Silas spent the next ten minutes hiding in an alleyway. Should he follow them by activating the tracking amulet he had bought? But he soon dismissed the idea. He needed to tread carefully. These were not like the monsters he fought on his first quest. What he was facing were real people driven by something more than their instincts.
Sighing, he came out of the alleyway and followed the direction on the map leading to Gearsmith Street. The trip was quiet, for the streets were empty except for the flickering lampposts and occasional fighting between stray dogs and cats.
A box appeared before him, announcing his arrival at Gearsmith Street. Instead of lampposts with different colors, Gearsmith Street had only red and yellow for its light.
Thick smoke billowed from chimneys and furnaces which made the air heavy. A rhythmic clang echoed to his ears as steel was beaten by a hammer. The street was empty except for a few wagons and carriages parked along each workshop.
Silas looked around, trying to discern what the quest intended for him to find. He walked in the empty street and went deeper into it until he came upon an abandoned part of Gearsmith. He reached what used to be a plaza, at its center stood a stone fountain with overgrown grasses and thick moss.
He stopped before a three-story building made of both wood and stone. The beams had visible infestation of termites from years of abandonment. Empty cobwebs that had collected dust hung on its broken windows. On either side of the broken door was a pot, but whatever was planted there was long dead. What grew there instead were thin wild grasses.
After much thinking, Silas decided to check the building.
"I wouldn't do that if I were you."
The sudden warning from the unseen stranger sent shivers down his spine. He turned sharply. In the alleyway, he saw a figure hiding in the dark. Silas put his hand behind his back, preparing to summon his staff.
The stranger walked towards the closest streetlamp to reveal himself. Thaddeus's gaunt face glowed under the light, making him look stricken. He was wearing a dark-red trench coat while carrying a cane with him. The investigator tapped its pointed end to the ground as he approached Silas.
"I didn't expect to see you here," Thaddeus said, standing a few meters away from the boy.
"Forgive me for being nosy… I just got lost."
The man looked at him as if trying to discern if what he said was the truth, but he ended up just shrugging. "This place is important for the case I am trying to solve."
'He appeared indifferent,' he thought as he stared back at Thaddeus. The man had seemed jovial and goofy yesterday when they met. Silas wondered which of the personalities was the real one.
Silas decided to probe further. "You seem different from the last time we met," he said, attempting a casual tone.
Thaddeus's expression remained unchanged, but his eyes flickered with a hint of amusement. "People wear different masks for different occasions. Yesterday, I was entertaining a tourist. Today, I'm on a case."
Thaddeus reached for his pockets and brought out a pack of cigarettes, offering him one. But Silas refused; there was a time he tried taking a drag from his friend's cigarette, but he ended up hating the experience. He thought the man wouldn't speak more, but after letting the smoke move out of his half-open lips, he started speaking.
"Remember the people you saw in the plaza? I somehow think this house is related to what is happening in this city."
"Are you sure you can tell me about it?"
He laughed, "Why? Did I make the wrong impression about you?"
Silas donned an expressionless face and maintained eye contact with the older man.
"You're not the first and you wouldn't be the last to be interested in this case. What do you think happen at that hotel?"
Silas looked back to where the cigarette was pointing. Anyone who saw this place would simply assume it was abandoned, but if Thadeus was asking the obvious, it would only mean that there was more than meets the eye. Despite arriving at this conclusion, he also knew that the man was expecting a mundane answer from him.
"It was abandoned?"
"No, this place had been burned. Arson." He took another long drag from his cigarette. Silas turned back and wondered if the man had truly gone crazy. He was confident that he knew how a place that had been burned would look, but this place looked no more than abandoned.
"I know you think this investigator has perhaps gone crazy. But hear me out. The mysterious part of this case is that only the bodies of the people living inside that house were burned. The fire didn't spread. Uncanny death, isn't it? But you wouldn't think like that once you know the type of people living inside that building. Outcasts, that's how they were referred to. I think it stems from them being part of the same religious cult."Silas had to looked elsewhere, the sudden burst of information had taken him by surprised. Religious cult? A fire but it only burns those who are living in this building? Anyone hearing what this man, who had called himself an investigator would think that he had truly gone mad.
"Then what are you saying happen in this place."
Thaddeus took a final drag, deep and lingering, before flicking the cigarette toward the street. "There are no signs of forced entry. It's a locked-room murder unless they let someone enter their house in the day before they died or… else they were hiding someone in the basement. I can only conclude one thing from this situation: it was a ritual, they sacrificed themselves. But to whom is still a mystery… that's what I need to find out, before this 'god' they are referring to is resurrected in this world."