It turned out the was not exaggerating.

"Would it be easier if you just gave me a list of people without a reason to want this blasted woman dead?"

"With great power comes great potential to piss people off." Latham's face was expressionless as he placed another stack of scrolls on the floor next to the exasperated Inspector.

Lowe returned the first crate of material delivered to him and looked around the receiving chamber again. The smell of blood was beginning to get to him, and he was eager to get back to . . . where?

His ransacked apartment was hardly the sort of place he wanted to spend any more time than he had to. He could retire back to one of the local pubs, but he sensed this was the sort of thing Cenorth would look askance at. Perhaps Arebella could be persuaded to put him up for a few nights?

He locked that thought away at the back of his mind.

"We will need to open this floor up again shortly, little man," Latham boomed out. "The business of Gravalk does not cease just because the High Priestess had an accident. Is there anything else you need out of here before we release the body to the ?”

Lowe wasn't wild that the nickname 'little man' appeared to be sticking but figured now was not the time to make a big deal of it. “Give me a few more minutes to fix the scene in my mind."

As he spoke, Lowe triggered Grid Search, one of the other Skills he had retained when his Class had been removed. He slowly turned his head to the left and then to the right, up and then down, ensuring his eyes swept over every corner of the chamber. It was a Skill that was exceptionally heavy on the mana, but it did mean he would have instant recall of all aspects of the crime scene whenever he wished to review them. Using it left him pretty vulnerable to getting his arse handed to him without Roll with the Punches kicking in to save the day. However, if he wasn't going to use it for this case, what was the point in possessing it?

Unbidden, frozen images from cases long ago swam forward in his mind. Grid Search gave him perfect recall of anything he saw when the Skill was active, and the memory never faded, no matter how much time passed. If he closed his eyes, he was transported back to the scene in question and could interact with what he saw as if he were really there.

He had long ago learned that the Skill was both a blessing and a curse. There was satisfaction in remembering cases that his diligence had brought to a successful conclusion, but there was the flipside, too. He would have liked to have the chance to forget some of his failures. During some long, dark nights of the soul, he often found himself returning to some especially brutal crime scenes, exploring evidence, and picking at the detritus of murder, as if he might stumble upon a golden nugget that would finally allow him to put the investigation behind him.

More often than not, though, such explorations just made him hate himself a little bit more.

Lowe gritted his teeth and focused back on his latest crime scene.

The Throne that the torso was wedged into was, as its title suggested, already Scarlet long before Gianna had leaked all over it. Intricately carved imagery of flames and fire marked the seat and the armrests with a giant depiction of Gravlak on the whole back. Rumour had it that when the High Priestess channelled her power, the eyes of the Fire Demon would open to add its own power to her casting.

"It's interesting the Throne did not help her in a struggle for her life. I would have expected this to be the last place someone would try to take her. If she'd been aware she was under threat, I doubt there'd be many beings who could survive an encounter with her in here."

The remained silent yet surreptitiously tapped his watch in a way that suggested that if Lowe didn't hurry up, there'd be significant violence soon.

It was quite an expressive gesture.

Lowe ensured his Skill captured the other pieces of furniture in the chamber. There were a few interesting scrolls on the large mahogany desk that sat in the corner of the room. They appeared to all be addressed to "The Bitch" and were a series of screeds about the High Priestess, suggesting various and creative ways in which she could seek to procreate with herself lethally.

Lowe was no stranger to the odd poison pen letter himself, but these missives had an unusual level of venom.

"Do you know anything about these?"

Latham scanned through them and then passed them back. "The Warders were aware that Gravalk's High Priestess was being threatened on and off for much of the last three or four years. We encouraged her secretary to destroy the scrolls when they were received. Obviously, though - for whatever reason - he felt the need to keep passing them on."

You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

"These are pretty vicious. And fairly specific." Lowe picked one of the threats at random. "Were you not concerned that whoever wrote these might seek to follow through with the threats?"

Latham's face remained stony. "The High Priestess was one of the great powers of Soar. If she was not concerned by the content, then it was not for the Warders to gainsay her." Lowe went to interrupt, but the Wader pressed onwards. "I do not know if you are familiar with those who exist at the higher levels of the Celestial Temple, little man, but they are not like the rest of us. These avatars are within touching distance of being gods themselves. Gianna d'Avec was, perhaps, a week or so from moving to the Second Floor. What would anyone possibly write that would bother her?"

Lowe's eyes very deliberately rose to look at the High Priestess's head that remained lodged within the chandelier. "I don't know, mate. But something managed to get under her skin."

*

There were three people waiting in the meeting chamber when Lowe finished his initial exploration of the scene. He hadn't found anything particularly noteworthy at this stage, but neither had he expected to.

Murders broadly fell into two categories.

There were ones when you arrived to find one dead body and one extremely chatty person eager to clarify how what had happened was an accident / not their fault / entirely what the deceased deserved. These were extremely common in Soar - XP gains, remember? - and often took longer to complete the paperwork than they did to solve.

On the other hand, there were the ones Lowe was beginning to worry the case of Gianna d'Avec was likely to be. He was going to need to work very hard indeed—and have a huge amount of luck—to get anywhere at all.

At present, all he really knew was that the High Priestess hadn't died of natural causes but that pretty much everything else remained in play. Particularly as Gianna d'Avec had been receiving pretty dramatic and vivid death threats for a few years, and Latham was giving him the impression that the cartloads of potential suspects he'd so far seen were being lowballed somewhat.

All in all, Lowe did not feel much more informed right now than he did when he arrived at the Temple. And now he was preparing to be face-to-face with the three people who worked most closely with the High Priestess, and he was not wholly sure where to take things.

Of the three, it was the who seemed the most upset about the death. The other two, both Priests, seemed interested rather than distraught. They were both short and round, with the higher level one, Hiwalk, being - according to the text above his head - something called a whilst the other one - Setort - was a .

Not for the first time, Lowe found himself somewhat baffled by the sheer range and complexity of Classes. It was a language that - now he was outside of its reach - felt like it was curiously beyond him. Like an exclusive club from which he was denied entrance.

Having no other real idea of how to begin, Lowe decided to direct his first questions to the only person in the room who seemed to give a damn. "Mr Webber, I understand you found the body?"

The older man nodded, his long grey hair falling over his eyes, needing him to sweep it backwards with both hands. "Indeed. I've never seen anything like it before in my life."

"The dismembered corpse of an avatar? I'd hope not." Hiwalk snorted.

Lowe decided to ignore the for now. "And it was your usual procedure to open all the chambers when you arrived at work in the morning? You must have been a trusted advisor?"

Hiwalk snorted again. Lowe wondered if he had a sinus condition that could be eased by a punch on the nose. "Hardly! But someone in the Order needed to hold Secret Keeper, and I doubt anyone else wanted to waste the Skill slot." The glanced at the text above Lowe's head with interest. "Although I imagine you don't know very much about that, do you? You're that Unclassed Inspector that was in the press recently."

Lowe favoured Hiwalk with a brief smile. He'd have rather told him to 'go fuck himself', but - at least in the opening hours of an investigation - he had learned to try to keep relations cordial.

Nevertheless, he slipped his Ring of Regeneration back on and added a Torc of Shielding to his left arm. Between Roll with the Punches and the Uncommon armour, he probably wouldn't be one-shotted by a pissed-off priest. And sometimes that's the rainbow on a dreary day.

"I have had some small successes on behalf of the Security Service. Not all in Soar have the luck to be Classed."

The other priest tilted his head. "But I'm sure I read somewhere that you were Classed, were you not? There was a scandal around . . ."

Lowe turned back to Aintra. "Your usual procedure in the morning, sir?"

The seemed oblivious to the two priests who had suddenly become very interested in the investigator before them. "I do not think I had ever been in the Temple before the High Priestess until this morning."

"So, you did not usually open the door to her receiving chamber?"

"No, sir. There was never any need. Although she did not live here - as would have been her right - she was always here very early."

Lowe wanted to explore that further, but Hiwalk was interrupting again. "Didn't you say, Webber, that the door was locked when you arrived? That means whoever killed her locked the door behind them when they went."

"How many people in the High Priestess’s service would be able to lock that door?"

It was Setort who answered. "To her personal chamber? Hardly anyone, I'd imagine. Aintra has the Secret Keeper Skill, of course. Beyond that, only those Gianna trusted implicitly would have access."

"Either of you?" Lowe asked neutrally.

Both shook their heads. "The High Priestess was not especially free with her favour," Hiwalk said through very, very thin lips.

Latham was suddenly at his shoulder, whispering in such a way that everyone in the room - and probably the building - made out what he said. "We have finally been able to persuade the High Priestess's to reveal the whereabouts of the d'Avec home. I suggest you visit there as soon as possible before the press beats you to it."

Lowe had heard more subtle dismissals in his time, but he currently had little else to go on. And if he had to look at Hiwalk's face much longer, he was likely to make things . . . complicated.

"That's fine. I presume someone has informed the household about d'Avec's demise?"

"Oh, no," Latham said with a smile. "We thought it would be much better coming from you."