Deputy Connor Kenton Jr. sat at one of only two desks in the sheriff’s office of Millpoint. The big desk had been an addition to the office by Sheriff Jed, made of varnished cherry and the size of a medium boulder. It was the kind of desk with so many drawers you started shoving random things in there just to fill them and thick panels on the sides that swallowed your legs up like a cave. Sheriff Jed had said it was an “antique” somebody had taken pains to restore. It was his pride and joy.
Needless to say, Connor Kenton Jr. was not seated at the big desk.
Instead he sat at the one in front, a squat amalgam of misshapen timber and rusty nails that he was pretty sure was older than the building it sat it. Bits of nail jutted from it in places speckled with blood from when Connor had pricked himself filing paperwork, making it the most dangerous task he’d been given since taking on his post here.
Connor wasn’t an officer of the law per se, but he was one of only a handful of paladins stationed this close to the wasteland. When his superiors at the Union had given him this post he had expected to be battling monsters from the wastes, fending off bandit raids, or maybe even see one of those umbral storms he’d heard about. Instead, he spent most of his time filing the Sheriff’s reports for him, clearing away rattler nests, and helping drunks get home after a long hard day of staring at sand. Not exactly the thrilling adventure he had hoped for.
But then, almost a week ago, the Sheriff had found ———‘s body. He’d found it deeper in the canyon that most of Millpoint was nestled into during a routine patrol. Connor and Sheriff Jed generally did a sweep of the canyon every week or two (or whenever Connor was supremely bored, which was often) to check it for any possible threats to the town.
[Put a description of the crime scene here]
______________________________________
After four days of dead ends, Connor had had enough. The Union had no troops to spare for a murder investigation, supernatural or no, and Sheriff Jed had other pressing matters that demanded his attention. Four days of trying and failing to solve the case himself. He needed a fresh pair of eyes.
He spent the first half of the day digging through his requisition files until he found the form he was looking for: an [approval?] form to officially request some outside help in the investigation. A Stranger.
Not a stranger in the sense of a person he’d never met, you understand, but a Stranger with a capital “S”. A special breed of mercenary for hire. A monster hunter. Connor had heard the same superstitious things everyone else had about Strangers. They were mages who used the darker aspects of magic and they traveled from town to town, offering their services to anyone who needed them. Some of the rumors even claimed they took a piece of your soul as payment, but Connor put little stock in that sort of thing.
As far as he was concerned, Strangers were just regular folk. Folk that used magic and killed monsters, certainly, but that seemed no worse to him than what a Paladin did. Heck, he’d bet that some Strangers were even Paladins themselves!
So, after digging up the proper forms, Connor had submitted them for approval by dropping them in the small paper tray on the big desk. He then plucked them out of the tray, brought them back to his own desk, and stamped them with the little rubber seal the Sheriff had given to him to fill out requisitions. He had said that he was far too busy to look over most of the paperwork that came across his desk, so he’d presented Connor with a stamp of his signature and told him to, “Use it as much as you’d like,” so he wouldn’t have to bothered with trivial matters every time Connor needed his approval. It certainly kept things quick on Connor’s end.
And quick was what they needed now, two and a half weeks of dead ends had the townsfolk worried. He was supposed to be taking care of them, damn it! If he couldn’t manage it on his own, he wasn’t too proud to ask for some help. He’d tell Jed about it later.
And so Connor had sent out the request with Fari, the town’s supply runner. He’d even radioed command ahead of time and actually already gotten the approval, he just needed an official paper trail to keep everything above board. After he’d covered all his bases, he sent out the repeating bulletin over the radio and waited.
“This is Paladin Connor Kenton Jr. requesting a Stranger for the town of Millpoint, just north of the wastes. Standard Lamaryll Union contract and pay, additional fees negotiable depending on results. There’s been a murder we believe to be supernatural in nature and request assistance.”
He’d not used a Union channel to send out the call, that wouldn’t have done him any good. There was actually a special frequency people used to post jobs, warnings, and all sorts of other mercenary-like things he imagined it was useful to keep appraised of on the road. That was where he’d find a Stranger.
It was an agonizing couple of hours of waiting, Millpoint was at the very edge of civilization after all, but the station radio finally crackled to life while Connor had been pouring over his case notes late into the night.
“This is Flynn,” it crackled, “I’ll take the job for Millpoint. I’ll be there in 48 hours.”
He’d leapt up so quickly he nearly knocked over his chair. This was it! An answer from a real Stranger! Connor wondered what they would be like. The voice had sounded feminine over the radio, but constant dust storms blowing through town made the signal too full of static to be sure. Whatever, it didn’t matter, any and all extra hands were welcome as far as he was concerned. Hands that knew more than he did about magic were even better, and if even half the rumors were true, that’s exactly what he’d get from a Stranger.
48 hours was a bit longer than he’d been hoping, but it was probably the best he was going to get considering the town’s location. It was too long a time to leave the body at the crime scene, but the tiny closet that was the town morgue was just big enough to house it for a couple days so the Stranger could inspect it when they arrived. Hopefully they’d find anything Connor and Sheriff Jed might have missed.
He spent the time arranging his notes in a hopefully understandable order and doing his usual tasks around town. Trying to get his work done felt more like pulling teeth than anything, but even with a murder to investigate the usual goings-on of the town didn’t stop and politely wait for him to finish. People still needed him, and he couldn’t let them down at a time like this.
______________________________________
It was the slam of the office door that woke Connor. He shot up from here he’d lain across the desk, hand reaching for a sword belt he quickly realized was hanging on a hook across the room by the door. He must’ve dozed off while he was working on the reports.
A sheet of white flopped across the top of his vision while he tried to clear the sleep from his eyes, he reached up to his forehead to find one of the reports he’d been working on plastered to it. Plastered with what, he’d rather not think about. He quickly snatched it off its impromptu perch and slapped it onto the table atop the pile of other reports, then slapped his other hand down to narrowly avoid scattering them all across the desk in his haste.
“Sorry about that,” he straightened, fully turning to face the newcomer, “How can I help you?”
“You Connor Kenton?” The newcomer asked.
“Jr.!” He added automatically, “Connor Kenton Jr. ma’am, Paladin of the [insert a # here] Order, Lamaryll Union representative assigned to the town of Millpoint!” He finally shook off enough of the haze to get a proper look at the stranger standing in the dusk.
The woman stood a little bit taller than he did, and he was by no means a short man. Her thick dark hair spilled out behind her head from beneath a triangular high-brimmed hat, cut in a ragged bob just below her cheekbone and ending in a shock of bright red. She wore a rust-colored leather duster beneath a dull metal breastplate, and had stripped off its sleeves to reveal thick chords of muscle and intricate tattoos. They trailed down her arms and across her fingers in geometric lines and strange glyphs interspersed with flowers of a variety he wasn’t familiar with.
A flat spiral of silvery patterned metal hung from her neck to rest in the center of her chest, strung from a worn leather chord that looked like it had been tied in a few places along the strand. Patterns of wavy lines and ridges along the metal circled back on themselves, reminding him of tree rings that appeared to shift and twist in the low light.
A Stranger.
He looked up to meet her eyes only to find them obscured beneath colored lenses.
“Are you Miss Flynn, ma’am?”
“Yep.” She tilted her head to Connor’s sword belt beside her, “Union protocol’s to keep your belt on you while in uniform, yeah?”
“Yes ma’am.” He flushed, “I don’t remember hanging it up, but I must’ve before I dozed off. I was going over the case notes we’d gathered so far.”
“Uh-huh. Here,” she said as she hooked a finger beneath the hanging sword and deftly tossed it the Paladin’s way. “Your request sounded urgent, should we get to work?”
He caught it, bewildered, “Now ma’am? Isn’t it the middle of the night?”
“If it’s really something supernatural, it won’t stop at just one body. Cases like this without a clear motive or culprit tend to be either a hunting pattern or components to some larger ritual. The quicker we work, Mr. Kenton, the better.” She raised a wrist to her face, inspecting a spiked bracer strapped to the arm below it and adjusting one of the straps. Then she turned her attention back to him, “Shall we?”
