D.E.M.O.N.S: Getting Summoned Weekly isn't so Bad Chapter 2304 Of Six Houses Part 2

--- Kat ---

With two of the six houses cleared they were making... progress. It was hard to say if it was fast progress or not. Two houses were cleared, but it wasn’t as though they’d rushed through them. Plus, with the... maybe death in the second they weren’t rushing to get to the third house. Though, as they approached this one, Kat noticed something on the side. One of the windows was busted. Likely not from an escape attempt, getting through the timestop would’ve been too hard... but perhaps some sort of ball game? Or something silly?

Whatever the case, the broken window meant that even with the locked door at the front they had a way in, and the people who had once lived here had a way out... assuming they were even inside in the first place?

Kat shrugged and soon they were scouting the place. It had a somewhat familiar layout at this point, and while unlike the window, the doors inside were locked, they found neither a corpse nor a sign of a woodworking spot. In fact, it was just a LOT of beds. Whoever owned the place had at least six kids, maybe more depending on how you took a few of the hints that a couple of the younger kids shared.

Kat shivered a bit at the slight image that passed through her mind when she realised that... but small kids were small. The standard wooden windows had plenty of space around them. For young enough kids... it should be fine. They were too small to be trapped and basically every room had at least one window. It probably meant they wouldn’t find anything like that during their explorations. Hopefully.

The next house, house four, was another one with a back door that was open and allowed everyone a way out. Once you were inside the doors were mostly all open, with the exception of... a woodworking shop! The issue Kat found, was that it didn’t really seem the place for the larger pieces. The woodworking room here had a big window, a long table, and a bunch of little bits and pieces of wood along with a rack of tools set against the wall. The problem came with the fact that there was also a table for sewing, and a small secondary section for more woodworking, this one kid sized.

Kat chewed on her cheek as she looked the room over. "Do... you think this is right? I mean... it just feels a bit amateur?"

Lily nodded as her she directed her shadow to point to one of the buckets under the tables. They were filled with scrapped projects, some of which were birds... but they were clearly of lower quality then most they’d seen at the bird house. Sure it might just be that they were considered inferior early on in the process but... "Yeah I get what you’re saying. It’s A woodworker, but I get the feeling that it’s not THE woodworker that Lachlann wants us to look for..."

A note once again, and then they moved on, to the fifth house... and probably the one they were looking for. Honestly, Kat was feeling a little foolish now they were approaching it. Aside from the usual animal statues and pelts there were a lot of little details that she hadn’t really internalised when first scanning the neighbourhood. The big one was the door. Everyone else had fairly standard looking doors, nothing all to fancy. Just what you think of when you say ’door’.

This house though? It was carved exceptionally carefully with what might be moments from adventures. Monsters and people fighting against each other, three figures disappearing into a cliff. All sorts of moments carved delicately into the wood of the door in such a way that you only seemed to notice more as you got closer. Some parts of it served two or three sections, as the separate scenes all seemed to blend into one whole.

Of course, there were other notable things that told you a woodworker lived here. Wood shavings were in just about every corner, compressed down perhaps, but still notably present. The windows had little vines carved around the wooden poles keeping them in place, and the stairs had some minor details carved into them as well. Using water form to enter through the windows, Kat was amazed with all the dust. Probably wood particles. Now trapped where they’d be before everything.

It seemed whoever lived here probably did so alone for the most part. The main ’living’ area had been converted into a space for more woodworking. There was also a big door at the back to allow for logs, and likely completed pieces to come in and out. The kitchen was right there as well... probably not the most sanitary but whatever. Poking around in the rest of the house, the doors were all locked.

On the other side seemed to be... mostly guest rooms. Or perhaps bedrooms they were simply no longer in use. Two beds that looked like they’d never been slept in, a bunch of nicely carved cabinets and whatnot... but a quick check through the cracks showed that nothing was actually stored in any of them despite being so well made. Probably just more side projects.

Of course, there was one last room to check. Off to the side of the house behind the kitchen was what had to be the master bedroom. It was closed. The door was somewhat fancy. Kat didn’t want to open it. Commented Lily as she teleported herself under the door using the shadows.

Kat used her watery form to get inside... and was happy to find it empty. The bed had been made... though not very well. Clothes were hanging in an open closet, and the window showed the outside. Kat let out a breath. "That’s good."

"Why were you so worried anyway?" asked Lily as she transformed back to give Kat a hug. "Even in the worst case none of this people are going to be dead you know?"

Kat sighed, "I don’t know. I guess it was just a feeling. Still... this is certainly the correct house right? Do we check the last one?"

Lily shrugged, "Certainly the correct house but you can check if you want to? I mean it’s not going to hurt."

"I just worry about what it would mean if they were say, trapped in someone else’s house..." mumbled Kat.

Lily poked Kat on the forehead. "Don’t be silly. If we needed to confirm something like that we would’ve had to go to literally every house in the city looking for specific corpses. Heck, we don’t even really know what the guy who lived here looks like. Maybe someone was waiting for him to come back, or they were visiting while the woodworker guy went to go grab something from the market stalls or something. Even if we’d found somewhere here it’s no guarantee of who it was."

"Oh... I guess I got a bit caught up in the atmosphere... especially after the bird house," mumbled Kat.

Lily shrugged, "Yeah I sort of notice that. For me, that was what took me out of it. She seemed more like a statue then a person, and might actually be a statue. Certainly might as well be for our sakes. Plus all the birds just made it a bit... EXTRA you know? Like it was clearly a scene?"

"Ah," mumbled Kat.

Lily shrugged, "Look, I’m at the point where I’m wondering how much free time Thyme has. Like, they’ve built a bunch of extra towns, a whole island, so many bits and bobs... it’s just a LOT of work, even if they allegedly had help for this most recent lot."

"I guess," agreed Kat. "I think that’s what makes it feel real though? This feels like a real town... though actually now I think about it... do you think this is just a copy of some real town that Thyme used to save on creative energy?"

Lily snickered at the idea. "I mean, maybe? It would be kind of funny if it was... and also oddly symbolic? A town frozen in time... not because of a spell, but because it’s a copy of a totally different town. Heck, it means if Thyme keeps the spell up that the copy will outlive the original."

"Yeah... strange to think about..." mumbled Kat in agreement.