[color=6ecff6]Optional Reading


[u][b]Lucie McClellen and Lucie Ruzicka in:
The Cedar Chest
[/b][/u]


Lillian McClellen stood as stark naked as the day she was born, but for a golden fox mask affixed to her face. A carefully placed arm covered her breasts, and a hand covered her womanhood; she felt very uncomfortable, very vulnerable, and very seen. Despite the fact that everyone in the room but her was currently in a pile on the ground, very dead, and not paying attention to anyone's nakedness. 

A few weeks prior Lily was snooping around a neighbors house while they were away; She was under the suspicion that said neighbor possessed several stolen pieces of important art. She had in fact found the art, but also found a secret room with a demonic shrine hidden within. A large statue of a multi-horned bipedal bull with an unfamiliar symbol carved on its forehead took up most of the space. At the foot of the statue was a series of occult related items and accoutrement, and a tapestry on the floor depicting various demons fornicating with humans and then presenting them with gold or power served as a place to kneel and worship based on wear marks. Among the items in the hidden room was a small book detailing numerous practices and methods for paying tribute to various dark deities and even summoning them. Within the pages of the book she found a letter that served as invitation to a party hosted by a noble within the city that Lily was familiar with, and had had suspicions of for some time. The letter wasn't addressed to anyone specific, so naturally Lily went to the party and presented the invite as though it were her own. The gentleman at the door had been very suspicions; Lily was known around the city, as was her penitent for finding her way into private events. He asked a few questions that he must have assumed only certain people would know and received the appropriate answers; answers known to Lillian only because she made a point to read the book she had found at the shrine. The night started off rather normal and boring with a lot of rich people eating expensive food and chattering on about the woes of being rich. Lily did her best to fit in. At some point in the night the whole house was locked down, and the entire serving staff for the whole house left and, according to the host, would not be returning until the next morning. 

Golden masks were passed out, and everyone was ushered into the ball room which had a large pile of pillows set up in the center, and a long table covered in cups filled with a dark red liquid was set up against one wall. It was around then that Lily had initially become a tad concerned as none of what she saw matched anything in the book she read. Her concerns were temporarily elevated when the host began speaking about pacts with demons, power, and how they were all mere hours away from becoming the most powerful humans on the planet. There was much cheering at that, with several of the guests yelling out thanks to various entities with difficult to pronounce names. Lillian was sure she heard the same named said four different ways.

The night took a turn however when the host pulled out a much larger version of the book Lily had read, and it was then that she realized she might not have known as much about the cult and it's practices as she had originally thought. A point that was proven immediately correct as everyone was directed to strip their clothes and begin fornicating on the pillows as part of preparation for a ritual. The quests were informed there were rooms at the back that had been built for those who wished to undress in some privacy, though few seemed to take the host up on the offer and began stripping right out in the open. Lillian had very much not been prepared for such a turn; she had mentally prepared for nonsense speech's, depictions of gore, perhaps even an animal sacrifice. But a full out orgy was well outside her comfort zone, so she immediately turned and ran towards the closest of the changing rooms, elbowing an older woman out of the way as she did so. The room was small, but had an oil lamp to provide light and a latch on the door to prevent others from entering. 

Lillian sat on a velvet covered bench inside the room for several minutes contemplating her next course of action. She had gotten herself into quite the pickle and needed to react in a sensible way. Secret occult societies were not ones to let outsiders know about them and their practices, so running away held a lot of risks even if she got away; plus that plan relied on the house not being locked down. She could have simply stayed in the room and waited things out, hope none of them noticed her absence. But that meant staying in a small poorly lit room for god only knew how long, willingly cornering herself in the event things went south. And the final option, strip and get back out there. Which was as appealing as trying to fight a hive of bee's with one's face. 

In the end she concluded she should leave the room, devoid of her clothing, and make an appearance. She wasn't comfortable participating but reasoned out the others would be too distracted to notice she was on the side lines. Decision wearily made she hung her pouches on a hook, which immediately broke causing all her personal effects clang loudly on the floor, and began to stip. As she started she could hear the beginnings of moaning, and the unmistakable sound of flesh slapping against flesh as the pre-ritual orgy got under way. The sounds made her second guess her decision and her undressing slowed to a crawl. 

It took her several minutes to de-clothe, and she was so flustered and fixated on the process she failed to notice the sounds outside had stopped. Once she was naked, she spent several more minutes trying to decide if she should focus on covering her breasts or her womanhood, as she would need a hand to open the door, leaving one of those spots vulnerable to lascivious eyes. She eventually decided on covering her breasts as they were the most overt and noticeable part when unhidden. When she opened the door and stepped out her face burned red hot from embarrassment, a feeling that did not go away as she found the entire group of quests dead in various positions and stages of coitous. The heat in her face traveled down her neck as she noticed several pairs of lifeless eyes looking in her direction and she instantly moved her spare hand to cover the rest of herself. There she stood for a solid minute, unmoving, struggling to understand what it was that had had happened and trying to cope with the fact she felt very uncomfortable. 

She eventually managed to snap back to reality enough to realize she needed to get dressed and get to the bottom of what had happened. She turned quickly, moving the hand from her breasts to cover her bottom and went back to the changing room. She tried to open the door, but found that it was thoroughly stuck.

"...oh heavens no..." she said aloud as she realized the latch on the door must have activated on it's own. She turned around, moving her hands to covering the correct spots, and looked around the room at all the clothing laying about. She desperately wanted to steal some so she could focus on what needed to be done, but every article of clothing had become evidence and were unusable. She came to the same conclusion as she looked at a table cloth and contemplated a toga. No, if she wanted cloths she either needed to get her hands on some tools to get the door open, or she had to find some clothing elsewhere in the house. The thought of walking around the house in the nude, even one that was empty, made the redness in her face and neck travel to her ears. She decided instead to search the house using her power, and began looking for a place to hide her body. The other changing rooms were an option, but she was once again worried about contaminating evidence, and additionally, she was worried the faulty latches would leave her trapped. It was quickly decided to stow her body in an ottoman tucked into the corner of the room that appeared to have an internal compartment. The ballroom was not all that large so she had to get rather close to the body pile to get where she needed, and it was very difficult dodging all the errant articles of clothing strewn about. At one point she almost fell and had to throw a hand out to keep her balance. She quickly returned the hand to where it was as soon as she was safe, but couldn't help lookin to see if any of the bodies might have seen her. Only one pair of eyes was on her, belonging to an elderly man who had died midway through pleasuring himself. Lillian just about passed out from embarrassment, but managed to pull herself together and accepted that a dead man had seen her bottom. 

Once at the ottoman she found that it did indeed have an internal compartment, which was thankfully empty. Lillian stepped inside and curled up as small as she could to fit into the space, letting the lid close on it's own. It was not the most comfortable position, but she felt safer, and comfortable enough to search the house with her power. She activated her ability, and climbed out of her hiding spot. She took a brief moment to look down at her naked form and couldn't help but feel that she looked like a babe in the womb with the way she had tucked herself in. Something about the sight was both odd and comforting at the same time. 

She closed the lid and turned to take in the room, double checking that she had not missed anything immediately important before she went hunting for untainted clothes. She quickly discovered however that she had in fact missed something important: counting herself and the host their were twenty people who were at the party, and yet there were only eighteen bodies in the pile. A quick check confirmed there wasn't a lost body hidden under the others. Someone was alive elsewhere in the house and might have very well been the killer. 


The house was large, and it's room numerous. The missing corpse could be anywhere, and there wasn't time to search methodically. Instead, Lillian made the logical conclusion that if the missing person were still in the house the most likely place they would be, was the master bedroom. 

It didn't take her long to get to her destination, her legs carrying her far and fast when they didn't need to obey physical laws so strictly. She quickly found the room and peered through the keyhole. Sure enough on the other side was, to her knowledge, the only other living person in the house. It was a man, and he was quite tall with rather plain pants but a brilliant indigo tail coat that was hard to miss. She had seen the man at the pre-cult activities fraternizing with the other quests; she had not had a chance to speak with him before.

It was very difficult to make out what he was up to, the keyhole providing a poor window. She watched for a moment, biding her time, until the man's back was turned, and carefully opened the door. Thankfully did not creek, or squeak, or five any other signs of operation allowing her to slip inside without too much issue, contorting her form so she didn't have to open the door too far. Unfortunately despite her efforts, and confidence she'd be quiet enough, the man turned almost immediately and rushed to the door. Lillian deftly leapt out of the way, landing on a wall sconce. The man flung open the door, peered out for a moment, then closed the door; taking a moment to test the handle. He had most likely assumed the door came open on it's own. A reasonable assumption in the face of the evidence; invisible women where, after all, not a likely occurrence. 

The gentleman got back to what he had been doing, which was apparently robbing the place. He had a medium sized satchel, something large enough to carry a lot of valuables but not so large as to attract suspicion, and was filling it with various expensive items around the room. Lillian rushed over to the man and begin to take in his features. Like everyone else at the party he wore a simple gold mask -a homage to a bird of some sort- that covered the top half of his face. Up close it was clear his suit wasn't just well made, but very expensive, though that was hardly most noteworthy part of it: the entire suit from vest to pants, had been altered in rather strange ways. Certain places had been taken in, taken out, and had something added to the inner lining to make the area stiffer. To the unobservant onlooker everything would appear fine, but Lily could tell from the way the fabric moved, and interacted with the body, that the suit did not match the form of the wearer.

It seemed strange to disguise one's body in such a manner, so Lillian quickly applied her detail oriented eye to the rest of the man. It did not take long for her to discover, to her great surprise, the man was in fact a woman in disguise. The first obvious clue was the rather obvious lack of and Adam's Apple. However there were other details as well, on close inspection many of the facial features that could be seen had been expertly falsified with makeup. The work was so impressive Lily briefly wondered if it was worth learning some tips from her mother if only to test the lengths of how  much one could do with simple face paints. 

The other give away were the eyes, as bit difficult to see through the mask, but she could just make out the higher brow and more exaugurated archs that were traits typically found on women. Additionally, based on the woman's glabella and supercillary arches, were she not done up like a man she would most likely had been strikingly beautiful. The eyes especially, which were a rather gorgeous ember, would have made the woman look rather stunning. Only around five-percent of the entire worlds population possessed Ember eyes, so naturally Lily was quite enamored and lamented how,  under better circumstances, she would have liked to have spent an afternoon with the woman. 

There were various other clues as to the person's identity, at least gender wise. A more rounded mandible, a skull that was more vertical than wide, slimmer wrists than would be expected for someone who actually fit into the suit being worn; and there were several discrepancies in the measurements of the individuals cricoid girth and lateral neck length were they a man of similar height. Not that any of that helped Lilly with her current issue. What did help, was that there was a carefulness to how the woman was looting the room. Most people would have taken anything shinny that appeared expensive. The woman was picking things rather carefully, as if she had some innate sense as to what was more worth her time. She didn't have the air of someone who had all the time in the world to pick through their murder victims belongings, instead she had the appearance of someone making big decisions. Trying to maximize how much wealth they could pilfer without having to take things that would be hard to fence or carry. Lily was quite sure the woman was not the murderer, however she still needed to be stopped as she might have been stealing important clues.

Unsure of what to do but knowing something had to be done, Lily returned to her body. In an instant she was out of her hiding spot and running naked down the hall towards the master bedroom. Along the way she stopped for a moment to pull a saber out of a scabbard that was hung up on display. As she approached the door she slowed so as to not alert the woman on the other side and carefully approached, sword at the ready, and woefully underdressed for a possible life or death encounter. She moved to place her hand on the door, but felt a subtle shift in the wood beneath her feet. Someone, was on the other side of the door. 

Perhaps she should have slowed her run sooner, perhaps she wasn't as stealthy as she thought. Regardless of what specific failure lead to her reveal was unimportant, she had a potentially dangerous criminal on the other side of the door. Her grip on the sword tightened, she was unsure if she could kill another person even in self-defense. There were so many ways things could go, many of them bad. Part of her wondered if it was worth it, if she should just walk away, accept she might loose some clues. Lillian thought back to the woman who was tall enough to tower over most men, thought about how much skill and training and discipline goes into being as adept a criminal as the other woman clearly was. But she also thought of the woman's ember eyes, and the careful way she plucked certain items for her bag. Lillian decided to make a gamble.

"H-hello Ma'am. I mean sir. Did you kill all those people down stairs?" There was a long silence. Lillian expected the door to fling open at any moment and unleash a life or death struggle. Her arms shook, her grip on her weapon tightened so much she began to hurt her own hand. Then, quietly, a feminine voice came through the door.

"No." And Lilly believed her.

"Right...well, that's good. Now that that is out of the way, I am going to have to ask you to s-stop your acquisition of the hosts personal possessions, there might be a vital clue that could lead to the culprit of the murders hidden in them. "She paused a moment, thought back to the carful collection of items once more, and what she remembered of what was left in the room. "Except for the box of jewels on the credenza," she added "I am reasonably sure those won't be of importance to my case. " She wasn't actually entirely sure about that, but had enough reason to suspect the box was unimportant enough to offer it as a sort of bribe, or more accurately a sort of conciliatory prize. There were only so many jewels in the world that would warrant killing eighteen people over, and Lilly knew for a fact not one of them was in the Czech Republic at that time. 

There was a long time of silence. Lilly stood still for almost 5 minutes, her hand going numb from squeezing the hilt of the sword so tight for so long. She waited for a response, waited for the floor beneath her to shift to indicate the other woman moved away from the door. Unable to stand it any longer Lillian threw open the door, sword at the ready, utterly terrified, and totally mortified all at once.

Inside she found a room devoid of mysterious women. The satchel of stolen items remained on the floor, and the box of jewels which Lily had offered up were gone. The only clue as to how the woman got away was that one of the windows in the room was every so slightly ajar, and the storm shutters - which should have been thoroughly closed from the lock down- were wide open and flapping in the wind. 

Lillian let out a breath she had been holding, the breath turning into a sigh of relief. The sword in her hand clattered to the floor and an unpleasant prickling took its place as blood rushed back into the vein's and vessels. She dropped to her knees and leaned forward, one hand supporting her weight, the other covering herself. She allowed herself a few moments to simply breath. [/color]