It was currently midnight, he watched people walk down the street checking out various other stalls. The bright neon lights, the smell of different kinds of foods and alcohol, there were plenty of things polluting the air.
'I kind of hate this now.' Solstice's sensory tolerance grew immensely as he trained, he no longer had killer migraines and nausea in most places, however, the night market was filled with many things that stimulated him. Still, it only grew to the level of a minor headache thanks to his recent training.
An older gentleman began walking up to his stall, his hair was short and fully white, he had a warm wrinkly smile, he had blue eyes and wore business casual attire.
Solstice's hairs on his body instantly stood up, he was on full alert.
'This person is not human!' The instant that the older gentleman stepped within his 10-meter radius, Solstice sensed it immediately. The old man looked like an ordinary old man, however, Solstice's extrasensory wasn't fooled by what he was seeing with his eyes, as it constantly provided him with vivid visualizations of his surroundings, the ability was very hard to be deceived.
The old man's true body was very, very tall, he could safely assume it was between 2.8 to 3 meters, and his body was that of an anthropomorphic raven, although a completely featherless raven, its skin was indigo colored. The old man's true body had very long limbs, with long and sharp claws, wings that had no feathers and were just simply flappy skin, and it had no eyes, just empty eye sockets. However, the monster did have one eye, a vertical third eye colored red on its forehead, that was currently open, analyzing Solstice.
"Ah! What do we have here?" The old man looked around at the items that Solstice had for sale, and the third eye on its true body stopped analyzing Solstice to do the same.
"Hello Sir! I sell various goods, mainly household goods. Was there anything in particular that you feel is missing within your home?"
"Hmm, I wonder…I don't need anything for my home, but I do work at a daycare, and our projector has broken recently. I was carrying it and I fell! Yes, how clumsy of me, damn this old body. The kids loved watching films with it, do you perhaps have one available?"
"Well, I hope you didn't injure yourself. You are in luck, I have one in stock, let me get that for you." Solstice reached underneath his stall and pulled the projector out and placed it on top of the table.
"How much do I owe you?" The thing in front of him smiled.
"300 credits will do." Solstice spun his chip reader to face the customer.
The being raised his right wrist over the chip reader, a ding was heard confirming the payment was successful.
'How did this thing even acquire a microchip? And why hasn't it detected the body as non-human?' Solstice grabbed the projector and placed it inside a bag for his customer, then he handed it over.
"Pleasure doing business with you. Sir, may I ask what daycare you work at? I have a younger sibling and it's been hard to look after them. It might be a good idea for me to have them enroll there." Solstice did his best to smile, and maintain a friendly presence.
"Oh that's just fantastic! We're always accepting more children. Our daycare is called "Whispering Winds Daycare", we're located off of Bolton and Malt." The thing pretending to be an old man was beaming. "How old is your sibling? You look quite young yourself, are you their only legal guardian?"
"Our upbringing was a little complicated, but yes I'm her legal guardian. She's 3 years old and turning 4 next month." This was a lie, his little sister was dead, and had been for a long time.
"Well I think that our daycare would be great for her." The raven-like monster smiled and walked further into the shopping district, sometimes briefly stopping at other stalls to chat with vendors.
'That daycare is extremely close to my house.' Solstice waited a few minutes for it to leave his area completely. With no hesitation, Solstice immediately began to clean up his stall early tonight, he wanted to rush back home, and look into Whispering Winds Daycare more.
After some time, Solstice returned home, taking quick steps to his computer which was located in the living room. With Ava and Daemon now living in his home, he gave up his room to them, which in reality it was Ava's room now, as Daemon regularly slept out on the couch with Solstice. Daemon himself got a job at the harbor, since he was very able-bodied, it fit him and paid well, but he did have to work a night shift.
He turned on his computer, the holographic interface popping up in front of him as he began typing away.
Ava, who was the only other person in the house at the moment, had been in the kitchen prepping a meal for Daemon. She stepped out of the kitchen momentarily as she heard noises coming from the living room.
"You're back early."
Solstice smiled as he smelt a delicious meal being prepared, then he remembered that it wasn't for him. "Something's come up."
"What's going on?" Ava crossed her arms and leaned on the edge of the cased opening.
Solstice's smile quickly went away and he sighed. "There's a bit of a situation, I probably will need your help on this."
He quickly detailed his experience with the bird-like monster to Ava. Ava was still leaning against the cased opening, attentively listening to the explanation with her arms crossed. "How certain are you that he was a Wyrd creature"
"I'm one hundred percent certain that he's not human. Excluding what I felt with my senses, he paid three hundred credits for a projector and didn't think it was weird that it was that cheap. Even though it was a refurbished projector, and old tech, he still didn't even ask why it was that price." While talking to Ava, Solstice continued to search for any information on Whispering Winds Daycare, he hadn't found anything suspicious yet, and the reviews of the daycare were good.
"Maybe he thought you were just giving him a great deal?"
"No. People who have lived a majority of their lives in the outskirts will question something that doesn't sound right, especially when it comes to buying from vendors in the night market. If it's cheap, there's either something wrong with it, or there is some ill intent behind the sale of the item."
"Look, if that old man who works at that daycare really was a Wyrd creature, it would already have been discovered and killed. It could be that he's secretly a Traverser himself, with a strange transformation Gift."
"I really don't think so. Although I admit I don't have that much experience dealing with the Wyrd, that vertical eye in the middle of its forehead has me suspicious that it has a visual illusion ability, albeit a simple one. My Gift doesn't get affected by that kind of illusion, which is why I was able to perceive what that thing really was. Let's say, I entertain the idea that he's not a Wyrd creature, but also that he's not fully human, what would you think that being would be?"
Ava who completely forgot about the food she was cooking, silently contemplated. A few seconds went by, she narrowed her eyebrows, coming to an answer. "Someone who was thoroughly corrupted by some entity, either by a powerful Wyrd creature, or an evil god."
"Similar to what you guys told me about the Rotten One?"
"Yes, which is why the microchip didn't detect the body as non-human, as the body technically is human, albeit thoroughly corrupted. I would like to confirm if he is corrupted though." Ava turned back around into the kitchen, realizing that she had slightly burnt the food, she took the food off the heat. She came back to the living room, this time sitting down right next to Solstice to see what he was reading on the display.
"I mean…I have my sensory abilities to tell if something is off with a person. How do you plan on confirming it with yourself? From what I remember with the situation regarding the Rotten One, multiple Traverser families with their vast resources have trouble discerning corrupted individuals, depending on the medium of corruption."
"That's because The Rotten One is fairly unique. I'm thinking…there are multiple ways to discern most corrupted beings, and I have one idea that would be very simple, but it isn't the safest."
"What is it?"
"As Traversers, we can see the severity of our fate by focusing our attention on our reflections, usually better with mirrors, which will reflect ourselves and our "Chains of Fate" attached to our bodies."
"Right." This was something that he had read about from the limited information Jest had provided him. When Solstice tried it out for the first time, he saw himself completely wrapped like a mummy, but instead of linen bandages, it was ghostly burning yellow chains, and there were even more that descended from the sky in his reflection. When he saw that, it only reaffirmed him that he was truly given a powerful and unique fate from the Wyrd. Ava and Daemon had similarly powerful reflections, of course they described it to Solstice, as Traversers can't see another Traverser's chains of fate through reflections, at least not without specific conditions being met.
"Well, as much as corrupted beings try to hide themselves, they can see the true reflection of a Traverser without needing special conditions to do so, which is one way to differentiate a corrupted being from a Wyrd creature. If we were dealing with the Rotten One's corruption, the corrupted being most likely wouldn't react and give itself away. But I do think it's a potentially viable strategy for a corrupted being that is most likely alone, and it would do anything to get rid of immediate threats, like a lone wild animal. I'm sure it will react more strongly in surprise and fear."
"That's a bit risky, what if there is more than one?" If there were more than one corrupted being, then that would make the situation much more complicated.
"Then we can throw that strategy in the trash and think of something else. If you're certain about this, then one thing to do is to make sure that the old man is the only odd one there at the daycare. Your senses are capable of this, so you should schedule a tour first to scout it out."
"Alright, afterwards we'll have two options I assume? Deal with the corrupted being or Wyrd creature ourselves, or acquire enough evidence and provide them to the local authorities so that a Sentinel team can be sent out."
The World Government had a superhuman task force to deal with any supernatural instances, and investigate any potential sightings of Wyrd creatures, or corrupted beings. Members of these task forces were known as Sentinels, which consisted of a mix of actual Traversers under government control, and superhuman individuals with unknown origins for their abilities.
Conspiracy theories were always made about these superhumans that weren't chosen by the Wyrd. The most popular ones were accusing the World Government of extremely inhumane trials that they put select people through.
Whether this was true or not, wasn't proven, but a lot of people believed it was true.
Ava paused briefly. "If there are children in immediate danger, then I'd rather deal with it ourselves, even if it might bring unwanted attention to us."
"I absolutely agree."
"We should observe the old man's behaviour as well, it might not be too impulsive, and could give us the time we would need to acquire evidence. If we don't have to cause some commotion and bring attention to ourselves, whilst dealing with this corrupted being, that would be the best case scenario. Of course, this is all under the assumption that he himself isn't a Traverser that has a strange gift."
Solstice nodded in agreement, whether the old man was a corrupted being or was a Traverser himself, they would confirm it either way with their current plan to use the reflection as bait for a reaction.
"Do you think you could schedule a tour for this afternoon?" It was currently past midnight, meaning that technically, it was already the next day.
'How convenient.' Solstice saw on the website that there was surprisingly an opening for a tour.
Rubbing his tired eyes, he sleepily responded to Ava. "I'd have to call out of work on short notice…my boss won't be too happy, but I'll do it."