Finding my Parents in Another World

Raorka knew something was wrong when the hen didn't start the morning with its clucking. Not that it caused him to have a longer morning, the previous clucking had already Pavloved him into waking up before 6am every day.

But when he woke up without the ever familiar noise, Raorka actually felt somewhat disturbed.

Maybe someone finally had enough of that damned hen and ate him

He thought, in order to introduce some humor to his inner uneasiness. However as he walked down the deathly silent stairway to the main hall, he couldn't shake off the feeling that something terrible had happened.

Down in the hall, Lumina was sitting by herself solemnly in the middle of the table, deep in thought. There was no one else around, not even Lucerne.

"What's wrong Lumina?" Raorka asked, his tone automatically taking on a hushed note.

Lumina looked up gravely. Her usually cheerful face was scrunched up in a scowl.

"Someone has taken young Clara Nidston."

Lumina offered no other explanation, so Raorka was forced to ask, "Who?"

"Clara Nidston. She was due to get married next week, and now she is nowhere to be found."

"And you think she has been abducted?"

Lumina nodded gravely.

"Isn't that quite a hasty conclusion though? She may have just run away no?"

Lumina shook her head. "Clara was a very happy girl, and she was deeply in love with Jones Finkle, with whom her marriage was arranged. There's no way she would have run away."

Raorka nodded, though he was still not convinced. After all there may be a hundred reasons for her to have run away, notwithstanding how happy she may have appeared to others. However he decided not to press the point, since Lumina was clearly stressed.

"When did this happen?" He asked instead.

Lumina's face grew darker. "Sometime late yesterday night but no one is sure when. Jones was with her till about 1am, then he dropped her back home. Then she went to her room. Her parents are witnesses to the same. In the morning though she was gone from her room."

"Was there any signs of struggle in her room?"

Lumina shook her head, and Raorka's suspicion that she had gone voluntarily grew stronger. After all even the most silent kidnapper couldn't abduct someone without them waking up.

Lumina however still muttered darkly, "A kidnapper in Temuril...can't be....."

Raorka was quite surprised at this reaction. Of course a young woman being kidnapped is a serious matter, but Lumina was acting as if the world had just ended.

At that moment Lucerne came in through the front door, with about four other girls, evidently her friends.

"We have just been to the Nidston House." She declared, casting a sideways glance at Raorka.

"Any news?" Lumina looked up, a glimmer of hope in her eyes.

"No none. The Mayor was down there himself to assure the Nidstons that their daughter would be found."

"Did he say who he was suspecting?"

"No, I don't think he has any specific suspect in mind, he mentioned that they have just started investigations." The glimmer of hope in Lumina's eyes were dead.

She stood up tiredly, and for the first time she looked much older than she was. Without saying anything, she slowly walked away and out of the room.

Once she had gone, Lucerne's friends also bade her goodbye and soon Lucerne and Raorka alone in the hall.

"Why does your mother look so grim?" Raorka asked.

Lucerne looked at him sharply, "Is a kidnapping not a grim matter?"

"N-no no that's not what I meant." Raorka said hastily.

Lucerne looked at him coldly for a while before her expression softened. "I'm sorry, I have been on edge since I heard of Clara's disappearance."

"No, I'm the one who is sorry." Raorka said and bowed his head slightly. "One of your friends has disappeared. Of course finding her is of the utmost priority."

Lucerne nodded, and then bit her lip as if she was pondering on whether to tell Raorka something. For his part Raorka remained silent, knowing that nothing he could say would swing the decision in his favor atleast.

Finally Lucerne sighed as if she had made up her mind and said, "Just before my fifth birthday, my mother was kidnapped herself. My father and our entire town searched for her throughout these lands, as far as we could. But we weren't able to find her. A year later she appeared, covered in injuries, outside the Temuril gate. She never told us who had kidnapped her, what had happened to her and how she had escaped. In fact she still never speaks of that one cursed year. But it's a topic which causes trauma to her, and it is probably for that reason that she is affected much much more by this incident than any of us."

Raorka stood in silence. He never would have guessed that Lumina would have such a dark and sad backstory. He suddenly felt extremely sad about the way she had almost stumbled out of the hall.

"And they never caught the kidnapper that time?"

Lucerne shook her head. "The Mayor of that time requested and pleaded with her but she would not say a word. My father himself kept pleading her until he died to say the name of her kidnapper, just so that he could take his revenge, but my mother said nothing."

"That was almost fifteen years ago right? Have you asked her yourself?"

"No I have not. If my mother doesn't want to speak about it, I don't want to keep badgering her. It's clear she would rather forget all about it and I want to help her do just that."

But now, like a spectre, that has come back to the forefront of her mind.

"Wait a minute...." Raorka said softly as something came to his mind.

Lucerne turned towards him. "What is it?"

"What if your mother thinks that the person who kidnapped her is the same person who kidnapped Clara yesterday?"

"What?! After fifteen years?" Lucerne asked, clearly incredulous.

Raorka shrugged. He had to admit that this was quite far-fetched.

"No you're right. It's more likely that a kidnapping reminded her of that trauma."

After this both of them felt silent. Raorka sat down on one of the tables, thinking and Lucerne sat opposite to him. It was quite clear that the Fritten Inn would be closed that day.

.XX.

For two days the soldiers of Temuril investigated Clara's disappearance, not able to find a single clue indicating who had kidnapped her. Though they would never admit the same to the Nidston family, the primary assumption of most of them was turning into that Clara had run away from home instead of being kidnapped.

However on the third day, they were all proved wrong.

Raorka awoke that day to the extremely loud noise of arguing coming from below. Quickly getting dressed he rushed downstairs to find a man crying on one of the tables as Lumina and Lucerne watched over him. Lumina was consoling him while Lucerne stood in a distance. Seeing Raorka, Lucerne approached him.

"What happened?" He asked in a hushed voice.

Lucerne's face was as dark as her mother's had been the previous day.

"There has been another disappearance."

.XX.

"Jhoira Baker was the only daughter and heiress of the Baker family. She was out with her friends yesterday night. She was in the local pub besides the Adventure's Guild. Her friends dropped her home at around 11 pm. Again her parents are witnesses to her coming home and going to her bedroom at that time. And again the next morning she was gone without any traces of a struggle inside her bedroom."

The eerie similarity between the two disappearances disturbed Raorka.

"Was she too due to get married?"

Lucerne shook her head. "Not yet. The Bakers were looking for a husband but they hadn't started looking yet."

"Two disappearances in extremely similar circumstances huh."

Lucerne nodded and stared at Lumina in concern. After the man, who had been Glint Baker, Jhoira's father, had left, Lumina had collapsed on her chair. As Raorka watched he saw that she was trembling slightly in the chair.

"Mom. Why don't you go up and take some rest in your room? Me and Raorka will handle the Inn for today." Lucerne said gently.

Lumina looked at her daughter, her eyes vacant. Her face had become somewhat gaunt and there was no trace of the ever present smile that used to be on her face.

"Yeah I guess I will do that." She said emotionlessly and again shambled her way across the hall and up the stairs. Raorka again felt extremely sorry for the woman.

"She is living in fear." Lucerne said once her mother had left.

"Fear of being kidnapped again?"

"No. Fear that I will be kidnapped instead." Lucerne said grimly.

Raorka nodded. That made a lot of sense but he still had the feeling that Lumina thought her own kidnapped from fifteen years ago was the one who was the perpetrator this time.

The second disappearance had shaken the town, but it took the third one to completely send Temuril into panic.

This time it was Fiona, one of Lucerne's friends who had gone with her to Clara's house. Again the circumstances were similar. Returned home, witnessed by parents going to her room and then gone in the morning.

"How the hell is this kidnapper breaking into homes and taking girls without any struggle or noise?" Lucerne asked, pacing about the hall.

She was extremely agitated this time because it was her friend who had been kidnapped.

"Fiona is not a timid girl. She would fight back, she is not the type of girl to not do that." She kept repeating.

Lumina was also sitting at the table, but with each disappearance she had grown more withdrawn. She barely spoke nowadays.

"Did you ask your mother about her kidnapper?" Raorka had whispered to Lucerne.

"Yes I have."

"And?"

"Still nothing."

"However I think you are barking up the wrong tree Raorka. There is no chance of Mom's kidnapper being the one responsible for these kidnappings." Lucerne had continued.

And Raorka had to agree. Lumina's kidnapper had kidnapped only one woman, Lumina herself. This new kidnapper was abducting people left and right. Within a week they had abducted three women. Plus it was not credible to assume that Lumina's kidnapper would wait for fifteen years before going to his next victim. However for some reason Raorka still felt that Lumina herself thought that the perpetrator was the same or atleast someone related.

Raorka debated whether he should ask about the specifics from Lumina himself but quickly dismissed the thought. If she would not tell the truth to her own daughter then there was no way she would do that to Raorka. Not to mention he didn't want to trouble the poor woman any further.

"We need to find the kidnapper and fast." Lucerne said in a whisper.

"Yes, the town is already falling into panic." Raorka said grimly.

There were already calls to ask for assistance from the Emperor.

"But the bigger problem is the traditionalists of Temuril, atleast for you." Lucerne said.

Raorka winced. A large group of inhabitants, whom Lucerne called traditionalalists, had come to suggest that the kidnappings were the work of some outsider to Temuril. And currently the only outsiders close enough to the town were Raorka and Artemis. Because the townspeople hated the Witch of the Woods much more, Raorka himself hadn't faced the music yet. But he knew once they got tired of demeaning Artemis, they would turn their attention to the easier target.

But as he had had nothing better to do since the Witch had cancelled training sessions until the madness in Temuril died down, he had begun to think about the kidnappings. Raorka didn't fancy himself any sort of great detective or such, but he wanted to help in catching the kidnapper, especially when it was having such an effect on Lumina.

"Have the Mayor's soldiers not found any logical suspects yet?" He asked Lumina, who shook her head.

"They are stumped on the fact that there was no struggle for any of the three cases."

"Couldn't it have been someone who was an acquaintance of all three?"

"No there is no such person, or atleast noone who was extremely close to all three of them to the point of going up to their rooms. They each had completely different social circles."

Raorka was about to say something when there was a knock on the main Inn door.

Lucerne cautiously opened the door to find the grinning figure of Drisnen standing there.

"Drisnen! What are you doing here?" She asked in some surprise.

"Why I have come to invite both of you to join."

"Join what?"

"The Temuril Investigation Soceity of course." He responded with a wide smile.