Stoludi was basically turned inside out after the explosion at that fort. The fort had impeccable systems in place to prevent a massive detonation... yet it had occurred, and killed six men, including the Fort Master and a lower officer. The investigation was still ongoing, but already, the smell of fish was strong in the air. There was just something not quite right about how one of the best strongholds in Stoludi had been crippled, and on the day that a rather important convoy had left the port. Something was awry.
The responsibility of the investigation had fallen to King Emmerik. Right now, he was seated in front of the Second in Command, Lieutenant Kellii. She was a typical Stoludian soldier woman; strong-boned with a weatherbeaten face and eyes that were like small, glinting green gemstones. Short blonde hair hardly showed under her hat. A sharp nose and a bony face covered by pale skin completed the picture of her, or at least what could be seen underneath her white dress uniform. It was an elegant piece, with black buttons holding it together on her front, and a smooth, white fabric covering the rest of her torso. A similar set of pants covered her legs, and her shoulders were an emerald green. She throws a hasty salute and stands ramrod straight, awaiting questioning. There are freshly dressed wounds covering her face, in several places, and some dried blood remained on her lip.
They were in the office of the fort's commanding officer, the one that had suffered an explosion just a couple of hours ago. It was in the middle of the complex and stood as a squat, square building. The remains of the dead were still being cleaned outside of the shuttered window as Emmerik curtly tells her, "State your duties, Kellii."
Kellii answered as a military woman would, "Sir, I am the second in command, designated to take over command if the Master is incapacitated. I am also his adviser and his link to the personnel of the base."
Emmerik nods slowly and scribbles a note, then glances up to ask, "What were you doing in the moments leading to the explosion?"
Kellii doesn't even bother to swat away a moth that was flapping into her face as if it could fly through it. She seems to not even notice the little ashen grey thing as she fires back, "Your Grace, I was overseeing the mounting of a new cannon. Faster firing and longer range than our previous models."
Again Emmerik nods slowly and asks her, "Was there anything odd you noticed in the moments leading to the blast?"
At this, the woman actually shows some emotion. Her face twists, faintly, into a look of concern as she tells him, "One rookie loader grabbed a few too many cannon fuses... he dropped a couple in the grass, your Majesty."
Emmerik sighs softly and scribbles for several seconds before asking, "And what is the standard procedure in that case, Kellii?"
Kellii, deadpan, answers, "Leave the fuses be, your Grace. They don't pose a fire hazard in the wet grass and they are plentiful."
Emmerik simply scribbles a quick note in the dim sunlight and sighs, staring at the ceiling for several seconds before he finally, slowly, begins to say, "So, Kellii, what was the first sign of trouble?"
She shuffles her feet, just a little, and tells him, "Smoke, your Majesty. The smell of it. It did not smell like cannon fire or a hearth fire."
Emmerik scrabbles more, "And did you ever see this smoke?"
Kellii nodded quickly, "I followed the Commander, sir. We saw smoke coming from the doorway of the magazine, which was open. That is unusual. The smoke was thin and had a white quality to it..." The woman trails off, sighing.
Emmerik tilts his head slightly, "Something amiss?"
Kellii looks down at her feet for just a moment before looking up and saying, resolutely, "Yes, your Grace. It looked like fuse smoke. Those magazines had built in fire protection designed by the greatest minds of Stoludi. The men were drilled relentlessly on safety procedures. I do not know how it could have been accidental."
Silence filled the room then. The calls of men and birds filtered in through the shutters, but it was still quiet enough to allow even the drop of a pin to be audible. Emmerik had scribbled in his notes for a while, but now has gone silent, and instead stares at the ceiling while Kellii kept her eyes focused above his head, standing like a statue. Finally, the silence is broken when Emmerik shifts in his seat, and simply says, "You are dismissed, Kellii. Thank you for your time and I am sorry for your loss."
Kellii just bows and walks out ramrod straight. Emmerik considers the wall opposite him for a few more moments, then pulls out a piece of parchment and begins to scrabble a letter in the strange pictographic language of the Stoludians.
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Oddly enough, at almost the same time, some bad things were happening elsewhere in the fortress. It was to be another incident that shook Stoludi to it's core. A very low ranked guard named Pirearm was leaning on his musket on the outer walls when he saw a man... sending... something... into the air. It was out in a field of thick grass, next to a mountain and accessible only through the rarely used Southern sally port. Pirearm stormed down the wall and burst out into the field so fast he surprised the man, who was about to release another balloon when a deftly delivered shot from Pirearm's musket turned his hand into a bloody, grotesque mess and popped the floating thing. The man doubled over and cursed in a strange language that Pirearm didn't recognize... and the floating thing had dropped a box and a piece of parchment. Another guard, having seen the confrontation, ran out and tried to restrain the man. He turned and delivered three punches to Uritham's face, until he was then delivered a butt-smash from Pirearm's musket that broke his nose and left him bleeding from two places and whimpering in the grass. Two more men ran out and finally got him under control.
Pirearm sighs as Urtham wanders back into the fort, cursing and kicking at random rocks. Pirearm finds the box to be oddly light, and the letter... the letter was written in the odd language the man was cursing in. Pirearm just shrugs and wanders into the base, meandering his way across the courtyard until he found Kellii fresh out of her questioning. They converse for a moment before Pirearm delivers the artifacts he found... and almost instantly Kellii looks particularly alarmed and scurries off with the letter, leaving Pirearm very confused.
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An hour or so later the letter, along with a copy of the hearings, had been delivered to Queen Annetan under the talons of a white-tailed hawk. Per the usual procedure, Annetan blessed the hawk with a kiss to his forehead and some sweet words of thanks before dispatching him back to the aviary where he had come from. The queen was currently mounted on Rubania, making her way to Aurorastan to observe some infrastructure improvements that would hopefully stop the nearly clockwork plagues that always hit the insanely huge city. Not to mention the recent bout of fires... The Queen unrolls the parchment and begins to scan the document as Rubania saunters on without any input from her rider. After a few moments, the Queen's right-hand guard Aleit pulls up alongside her atop a smaller, chestnut mare named Opalik. Aleit looks sideways on at her before inquiring, "What news does the hawk bring, m'lady?" Annetan lets the scroll snap up and tells him, flatly, "Just a transcript from one of my Love's questionings. Just as I suspected, it was a bomb that destroyed that magazine."
Aleit licks his lips and hands her the other letter, this one having arrived on an eagle, and tells her, "We have some more news. The guards captured someone. And they found a letter written in the language of the RNI, and it was being sent by and RNI agent. They are holding him for interrogation but... the worst part is, he was sending some of Jester's Breath along underneath a balloon full of the stuff."
Annetan tilts her head slightly and frowns, deeply, asking, "Yibini can't have been in on this, can he?"
Aleit actually laughs, heartily, for several seconds before telling her with a mirthful smirk, "Your Majesty, excuse my manners, but there is no way in Asphodel that Yibini was in on this. He is an isolated hedonistic hermit, you know that. We give him money for labs and a selection of the finest canine bitches for his deviant desires and he causes us no problems, and gives us some important discoveries."
Annetan shrugs and simply mutters her agreement, and then she tells him, "We will have to keep a weary eye on the RNI after this... that letter is being deciphered, yes?"
Aleit nods quickly, "Yes, your Majesty. As quickly as possible."
Annetan looks forward and watches Aurorastan's twenty foot high walls approaching, sighing softly and remarking, "These are very troubled times."
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Speaking of Yibini, he was in his observatory at the top of that central tower, peering through a telescope with multiple lenses and observing some cloud movements off in the South. It was looking more and more worrying. This was shaping up to be one of the epic storms described in the records of Stoludi... on the table next to him were stacks of old, crinkled records that described one or two storms of this kind. He begins to compose a letter as well, worried about the tidings this storm may bring.
