(tw: Some imagery can be disturbing)
The Elderdeer situation has gone from critical to endangered, only a small handful of the deer remain and their numbers shrink every week. The monster that continues to harvest them is still at large. Despite the efforts of Delumine’s citizens, it is rare to see the lights of the Elderdeer heralding the arrival of morning’s eve. Dawn citizens have learned to accept the deep and fathomless black of night and the empty reflections of transparent crystal stars. They try to replace the natural magic with synthetic light - it does nothing but deepen the sorrow of all that has been lost.
Patrols have blotted out the last seeds of peace and quiet when it was agreed upon that it would be smart to light the way through the forest with enchanted torches. It is expensive - it requires many mages, and results are too inconclusive to maintain salaries. Not only that, but there simply is not enough men and women trusted to illuminate the paths of carnage that have been mapped out. The fires only drive the poachers deeper into the relentless growth of the woods. Most of them travel the routes that have been handed to them in the form of a map. That same map handed out to concerned Delumine citizens and the resident patrol. Not everyone has a map and not everyone uses the pathways. While Delumine runs its circuit over and over again, killers continue to hunt the magnificent beast to the ends of the Novus soil. It is possible that they are on the verge of extinction. Soon, they will be nothing but fables.
One plus one equals two things; suspicion and curiosity. While the Emissary continues to make her appearances and spit her feelings into the air, there are shortcomings in her guise that are inadmissible. She is a phantom within the city itself, she appears on the occasion but never on the off-day. Her home is like a distant and far away land, she likes to act as if her home is not placed directly on the belt of death where all the Elderdeer have disappeared. Her rap sheet is long and unforgiving despite the repentance she claims to have made. While she seems convincing when she is mad - or even sad - there is an eerie quiet in her eyes that can make a travel ed (possibly broken) mind know - or understand - a similar madness.
Emersyn has made one connection in all of her travels, no one knows but the girl who met her, and it's quite possible that the girl has already forgotten her name. Delumine citizens consider her creepy and she has scared children before, these are two of the three things most of them know about her, the third one is that she has no friends. If she does, no one knows who. Not even the rabbits she keeps as messengers like her - she cages them when she isn’t using them so that they cannot run away. And for the ones that have - she hangs their pelts along the sides of their hutch as a reminder.
She hunts when she cannot sleep at night. It is never just for fun (that...is a lie). It isn’t a sport (that is also a lie). Somehow it is therapy (unfortunately not a lie). And, in her own method, a manner of healing (she will never heal). To everyone else it is a nightmare, possibly even a tragedy. Dozens of enucleated animals are left littered throughout various parts of the forest and the pattern is so static it almost seemed intentional. Like a ritual. Darkness nests in the souls of the damaged. It thrives in the wildest yet most-protected memories of Emersyn. To understand her, is to be the man that created her.
And he is dead.
As the torches dwindle in numbers, the death toll rises. Later, it will be revealed that a generous benefactor has been the Collector all along, and that the torchlights are planned obsolescence. The only thing that the Collector fails to do is resist the urge to keep cultivating specimens despite the narrowing of a threshold around them. When they begin to connect the dots - poachings decline. No one knows why because no one is talking - not yet - it is almost too disturbing.
Death plagues Viride like a bad fog. It lingers from the ground and from the barks of trees, it smells of sulfur and rot, it is heavy with malaligned intentions. Some minds start to think about who is involved for such bad luck to continue. What has Dawn done to deserve this devastation? This deterioration? It is a gnawing carcinoma. The forest they cherish continues to rot and fall apart despite their efforts, even trees carry disease, some get blighted over winter. Many fall, and beneath them, corpses of the dead reveal themselves beneath the frosts of past-Winter. Spring comes, it bleeds into Summer, bones emerge from soil beds along the river, sometimes rib bones end up all the way down river. Sometimes a bird drops one on a roof top hoping to crack it, all the bones are disturbingly fresh. Emersyn uses the boon from spring to cash in on a new clutch of rare birds that migrate this time of the season - she takes them alive and sells them that way to a private collector. Someone swears they see her, but for the protection of the witness, no details are discussed.
One rumor speculates that their Emissary is still too stiff and too secretive this far into her term to not be up to something. Why does she live so far away? Why does she never visit? Her assistant has gone missing and no one knows where the girl is. Subtle changes in the morning market emerge over time, of rash of miracle tonics and elixirs made out of mysterious components - all things that weirdly work with suspicious perfection. Skeptics want to call it all a hoax but they can’t, so they try to find the secret ingredient by ransacking workshops and shaking dock-boys for information. When no one is looking, Emersyn buys into the whole lot of the elixir herself but even now, no one can track where it has since gone. Somewhere deep down in Denocte - possibly even the hospital - a glowing blue potion circulates like a quiet serpent. Once it starts surfacing in high dollar circles, she washes her hands of it and destroys all her ties. Rather, she buries her delivery boy in the back where the bulbs bloom. The blooms are so splendid this time of year.
Someone else knows, though. It takes three weeks for hive mind effects to take place - everyone knows that Emersyn is a freak. They are convinced she has buried her assistant in the flower bed, all she thinks about these rumors are; No, I buried my delivery boy in the flower bed. My assistant is actually still missing! Acquaintances cancel breakfast plans, brunch and tea plans, dinner plans, planning plans. Meetings are curved away from her trajectory. Less and less paperwork comes to her now. The calls have gone from an endless trilling of birds on her window ledge to motionless radio silence, and Emersyn feels no shame in that. She has collected several of the messengers sent to her - in jars. The silence is understandable (that, and nobody feels comfortable enough to be around her).
And so it should be no surprise that the King himself decides that he should send himself - rather than another bird that she will ultimately just add to her collection.
