Chapter 52: Fragile Life

The kidnappings that began from Clin Village. In the land of Marshfoth, there was more forest than Elise have read from the books. Due to its nature and the rain that often come and exit from the land, it held some freshness of a dew like how it could feel when one woke up in the early morning.

Elise sat on the carriage and when they came to a stop, she saw Ian walking down the carriage and followed his suit. She darted her eyes around to her surrounding to see that not only did the four men who was in the mansion were there but also another batch of people who were wearing the Church's uniform. She turned her eyes after taking a note of the place and stared at the entrance of the town, it was dilapidated and had a deep sense of loneliness along with a sense of horror. When she entered the village, the buildings of the villagers were already ruined and some was even burning. Just by a glance and anyone could feel the chilling gloominess and silence of the village that had suffered from loosing many of their folks.

"Since the Church always come in advance before anyone, did they say anything else?" Ian inquired for Alex to hum. "Nothing much, they also couldn't get any clue to what had taken place in the town."

"What we know for now," Edward chided from the side, bending his knees to crouch on the ground and placed his finger that was covered by the gloves to sink it toward the slightly wet ground. "Is that three quarters of the people who lives in this village disappeared by the count of three days. Although it should be alarming enough for many people to disappear in a day and for them to relay the message to the rest of the villagers to hide inside their house and not to linger at the time of nightly creatures, the witnesses claimed that they never felt anything odd happening until the third day."

"Amusing, there are witnesses?" Ian spoke with a devilish grin, making others to wonder why he was smiling that way.

At that point, they had reached the core of the village. Dalton replied. "Yes, about fifty of them were alive."

" 'were' so you mean now they're not." Ian was quick to pick up the clues that fell from their mouths and hummed. "The reasons of their deaths?"

"After a few day of their securement, they died out of a poison. The further autopsies report showed that this poison had run down through their system for a very long time. It's suspected that they drank the poison by the first day when the first batch of town villagers disappeared." Dalton filled the blanks and heard Ian chuckling.

"How convenient. I thought the Church knows well how important their witnesses are? For them to die out of poison is getting older affect their works too?"

The rest of the people heard Ian's words had nothing to reply back to his words as everything he said held much of the truth. Witnesses to the dark sorcerers are very important to the Church that even most of the Church member would put their life on the line in order to protect the witnesses that could possibly hold a clue to the dark sorcerers. But they had lost many of them with such carelessness.

Ian hummed in between the silence, "But this is not enough to proceed into anything. Without witnesses nor clues there are nothing we could conclude."

Edward red gaze stared back at Ian's having some boiled arrogance as he provocatively chimed. "Do you mean we should give up now?" at the end of his question, a grin appeared on his lips.

Ian had an unmoved expression by the young man's cheap provocation. "Of course not isn't it a basic to investigate the crime scene at the Church? Even an animal knew better what they should do when they can't find clues, sniff them and eventually you will find out. Once there's a hole everything will collapse."

Edward glared at him before shifting his eyes toward Elise who was looking around the village and abundant forest that wasn't too far from the right side of the town. Dalton spoke with Alex, mentioning the places where most villagers disappeared.

"Then as, Lord Ian had suggested we should spread to search for clues, if there are anything that's out of place do not forget to relay the information to us." Alex spoke to the rest of the Church members.

Ian turned his head from the core town, turning to see Elise who had used the silence as her time to investigate the town by her eyes. "Let's go puppy."

"Yes." Elise replied, padding her boots down to sank it toward the dirt before changing her course to the pebble stoned tiles. Seeing the town's building, her eyes kept on questioning the odd view she had been seeing. "Master Ian, can I ask a question?"

"Go on." said Ian after shifting his red gaze from the houses to Elise.

"Why are the houses burned and ran-down? It was supposed to have been less than a week after the kidnappings and it doesn't make sense for a kidnappers who kidnaps the people silently to leave such a big evidence without purpose." She found it odd since the first time she had arrived and guessed that she must have been lacking information as she had only been overhearing Ian's and the rest of the Church members discussing the matter.

"That's a good question. This is the reason why Lewis asked me to be the one to investigate this matter. After the third days when all the third quarter of the town folks, they finally realized how they lost their family and went to ask for the Church's help. By the time the Church came, the dark sorcerers came to burn off the evidence but they were a step to late." Ian explained, entering one of the house that was horribly burned than the rest of the houses and Elise followed his steps quickly, contemplating from the evidence he gave.

"So, the witnesses that died from poison are not the witnesses to the kidnappings but to the second appearance of the dark sorcerers?" Asking it aloud, everything finally made sense to Elise's mind.

"Correct. You're a bright child." Ian praised and added a little sarcasm that wasn't pointed to her but to the Church members. "If only the rest of humans are as smart and quick as you. Perhaps I would have less work."

She was a very simple person, Elise thought to herself. Only from a single praise from Ian, she could feel her ears turning red from delight. She pursed her lips, trying her best not to make a smile that was too wide before the Lord that she love.

Inside the house, the sun shone down upon them due to the ceiling that had turned black from fires. Walking around, her steps made a small creaking sounds as she put pressures to the wooden floor. She looked around at the walls before finally stopping at the large family portrait that had it upper half burned diagonally. "How horrible." She whispered while running down her finger to wipe some of the ashes that covered the painting.

"The dark sorcerers has alway work this way. Do you notice that the one who lived here are humans?" Ian asked and saw her nodding. "Why do they particularly attacks humans?"

"There are two main reasons for that." Ian rummaged something from his inner chest pocket, taking out a white handkerchief to pass it softly for Elise. "Humans are the weakest creature in this world, they're vulnerable to attacks and have a very fragile life. The other reasons is because the sacrifice ritual only use human sacrifices that are easier to consume for their power base."

"Aren't they a human too?" Elise tried to reason.