The rain was unrelenting. Liara had stood, not far from Kalar, quite literally soaked to the bone. She was never very far from Kalar. While the other rangers always looked at her with tilted heads and squinted eyes, Kalar was different. She noted that he needed to be, in order to lead such a rabble, but it was something more than that. There was a normalcy, an acceptance, which reminded her of a time before all the bloodshed and anger.
The misery of that day hadn’t seemed to shake her, she was too preoccupied dissecting the carnage of someone else’s wrath. Slowly stepping forward, the debris crackling under her boot, she reached a finger towards a piece of iron. It was covered in a layer of soot so thick, the rain, despite its intensity, had only smeared a small portion of it away. The metal itself had been burnt so badly, one would never recognize what it had been before, but it was the smeared soot that caught her eye.
A voice came forward over the clank and clatter of the others and the loud pitter patter of the rain. “Liara,” her mentor stepped forward, “find me something. Anything. I want to know what happened here. “. She nodded in response, “Of course, sir.”
Her gaze crawled back to the caravan and the riddles it whispered. She had seen this wrath before. At least she thought she did. The destruction came as something familiar. She had felt it, courted it from time to time in a past life. She pulled a small piece of cloth from inside her cloak. It too had been sopping wet, but would do the job just fine. She ran it down the warped piece of metal, collecting whatever she could. She continued to move slowly, circling the caravan, her feet in careful placement as not to further the damage the rain was ensuing. Another step, and then another, taking in all details of what was left.
“Do we know anything about this caravan?” her eyes were fixed on what lay before her as she spoke. Bodies burned to a crisp, some even cemented to the ground. But there was something else, a distinct smell that still lingered in the air. She tilted her head back and pulled down her hood to get a better whiff. Closing her eyes, she inhaled deeply, her lips pursing tightly as she came to realize what it was. Yes, it was the smell that gave it all away.
The heavy rain had managed to wash all tracks away, but there was something amiss. Something had made large impressions in the ground, that were now filling up with water. The puddles were much larger than any others scattered throughout the area.
“I’ll need to know a bit more about the caravan to get a clearer picture of why it happened – where it was going, what goods was it carrying. The obvious intention was to eradicate all that was here. I can’t tell if this was just pure animalistic rage, or if not, what the reason was to burn it all from existence. But I can tell you that there was ... something else involved. The fire would not have burned so hot and for so long without an accelerant of some type, and there was none here."
She knelt down beside one of the bodies to inspect it closer. Shoving away the charred remains of the caravan, anything that concealed the body and there it was. Her fingers ran upon the jagged edges of flesh and torn cloth. This body had been ripped in half. She finally looked up at her mentor. Though her face was void of expression, her voice gave way to much concern.
"I know of no man who can do this."
