe eastern European? Either way the horned woman slides from her saddle, boots splashing in the mud as she slogs to the corpse turning it over by the shoulder only to find more damage to the back to the dead man, gored from behind as he ran, but the killing blow was from the front. An ambush no doubt. Whatever she was chasing knew this shanty town well enough to cut him off.

“It’s a demon and a vicious one at that. It didn’t even eat him.” She thinks out loud staring into the creepy shadow of the factory, cringing as it just felt wrong. At this point she realized it was probably either one very powerful demon or multiple semi-strong ones working together for sport, which was never the kind she wanted to handle, especially by herself.

She glances to the rabbit woman with the stick just poking the dead guy. “I’m going to go kill this thing. Want to come with me?” She asks as if it were the most normal question in the world. Just come right in this factory of doom with her and murder something awful with her as if it were just an everyday occurrence. A building was no place to take a horse as Grimmorah fades away into a smoking pile of ash, to be called again whenever Rai felt like it.

Oh yeah, that was a good...trustworthy answer. Ten out of ten, all suspicions erased from Mel's mind. What a good, solid argument.

Melody honestly didn't think this woman had killed the person she stood over, again the weapon was clean and the wounds didn't quite match it, but...come on. There had to be better excuses besides just flat out denial. The woman had an accent of sorts...maybe it wasn't her first language? If that was the case, then some more leeway could be dealt out in her favor, but still. Come on. She could've at least sounded a bit surprised or realized how it all looked to an outsider...

She sighed as the body was kicked over and more wounds were exposed. At least that affirmed that it probably wasn't this woman. Melody's eyes peered up from the body and at the woman, and a raised brow, "...a demon?" She asked. She had fought supernatural beings before. It was common in her line of work, but this was a lame reveal. She hated when it was just spelled out before her, took all the drama and fun out of investigating. She stood up and brushed off her knees before returning her gaze to the woman, "I guess it could be..." She muttered, "And here I thought it was gonna be a serial killer."

She offered a shrug and set her hands behind her head, relaxing a bit more. "Yeah, sure. I was just gonna set up a patrol and maybe check out the weird factory but if you wanna take the lead on this one by all means. I don't usually fight demons so I don't mind leaving you in charge of this one." She went on before starting down the alleyway, looking to her new teammate.