image [https://draviaaris.neocities.org/images/lestaria1scenery/saturnicityday.png]

Though my access level meant finding a civilian murder case was easy, the file was empty enough that I might as well had been given a crude drawing of a stick figure covered in blood and nothing else. The archives for our common case files were in the same area as the archives for everything else, divided between several small soundproof rooms that contained nothing but a small terminal and a holographic projector. After I checked in at the front office of this floor, I scanned my MPF ID and could access whatever I wished within my permissions.

And considering I was a soul stone holder, that meant a lot. But also considering I wasn’t Sunny or Bella, that meant some things were out of my reach. Such was life.

My left eye twitched at the thought. There must had been some errant dust irritating it.

I was only granted about five minutes of peace to look at the file. Not because of any arbitrary time limits, but because a crackle of static followed by a voice in my head pulled my attention away. The archive receptionist was trying to get in contact with me using telepathy based tech magic, and I was loathed to ignore their call.

‘Yes?’ I responded through the magic line rather than out loud.

‘Someone from the MPF emergency responders wants you to meet them at Crean Street. The big red apartment complex on the corner.’ The crackle sounded through my head again, and so the call ended.

I clicked my tongue as I shut the projector down, staring at the blank baby blue wall. Whatever it was must had been extreme for me to be contacted directly.

Extreme it was. And all too relevant to my current objective, as I would learn.

I dashed through the crowded lobby, the first sign of the workday starting. Officers, medics, white collar workers—the body of employees we possessed at the Saturni MPF headquarters held a vast array of skills and positions. Unfortunately, the quality of their work did not match the quality of our headquarters. The lobby looked more like a worn down hospital waiting room, with second hand couches making up most of the seats. Anything you could sit down on was punctured with holes from which a rotten smell always emanated. The walls were covered with various motivational posters Sunny just replaced thirty or so years ago, with the elevator and staircase standing out like shiny sore thumbs. Even the receptionist desk was beat up and cracked, no thanks to the many fights that took place over the years right on its surface.

Oh, the stories I could tell.

In the parking lot, I threw myself into Bella’s hover-car she allowed me to borrow while she was gone (the seat warmers worked in hers), and set it to autopilot towards the location I was provided. The car sputtered and shook as it turned onto the street, though that was due to the uneven and cracked pavement rather than anything with the car.

The side view was nothing I could note with pride, not after all the damage done over the past century. I used to be proud of this city, serving as a symbol of our alliance with the marine, as our bastion of power and control over the seas. Now, the number of tsunamis that occurred in the past decade alone ravaged many of the buildings. No matter how much you repaired and rebuilt them, there was nothing you could do to clear the foundation of the sewage smell seeped into it. Nor could people afford repeated maintenance time and time again. More and more buildings remained for sale, with even the bustling downtown downsized from skyscrapers to smaller story foundations. The tides rolled uncomfortably close as the coasts pulled forward with each passing decade.

Ugh, it was too much to dwell on. At least the local populace took to decorating the streets in their own way, painting murals of the city such as more...fanciful mermaids for everyone to rejoice in. Well, except for the actual mermaids. I’d sort that out eventually.

When I took in the aging apartment building around the corner, I made sure the car pulled into the correct parking lot this time. I hopped out and approached the marked hover-cars parked much closer towards the entrance than mine. The building had moss growing on the exterior and a hastily covered up hole busted in next to the lobby door, but it was decent enough.

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Except for the blood trail that led out the door and into the street.

The officers were all in uniform and crammed inside the ground floor lobby. Black vests and pants complimented helmets that protected your face while obscuring your identity from the prying public. At my entrance, one of the officers turned to me and pressed the side of her helmet to deactivate it.

Two blonde pigtails escaped from her helmet, and I couldn’t help but smile in recognition. There’s no one else I knew with that hair and those blue coloured hair clips.

“Oh my gods, hey!” Serena grinned and waved, even though I was right in front of her. “Erna, glad to see you’re not all stuffy busy after one day of power. I knew if any of ‘em would care enough to check this out, you would. Thanks for answering my call!”

Serena Danya was a young woman I’d been acquainted with for years. She was an energetic person who settled down in Saturni due to the cooling climate making it easier for frost spirits like her to live here semi-permanently. Her skin appeared white as snow, accompanied by light blue eyes that almost shimmered with the power of ice. A cheerful, capable worker—there wasn’t anything I appreciated more.

“Indeed,” I said as I pulled out my phone to jot down notes. It was not easy being a symbol for the people, but the appreciation alone was a great reward. “It’s good to see you again, Serena. Inform me of the situation.”

“It’ll be easier if you see for yourself,” Serena said. Her smile dropped immediately after. She gestured for me to follow, and the other MPF officers were quick to part from our path. We hurried through the dinky apartment lobby that somehow managed to smell moldier than our own and into the elevator, which Serena jammed the ‘up’ button to near instantly.

Her thumb left a small imprint of frost on the button. She frowned and looked down at her hands, which sparkled under the light. “Oops, I gotta keep the chill down a bit.”

“Winter is when frost spirits prosper,” I said. “Embrace it while you still can. Spring is around the corner—not that there’s much of a difference in Maia.” I rubbed my hands together to warm them up, though the gloves already did wonders in that department. However, a little more wouldn’t hurt…

“And that’s why I work here,” she laughed. It died down as the door opened, which presented us with another piece of the blood trail. It appeared, whatever caused it, it leapt off the second floor balcony, landed in front of the lobby door, and managed to escape from there. If it were not for the higher floors being outside, then perhaps it would not have been so easy.

We followed the path to a door, where a crying woman was being comforted by one of the officers as another one looked inside the apartment from the entrance, taking careful measure to avoid stepping on the blood trail. Serena cleared her throat and the unoccupied officer turned to us.

“You really wanna be here?” The officer kept his helmet on, the putrid smell of fresh carnage wafting out being his incentive to keep it in place. Serena was quick to put on hers again, though I was personally unconcerned by such average affairs. That, and I never truly thought to bring protective headgear to every mission. Better I remained a clear target, so others held a better chance of survival.

“We have no choice, if we’re to piece together what happened,” I said. “Is that a witness?”

“Eeeeeeehhh…” He looked over, hesitant to elaborate.

“I got this,” Serena said and put a hand in the hair. “She’s kinda freaking out still, but we heard from her before she started crying that this like, angel looking thing showed up and tortured the victim ‘fore she ran? It’s really gnarly. You’d probably get it better if you saw for yourself.”

My chest tightened. That word again.

Angel.

Without a moment of pause, I stormed past the officer and into the apartment. Before me was a body cleaved in half, mouth wide in agony as dried trails of spit spilled from his lips—indications of suffering. The eyes were removed, and his fingers were cut clean off at the first joint. The legs and feet of his body: chopped into unrecognizable bits of bone and tendon, but everything above the split torso was recognizable enough to ID the victim. Intentional, perhaps?

The apartment itself was a mess of blood. Broken antiques mixed with tables and chairs, all sliced in perfect halves. This was a drawn out murder—no, it was as Serena said.

Torture. Pure and simple. The second of its kind, for all I knew.

A horrid seed of worry took root in my heart. It seemed the peace of Saturni lasted for all of two seconds before it casted out another mystery for me to face. I turned to Serena, who still stood at the door with her gaze averted from the carnage.

“I have a question,” I said to her.

“Uh, what’s up?”

“Did the witness describe the being sighted here as an angel of light?”

She slowly faced me again. Faced the corpse behind me. “Wait. Yeah, she did. Why’re you asking?”

I looked around the room once more, noticing something I missed during my initial sweep. Although it was only a one-bedroom apartment, it held a lot of knick-knacks on its broken shelves, but one in particular remained safe, turned over and on the ground.

A small, glass statuette of Xaviais, the goddess of light, knowledge, and righteous justice.