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Pick marches to where Flibble is, grabs his arm, and tugs in a 'come along' fashion.
Presuming they don't need to stop for anything else, they make it to the scene of the crime...
Kyra expected silence from Pick at her question, or perhaps for him to shake his head, but she less expected him to stomp off in a different direction. She considered calling after him, but figured he would be unlikely to respond. With a shrug she continues walking towards the scene.
The trip to the scene of the crime is pretty short - the building is just across the river, one of Scarnetti's many mills. According to Peguson, one of the victims was one of Scarnetti's employees, as well as another young woman.
The mill is a pretty simple but large two-story building, a watermill running into the river, but the sounds from the inside of the mill silent. There are three guards standing outside of the building, each with a little note and a promise to keep everyone else (that is to say, except for Kyra and her friends) out of the crime scene.
They receive cursory nods from the guards, who let them pass and go inside.
The upper half of the building is just a balcony that goes around the outside, leaving about a 30-by-20 hole that exposes the actual roof of the mill. The mill's saw is large and is accessible from a raised wooden platform. One of the bodies is nailed up to one of the pillars on the far side of the mill building. The shirt is stripped off of him - a young man's body. His throat is savagely slit, and a seven-pointed star has been carved right into the flesh of his chest.
The second body is within the sawmill. Ripped to pieces by the saw's blade. A young woman's body, her intestines now coat the sawblade and the recesses below it. Blood is everywhere.
Bloody footprints, left by bare feet, circle around the sawmill. A single woodcutter's axe, bloody and gory, rests on the platform of the saw blade.
When Hammer asks him if this is a trap, Pick merely looks at her blankly and shrugs. If it is a trap, it is one they cannot ignore...
***
At the mill's doorway, Pick grunts to himself but takes no further step in. He gazes at the bloody footprints on the floor, then turns and starts making a slow circuit of the outside of the building, crouching down and looking for any disturbances in the soil, any signs of traffic on anything but the road itself. Or blood drops. Blood drops would be good.
The guardsman has a quick report for those here to investigate. "A young man named Ibor Thorn discovered the bodies early this morning when he came to work the morning shift at the mill. The victims include his co-worker, Benny Harker, as well as a young woman named Katrine Vinder - one of Ven Vinder's daughters. We've got him in a holding cell back at the barracks, for questioning."
Circling the building, Pick finds some interesting things. First is that wood is brought into the building from the pier, and the pier extends out into the water. Pick finds a set of muddy footprints that come out of the water, cross over into the mill, and then apparently they scale the wall of the mill.
Pick can also smell, very strongly on all of the offending bare-footed footprints, the scent of rotting flesh and carrion.
Kyra's stomach does flipflops as she looks over the carnage, but she fights the instinct to flee, and forces herself to take in as many of the details as she can. "Even the goblins weren't this savage." she mutters.
At Flibble pointing out the axe, Kyra nods, responding. "It doesn't seem likely that it was even used - you wouldn't slit someone's throat with an axe, and the gi- Katrine is all over the saw blade. It could be another message."
She gestures to Benny's body. "Pick told me once that the victims had a symbol carved into them, I assume this is the same one?" She sighs. "What a mess."
"See if you can track down the owner of that axe." She instructs Flibble. "I saw Pick lurking around out back so I imagine he's following another lead. I'll see if I can get any answers from Ibor."
Shaking her head, she steps outside, thanking the guards and telling them to make sure not to let alone close, save the two "little ones" that were with her. With that, she makes for the barracks.
Actually Kyra is quite wrong about the axe not having been used - it's covered in blood and a little bit of gore, and it radiates a sickening smell. Like a dog died on the axe and was allowed to ripen for several days.
There are no magic items or active spells right now. But there's...something. A hint of a whisper of magic, centered on the dead man's carved-up chest. Transmutation magic.
Pick wrinkles his nose at the strange tracks that come from the water itself. Water-people? With feet? They smell bad. Pick is no stranger to dead bodies, and these smell... especially bad. He rubs at his scarred mouth for a bit the way a real dwarf might stroke at his beard, then he goes to look for Hammer.
He finds her (hopefully) before she's left the scene and gone to the barracks.
"Tracks," he says, and points towards the water. "Smell like... death." That's insufficient, so Pick scrunches up his nose and tries again. "More than dead. Death. Like... in tunnels below Sandpoint-- dead one in pit, moved. This... like that. Came from water."
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Flibble mutters to himself,
"Och, what have we got? Blood on yon axe is especially ripe, but it does nae match the victims, since they are nae so ripe and have nae wound fro' an axe. That suggests oor wee laddie gae his opponent a good clobber. Aye, and my guess is the attacker wasnae living, since he stinks. Finally the attacker or some associate performs a magical ritual involving yon marks on his chest. Nae then where's yon Pick-yuir-nose got tae?"
Kyra nods at Pick's observation. "The tracks came from the water?" She frowns at the small dwarf. "Maybe an underwater tunnel. Can you swim, take a look around?"
Pick gazes up at Hammer in silence for several seconds. Then, he looks to the water. Then, he looks to Hammer. Then he says... aloud...
"Pick... can."
Heavy pause. "Elder orders it?"
It is good he is not one of the weak noisy topsiders. If he were like them, he would, he supposes, be noisily protesting how maybe the dead things in the water would eat him. But fear is for topsiders. If Hammer orders this, he will fulfill it.
**
Before he trots off to the water, he looks quizzically at Flibble with the bloody axe. Does the Noisy one think his nose is that good?
"Will smell of blood. Will smell of you, too," he says, but he takes it in his gloved fingers and looks the blade over, closely. He is less interested in the smell than to see if there are any bloody prints of hands on the handle of the axe. And if those hypothetical prints have, say, the correct number of fingers, or otherwise have anything odd about them...
Pick sees nothing of interest on the axe right now, perhaps. He prepares to go to the water and throw himself bodily in. He has swum in deep cave-tunnels filled with cold black water. He hopes it is not terribly different to swim in the salt surface water.
Pick smells living person's scent on the haft of the axe. female living person, if the perfurmey scent is anything. He also smells dead person flesh on the blade of the axe.
...?
"Hmn!"
Pick gazes at the axe a moment. Then, he gets into Flibble's personal space and takes a deep breath of his scent.
Having satisfactorily verified that Noisy One is not the source of the perfumey scent, Pick scrunches up his nose and steps back from him.
"Two smells. One dead. Like tracks. Other... female. Flowers. Stink."
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Flibble hides his surprise by gazing into space and puffing on his pipe
"Och, so the wee lassie sees yon creature gang the mill, she teks yon axe and skelps the spalpeen. It stoats her into yon saw, and she drops the axe. Mebbe father Zanthus will confirm the Cratur's undead from this sample. And I reckon Ven Binder will be able to tell us if his daughter was steppin' oot with Benny Harker"
Flibble puffs contentedly on his pipe a moment. "Och, I'm gang Father Zanthus wi' yon axe tae confirm this cratur, d'ye Ken?"
Pick squints at Flibble in his usual incomprehension. Wordlessly, he turns and starts for the water. Go do whatever... weird thing you do, Noisy One.
At the water, Pick gazes into the dark water for several long seconds. It looks cold. His metal shirt will weigh him down, but he doesn't want to go in the water unprotected, either. Maybe he will go find Ran-Loy... Ran-Loy can make magic armor out of the air...
Pick's doubts are fulfilled - he doesn't see anything that he might specifically be suspicious about from here, on the surface. The water is clean, but the fact that it's running and actually a rather deep river make it hard to see to the bottom.
Pick grunts to himself in cynical resignation. He thinks a moment longer, then he starts the awkward process of tugging off his chain shirt and heavy outer robes. Please don't look at him, top-siders. He's going to be showing more bare, sick-looking, ashen skin than he ever has before.... even if that means, at the end of things, that the bared skin is just his arms and bare feet. It feels naked to him, anyway. He's also bald as an egg beneath the ever-present hood, and shifts away uncomfortably from anybody's eyes to crouch on the riverbank instead. Gollum
Clad now in just a in a sleeveless leather jerkin and simple trousers, Pick makes sure his dagger is tucked into his belt but leaves the rest of his things on the bank. They will only slow him as he swims.
He ties one end of his rope to his ankle, and the other to one of the pier's posts, before starting to get into the cold water.
Pick is a pretty strong swimmer, and easily pulls himself to the bottom of the river to look around. There are no caves, no dead bodies, no creatures looking to rip Pick limb from limb.
Just a set of foot-shaped impressions in the river, leading away from the city, south. That, and a set of stones where the footprints end, tied to lengths of twine that have been severed by something sharp.
The footprints only continue for a hundred or so feet (and traveling this far requires surfacing to breathe multiple times) before they're faded beyond recognition, but there are footprints in both directions.
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Flibble looks on in astonishment as Pick begins to strip. When it becomes clear that Pick intends diving, he calls out,
"Now, hauld on; ye're nae gang swim wi' nae protection, laddie!"
With a that, he gestures and mutters and a covering of force appears around Pick
"Dinna get yourself killed, y'hear? Life'd be getting awful dull wi'out ye."
The prison needed a new guard after the previous one was killed by Tsuto and Lyrie - now there's a much less imposing Varisian man, sallow and lean and armored with the Sandpoint crest, replacing the scarred Shoanti that used to guard it.
Ibor Thorn is sitting in one of the holding cells, two cells down from Ven Vinder. Both are here as suspects, but Peguson doesn't really think either of them did it. Thorn is a handsome man, with short black hair and prominent bone structure and a lean musculature. He has a haunted look in his face, and lightly bloodstained hands. He looks up when Kyra enters. "Good afternoon, Mayor Arkona. I'm afraid to say that I don't have much to tell you..."
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Calling Sovola, Flibble flew to the church to visit Father Zanthus so as to avoid having to carry a bloodied axe through the town. Alighting in the graveyard, Flibble quickly makes his way to the Father's office, where he explains his suspicions and asks if the Father can confirm that the blood on the axe head is indeed from an undead source with magic.
"With magic?" says the Father, looking up from a holy book that he was perusing. "I doubt it - there isn't a spell that I know that tells me if there was an undead somewhere. Can I take a look at that axe, though?"
Looking it over, taking a quick whiff (followed by a sour-looking facial scrunch), he says "Well, I don't need magic to tell that the head of this axe has been lodged in the body of some kind of corporeal undead recently. Of the fleshy variety. No skeletons."
Pick grunts his thanks to Noisy One for the protection, then dives in...
His eyes are well suited to looking around in the dimness of underwater. After several trips to the surface for air, however, Pick has found nothing save... rocks. Rocks with string. That is very strange. He picks one of these rocks up and swims for the surface with it, to scrutinize it by daylight. Odd.
A weight, perhaps? To keep the walkers on the bottom of the river? Pick is not entirely satisfied with this as a theory.
Assuming he has a rock, he will take it to Hammer to show it, after looking it over thoroughly.
Pick continues to think this is weird. He still shows Hammer the stone, and explains in his usual terse and laconic style the presence of the prints, and the stones, and his theory on why they are there, even if he is not fully satisfied with it. Why would walkers under the water need twine for the rocks? Could they not merely hold them? It is a mystery, one that leaves the dwarf-like-creature scratching his bald head. Something was tied to the rocks, that much is clear. And cut with a dagger, or similar. It would have floated away downstream if left to its own devices...
Pick dons his chain shirt and his robes once more. He picks a thoughtful way downstream along the bank, following it until it meets the Sandpoint harbor, and keeping an eye out for anything of interest, before he turns and heads for the inn in order to get warm and dry by the fire, and have something to eat.
...Where he sees Rhanloi with his nose in a book - or a glass of wine - sitting by the same fire Pick wishes to warm himself by...
Pick grunts at Ran-loy and settles in with a bowl of hot stew. He slurps it all down before speaking.
"Dead people walk under water. Why?"
"You talk nonsense, little Pick..." says Khalbar returning from the bar with a large earthen mug of ale, and sitting down next to Rhanloi. "...Like usual. Dead men walk in halls of Pharasma. No where else. Not underwater. Undead, that is different. We saw undead in far-off land. Eh, Rhanloi?" Khal gulps down a large quantity of ale, and smiles at his half-elven friend, proud to show how smart he is on such matters.
Pick looks with blank annoyance at the Big One's dismissal of his words. Nonsense? Pharz... mah? What is an un-dead? Dead is dead, only sometimes dead people move. But fine, Big One. He has told Hammer and Hammer will punish you if you are wrong, so there.
He grunts and looks into his empty stew bowl, wishing there were more.
"Walkers smell like dead," he mutters sourly.
Rhanloi doesn't even lok up from his book, but manages to admonish both the big and little man with his casual comment, "Stop bickering. You sound like 6 year old brothers. You are both saying the same thing - and I know about words." Flibble's pronouncement actually causes the half-elf to put the book down - for a moment. "So more nastiness in Sandpoint, I take it. Is this connected to Tsuto and the white-haired woman we released from this world last year?"
"Undead walking in Sandpoint?" asks Khalbar worriedly, considering the mess he has at home. "What happened"
Pick glowers, unnoticed (probably), at the back of Ran-loy's head. He gets up and stomps his way to the counter to get more food. Pick is not a brother. Whatever that is.
He jerks a shrug to Ran-loy's question.
"Dead people at mill. Something walked from water to kill. Walked underwater. Smells dead."
Perhaps Noisy One has more elaboration.
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"Aye, laddie, it's dead, yet it walks. We call them 'undead', d'ye Ken? I gather from his speech this thing walked along the river bed, climbed oot at the mill and climbed the mill wall to get in. I'm guessing that one o' the victims saw it gang in, she grabbed a woodcutters axe ran in and hit it - there is undead flesh on the axe head. It hit her hard enough to fall into the saw, which killed her, while it pinned up the other victim, slit his throat, then carved symbols on his chest. Or maybe yon symbols came before it killed him. This is something Pick and I came across in Magnimar, though 're first time here."
"So, Pick, how do ye Ken it walked on the river? What did ye find in yuir diving?"
Pick fetches more stew for himself, rolling his eyes behind his goggles all the while at how topsiders need so very. many. words.
Un-dead. He grunts and files the word away. At least it is a short word. He comes back with his stew and sits down in 'his' corner, pulling his hood up further around himself.
One thing he really does like about the topside is food, though. Food of the People never tasted like this. Food of the People was... you ate because you ate, because the body needed food. You did not eat because it tasted salty thick rich creamy fat, with chunks of soft meat and tender onion and chewy morsels... spices that make his mouth water...
He glances up at the further questions taking him from his happy internal rhapsody about stew.
"Prints. On river bottom. Walk walk.... two hundred feet. Come to rocks." He produces the rock he'd brought up from the river bottom and sets it down on the table with a solid thunk, pointing at the string tied around it. "Already cut. Many rocks. Many strings."