The early morning sun trickled into Rok’s room, illuminating the bare walls and empty floors he called home. Resting on the bedroll in the center of the room, the only thing that could be described as furniture, lay the man himself. As the light steadily increased from a dim glow to a bright shine, Rok finally began to show some signs of activity, albeit very little.

He remained motionless on his roll, apart from the rhythmic breathing and the slow opening of his eyes. It wasn’t for another ten minutes of simply laying beneath the window, basking in the sun, that he finally showed any further activity, and rolled onto his stomach.

It took another fifteen before he was finally ready to begin going about his day, pushing himself onto his feet with a quick little motion. He set to work on his morning routine, cleaning, dressing, and eating as quickly as he could before opening the door to his shack. Yet again, he stood in the doorway for a moment, allowing himself the time to adjust to the blinding morning sun.

Finally steeling his resolve for yet another day of this, he slogged into the nearby shore towards the guilds’ halls, once more pleased to have built his home in the mangroves rather than in town, before coming to a halt in realization. After a short jog he found himself before a moderately large stone building, stout and sturdy, this place constituted the closest thing to a prison the tiny island could claim. He very quickly found the guards in charge of the place, a man who very proudly claimed to be the warden of the twenty cell building.

After talking to the all too enthusiastic guard, he wasn’t in the least surprised to find that none of the ‘suspects’ did anything suspicious, leaving the crocodilian feeling both vindicated at being likely correct about them, and stifled as to how exactly he’s going to write off the ‘incident’ that this will no doubt be. He also knew that now he had no reason to further delay their interrogation, and would have to be more serious in his conduct now.

Without further ado, he stepped into the first room he knew to be occupied, the same one he had been in when he was so rudely awoken in the dead of the night, then forced to remain awake at that unbelievable hour, just to interview a bunch of thrill seekers that were alleged terrorists.

“So, have anything more you would like to confess today?” Rok wasted no time in questioning the sole occupant of the room, a mermaid he vaguely remembered dashing the dreams of with his departing words.

The poor girl jolted at hearing Rok enter the room, looking around at the otherwise empty cell that served as her resting place for the few hours of sleep she could manage to scrape together. Very quickly she shook herself awake, bringing her torso above the shallow waters in order to put herself anywhere near eye level with Rok.

“No, I haven’t. We already told you last night that none of us had anything to do with the orcas, or the ships, or the bang, or any of it.” The mermaid spoke with an aggrieved tone, one that suggested that the mere idea that Rok could still suspect her of anything was nothing short of a criminal act. Rok sighed and walked over to the stool he had used earlier that morning, sitting down and crossing his hands together as he leaned over towards her. Despite being sitting down, he was still towering above her, and she had to retreat back some to not be craning her neck to meet his gaze.

“You can’t tell me anything else about your experience inside the dungeon? Setting aside the stuff which happened outside, is there anything you can think of which might have played a role in the explosion? A suspicious person or even a creature which seemed capable?”

Rok watched as she started thinking over his words, idly waving her hands back and forth through the water as she did. A moment later, she frowned and shook her head in the negative. “No, we didn’t really run into much besides some fish at first, we lost three to those shrimp before the rest learned to stay away from the walls, and my ears are still ringing.”

Rok could attest to that, knowing all too well what the dungeon’s shrimp were capable of before it apparently managed to engineer them into the hateful creatures they were now. Just the thought of the permanent reminder he was left with was enough to put him in a bad mood, something that the mermaid apparently noticed. He cleared his throat to hopefully brush past the rumbling a moment earlier and motioned for her to carry on, and she did after a moment.

“Anyway, aside from that, nothing in the dungeon even stood out until we got to the fifth floor. I didn’t really see it too well, but it looked like a ball of tentacles, and was apparently really sturdy. Jrake sent one spell its way but the thing didn’t even react to the boiling water he cast, so he turned us around and got us out.”

Rok digested this information, mulling it over in his head. There really wasn’t anything he could tell that stood out as new or surprising, even the ball on the fifth floor was something he’d gotten reports on before, albeit few. After asking her a few more questions and getting back very little in return, he stood up to leave.

“I guess I’m still not leaving?” Came the sorrowful voice of the mermaid, and he didn’t have much to say aside from telling her ‘pretty much’ and some promises to work as swiftly as he could upon seeing her grief stricken look.

After that, he went to the next cell in line, encountering the very belligerent lamia which had used some choice words against him earlier. Unfortunately, it seemed that he hadn’t fully cooled off, though he was refraining from using the same insults towards Rok and his family that had earned him a rather vicious glare from a groggy and temperamental Rok, something that had apparently instilled some respect into the man.

In fact, he was refraining from speaking entirely, simply clamping shut his jaws, crossing his arms, and coiling his tail tightly. Rok tried to get him to talk a few times, but he was anything but forthcoming, and short of using bad decisions to force information out of a likely innocent person he had tried everything.

Next on his list was another merman, not surprising considering they made up five of his six prisoners. It wasn’t too surprising, mer-people were by far the most widespread race of the seas, though not many surface races put much though into the different species there were, if they were even aware of the differences. This one was apparently the merman named Jrake, after a brief introduction between the two of them Rok wasn’t even able to start talking, the man had his own slew of questions.

Surprisingly, the man was actually at least a bit respectful, too. Rok could still make out the deeply ingrained superiority the man felt, but he was apparently a mage so it wasn’t all that surprising.

“So you can’t tell me when we’re allowed to swim out?” After nearly two minutes of questions Rok couldn’t or wouldn’t answer, he was finally met with one that could.

“Nope” Came the simple response, though as he saw the man furrow his brows and open his mouth for another round he cut him off.

“Calm down, how about instead of pressing me for information I try to get something from you instead. It’d probably make this whole experience easier and quicker.”

“Fine” The man muttered, using a tone not dissimilar to a child’s after they were told to tell the truth by their parents. Still, Rok did his best not to let the man’s attitude affect him, he’d been in similar circumstances in the past and was familiar with just how frustrating they could be.

“So, we’ve already gone over you denying any forms of conspiracy or plot against the guilds, and from what I know right now I’m inclined to believe them. Do you have any idea of anybody who would? Did you run into anything down there that struck you as capable of causing a bang that loud?”

Jrake frowned as he thought the question over, apparently either contemplating deeply on the question or trying not to express frustration at needing to restate information he had already covered.

It didn’t take him long to go over events with Rok, though, and he hadn’t told him anything his partner failed to, something that also worked in their favor when it came to whether he thought them innocent of their accusations. He didn’t have much to ask aside from that, though, simply asking some token questions or getting information that would be included in his many reports.

He had just shut the heavy door behind himself when a communication crystal went off in his bag, and he was already loathe to imagine what they could be contacting him for.

“Hey, Rok. We’ve got good news, and a bit of bad.” Spoke the eager voice of a guard he hadn’t interacted with before. Hopefully the news would prove worth his decision to use an expendable communication crystal, they were difficult to manufacture and in limited supply.

“What is it?” He asked.

“We’re pretty sure we found out what the explosion yesterday was. The fifth floor looks like it collapsed in a bunch of places, and there is still rubble scattered throughout.”

That answered one question, and raised another in its place, why exactly it collapsed. He was fairly certain it wasn’t outside interference, it would be near impossible to get enough materials and time into the place to cause a floor to collapse without months or years of preparations. Which meant the dungeon decided to do it, to merge yet another floor and to do it in a non-standard way, and that was a line of thinking he simply wasn’t in the mood to pursue at the moment. Thankfully, he had just the distraction

“We also found one of our healers fleeing the dungeon last night. When we picked her up we thought she had gone in on her own illegally, but she was really beat up. When she finally came to again we learned that she’s deaf, and was Charmed.”

And there it was, an actual move against the guilds and their authority, just the action of Charming one of their own non-combatants was a slap in the face, and even Rok felt himself get angry at that. Charming any sapient under most circumstances already constituted a crime for most of the guilds, doing so to one of their healers, especially leaving them in the state the guard went on to describe her, had him clenching his jaw so tight he sliced into his own flesh.

Rok’s day had been thoroughly disrupted at the news, and he was now torn between trying to interview the remaining prisoners, asking if they have any association with a siren being added to the list of questions, or going back to his office to start preparing the papers he’ll be needing to write for his superiors, along with waiting for the elf on her way to meet with him. He rubbed his temples, already dreading the meeting and what he’d learn.