It wasn't a pet dog. It was a wolf, likely not a domesticated one, so also not somebody's cherished pet.
Why bury it in the first place?
Could some gedwyld practices be involved?
Was someone trying to make a contract with a deofol?
"No…"
Rotsard frowned and muttered to himself before extracting all the bones from the soil.
Afterwards, he glared at the wolf's skull with a detached lower jaw, as if he could threaten it to share what happened to it.
What if…
What if the suspicion of gedwyld, and not actual ritual, was the objective of the perpetrator…?
A bait, left so that the actual crime remained hidden.
"...there's nothing there… there's nothing in here…"
Despite repeating it like an incantation of a spell he wanted to memorise, the bleached-blond-haired boy went back to the hole and started digging deeper.
There's nothing there.
There's nothing in here.
Scooping out the earth and digging deeper.
There's nothing there.
There's nothing in here.
Scooping out the earth and digging deeper.
Again and again.
While the scent that led him there was becoming stronger and stronger, so did the putrid stench of decay.
And when he dug a hole in which he could hide himself completely, he did end up finding the source.
"...th-there's nothing here… there's… no… thing…"
With mud-covered hands, Rotsard muttered... tears welling up in the corners of his eyes. His chin trembling, at the sight of human remains bundled up in a nurse's outfit turned into rags by rot and decay.
*thump*
"...Miss Commoner…?"
Rotsard slumped down inside the hole and whimpered.
"...what are you doing here…?"
He cried out, slumping down and wrapping his arms around his head, as his chest was rising and falling spasmodically with an uneven breath of overwhelming despair.
"She wasn't named in the story… the story didn't even specifically mention a nurse dying either… Didn't you just leave? Didn't you abandon me? Why…? Why did you end up… like this…?"
Rotsard couldn't even swallow his saliva, with his throat tightened as the defenses of anger he built around his heart all came down at once, destroyed by the overwhelming sorrow
He wasn't abandoned.
Yet again, a precious person was taken away from him.
And, yet again, the last words they've shared could only bring regret as well as burning bile rising from the stomach.
"..."
Rotsard closed his eyes for a moment and reached out towards the half-exposed skull of the commoner nurse who liked to jump to conclusions, but was doing it with his well-being in mind.
In silence, he gently touched its cheekbone while digging around, careful not to damage anything.
"...?"
But as he carefully picked the skull up that was mostly intact, something reflected the moonlight from above, getting Rotsard's attention.
It was a small piece of a necklace, a thin silver chain that had its links crushed together.
After a closer inspection, there were a few more broken pieces of the chain scattered under the bones, as they were beneath them originally, they didn't get noticed right away.
"?!?!"
The discovery of the fragment of the thin silver chain necklace was what led Rotsard to another, much worse one. One that caused rage to flare up in his heart, pushing sadness to the side.
The neck…
The exposed vertebrae of the neck.
Most of them were broken, some even crushed. Even with the position in which the corpse was buried, that would not be possible unless the culprit decided to brutalize it.
Which meant that this was the cause of death.
…strangled with so much power that the neck snapped and the vertebrae all shattered one by one…
"After all.. I am cursed... I'm... I'm sorry."
Rotsard was finally able to swallow his saliva, and he spoke to the skull in his hands, lowering his head towards it.
"You will have to wait a bit more. I promise to give you a proper burial after the exams…"
He said, biting his lips over the shamefulness of his own words.
"But to make up for it, I also give you my word to find and punish the one who did this to you…"
Rotsard added, feeling the tears surging once more.
"A word of a noble isn't something given lightly, so…"
He said, raising his head and doing his best to smile at the skull through the sorrow and sadness.
"...you can relax and… and… rest in peace…"
Rotsard's shoulders and chin shook terribly, and no facade could be kept anymore.