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Fandom: FFXIV
Summary: Snowballed Headcanon
Chapter Summary: Thancred gets ambushed by the other Archons for questions, then gets the planning meeting he asked for and learns what happens when two strong dominant personalities are stressed, frazzled, and unhappy.
Warnings: Prodding at mental trauma!
When he got back to his room, he stopped in the door way, blinking at the welcoming committee; Yda was perched like some sort of strange gargoyle on the foot of the bed, Papalymo standing by her, Y'shtola next to the door, and Urianger and Louisoix had taken two of the three chairs by the table.
“Did I miss an occasion?” He stepped in, letting the door close behind him.
“Nothing so pleasant. We would've left this for when you were ready to speak of your own accord, but under the circumstances, we can't afford to be delicate.” Papalymo, and all of them really, were oddly grim.
Louisoix motioned to the empty chair; he took it, keeping it turned where he could see the rest of the room easily. “Before we meet with the guard... do you think you would be able to go over what you saw?”
“Yes.” He'd repeated it to people more than once already; he knew it should be fine, even if he was struggling with feeling a little queasy and his stomach going heavy.
“Considering that we'll need to be able to back you up in the meeting, you may want to start beforehand, at the beginning of the affair.”, Y'shtola added.
As much as none of them had struck him as anything terrifying, for once being the center of attention was unnerving; he shifted in his seat, closing his eyes. “We didn't know what was going on, when it started – there were a few people we didn't know very well that nobody had heard from; another pickpocket around our age, a few prostitutes, some laborer that'd been by the baker down the street every morning not showing up. Then there were – a couple bodies found; I didn't see them myself, but it spread pretty fast, that they'd been mutilated horribly.” Opening his eyes didn't really make it any easier, but he needed to keep going. “It was all people that – didn't have families in any good standing to report them missing, and weren't in any position for their absence to draw a huge amount of attention.”
“Who do you mean by 'we'?”, Papalymo asked.
“Ah – a few of the others that live down there, people I grew up with.” The Lalafell rolled a hand in the air for him to continue. “...Mostly street orphans and homeless; I – was living with the one the Inspector's looking for, Ives. He never got very good at much that would earn a 'respectable' living, so we've scraped by on my street performances and his petty thievery; he had to start ranging farther when the murders started, because people and the guards were getting so agitated, and I was struggling because nobody stops to listen to a minstrel when they're hurrying to avoid a nebulous killer. It's the other kids Mattye had been teaching.” Half of whom were dead now with their teacher, and he hadn't seen Ives in too long.
There was silence, then a hand on his shoulder – Y'shtola, stepping away from the wall, giving him a quiet nod.
“A couple of the victims were students of his; he said that he knew we didn't have many that would care to speak up for us, so he went to try to find out who it was. He couldn't bring any guard with him, or nobody would talk, so I'd – been tailing him. Just in case. I caught enough to figure out where he was going, to the old church, so I got there ahead of him. It wasn't... abandoned; the dust was disturbed everywhere, things were defaced and moved, but nobody seemed to be there when I got there.” After how easily it'd rattled loose, there was a lump forming again thinking about it; but he knew that it would be harder to stop the damn thing if he didn't, so he forced past it. “I was checking something in the old choir loft when he walked in with his carbuncle, so I flattened to stay out of sight; it – must've been underneath that where I couldn't see it the whole time. He called out that he knew someone was there, and it walked out – its back was to me the whole time, so I couldn't tell much with that hood and robe.” He took a moment to breathe. “It said – something that wasn't human, and he stepped back, then it took off his mask, hands out like it wanted him to attack it. He just – he banished his carbuncle, lowered his tome, and let it kill him.”
A small sound of shifting cloth broke silence, and he caught movement out of the corner of his eye; Urianger frowning, some kind of gesture to Louisoix. The entire tone of the room had gone from grave to something wrong, but Louisoix motioned for him to continue.
“It … it put the mask back on, turned around and looked right at where I was hiding, and then just – teleported out; I went down to check on him, but there wasn't anything I could do, and when I heard the guard coming outside I – I panicked, I knew they'd probably blame me if they saw me, so I ran. I didn't even notice it'd used Ives's knife until the Inspector had it later.”
The room was silent for a few long moments, Papalymo finally breaking it.
“Well. That puts an unpleasant twist in things.”
He looked from Papalymo to Louisoix for an answer; Louisoix rested his forehead on one hand tiredly. “Ascians have no form of their own; they can sometimes manifest something, but it's very temporary and difficult. They deceive and ensnare mortal men, possessing their bodies to act in our plane.”
“Mattye's reaction means that he knew its host, and they were someone he refused to harm. Since he couldn't strike it without killing them...”, Papalymo trailed off.
“Then – can you find who it is?” He caught his voice cracking halfway through that.
“Unfortunately, the list of people Mattye was fond of is not a short one; it gives us a direction, but we'd need to check half the college and most of your people, while it and the people it swayed to its command are still killing.” Y'shtola punctuated it with an attempt at a sympathetic squeeze of his shoulder, even if she was drily matter of fact about it.
“It also leaves us with another problem; if it's clever enough to use its host's face, or Gods forefend the host is a willing conspirator that allowed it in, then it might've been in on the entire hunt, knowing our every move.”
Yda had been looking between them looking increasingly dismayed, finally reaching down to ruffle Papalymo's hair after he'd finished speaking; the Lalafell batted at her hand, stepping away with an irrtable glare.
“Oh it's not all that bad is it? I mean, sure, it might be able to run rings around us and has probably been laughing at us all along, but it's got people working for it, and they can't teleport or wear someone else like a bad suit, and if it was trying to open a voidgate, then it might still have enough going on wherever they're hiding that it can't afford to ditch too fast, so if we can find them, we can clear them out and if it doesn't decide to try to kill us for it, we can look for its host then!”
Thancred made a mental note that if Yda was always this comforting and full of tact, he was avoiding her the next time he started feeling low.
“That is likely our best option; ordinarily I might think it would've aimed for an opportunity to interfere with us directly, but...” Louisoix looked over to Thancred, and his face went downcast. “It's likely that it's drawn its followers from the poorer population; managing to sway them enough to have people starting sacrifices and learning summonings by now means that it had their trust quickly; the host is more likely to be someone you would recognize, and very likely willing and helping it lure people into its fold.”
Someone he knew. His mouth went dry; he nodded. He'd had to face the realization that some of the followers involved in the murder were people he hadn't necessarily gotten on well with, but that he recognized and had some fond memory of, but it was like chipping away to add a new layer on to that.
“...I don't...know everyone he'd been teaching – I can look out for the others I do know about.”
“That's the best we can do; for now, let's focus on finding their hiding place.” Y'shtola lingered close by for a few good moments after.
“Thank you, Thancred.” Louisoix rested a hand on his wrist on the table. “Will you be alright by yourself?”
He wasn't entirely sure, but anyone he could think of that would actually lay some of the creeping dread to rest would be harder to reach. “...I should be – thank you.”
He managed to sleep with a bit less staring at the ceiling and out the window, even if the bed was still a very foreign and alien concept; he was fairly sure it was more lingering tired still catching up than actually feeling like sleeping. There was a message when he woke that the idea of a meeting to try to pin down where the hideout was had been agreed to, and he had barely gotten through a bleary breakfast and tea when Papalymo found him for it.
He soon found himself in what was supposedly a smaller meeting room of some kind, with a table that looked big enough for twelve or thirteen people at least; one of the more detailed maps he'd ever seen of the city was spread out on it already. There were a few extra stands with lamps of glowing crystal, keeping the room bright and almost starkly lit. Louisoix had one of the chairs on the side across from the door, Y'shtola leaning on the wall nearby, and Yda in another chair, draped over the table as if existing in that room were suffering – or maybe just being still and quiet was the suffering part.
There was someone he didn't recognize in the robes of a magistrate-judge, leaving him working on settling a reflex to be on edge just on that alone; a neatly groomed Elezen that he didn't recognize with a guardsman's coat and the insignia of another inspector, Abylghota settled half-drowsing in a chair, and a couple of other guardsman, one of whom he recognized from patrolling the area, and another he didn't.
Papalymo led him around the table, where there was an empty chair in the center with easy reach of the map, taking his own seat on a taller stool at the end of the row. Once Thancred had settled, Y'shtola took the last chair on that side.
The door opened for the last to arrive, and Thancred realized he should've seen it coming; he and the Inspector shared a brief, awkward moment, and he somehow got the feeling he wasn't the only one that hadn't thought this through entirely beforehand.
The inspector shifted uncomfortably and took the seat next to Abylghota; Thancred caught her quietly keeping watch, even as much as she was feigning being half-awake.
The magistrate cleared his throat, looking to Louisoix. “I would apologize for dispensing with formalities, but I doubt anyone here will have a great deal of patience for them on this matter. I've been granted leave to treat this situation as an emergency, to make decisions on this matter without consulting the full council; I've brought in the lead inspectors of the affected districts. There will be nothing said here leaving this room that is not the bare minimum necessary to function; it's possible they have someone within our ranks.”
“On that note,” Papalymo interjected, “If any of you see someone that isn't casting a shadow who should be, do not call attention to it, and contact us at the first opportunity.” The magistrate nodded in agreement.
“Are we sure we're dealing with an Ascian?” The Elezen sounded mildly disbelieving.
“Yes. But if my word is insufficient, we could send for Urianger, so he can recount the details of his own encounter?” Louisoix was polite, calm, and yet Thancred was utterly unsurprised that the Elezen shrank in his seat with a mumble of “..no, that won't be necessary.”, trying to mask any dubious looks.
Thancred shifted, but... well, he was here for a reason. “Inspector – your people had to've been aware of Frederick; would you believe him learning how to summon something like that in that short an amount of time without some sort of inhuman help?”
There was a faint flicker of affront, although at least not as surprised as he'd been afraid of, some kind of half-second conciliatory glance to Abylghota – who was leaning back in her chair with a watchful eye on her partner – and he slumped his shoulders. “No. To be honest, him lighting a candle would've been a miracle, much less summoning an Ahriman.”
The Elezen raised an eyebrow at the inspector. “So this one was a few yalms from an entire cordon and no-one noticed?”
“And how long has his partner been working your district without yours reporting so much as a glimpse?”, the Inspector snapped.
Abylghota suddenly straightened, hands raised in the beginning of reaching over to grab both of them, and the Magistrate cleared his throat; both of them shifted in their seat.
Louisoix made an airy gesture to Thancred. “His knowledge of how people evade your notice is exactly why he is here; he would not be nearly as able to help us find them if he weren't able to fill us in on how one goes about disappearing as they have.”
“Well then?” The Elezen motioned to Thancred, and he was suddenly the center of attention in a room where half of the people in it were ones every survival instinct for most of his life was 'If they're focused on you, run'.
He managed to only blanche for a second; it was an audience, the streets on a bad day usually had audiences that ranged a little hostile. “Well, they're probably not going around in robes wearing signs; I'd wager that they're only moving one or two at a time, at most, and dressed like anyone else in those areas at that – as long as one can look like normal traffic and not clash with the background, it's surprisingly easy to go unnoticed. Catching them outside is something even I'd think half impossible, but what they're doing means they need a decent amount of space and aren't going to be wont to abandon lairs.” He rested his chin on folding hands for a moment, studying the map. “I'm guessing that the red markers are where you've found – bodies;” he managed to mostly not trip, with only a faint flinch, pushing how many of those marks he might've known out of his mind. “Could you mark out places you've already searched? Particularly any larger abandoned structures, places with room to house multiple people and have space for – whatever they're working on.” He knew there would probably be some they wouldn't think of, but knowing where they'd already looked would help.
There was a brief pause, the two of them eying each other across Abylghota; she had returned to sitting calmly, arms folded, but her expression suggested being increasingly tempted to grab their collars and do something mildly violent. The Magistrate was trying not to react, but Thancred caught a small, long-suffering twinge to his calm.
Unsurprisingly, there were a few times where the inspector's blue markers ended up in the same spot as a few of the elezen's green ones, an event that got a few glares that suggested a distinct lack of communication. He was managing to maintain the “I have an audience” face, but out of the corner of his eye he caught Papalymo giving them an increasingly dim look.
And, about as he'd expected, there were several places where he knew there was a notable gap – and one that wasn't a gap that caught his eye; definitely not something where he wanted to betray a reaction.
“...This place, here...How recently did you search, and did you find anything?” It was firmly within the Elezen's district, and only had a green marker on it.
The man gave a tired sigh and a headshake. “Within the last week, and aught but a couple long-dried bloodstains; going by the disturbances in the dust, it'd been at least a week since anyone had been there.”
Thancred frowned, dropping the audience-act and rubbing his face numbly. “...Some of the... people that were trying to escape the killings had – holed up there to hide from it; I heard about it from a friend – from what she'd said, there were probably a handful of younger people and children, with a few others.”
The table was silent for a few long moments, broken by the inspector, sounding worn and more careful than usual, with an eye half on Abylghota as he spoke. “We can't assume they're alive; they may have found ways to dispose of bodies without us finding them – and if they are alive, there's a high risk of them being used as hostages or being killed to get rid of them when the cult is cornered.” He had a very uncomfortable frown. “Or that some of them turned and handed over any that wouldn't; there was already one that you knew among their number.”
He gave a short, numb nod, returning to scanning the gaps in the markers.
There was an old graveyard that had extensive catacombs under it that was relatively blank, off the beaten path by the wall on the northern edge of the Elezen's territory and far away from the Inspector's district; a couple of warehouses near the college that weren't technically abandoned, but stood empty often enough that they'd been used for illicit dealings on a regular basis with the merchant company in ownership either paid off or none the wiser; and an area where he knew that there wasn't a single building, but there were a number of old houses standing empty so that it was as much empty as inhabited.
“....I can see three places I would look... if I can have a day to scout – quietly – I can narrow down which one they're using without being seen.”
“Not alone. We have people that work un-uniformed, one of them can accompany you.”
He bristled at the Elezen, and Abylghota fought back a grimace.
“I don't even work your area and I probably already know most of them; if anyone that actually still works a field where they'd need it joined them, it'll blow the entire point of me going out looking.” The man didn't look like he was budging. “They'll see it coming, and they'll either pack up and move somewhere further out of reach, or they'll dig in, kill any captives, and have us walking into a huge trap. Not an option.”
“And if one of them recognizes you? Your disguise wasn't that great if someone looked closer, what's to stop them picking you off?”
The Inspector's interjection got a flickered twitch of a disapproving frown from the Elezen. “Are you honestly proposing we trust him?”
Abylghota was getting the impending violence face again, fingers twitching, but she was interrupted before she could move.
Louisoix gave only a brief glance to the magistrate. “Yda!”
The woman stirred and sat bolt upright. “Iwasn'tsleeping!”
“Yda. Thancred needs to do scouting work, but anyone visible puts the mission at risk. Can you tail him in case something goes wrong?”
“What? Oh, yeah, sure, I'm a very ghost, I rarely trip over things when I'm trying to be sneaky, you won't even know I exist!”, she chirped over Papalymo's head.
Thancred was feeling increasingly dubious about this, passing a pleading look between Papalymo and Louisoix.
Papalymo just buried his head in his hands. “I know it's hard to believe, but she actually can disappear quite competently. Just try to find her for her turn at chores if you want to test it.”
“Is that a satisfactory solution?” Louisoix fixed both of the law-officers with that look again, voice calm and even.
Both men nodded, and Abylghota returned to sitting with her arms crossed.
“Then we will leave the intelligence in your hands; will there be anything else you need to cover this endeavor?” The Magistrate's voice wasn't leaving any room for debate, and his eyes were firmly on the side of the table with the two lawmen.
“Suspending your own searching to avoid an unfortunate accident, and reducing active patrols; if you were to completely pull back presence, it would seem suspicious, but a pair of unprepared guardsman finding this would only be casualties and the cult going further to ground.”
“Then it will be done.” The magistrate looked away from his two officers to Louisoix, but there was still a clear and pointed sense in the air that if either of them protested, it would not go well for them.
Summary: Snowballed Headcanon
Chapter Summary: Thancred gets ambushed by the other Archons for questions, then gets the planning meeting he asked for and learns what happens when two strong dominant personalities are stressed, frazzled, and unhappy.
Warnings: Prodding at mental trauma!
When he got back to his room, he stopped in the door way, blinking at the welcoming committee; Yda was perched like some sort of strange gargoyle on the foot of the bed, Papalymo standing by her, Y'shtola next to the door, and Urianger and Louisoix had taken two of the three chairs by the table.
“Did I miss an occasion?” He stepped in, letting the door close behind him.
“Nothing so pleasant. We would've left this for when you were ready to speak of your own accord, but under the circumstances, we can't afford to be delicate.” Papalymo, and all of them really, were oddly grim.
Louisoix motioned to the empty chair; he took it, keeping it turned where he could see the rest of the room easily. “Before we meet with the guard... do you think you would be able to go over what you saw?”
“Yes.” He'd repeated it to people more than once already; he knew it should be fine, even if he was struggling with feeling a little queasy and his stomach going heavy.
“Considering that we'll need to be able to back you up in the meeting, you may want to start beforehand, at the beginning of the affair.”, Y'shtola added.
As much as none of them had struck him as anything terrifying, for once being the center of attention was unnerving; he shifted in his seat, closing his eyes. “We didn't know what was going on, when it started – there were a few people we didn't know very well that nobody had heard from; another pickpocket around our age, a few prostitutes, some laborer that'd been by the baker down the street every morning not showing up. Then there were – a couple bodies found; I didn't see them myself, but it spread pretty fast, that they'd been mutilated horribly.” Opening his eyes didn't really make it any easier, but he needed to keep going. “It was all people that – didn't have families in any good standing to report them missing, and weren't in any position for their absence to draw a huge amount of attention.”
“Who do you mean by 'we'?”, Papalymo asked.
“Ah – a few of the others that live down there, people I grew up with.” The Lalafell rolled a hand in the air for him to continue. “...Mostly street orphans and homeless; I – was living with the one the Inspector's looking for, Ives. He never got very good at much that would earn a 'respectable' living, so we've scraped by on my street performances and his petty thievery; he had to start ranging farther when the murders started, because people and the guards were getting so agitated, and I was struggling because nobody stops to listen to a minstrel when they're hurrying to avoid a nebulous killer. It's the other kids Mattye had been teaching.” Half of whom were dead now with their teacher, and he hadn't seen Ives in too long.
There was silence, then a hand on his shoulder – Y'shtola, stepping away from the wall, giving him a quiet nod.
“A couple of the victims were students of his; he said that he knew we didn't have many that would care to speak up for us, so he went to try to find out who it was. He couldn't bring any guard with him, or nobody would talk, so I'd – been tailing him. Just in case. I caught enough to figure out where he was going, to the old church, so I got there ahead of him. It wasn't... abandoned; the dust was disturbed everywhere, things were defaced and moved, but nobody seemed to be there when I got there.” After how easily it'd rattled loose, there was a lump forming again thinking about it; but he knew that it would be harder to stop the damn thing if he didn't, so he forced past it. “I was checking something in the old choir loft when he walked in with his carbuncle, so I flattened to stay out of sight; it – must've been underneath that where I couldn't see it the whole time. He called out that he knew someone was there, and it walked out – its back was to me the whole time, so I couldn't tell much with that hood and robe.” He took a moment to breathe. “It said – something that wasn't human, and he stepped back, then it took off his mask, hands out like it wanted him to attack it. He just – he banished his carbuncle, lowered his tome, and let it kill him.”
A small sound of shifting cloth broke silence, and he caught movement out of the corner of his eye; Urianger frowning, some kind of gesture to Louisoix. The entire tone of the room had gone from grave to something wrong, but Louisoix motioned for him to continue.
“It … it put the mask back on, turned around and looked right at where I was hiding, and then just – teleported out; I went down to check on him, but there wasn't anything I could do, and when I heard the guard coming outside I – I panicked, I knew they'd probably blame me if they saw me, so I ran. I didn't even notice it'd used Ives's knife until the Inspector had it later.”
The room was silent for a few long moments, Papalymo finally breaking it.
“Well. That puts an unpleasant twist in things.”
He looked from Papalymo to Louisoix for an answer; Louisoix rested his forehead on one hand tiredly. “Ascians have no form of their own; they can sometimes manifest something, but it's very temporary and difficult. They deceive and ensnare mortal men, possessing their bodies to act in our plane.”
“Mattye's reaction means that he knew its host, and they were someone he refused to harm. Since he couldn't strike it without killing them...”, Papalymo trailed off.
“Then – can you find who it is?” He caught his voice cracking halfway through that.
“Unfortunately, the list of people Mattye was fond of is not a short one; it gives us a direction, but we'd need to check half the college and most of your people, while it and the people it swayed to its command are still killing.” Y'shtola punctuated it with an attempt at a sympathetic squeeze of his shoulder, even if she was drily matter of fact about it.
“It also leaves us with another problem; if it's clever enough to use its host's face, or Gods forefend the host is a willing conspirator that allowed it in, then it might've been in on the entire hunt, knowing our every move.”
Yda had been looking between them looking increasingly dismayed, finally reaching down to ruffle Papalymo's hair after he'd finished speaking; the Lalafell batted at her hand, stepping away with an irrtable glare.
“Oh it's not all that bad is it? I mean, sure, it might be able to run rings around us and has probably been laughing at us all along, but it's got people working for it, and they can't teleport or wear someone else like a bad suit, and if it was trying to open a voidgate, then it might still have enough going on wherever they're hiding that it can't afford to ditch too fast, so if we can find them, we can clear them out and if it doesn't decide to try to kill us for it, we can look for its host then!”
Thancred made a mental note that if Yda was always this comforting and full of tact, he was avoiding her the next time he started feeling low.
“That is likely our best option; ordinarily I might think it would've aimed for an opportunity to interfere with us directly, but...” Louisoix looked over to Thancred, and his face went downcast. “It's likely that it's drawn its followers from the poorer population; managing to sway them enough to have people starting sacrifices and learning summonings by now means that it had their trust quickly; the host is more likely to be someone you would recognize, and very likely willing and helping it lure people into its fold.”
Someone he knew. His mouth went dry; he nodded. He'd had to face the realization that some of the followers involved in the murder were people he hadn't necessarily gotten on well with, but that he recognized and had some fond memory of, but it was like chipping away to add a new layer on to that.
“...I don't...know everyone he'd been teaching – I can look out for the others I do know about.”
“That's the best we can do; for now, let's focus on finding their hiding place.” Y'shtola lingered close by for a few good moments after.
“Thank you, Thancred.” Louisoix rested a hand on his wrist on the table. “Will you be alright by yourself?”
He wasn't entirely sure, but anyone he could think of that would actually lay some of the creeping dread to rest would be harder to reach. “...I should be – thank you.”
He managed to sleep with a bit less staring at the ceiling and out the window, even if the bed was still a very foreign and alien concept; he was fairly sure it was more lingering tired still catching up than actually feeling like sleeping. There was a message when he woke that the idea of a meeting to try to pin down where the hideout was had been agreed to, and he had barely gotten through a bleary breakfast and tea when Papalymo found him for it.
He soon found himself in what was supposedly a smaller meeting room of some kind, with a table that looked big enough for twelve or thirteen people at least; one of the more detailed maps he'd ever seen of the city was spread out on it already. There were a few extra stands with lamps of glowing crystal, keeping the room bright and almost starkly lit. Louisoix had one of the chairs on the side across from the door, Y'shtola leaning on the wall nearby, and Yda in another chair, draped over the table as if existing in that room were suffering – or maybe just being still and quiet was the suffering part.
There was someone he didn't recognize in the robes of a magistrate-judge, leaving him working on settling a reflex to be on edge just on that alone; a neatly groomed Elezen that he didn't recognize with a guardsman's coat and the insignia of another inspector, Abylghota settled half-drowsing in a chair, and a couple of other guardsman, one of whom he recognized from patrolling the area, and another he didn't.
Papalymo led him around the table, where there was an empty chair in the center with easy reach of the map, taking his own seat on a taller stool at the end of the row. Once Thancred had settled, Y'shtola took the last chair on that side.
The door opened for the last to arrive, and Thancred realized he should've seen it coming; he and the Inspector shared a brief, awkward moment, and he somehow got the feeling he wasn't the only one that hadn't thought this through entirely beforehand.
The inspector shifted uncomfortably and took the seat next to Abylghota; Thancred caught her quietly keeping watch, even as much as she was feigning being half-awake.
The magistrate cleared his throat, looking to Louisoix. “I would apologize for dispensing with formalities, but I doubt anyone here will have a great deal of patience for them on this matter. I've been granted leave to treat this situation as an emergency, to make decisions on this matter without consulting the full council; I've brought in the lead inspectors of the affected districts. There will be nothing said here leaving this room that is not the bare minimum necessary to function; it's possible they have someone within our ranks.”
“On that note,” Papalymo interjected, “If any of you see someone that isn't casting a shadow who should be, do not call attention to it, and contact us at the first opportunity.” The magistrate nodded in agreement.
“Are we sure we're dealing with an Ascian?” The Elezen sounded mildly disbelieving.
“Yes. But if my word is insufficient, we could send for Urianger, so he can recount the details of his own encounter?” Louisoix was polite, calm, and yet Thancred was utterly unsurprised that the Elezen shrank in his seat with a mumble of “..no, that won't be necessary.”, trying to mask any dubious looks.
Thancred shifted, but... well, he was here for a reason. “Inspector – your people had to've been aware of Frederick; would you believe him learning how to summon something like that in that short an amount of time without some sort of inhuman help?”
There was a faint flicker of affront, although at least not as surprised as he'd been afraid of, some kind of half-second conciliatory glance to Abylghota – who was leaning back in her chair with a watchful eye on her partner – and he slumped his shoulders. “No. To be honest, him lighting a candle would've been a miracle, much less summoning an Ahriman.”
The Elezen raised an eyebrow at the inspector. “So this one was a few yalms from an entire cordon and no-one noticed?”
“And how long has his partner been working your district without yours reporting so much as a glimpse?”, the Inspector snapped.
Abylghota suddenly straightened, hands raised in the beginning of reaching over to grab both of them, and the Magistrate cleared his throat; both of them shifted in their seat.
Louisoix made an airy gesture to Thancred. “His knowledge of how people evade your notice is exactly why he is here; he would not be nearly as able to help us find them if he weren't able to fill us in on how one goes about disappearing as they have.”
“Well then?” The Elezen motioned to Thancred, and he was suddenly the center of attention in a room where half of the people in it were ones every survival instinct for most of his life was 'If they're focused on you, run'.
He managed to only blanche for a second; it was an audience, the streets on a bad day usually had audiences that ranged a little hostile. “Well, they're probably not going around in robes wearing signs; I'd wager that they're only moving one or two at a time, at most, and dressed like anyone else in those areas at that – as long as one can look like normal traffic and not clash with the background, it's surprisingly easy to go unnoticed. Catching them outside is something even I'd think half impossible, but what they're doing means they need a decent amount of space and aren't going to be wont to abandon lairs.” He rested his chin on folding hands for a moment, studying the map. “I'm guessing that the red markers are where you've found – bodies;” he managed to mostly not trip, with only a faint flinch, pushing how many of those marks he might've known out of his mind. “Could you mark out places you've already searched? Particularly any larger abandoned structures, places with room to house multiple people and have space for – whatever they're working on.” He knew there would probably be some they wouldn't think of, but knowing where they'd already looked would help.
There was a brief pause, the two of them eying each other across Abylghota; she had returned to sitting calmly, arms folded, but her expression suggested being increasingly tempted to grab their collars and do something mildly violent. The Magistrate was trying not to react, but Thancred caught a small, long-suffering twinge to his calm.
Unsurprisingly, there were a few times where the inspector's blue markers ended up in the same spot as a few of the elezen's green ones, an event that got a few glares that suggested a distinct lack of communication. He was managing to maintain the “I have an audience” face, but out of the corner of his eye he caught Papalymo giving them an increasingly dim look.
And, about as he'd expected, there were several places where he knew there was a notable gap – and one that wasn't a gap that caught his eye; definitely not something where he wanted to betray a reaction.
“...This place, here...How recently did you search, and did you find anything?” It was firmly within the Elezen's district, and only had a green marker on it.
The man gave a tired sigh and a headshake. “Within the last week, and aught but a couple long-dried bloodstains; going by the disturbances in the dust, it'd been at least a week since anyone had been there.”
Thancred frowned, dropping the audience-act and rubbing his face numbly. “...Some of the... people that were trying to escape the killings had – holed up there to hide from it; I heard about it from a friend – from what she'd said, there were probably a handful of younger people and children, with a few others.”
The table was silent for a few long moments, broken by the inspector, sounding worn and more careful than usual, with an eye half on Abylghota as he spoke. “We can't assume they're alive; they may have found ways to dispose of bodies without us finding them – and if they are alive, there's a high risk of them being used as hostages or being killed to get rid of them when the cult is cornered.” He had a very uncomfortable frown. “Or that some of them turned and handed over any that wouldn't; there was already one that you knew among their number.”
He gave a short, numb nod, returning to scanning the gaps in the markers.
There was an old graveyard that had extensive catacombs under it that was relatively blank, off the beaten path by the wall on the northern edge of the Elezen's territory and far away from the Inspector's district; a couple of warehouses near the college that weren't technically abandoned, but stood empty often enough that they'd been used for illicit dealings on a regular basis with the merchant company in ownership either paid off or none the wiser; and an area where he knew that there wasn't a single building, but there were a number of old houses standing empty so that it was as much empty as inhabited.
“....I can see three places I would look... if I can have a day to scout – quietly – I can narrow down which one they're using without being seen.”
“Not alone. We have people that work un-uniformed, one of them can accompany you.”
He bristled at the Elezen, and Abylghota fought back a grimace.
“I don't even work your area and I probably already know most of them; if anyone that actually still works a field where they'd need it joined them, it'll blow the entire point of me going out looking.” The man didn't look like he was budging. “They'll see it coming, and they'll either pack up and move somewhere further out of reach, or they'll dig in, kill any captives, and have us walking into a huge trap. Not an option.”
“And if one of them recognizes you? Your disguise wasn't that great if someone looked closer, what's to stop them picking you off?”
The Inspector's interjection got a flickered twitch of a disapproving frown from the Elezen. “Are you honestly proposing we trust him?”
Abylghota was getting the impending violence face again, fingers twitching, but she was interrupted before she could move.
Louisoix gave only a brief glance to the magistrate. “Yda!”
The woman stirred and sat bolt upright. “Iwasn'tsleeping!”
“Yda. Thancred needs to do scouting work, but anyone visible puts the mission at risk. Can you tail him in case something goes wrong?”
“What? Oh, yeah, sure, I'm a very ghost, I rarely trip over things when I'm trying to be sneaky, you won't even know I exist!”, she chirped over Papalymo's head.
Thancred was feeling increasingly dubious about this, passing a pleading look between Papalymo and Louisoix.
Papalymo just buried his head in his hands. “I know it's hard to believe, but she actually can disappear quite competently. Just try to find her for her turn at chores if you want to test it.”
“Is that a satisfactory solution?” Louisoix fixed both of the law-officers with that look again, voice calm and even.
Both men nodded, and Abylghota returned to sitting with her arms crossed.
“Then we will leave the intelligence in your hands; will there be anything else you need to cover this endeavor?” The Magistrate's voice wasn't leaving any room for debate, and his eyes were firmly on the side of the table with the two lawmen.
“Suspending your own searching to avoid an unfortunate accident, and reducing active patrols; if you were to completely pull back presence, it would seem suspicious, but a pair of unprepared guardsman finding this would only be casualties and the cult going further to ground.”
“Then it will be done.” The magistrate looked away from his two officers to Louisoix, but there was still a clear and pointed sense in the air that if either of them protested, it would not go well for them.
