The Clue

The thrall's neck snapped back with ferocious force. A small snap was heard seconds before a red crescent moon of a laceration appeared across his neck spewing blood in rhythmic torrents onto the cracked roadway. The thrall's silent screams came as mere sighs through his severed windpipe as a multitude of red slashes appeared across his body from some invisible force. And then as soon as it had started, it ended. The thrall's lifeless corpse slumped into the dark streets of Market Square, blood forming swiftly in a large pool before the fountain. The pool's crimson reflection  gave way to a hunched figure silently slipping through the opposite end of the Square approaching the fountain. Covered in fresh sprays of blood, the stooped figure brushed back a lock of dirty, matted hair. His blood red eyes paid no mind the mutilated body as he passed it, kneeling before the pooled blood at the base of the fountain. He dipped his hands into the fluid so warm it nearly steamed in the chilled fall air, the feeling eliciting from him a snarl as if from a wild animal. Swiftly... Deftly... Furiously he worked. Smearing blood upon the base of the fountain like a madman, he worked with the tenacious force of a starving animal feeding. His hands moved smoothly along the fountain's walls, stopping only here and there to soak his hands in more blood below. Finally he stood, the thrall's blood streaming in rivulettes down his arms. Snarling again in satisfaction, he stalked from the fountain and into the night, leaving behind him the carnage of his kill and the crude mural of a totem next to a river painted red upon the side of the fountain.