The Murder of Adelaide Sunflower Part 1

Dawn comes to find the killer of Adelaide Sunflower.

Written by: The Traveling Bard Age Tomb

Whispering Oaks

In the year of our Lord 1432

 

Dawn Cloakchurch stood over the body of Adelaide Sunflower, the Master Chef of the Imperial Palace, but they were not in the Palace’s kitchen. They were in the living room of Adelaide’s home on the Imperial Estates, where her blood had dried hours ago, and the door had been kicked in. She never showed up to the kitchen in the morning, which was odd and unlike her. The Second Master Chef Thomas Roseroot had the Palace Guard check on her to find her dead.

                The words raced through the Palace, forcing the Pegasus Core to lock down the whole of the Estate. The Imperial Guard wasn’t going to take the chance; the killer was still on the ground. They rushed to lock the gates while Dawn was summoned from his gunsmith shop to the house with the body.

                He frowned down at Adelaide, wishing he had got to know the Chef better before this moment, but life had a way of keeping squirrels from talking to each other until it was too late. He studies the body for a long time in the still of the house; no one else was allowed in by his orders.

                All of his Rank knew Dawn from sight along. His long-pointed ears shot up from his head like horns, and his red and orange fur had been an oddity in the city, let along in the Pegasus Core. Few knew where he came from, but there had been no great mystery about it, he was born in Whispering Oaks, his family had been in the Ranks of the Pegasus Core since its beginning during the Bloody Winter, one of the Realms many civil wars.

                All the guards stood outside of Adelaide’s house, waiting for Dawn to arrive.    

                Like all the houses on the Imperial Estates, it was ornamented on the outside with the hard-oak wood and many dragons carved into it. She lived on Dragon Tail Street, forcing every house on the stone road to have some kind of dragons on the outside to fit the name of the street. There were no street signs in the Estate, couldn’t allow an enemy to map out the mini-city inside of Whispering Oaks. But after living on the Estate for years, you learn the many names of the streets and how to get around without getting lost.

                Inside the Chef’s house, everything seems simple. There wasn’t much in the way of books, expect a few cookbooks Adelaide was penning, and there was only a reading chair by the window. Everything else was bare, but she didn’t spend a lot of time in the house. The only real reason she would be at home was to sleep.

                The house was clean outside of the body on the floor, leaking blood on the lovely carpet. The carpet from what Dawn could tell had a battle from the Long Winter sew into it and must have cost a good amount of acorns to buy it.

                What a shame it’ll have to be thrown out now.    

                Death had become a part of his daily route. He had been one of the best Guards to hunt down killers in the city. The Pegasus Core could and did work throughout the city to stop what crime they could, but they mainly worked with the Palace Estate, except for Dawn.

                He kneels to pet the cool fur of Adelaide, hoping she didn’t have a family to be called upon in the matter of her body. She died with tears in her eyes, which told Dawn she didn’t understand what was happening as the killer stab her multiple times.

                “Any clues?” Sir Gawain Sagesword asked, stepping into the house. Dawn rose to his feet, glancing over at the Master of his Rank, seeing they were both wearing the finest clothes of their Class. Their vest the Royal blue of Whispering Oaks with gold Pegasus flying all over the background. Dawn knew there were precisely six-hundred winged deer on their clothes, the same number of squirrels in the Core. They carried their swords at their hips along with their black powder pistol every Knight wore as their weapons, a clear tale they were Knights when they wore no armor.

                Dawn shook his head, “Not at the moment, I fear.”

                “How long have you been here?” Gawain asked.

                “Only a few moments before you,” Dawn said, walking around the crimson pool to his Master.

                “Do we know of any of her enemies?” Gawain asked, moving to study the body the same as Dawn.

                “I didn’t know a cook could have enemies,” Dawn remarked softly, and he wished to be back in his gun shop working on his pistols, not here among the dead. He had been trained, only after the skills required of any Knight, to be a gunsmith, and greatly enjoyed the work. He had been working on making his guns more embellished in the art of his weapons. He had already placed a gargoyle’s head on the end of the barrel to the pistol he carried at the moment.

                “She worked in the Palace,” Gawain said, trying to keep a stone mask at the sight of the body, but Dawn notice he glanced away from her eyes. He shot back to his feet, moving around the room no longer daring to look over at her. “We all have enemies here.”

                “I haven’t found a list,” Dawn said, watching the Master of his Rank with a steel hue eyes.

                “Has anything been stolen?” Gawain asked.

                “Not from what we can tell,” Dawn said. “The Palace Guard search the house to find nothing missing, but I will have them look over everything again.”

                “Good,” Gawain nodded, stopping by his friend. “We have to find who did this and make them pay.”       

                “We will bring them to justice,” Dawn said. He seems to care a bit too much; Dawn noted looking back over at the body. They both had seen their fair share of dead bodies, most of them in worse states than Adelaide, and Gawain didn’t bat an eye at them.

                “I want their head,” Gawain hissed.

                “If the Emperor wills it,” Dawn said, looking back over to him.

                “You will do something for me,” Gawain asked, and Dawn nodded, “you will come to find me before you turn over the killer.”

                “Why?” Dawn asked, keeping one of his paws resting on the hilt of his sword.

                “I want to make them pay is all,” Gawain said.

                “Are you ordering me to do this?” Dawn asked with a flat stare.

                “No,” Gawain shook his head,” I’m asking you as a friend to do this for me. Will you?”

                “If it means our friendship,” Dawn said with bitter tastes in his mouth. “I will.”

                One of the Palace Guard stuck his head in from the door before anything else could be said between the old friends and announced,” The Emperor is coming.”

Author's Note

If you had made it this far, then I appreciate it, and before you start to tear my work apart (which doesn’t bother me too much), let me explain something. The most common critique I see is about my spelling and grammar. It is an understandable critique, and I do not blame you for pointing it out. After all, spelling and grammar are the tools in which we use to craft our work, like a paintbrush or a chisel. The artist must know how to use these tools well, but like an artist who has a tremble in their hand's somethings will never be perfect.
My tremble in my hand is caused by my dyslexia. It is something, no matter how much I learn, study, or work on, it will never go away. It is the reason you will find a good bit of spelling and grammar mistakes in my work. I ask you to keep this fact in my when you are about to write your critique.
Also, I feel the need to point this out, this website is like a journal for me. A messy journal I used to work out problems in my stories or to simply warm up before digging into my novels. I do not hire an editor for the work here. I do not spend hours and days pouring over these stories to make them perfect, that energy is saved for the project I plan on taking to market. Everything on this website is my world-building exercises or sketches for other projects.
I do hope you enjoy my work, but this website is not a publishing house for me, and it shouldn’t be for you either. Something to keep in mind as you write your critique.