Witness to Murder

[Daddy Skelly]

Closed, solo.



Prologue

The "City of Heroes", what Ken had began calling Radasanth after some time, served to be a generally nice place. The architectural structure had all been planned and constructed well, with the combined efforts of humans, dwarves and elves. Each living quarter had distinguished blocks of homes and shops, which was the same case for the slums.

The city of Radasanth is where it all began. It is where Ken had been killed and where he was forced back into life; His mind thrust into a body he no longer called his own. He's left to wander the world aimlessly, without any personal cause or goal, only servitude to the Voice. A whisper echoes in the back of his mind and Kenneth must obey it. Such is what brought him to the southern, poorer section of Radasanth that night...

Thud, thud, thud... Kenneth's unnaturally light footsteps barely made a sound while he awkwardly walked through the night. He was the weight of a small child, but looked like a grown and strangely bony man. Regardless, while he was draped in heavy cloth that covered every inch of his body he was inconspicuous to the common passerby.

He lumbered clumsily on the cobble path, his steps uneven and unpracticed, as if it was his first time walking; A result of not being able to feel his own feet while he stepped, thus not being able to distribute his weight properly. His tall frame was hobbled over like an aged man, keeping his hooded skull down; Not as if anyone would see much of him anyway. A being clad in extremely dark clothing on a near pitch-black, moonless night.

His thoughts swam in a sea of confusion. His mind raced because there was nothing else he could do. Thinking was the only thing that separated him from any other undead, it was the only thing left of him that was human. Perhaps it was his soul still being intact, and that fact gave him a small glimpse of hope.

Ken's mind hadn't been controlled in any fashion, so while he was forced to commit deeds that would have a normal man executed thrice over and maybe even die of self-guilt before that happened, he had to scream in defiance while his arms swung a grotesque greatsword through whoever the Voice wanted. For three years he had been subjected to such relentless terrors... That night would be no different, for He had his objective. Two words floated at the bottom of that sea of thoughts, playing over and over in the back of his mind until he couldn't even understand the meaning of them anymore:

"Kill them..."

The voice was ominous and dark. It reeked of evil. Kenneth could not even describe the voice in his own mind. He heard it, but that was all. Not as if it mattered. Nothing mattered to him anymore. It would make no difference. The fact that he was nothing but a tool now cracked his resolve. The skeleton had been a slave for three years, with no signs of being gifted with true death and all hope had been shattered.

He didn't care as he walked past a bustling tavern to his side, didn't bother to look in as he passed; He didn't care to witness all of the people who were on the unfortunate side of the economy forget about their problems to drink and laugh. Even as a short, thin drunkard stumbled out of the door as Kenneth awkwardly limped past and in his blunder, slightly bumping into the skeleton's shoulder.

"Oh, er, sssorry, shir." Ken heard the man say as he continued on down the dark cobblestone road through the slums. The drunk man said something more, then again, as the skeleton walked on. Eventually, the man's drunk pleas were drowned in silence as he was left back at the bar. Back into the quiet night. Shambled houses passed, common peasants ignored and shouldered away if they even tried to say anything like "Fine night." or any type of common greeting. For the most part, people were celebrating something in the taverns dotted around that part of Radasanth. Kenneth was more than apathetic.

He ignored everything but his goal. It would have been pointless to worry about anything else.

[Daddy Skelly]

The scenery flowed past him like a casual stream; No small wave or ripple in the waters seemed different from one another as he strolled, keeping his head lowered. It was all the same to Kenneth. All the same except for the house he was looking for. The night would have only proved more detrimental to finding said house, save for the fact that his feet practically moved of their own volition once his directions were given.

The light thud of his booted footsteps eventually stopped abruptly and awkwardly, like some form of machine turning off unexpectedly. He even froze in mid step, huddled over as if his back was killing him. After a moment he set his feet down into a normal stance and pivoted to his left side; Ken's head slowly craned upward to bring his empty, emotionless eye sockets to gaze upon his target.

He was pretty much in the living quarters of the slums. The road he clumsily stood upon was of dirt and rocks then, rather than cobble stone, as he was further in the southern slums. Small, single floor homes lined the dirt path, each one looking nearly identical to the next, like they'd been too lazy and just copied the house next to it to save energy. The moon showed mercy, saving the Radasanthian night from its silver glow; Kenneth stood in the middle of the road, but was nearly invisible lest you walked within five feet of him. One could see small, glowing yellow lights coming from several houses, where the inhabitants happened to still be awake. But the peasant home he was looking at had its light out.

A small breeze lofted through the valley of houses, ruffling Ken's wraps slightly. A symbol of the calm night, where all of the people just went with the breeze to drink and be merry; Be alive. If the skeleton could shut his eyes and just enjoy the breeze, he would. But he wasn't able to do either, he could not even feel the wind brushing up against him like a nudging cat.

All of a sudden, he heard two words. The Voice's whisper. Any thoughts in his mind were immediately dissolved, by will. Caring about anything would only wrench more on his troubled soul than his state already did. Caring would only sate the reason why he'd even been enslaved, for torture. Kenneth had been condemned to a fate worse than death. He hated the Voice, but that was what it wanted. It's what it fed the magic keeping him together. He heard the words again, a whisper licking the back of his consciousness:

"Go in."

With no way out, no hope for the future, he reached a gloved and bony hand up to the shoddy hilt of his rusted greatsword, saying nothing as he proceeded to serve.

[Daddy Skelly]

Kenneth reached the wooden door that was only about half a foot taller than he was, if he stood straight up, and stopped. His empty eye sockets gazed at the door, void of emotion. But anyone with common sense would notice the feeling of hopelessness and desperation that washed over him. He was about to go into a peasant family's house, murder them, and steal what mattered most to them. For what? For who? Ken couldn't resist thinking about it, the horrors he was about to commit. His hand slowly released the hilt of his greatsword, he wasn't going to use it that night; He was going to give them a quick and painless death by simply twisting their necks. The Voice might control what he did, but not how he did it.

A gloved and bony hand reached for the door knob. Kenneth quickly reflected in his mind how he couldn't feel the metal of the knob, or the leather of his glove. The empty thought quickly vanished as he slowly twisted the handle, pushing the door open. The hinges creaked in protest and in a second the door was wide open, but Ken still stood in the doorway, looking inside. It was pitch black in the home and nothing made a sound. It was a welcome sight, a potential sign that no one was home that night. Whatever light there was came from the outside, which was also lacking and only seemed to crawl its way just in the house's entrance. The breeze that waded through the river of homes seemed to push past Ken a little more eagerly to get into the house, ruffling his cloak a little harder and whistling slightly.

He waited a moment more, listening. The door would have certainly woke up anyone who was sleeping inside. He waited for them to confront him; Waited to kill them. But nothing happened. Ken let out a sigh of relief in his thoughts, knowing he could just grab whatever he had to get and go.

Ken took a step inside, the floors changing from dirt to wood and his boot made a more audible thud. He didn't know where to start, but as an effect of the Voice's magic, he would know what it was when he saw it. After finally being fully acquainted with the house, the clumsy skeleton continued fully inside, politely closing the door behind him, the outside light fleeing as it shut. Again, the house was completely dark but luckily after some hopeful fondling of the walls adjacent to the door, Kenneth found a lantern hanging on the wooden wall and managed to light it.

Without thinking, the skeleton idly left his gloved hand on the bulb for a moment. As the flame kissed the glass that kissed his hand, he felt nothing. No warmth, no glass; He was laying his hand on a barrier of nothing that just happened to impede his movement. In that instant, a feeling of nostalgia washed over him, as it had many times before in the same way. He wished he could remember what heat felt like, or what anything felt like. Kenneth shook his head silently, lowering his hand from the lit bulb and wishing the feeling away just like every other day.

[Daddy Skelly]

Turning back, he looked around again. The fiery red glow of the lantern slowly blanketed the room. The house was small, probably only two rooms total, the first one he entered was basically the living quarters while a door towards the back corner of the home was closed. A small, square wooden table was in the center of the room, roughly five feet ahead, with four nondescript wooden chairs sitting at each side. Other than that, the house was practically bare.

"Where are they?"

Kenneth heard the Voice in the back of his mind. If he could feel, he'd describe it like scratching on a board, the hairs on the back of his neck shooting upward in doing so. For the most part, Ken ignored it. He had two things he had to do: Kill the inhabitants, and grab whatever it was he had to grab. Without the inhabitants, he couldn't kill anyone. But he was still forced to find the object.

"Where are they?"

Again, the words squealed in his head. The skeleton continued on with his task, looking around the room for anything special. Being a poor commoner's home, the rooms were scarce. Aside from the bare wooden table and chairs in the main room, several shelves lined the small walls. Useless trinkets on some, rations on others and clothing on a couple. The single lantern cast dancing shadows about the room, playing off the trinkets of different sizes such as vases, candles and toys. The room in the back was most likely where they slept.

Feeling relatively safe from being discovered by others, Kenneth pulled back the hood of his cloak. His scarf was carefully wrapped around his mouth and nose, leaving his large, empty eyes visible. Even though he knew no one was close, his head shifted around slowly. After a moment of contemplation he went to look on the shelves, stepping towards a wall but immediately stopping to hear the Voice again. But this time, it wasn't something he could ignore:

"Rip the place apart, burn it to the ground."

Kenneth's exposed, emotionless skull tilted downward to look at the floor desperately, as if hoping some sort of unexplained miracle could happen. But nonetheless, the floor responded in the same way it had for the past three years, by doing nothing. Regretfully and shamefully, Ken couldn't fight it, he lifted a hand to the hilt of his greatsword again. He was going to use it after all.

[Daddy Skelly]

Then in an instant, peace had been shattered. Ken defiantly screamed in his mind, something he couldn't help doing before committing such an act; But as always, his pleas were in vain. His body had gone into a rage, beginning by reaching around and latching a bony hand around the lantern. The heat did nothing but discolor the leather on his glove as he palmed the bulb and whipped his skeletal arm forward. The lantern was launched to the far side of the room like a fireball, opposite the bedroom door. Immediately the glass shattered with a definite crash and the oil within became aflame in a flash, settling on whatever wooden nooks it could find. The room suddenly became much brighter as the entirety of the oil was set aflame and angrily danced shadows against the walls in a mad waltz.

The free hand that had thrown the lantern reached up to grab the hilt of his sword. With both bony hands grasping the leather-wrapped hilt, he pulled the blade from its latch and jumped forward with uncoordinated speed, hammering the rusty greatsword down into the wooden table and the chair on his side of it. The long blade easily smashed, more than cut, through the wood with an extremely loud, sickening crack.

The weak wooden chair that had been closest to him received the brunt of the slash, as it was battered into two nonidentical, splintered piles of wood. Kenneth raised the sword again and brought the blade down with hammer-like force, resulting in another loud crash. The blunt force of his sword finally bashed the table into submission, blasting it into confetti with several more barbaric slashes.

Kenneth's actions were only half-controlled. In a sense, he dictated every action he made, but had to do so in a way that accomplished the command he was given. His mind raced as he demolished the home. He hated himself, he hated the Voice, but he also thought about the object. He hadn't found it and everything in the room was common. He hadn't been given proper time to find it. The skeleton wished that he would accidentally smash whatever he was searching for into pieces, or accidentally crush his own skull somehow. Only to come back to 'life' in a matter of weeks.

He found himself easily kicking and smashing through the home. A dastardly dervish of destruction, a peasant house's worst nightmare. Once the table had been reduced to a pile of boards, nails and splinters, Ken turned to the only other thing of actual substance in the room, the shelves.

Taking a step forward, the unbalanced skeleton didn't feel himself walking on uneven, broken wood. He tripped and crashed straight into the wreckage he had just caused, the middle of the table he had destroyed, his arms flailing outward and accidentally letting the greatsword slide from his hand. Personally, he laughed in his mind. A deranged, helpless cackle that served as a short respite to his torture.

[Daddy Skelly]

But his body didn't act the same. At first, he flopped around like a fish out of water, moving but not really being able to find his way. Then flailed his way back up into the most balanced state he could be in, but not after some struggle to gain footing. The skeleton scrambled to rise amongst the wooden debris, loudly pushing it aside as he stood, then lashed a kick out at a fallen chair and breaking one of the four legs off. But instead of following through, he turned to the shelves again; The knick knacks were waiting for him. Kenneth looked for his sword, only to find that it had leaped into the growing flames, which crackled and popped as it hungrily chewed on whatever wood was around and visibly spread through the dry house with startling efficiency.

Kenneth tried to take a step forward but instead, his head was violently jerked back by the clasp around his bony neck. He looked down to see that a foot was standing on the bottom of his long cloak, but couldn't feel it. Without thinking, he pushed the cloak behind him and hopped over the broken wood at his feet, diagonally forward towards the back of the room where his sword bathed in the spreading fire.

Besides his blunders at the table, the rest of the home went down without a fight. Allied with the flame, Kenneth ripped down the shelves with his own hands, stripping them from the walls and throwing them into the fire, which gladly accepted its meal. Glass items fell off their perches and broke on the floor, then were unknowingly stomped on by Ken's booted and bony feet. The small amount of clothing that lived on the shelves had been quickly lit when tossed in the fires. The bread toasted, permeating the room with a burnt scent that while bad, Ken wished he could still smell and experience.

The bare floor was quickly littered with fire, broken wood and shattered trinkets of various shapes. The air was polluted with a black smoke that slightly hindered the skeleton's eyesight, but he couldn't cough or feel his brow sweating, if he had one. Kenneth finally went over to grab his long sword. Luckily, the hilt had been saved from the fire. He reached down and scooped it up with both hands, lifting the blade from the belly of the flames. The rusted steel had been set aflame in a botched pattern as oil stuck to it.

Without thinking about it, he looked around to see the destroyed room as a whole. If he could squint, he would have. The black smoke got thicker every passing moment. Not so surprisingly, Kenneth could also hear loud chatter outside of the home. He had undoubtedly caused a noticeable stir within the slums that night. But there was one sound that stood out from the rest, but it didn't come from outside, but rather, from the back room he hadn't yet been in. The sound bit at his senses and he easily focused on it above the crackling of the flame and the crunching of whatever he happened to be standing on.

He heard someone whimpering...