Anastacia stared at the tall and formidable Ouan who was seated across the table from her and tried to come up with anything even vaguely useful to ask. As she struggled to open her mouth, it began dawning on her at an uncomfortably quick pace, that she may not have been the best detective out there – or even in the top half of detectives, really.
Having inspected the ruined carvings and gained naught from it, both necromancers had returned to their base of operations in Anastacia’s room to carry on with the initial interrogations. Though every cell of her being and her soul itself retched and cramped in refusal to the idea, the adventurer had to admit that she would likely make far more headway in the case if she allowed Teal to help, even if it meant she would have to end up protecting the culprit from the vengeful inquisitor in the end.
Next on the list of people she wanted to question had been lady Helia Pain, and even though Teal desperately wanted to escape the situation, and even offered to protect Stel when she was sent to fetch some freshly brewed and possibly slightly poisoned coffee, Anastacia convinced him to stay by reminding him that Lady Helia wouldn’t even see him if he simply stood in the corner a few meters away.
Lady Helia aimed her new crystal lantern directly at Anastacia and placed it on the coffee table. “Would it be possible for us to make a complaint? Are you not here to serve us? The horrid canine beast has kept us up for the entire night by clawing at the door of my room. Perhaps human adventurer Anastacia could finally remove it from the premises?” She said suddenly.
“I have no idea what you’re talking about, there’s no dog here.” Frowned Anastacia.
“Perhaps it has simply avoided your heretical sight? It seems to disappear in a blink of an eye when confronted by us. It might be far nimbler than your average beast?” The Ouan insisted.
“Maybe I should have Teal guard your door?” The adventurer suggested and grinned at the inquisitor in the corner of the room, who responded with a rather rude gesture. “I’m sure he’d be happy to help.”
Lady Helia nodded. “That would be… agreeable.”
“But I need to actually get this investigation thing going. I can only make you people stay in your rooms for so long.” Anastacia remembered and changed her tone to a more serious one. “How do I know you didn’t poison Nikolai?”
Rearing back as if she had just been gravely insulted, the Ouan hissed angrily. “What could this be? A jest? Does human adventurer Anastacia assume us for a simple schemer or a two-bit assassin?! Before your infinitesimal being is an Archfurion of the five divine legions, the holy pinnacle of purity in the mortal world and the first in line to for the position of the living saint! Our actions are the word of the five and the word of the five are our actions! And you, an insignificant cretin of corruption, a repugnant spillage from the cauldron of dark, mean to imply that we would ever stoop so low as to use poison to rid the world of those that stand before us? When the time comes, the pure light of the five will scorch this plane clean of its mistakes, and we will build it anew, and you think we would need to rely on something as mundane as this? Human adventurer Anastacia, we urge you to choose your words more carefully, lest you find yourself in the light as well.” She threatened the adventurer and buried her claws deep into the wooden table.
Not really considering Helia as a threat, Anastacia stood her ground and didn’t flinch. “Yeah, but you did send a bunch of mercs after Teal on the way here, didn’t you? So, if anything, you’ve set a precedent for underhanded scheming.”
“Does the human adventurer Anastacia actually think we are so blind to the unholy powers of the necromancers? That we would expect simple highwaymen to dispatch an inquisitor? Though their powers are drawn from blasphemous sources, we know of their formidable capabilities. This arrangement was simply to cease our contract with those rogues. Perhaps to inconvenience and cause delay?” Lady Helia admitted readily. “Maybe we have overestimated human adventurer Anastacia after all?”
“Rude.” Remarked the adventurer. “So what you’re saying is that you didn’t poison Nikolai, because you don’t need to?”
“The five do not think Vassund as beyond redemption at all. Merely as a lost sheep that wandered into the dark. As such it is not their will to cause harm to the nation. Poisoning an influential commander may just prevent them from returning to the flock.” The Ouan nodded and calmed down.
While not the most ironclad of defenses, Anastacia didn’t doubt Lady Helia’s piety, nor did the Ouan seem to be lying, not to mention the difficulties she would have to actually find her way to the kitchen and then to the coffeemaking equipment.
“So lets say that you didn’t do it. Do you know who might have?” She asked, doubtful that Helia would have seen much of anything.
Lady Helia seemed to hesitate for a while before deciding to reveal her thoughts. “Though we are perfect and without a flaw, our allies are not. The orcish war chief Fang is faithful, but deaf to the words of the five. Silent and calm, but perhaps far from patient? Toumarill has acted brashly under his watch. He may seek to force an engagement where we would still wait?”
As the Ouan diplomat spoke, somewhere in the vast, goblin-filled dimness that was Anastacia’s mind, two memories miraculously connected, and the adventurer realized something. On the way to the lodge, one of the files containing details about the guest’s home countries said something that suddenly rang multiple bells in the adventurer’s head – but there was something she needed to arrange before confirming her suspicions.
“Teal, can you come here?” Anastacia suddenly said and discarded the agreement she and the inquisitor had over keeping his presence a secret.
Lady Helia hastily began making sure her uniform was flawless while looking around. “Necromancer inquisitor Teal is here? Could he not announce his arrival?”
Silently mouthing curses at the adventurer, Teal walked over from his hiding place and sat down. “Yes, you two seemed to be in the middle of something and I didn’t want to interrupt anything important.” He lied to the Ouan representative.
“Yes, yes, how polite of you.” Anastacia agreed, hopped up from her seat and pointed at the lantern on the table. “May I check something on this?” She asked and grabbed it without waiting for a response.
After a while of fiddling around with the metal cover, she nodded and sighed. “It’s just like I feared, the crystal in this is actually running out of… magic. Luckily, I know that Strawberry keeps some spare crystals on himself, so I’ll just pop out for a second to replace it, if that’s okay?”
“What are you doing, Anastacia?” Teal asked, clearly getting very tired of the adventurer’s games.
“Oh, just being helpful, like always.” Anastacia smiled and closed the lantern. “I’m glad that you got here when you did, because it would be horrible to leave Lady Helia alone without her light, wouldn’t it? Surely you aren’t the kind of a man who would do something like that either, are you? Not when it might erase all the hard work towards peace you’ve already done.”
“Is this some kind of a ruse? We do not understand your tone, human adventurer Anastacia. Can you please return our lantern?” Lady Helia asked with just a hint of worry in her voice. She grabbed firmly onto the table in front of her and slowly started to feel around for anything.
Anastacia circled around the table, took the Ouan’s hand and placed it on Teal’s shoulder. “I’m not fooling around at all. Imagine how horrible it would be, if you were walking around and all of a sudden, the lantern completely ran out of juice, so I’ll just quickly pop out and replace the crystal real quick. Teal is right here to keep you company, so why don’t you continue from wherever you were left last night?” She suggested and quickly headed to the door.
The Ouan immediately dragged the inquisitor closer and made sure he couldn’t escape even if he wanted to.
Right as she was about to leave the room, the adventurer turned around to confirm her suspicions. “Say, Teal, the components of divenum were medicines, right? While prepping for this quest, I remember reading that a certain nation has been making moves in the medicine market for a good while now. Since you know about that sort of thing, do you happen to remember who the biggest producers of chiroptera and thropcillin are?”
“Well there are the herb gardens of Machau, but they don’t really have much in the way of trade in the north, then there’s Toumar- ohh, I see.” The inquisitor realized and glanced at the Ouan grasping on his shoulder hard enough to dig into his skin with her claws. “Ohh, I see…”
Anastacia gave him a one final shit-eating grin before rushing to confront the war chief of Toumarill. Lady Helia would give her enough time to either get a confession from the war chief, or to use the enchanted ring she had to confirm her suspicions. In case the ring proved her wrong, she needed to make sure she could calm the situation before the inquisitor got loose.
The war chief’s room was directly opposite to the vandalized carvings, and while Anastacia still didn’t understand how anyone could have made the runes now covering them, it still seemed like the amount of supposed coincidences was starting to pile up just a bit too high.
Knocking on the door was nerve-racking and gave the adventurer far more time to consider the possibility of being wrong about the whole thing. Even with the aid of the inquisitor, she had only managed to muster a single clue, that barely pointed in any direction at all. No doubt anyone with a more than a handful of gold in their name would have been able to buy both components for the poison Nikolai had been killed with, and certainly anyone with any diplomatic rank in their nation would have been able to do so with ease. But the sensitive nature of the meeting they were in forced her to act as quickly as she could, or the guests would surely begin to theorize on their own and cause all sorts of trouble.
The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.
It took a few moments for the less than spry orc to find his way to open the door for the adventurer. He politely greeted her with a nod but didn’t seem to have any intention to invite Anastacia into his room; instead he took a step forth into the hallway and leaned on his cane. “Is there something you need, adventurer?” He asked gruffly.
“Yeah. I was just wondering if you poisoned Nikolai.” Anastacia stated bluntly and slid her hand over one of the daggers strapped on her.
The war chief raised his brow and straightened his posture. “No, I did not.” He answered, in an equally direct manner.
There was no hesitation, nervousness or any other usual sign of lying detectable in the elderly orc but being a veteran of countless battles and of particularly stoic nature, telling a lie or two may simply not have bothered him in the slightest – or he was telling the truth.
Just as Anastacia was about to take out her enchanted topaz ring and repeat her question, a harrowing scream echoed from down the corridor from the direction of her room. The wail was followed by a set of porcelain coffee cups and a fancy silvery coffee pan falling off a tray that had been held by Stel.
On her way back from the kitchen, the maid had noticed Anastacia and Fang, and intending to see what they were up to, snuck closer to them. However, all that was quickly forgotten when she saw what was left of her precious carvings.
Screaming in what seemed like very genuine pain, Stel scrambled over and pressed her cheek against her favorite scene – the one where Cottona battles with the giant serpent. “What have they done to you?!” She wailed and sunk to the floor.
The commotion in the hallway understandably piqued the interests of the other guests, and it didn’t take long for the rest of the diplomats to gather to see what it was about. Anastacia tried to make sure everyone kept their distance, but when the glyphs on the wall caught everyone’s attention, there was no holding back the crowd.
“Does anyone know what they’re saying, or if they’re saying anything in the first place?” Magnon asked and took a closer look at one of them. He then glanced at Minerva, whose eyes were red from crying for the entire morning, but the high magister couldn’t offer any aid in deciphering the runes.
“Maybe it means that we should all just leave and never look back?” Farcie the younger suggested from a bit further away. The merchant heir was obviously far too uncomfortable to stay anywhere near the crowd, especially when his inquisitor ally wasn’t around to protect him.
“No one is leaving anywhere before we know what happened to Nikolai.” Lumira stated and took a step towards Stel, whom she had stared daggers at while others had been more interested in the ruined carvings.
Anastacia didn’t wait a second to slip past the dark elf and stop her in her tracks. Pressing the tip of her staff at Lumira’s chest, the adventurer made a silent threat and successfully convinced the vice commander back off.
“I’ll make one thing clear for now: everything I know right now suggests that this girl’s part in Nikolai’s death was purely coincidental and that she had nothing to do with it. I will not stand for baseless accusations at her or anyone else.” The adventurer decaled and struck her staff at the floor.
Besides the glare of pure rage she received from the vice commander, Anastacia received no opposition to her ruling, at least until the forgemaster pointed out something he had seen.
“Care to share what your business with the war chief was then? When I got out of my room, you were talking to him.” Magnon inquired and pointed one of the metal spikes on his forearms at the war chief. “Is he the main suspect?”
Fang said nothing to defend himself, but calmly moved the forgemaster’s arm away with his cane, as if preparing to fence with him, if that was what Magnon wanted.
“Forgemaster, what I said before applies to you as well! No matter how close any of you were to Nikolai, you’re all suspects until I decide otherwise. I’ll gather everyone and make a statement once I’ve figured something out.” Anastacia reminded him and prepared to stop everything, just in case.
Frustrated by the knowledge that the adventurer was right, Magnon flicked his wrist quickly and disarmed the orcish war chief as if to show him that though Anastacia had gotten between them this time, the matter was far from over. The forgemaster then quietly retreated back to his room, and caused the rest of the quests to consider it as well.
“Good. Now if the rest of you could follow his example and politely return to your rooms, that would be great – unless of course one of you knows something about the runes?” The adventurer addressed the group before turning to Fang again. “You can go too, but I still have something to ask from you later; I just have to deal with this first.” She said and nodded at the crying maid.
The war chief nodded and was about to pick his cane back up when suddenly the vice commander grabbed it from the floor first. Though Anastacia was sure that Lumira would probably snap it out of anger towards the new prime suspect, the dark elf merely inspected the odd-looking handle.
“What are you doing?” Anastacia asked.
“Making sure it doesn’t have hidden poison needle or anything. When I trained in Toumarill, not trusting his canes was one of the first things I learned. There’s always a hidden blade or something.” Lumira muttered, still angry at the adventurer but at least willing to cooperate.
The shape of the handle was one of the things Anastacia had noticed as well when she greeted the orc for the first time. Being shaped like an engraved sword hilt instead of a comfortable cane handle was certainly odd and it would have made sense if it contained a small knife or something along those lines, but that didn’t seem to be the case. The only interesting part in the cane was a small ring in the upper part of the shaft, that appeared to spin freely but only appeared to serve decorative purposes instead of revealing a weapon.
“Hmph, I have my eye on you, Fang.” Lumira grunted and slammed the cane on the war chief’s chest as she stomped past him to return to her room.
The impact seemed to have knocked the wind out of the orc’s lungs, as he went slightly pale for a few deep breaths – or at least as pale as orcs could go. “In her years at Toumarill, we taught her many things, but it appears our methods fell short when it came to manners and respect for her elders.” He lamented and shook his head.
“How does someone like her even make it to vice commander?” Anastacia couldn’t help but to wonder out loud.
“You say that, but you’ve not seen her on a field of battle. It’s people like her that stop us from making our move without trying to negotiate peace first.” Fang shook his head, but without a doubt, there was some pride emanating from his almost expressionless, chiseled face. “The gods created some people for nothing but war, so perhaps her mortal form just needs to take some compromises when it comes to personality?”
“If you say so…” The adventurer shrugged. Figuring that she might as well get the confirmation to her initial question out of the way and return with some more questions if the war chief turned out to be innocent, she slipped the topaz ring onto her finger and repeated herself. “Did you kill Nikolai?”
Fang raised one of his eyebrows and leaned on his cane. “No. Did you not hear me the first time?” He said as his words passed though the ring’s enchantment unaltered.
Disappointed in her own detective work, Anastacia took off the ring and cursed quietly. “Back to square one then… Okay, I still have some questions to you in case you saw something, but I have to get this maid back to my room first, so you can just wait in yours for a couple of minutes.”
“I’ll remain there.” The orc nodded and slowly wobbled into his room and closed the door behind himself.
Stel had kept sobbing next to the carving during the entire gathering and probably hadn’t even noticed anyone else being there. She pressed her cheek against the ruined image of her hero and caressed the wall.
Anastacia found it a bit hard to say anything but decided to make an attempt regardless. “You know these are just carvings, right? There are probably more of them out there, or like books with pictures or something.” She clumsily tried to ease the maid’s suffering to no avail. Next up in her comically lacking set of tools for calming people was distraction: “Umm… Do these symbols mean anything in the story’s context? I’m not all that good with languages, but they don’t seem like anything I’ve ran into before.”
Stel took out a napkin and blew her nose before leaning away from the wall to get a better look at the runes. Though still red and swollen from spending most of the day crying, the maid’s eyes lit up when she saw the markings and realized that they weren’t just an arbitrary bit of vandalism, but a message. “It… it’s a threat. They’re the last words of the hag of the north. It’s written in the language that was used by the witches, hermits and creatures of these lands. According to a book I have- well, more like a dozen of them, it’s from an age before the sun rose for the first time, but that can’t be right, right? Anyway, so when Cottona figured out how to kill the hag for good and did so by cutting the enchanted necklace in a heroic charge against a foe that was basically a demigod. She parried and dodged countless jagged, poisoned blades and other rusted weapons the spirit of discord was able to throw at her, and with the very tip of her spear, she was able to cut the string of braided hairs the necklace was made from. With the hag’s enchanted iron beads spread across the corrupted field of snow, she was no longer immortal and no match for the valiant heroine – oh and the two other hunters, of course…” She rambled on and on, and probably would have gone on for a while longer if Anastacia hadn’t said something.
“Yeah, cool, we can talk about all that in my room a bit later. Now if you just went there and-“ The adventurer made a futile attempt to get Stel to go back so she could carry on with questioning Fang, but anything she said was quickly drowned out in the quite clearly biased telling of the story about the three hunters.
“So when the killing blow had been dealt and the vile crone was all but defeated, she screamed out a final curse of discord, that entangled the whispers of half-truths and conspiracies she had filled the hunters’ heads with, and weaved a web of distrust even Cottona wasn’t able to overcome. So these were the words that, if you were to believe some versions of the story, literally burned themselves onto the hunters’ bodies and eventually turned them on each other. Now, the books actually disagree on the literal translation of these words, but it’s always something along the lines of ‘Know no peace, but in a shared grave’.” Stel continued to recite what she knew of the subject she was very clearly obsessed with. “Oh! Do you think the hag has returned to reclaim her land?!”
Anastacia sighed and started to give up on the idea of making the maid wait in her room instead of having her come along to talk with Fang, especially since talking about her favorite subject had very quickly improved the girl’s mood. “Doubt it, people are more than capable of being assholes without any supernatural aid. Besides, this meeting ending with a murder was always a bit of a coinflip, hence why I’m here in the first place.” She said and shook her head. “Now, how about we have a chat with the war chief about who he thinks might be behind all this. Somehow, we’ve already ruled out the more obvious religious lunatics and a literal assassin playing a diplomat, so let’s just hope we don’t have to start going through the staff as well – unless you guys have a butler? That’d simplify things.”
Having to deal with the sudden gathering of the guests had made the adventurer briefly forget about her surroundings, and Teal dashing into the hallway with Lady Helia in tow almost got the jump on her. At first, she figured that the inquisitor had finally managed to find a way out of his predicament and had come to avenge his friend, but the expression on his face wasn’t that of anger or fury, but far from it actually. Teal appeared utterly confused, almost frightened, which was certainly something that didn’t happen often.
The reason for his sudden appearance and odd expression became painfully clear to Anastacia soon enough, as she noticed the fresh pool of blood slowly creeping further into the corridor from under Fang’s door.