ENJOY THE FIRST CHAPTER. The second will follow next week~
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1- THE HOUSE OF FIANNA
Elliot Nightray sighed and could only watch as his sister Vanessa passed him to buy her ice creme.
"What else could you do in this city?", she had asked and he had known no answer. After all, he too had no clue what to do in an empty place like this. Why had Ernest sent them here in the first place? Oh right, there was that one building he was meant to take an eye on. They had more than enough time to do that later though.
Vanessa came back with a happy expression and told him immediately that she wouldn't let him take a lick.
"Who'd ask for that?", Elliot snapped back, thus earning a punch on his head.
"I'm still older than you, so watch your tone, dwarf", she laughed with a wicked smile and went ahead of him.
Both didn't really have a sense of direction, but somehow they had ended up in various places such as an empty playground, a park without trees and many streets with random piles of trash at their side.
They finally made their way crossing the street at a tunnel to the building they were sent to investigate, when something caught Elliot's attention.
It was a soft melody coming from the other end of the tunnel.
"You hear that?", he asked Vanessa and rushed to the source of the tunes without waiting for an answer.
"Elly!"
"Stay there! I'll be right back", he shouted back and searched for the one playing the music. But there wasn't anyone. There was only emptiness and the obvious lack of trees.
Just when Elliot was about to turn back he heard a sudden voice coming from below, a rude one at that.
"Do you need an invitation to get lost or are noble's these days able to figure out when their presence is the most disturbing to others by themselves?", a calm male voice said.
To his feet, on the ground, there was a young boy near his age, clasping his hands around a tiny violin, shooting death glares up to him. Everything about the stranger screamed bewilderness; The way his hair was messy and his bangs covered his eyes, how his shirt was too big and dirty to the core, the way that his skin was pale and thin above his bones.
"You- Don't you need a certification for playing music for a publicum?", was Elliot's counterattack, ignoring the offends of the stranger. At least that boy had seen a noble before, if he knew that Elliot himself was one only judging by his clothes.
"Do you see a publicum anywhere? I'm playing for myself only. Now do I need to remind you that you're disturbing the people that I play for, alas, me?"
"What's your name? I guess I need to report you to the city", Elliot retorted, ignoring the boy's words once again.
"Oh really now?", the said one asked, "Didn't you notice on your way here that there aren't many people coming here? This city lives from tourists like you. It's a corpse."
"Your name?", Elliot asked again, irritated this time.
Something just made him curious about this boy. The way he spoke, the way he played the violin and the sole thing that he was in possession of one all didn't fit in with this picture of him laying in the dirt. It just seemed off.
"Elly is a pretty girly name isn't it? Pretty feminine. Fitting for someone born as the heir. People like you will never get a clue of the truely cruel things in this world."
"Shut up! That's because my name is Elliot Nightray, and not 'Elly'!" Angered, Elliot glanced down on the boy once again, noticing his lack of shoes. It was the middle of August, but the temperate still wasn't as endurable without shoes. He felt responsibility since he had now found the boy and couldn't just leave him there, but his personality sure was tough.
Mentioning his nickname he took a step back to see Vanessa still resting at the other side of the tunnel. He sighed in relief and turned his attention back to the stranger.
"Elliot Nightray, huh...No wonder I never heard of him", the black haired boy ironically smiled and started playing that melody again.
"I take that you won't tell me your name. Say, where are you from? Forgetting about this whole reporting stuff for now, what's your family's name?" Elliot had a hard time focusing since that beautiful composition was going right through his veins and he had this weird feeling that he knew it all too well.
But he didn't have to concentrate anymore because the noirette stopped playing immediately and returned Elliot's gaze for the first time. "How would I know?", he asked back, his voice being a little louder than before. The noble caught a glimpse of the stranger's eyes and shivered. Had that been his eyes? Really? Not that they'd been similar to someone he knew, it was the other way round. They were of a color Elliot had never seen before.
Beautiful eyes, at that. Eyes that seemed to see through his soul, fixiating the noble's heart with his mere gaze.
Just as he wanted to ask yet another question, his sister interrupted him. "Elly! We still need to do that investigation!"
Elliot grumbled and turned to the stranger, pointing his finger at him. "I'll definitely come back and report you!", he barked, now seemingly tousled in confusement.
"Wipe off your shoes the next time, we wouldn't want the stage to be dirty", the noirette said, not moving an inch.
"I'm being serious!", the noble shouted as he went back to his sister.
I'm serious.
"Just why did you take so long?!", his sister scolded him when he reached her, panting a little.
"Sorry, sorry. Just some- issues", he answered in a roundabout way, leaving his sister dumbfounded and curious. He didn't lose another word about the stranger though, because he thought of the raven boy as his own secret, buried in this empty street, under the tunnel just around that corner.
And so, while Elliot was brooding over the recent issues and Vanessa was asking him weird questions, they made their way to the building.
To The House of Fianna.
The House Of Fianna was an unseemingly small building in the middle of nowhere. One of the sort that you'd just pass by without even noticing it was there in the first place.
And yet, even though it was so tiny, there were a bunch, no, thousands of kids running through the halls and passing Elliot and his sister while they were talking to one of the nuns.
"We were sent here by my Father, Bernard Nightray, to investigate this building. Though nothing seems to be off here?", he stated and searched for any hints of hidden messages in the nuns expressions.
"That's right", the nun answered, her eyes glancing down at the ground in a sad manner. "As you can see, we are quite the big orphanage for a small town like that. But lately, the kids that we're taking care of have gone missing one after another. We already have a way shorter amount of residents than we had one month ago! But no one knows the cause. We're truly worried about these kids, there's a reason they're here. We're the only one's for them after all. Who'll miss them when they're gone? This has to stop."
Vanessa stole a suspicious glance at him, harboring the same uneasy feeling as Elliot in her belly. "We understand. We'll do what we can for now. Is it possible to talk to the children?"
The nun nodded. "Of course. They're all important evidences, so you're free to do anythign in order to solve the mystery. Just, please make it stop..."
The blonde turned around and watched the kids play happily with each other. Since he was young he hadn't ever been able to stand the sight of sad people. He didn't know how to comfort them, especially not in this case. That would be Vanessa's privilege.
Just as he wanted to take a step, he felt the sensation of someone running into him on his sides and turned around to look at the culprit. At the ground there was a brow-haired boy, rubbing his head while murmuring a couple of curses. "Sorry", he whispered and shied away. "I wasn't looking where I was going."
Normally Elliot would have shouted at any person running into him to 'Gooddamn watch their step, for heaven's sake!', but the only felt himself snap even more when he saw the boy was scared and angsty of him. Those kids...were brought up to be weaklings, that's what he thought.
Before he could react, Vanessa was already at the boy's side and comforted him. "No, no, you didn't do anything wrong! Look, this dwarf's eyebrows always look scaaaary like that, he doesn't mean it! He was born with that kind of face, the poor dwarf. It's not like you can help running into him when he obviously stood in the middle of the room, right?~"
"NESSA", Elliot barked and raised a fist. "Who'd you just call a dwarf, you pedophile?!"
In split seconds the felt a hard knock on his head and when he opened his eyes, the furious expression of his black-haired sister met his. "What did you just say, Elly?", she said in a creepily slow voice. "Did you forget who's older?~"
Alarmed, the blonde took a step back and tried to escape the death wishes of his sister.
And while the siblings kept fighting, the nun watched them with a serious expression and the small boy stood up, his face painted with nervous laughters. Elliot only saw it for a split second, but the nun's face definitely gave him the shivers.
Something is definitely off here, he thought to himself, before Vanessa's punch hit him once more.
Soon after, they apologized for the mess and were quick to finish all that was left, before heading out of the building.
"Well, it's your fault for being unreasonable", the younger brother said and took the lead.
"Oh yeah? I could swear it was your fault for standing in the middle of the room, my dear idiotic brother", Vanessa retorted.
"Watch it!"
They were already on their way back, after they had just quickly exchanged goodbye's with the head of the orphanage and already, the siblings were arguing again. "You're just too proud to let it slide. That I call you a dwarf, I mean. And the thing with your eyebrows. They really ARE creepy, you know?"
"THAT AGAIN? Well, SO ARE YOU!", Elliot retorted and sighed. "We should rather talk about that House Of Fianna, 'cause fighting won't take us anywhere. So. Got any ideas?"
Vanessa shook her head. "I've never heard about anything like this before, and neither have Ernest and Claude. I have more experience with these kind of cases after all. But the question is...why would someone target a run-down orphanage like that?"
That's what Elliot didn't quite understand either. Nothing in this town was really worth spending one's time here. It was neither beautiful nor interesting, not even clean. It was just a huge bundle of nothing. But maybe that was what attracted the culprit? "Maybe it's as the nun said", he suggested, "these kids have no one. If they are to go missing, it won't be long before there's not one person left that remembers them anymore. The culprit could just kidnap them and do... practically anything to them, use them for all he wants and get away with it."
"But not now that we're on the case", Vanessa corrected him and her brother nodded in agreement. At least they were agreeing on something when it was about work.
"I have a hunch that this whole town is strange. Like everything here is woven, as if everything seems to be a fassade in order to keep a secret from us."
Vanessa gave him another knock on his forehad, this time a gentle, loving, sisterly one. "You're thinking too hard about it, Elly. Let's just go home for today. Tomorrow you can make theories about it all you want, but you should sleep a bit on the way back to the estate for now... You look tired."
Elliot nodded and when they were sitting in front of each other in the carriage half an hour later, he really was quick to fall asleep, while leaning on the windowsill with his ellbow.
And strangely, in his dreams there was no trace of anything involving the case. He only saw slick, long fingers elegantly wielding a fiddlestick to the rythm of a strange melody he could swear he'd heard before. Somewhere, for sure.
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