It was late at night, The rain painted the ground with thick mud. Colby and Richard were laughing as they happily stumbled home from the bar, their shoes sloshing on the roads.

“Ahaha, that was great!” Richard said.

“I-it was kinda fun” Colby admitted.

“Kinda!? Even I don’t love gambling that much! You shoulda seen yourself, all drunk and acting like a big shot.” Richard laughed.

Colby’s cheeks were red, whether from the shame or the alcohol still in his body, he’d never know.

“I still can’t believe we got this much money!” Colby said reverently, taking a peek in the sack he was carrying.

When the duo had escaped the bar, they ran into an alleyway to count their winnings. It came out to an astounding 312 ote, which the very thought of made Colby lose his breath.

They leisurely walked home, joking and chatting all the way, though in Colby’s drunken state he probably took alot more time than he should have.

As the duo made their way through the dark town streets, they eventually saw the glow of their house in the distance. But something didn’t look right…

Colby didn’t quite know how to place it, but Richard had already lost his joviality and was thinking at full speed. The front door was left open and there was a mess in the street in front of the hovel, with various items strewn around.

Richard took off in a run and Colby struggled to follow him.

When they entered the front door Colby gasped. The house was a mess, and Colby’s mother was sprawled out on the floor, tears in her eyes while his father was sitting crumpled near the hallway with a distant look on his face.

“M-mom!? What happened!?” Colby yelled panickedly. Meanwhile, Richard paced into the house, alert. As Colby ran to tend to his mother, Richard approached the father, and noticed that he was muttering something.

“T-they took her… they took her… and I couldn’t stop it…”

Grimacing, Richard entered the hallway. It was dark and shadows were cast long on the walls. Entering the bedroom, he found two children shivering in fear and cuddling in the corner. They were Doane and Cordell, the twins.

When Richard came into view, the twins had a reaction, gasping and shrinking away in fear.

“P-please, go away” Doane begged at Richard.

“You can see me…?” Richard asked, perplexed.

But instead of answering, the twins shrunk from fear even more.

Richard analyzed the situation calmly. Clearly, something happened, the father and mother were in no condition to be interrogated and these twins could see him… which meant that he could interact with them…

Sighing, he slowly crouched down to their eye level.

“Relax” He said in a calm but authoritative voice, “My name’s Richard. I’m not here to hurt you. But I need to know what happened”

“H-how do we know you're not with them?” Cordell asked in a raspy voice, worn from crying. After thinking for a moment, Richard replied

“I’m Colby’s friend. I’m here to help, but I need to know what happened. Who is ‘them’?”

“B-bad men. Huge, strong men! They knocked on the door and… and when- when Dana opened the door-” Doane started but choked on her tears before she could finish.

“They took her! The men kidnapped Dana!” Cordell burst out. “Dad tried to stop them, but they beat him up, kicking and punching while he was on the ground… A-and when mom tried to stop them, they hit her too! T-they said they were robbing us an- and they-” While Doane sobbed, Cordell was a flurry of emotions.

“Shh, stay on track kid. Tell me, how long ago was this?” Richard replied with all of the professionalism of a seasoned investigator. While they talked, Richard was investigating the scene.

“It wasn’t long ago. Only a few dozen moments before you came, Mr. Rochurd.” Doane slurred his name in her tears, but Richard was focused on a thread he found caught on a splinter of wood.

It was a fine thread, looking to be made of a high quality linen, dyed a deep, dark green. Richard reached down to pick it up, but his hand passed through both the thread and wood, and he softly cursed in frustration.

“What were these men wearing?” Richard asked.

“T-they had leather and metal armour, with weird feathers in their hats.”

Richard sighed. It was a long, sad sigh, one of great disappointment. He muttered to himself.

“So… a group of men break into a home, ransack the place and kidnap a young woman… I really can’t get away from this, can I? Same shit, different day; I’ve seen this a thousand times. The girl is taken, the father is defeated… then next, the son usually-”

Just as Richard was about to continue his monologue, he heard Colby let out a furious roar from the main room.

“Shit, there it is!” Richard cussed and ran back only to find Colby had already charged through the front door.

“Damnit kid!” Richard yelled, part in frustration and part in genuine concern. He chased Colby out of the house and into the street.

Following the sounds of chaos and yelling, he walked into an alley where he found Colby, lying in the mud, being kicked by some thuggish looking men. Richard sighed and approached the scene, looking down at Colby as he cried and tried to shield his face from the kicks.

“You little brat, thought you were a match for us!?!?”

“Ha! Pipsqueak! We gotta teach you a lesson!”

“Yeah! This is a lesson, you should thank us!”

Three men were beating Colby while he was down, yelling jeers and taunts while they laughed at the crying boy.

Richard couldn’t interact or do anything, so instead he decided to take the opportunity to look around while Colby ‘distracted them’. The men indeed wore leather and metal light armour, with a dark green undershirt and they sported some kind of bird’s feather tucked into various pieces of clothing.

The men seemed to have disguised themselves as common thugs, roughing up their armour and wearing cheap cloaks over their armour, but they did a very poor job of disguising themselves.

But most importantly, they had a symbol on their shoulder, some kind of crest or emblem. It featured a triangle pointing down with two lines shooting off the bottom that ended in spirals. Richard made sure to carefully study and commit the symbol to memory.

The men seemed to have been protecting a horse drawn cart when Colby drunkenly charged in to fight them. Richard swiftly jumped into the cart and began looking for Dana. Unfortunately, the cart only contained looted goods, stolen from Colby’s house, with no sign of the girl. The goods seemed to be carelessly thrown onto the cart, with several of them broken.

Looking around, Richard saw other cart tracks in the mud, which means this cart was likely meant as a diversion.

The thugs were still beating on Colby, and while they didn’t likely have an intention of killing him, if it continued it could still turn out badly.

As Richard jumped off the cart, one of the horses startled, letting out a surprised neigh. Richard went up to the horse and found that it was tracking him with its eye.

“Hmm… maybe this whole ghost thing isn’t as full-proof as I thought…” Richard reflected. Then he smirked, because he had an idea.

He slowly turned away from the horse, only to suddenly twirl back and yell “BOO!” throwing his hands in the air.

It worked and the horse startled so badly that it took off in a sprint, pulling the cart with it as it sprinted into the town.

“H-hey! The cart!”

“O-oh shit, shit shit!”

“The boss is gonna kill us if that cart breaks!”

The runaway cart got the thugs' attention and they ran off to chase the wagon, leaving Colby battered and bruised, crying limply in the mud.

Richard slowly strolled up to the boy and Colby looked up at him with one eye open, pupils filled with shame and sadness.