A dead body

Following Eudora's panicked gaze you see a bloodied form lying on the floor. His white robes are stained with reddish brown blood soaked into the cloth. A pool of drying blood is congealing near his body and his lifeless eyes stare blankly into yours. His face has been cut cruelly several times and you see other signs of **** as well, his arm is twisted awkwardly from a dislocated shoulder and several of his fingernails have been smashed.

"Stay here." You tell Eudora as you step closer to the dead man looking around the room for signs of his murderer. Stepping carefully around the pool of blood you kneel at his side and examine the man's body. At his belt you see strings that probably once held a fat purse and his fingers are scraped raw where rings have been ripped from his broken fingers.

He was dressed much like Pyrrhus and his fellow merchants that took Eudora from you so many weeks ago, almost certainly a merchant then - probably the owner of this warehouse. Looking for any other jewelry you roll the portly man onto his back but any other valuables that may have decorated his body had also been removed.

"Is he dead?" Eudora asks from behind you. "Poor man." Any doubt about whether Eudora could retain her sweet nature in the face of the horrors that she must have experienced are washed away by her words. Where you saw another greedy merchant responsible for enslaving young girls, Eudora saw a man cruely tortured and slain before his time. Seeing the man through her eyes softened your opinion of the merchant and you gently pulled his eyes shut and folded his arms across his chest. As you moved his left arm onto his chest you felt a unnatural ridge under the sleeve. Pulling the merchant's robes up over his pale arm you see a gold chain wrapped around his arm just above his elbow securing a key out of sight.

"I wonder if this is what they were looking for?" You ask as you work the gold chain off his arm.

"What is for?" Asks Eudora as eager as a puppy . It could be the key to almost anything from a door to a large chest for safekeeping valuables.

"Let’s look around a little longer and see if we can find what it opens." You realize as you start to look around that the lock that the key fits could be at his home or even in another city, but Eudora's excitement is infectious and soon the two of you are searching the room again like children looking for hidden sweets on holy days. In the far corner of the warehouse you find a door hidden behind a wall hanging and the key fits perfectly into the hole in the lock plate. Holding your sword ready in your right hand you have Eudora turn the key in the lock.

“Step behind me as soon as the door is unlocked.” you whisper “Who knows what we’ll find in here.”