96. Different Shapes

Isaac stared down the empty alleyway. The asphalt had been completely cleared, not a trace of red left on its smooth, dark surface. Any lingering drops that had splashed the glass windows of the neighboring skyscraper had been wiped away, leaving behind a mirror-like reflective surface with not a stain in sight.

There were no crowds gathered around, no one staring at the corpse that was no longer there. Maybe there had been, earlier in the day, but by the time Isaac reached Solonell City, clearly the citizens of the realm had lost interest.

He tore his eyes away from the perfectly clean landscape, its excessive sterility the only sign that anything had happened there at all, and hurried away to Rosalinde’s home.

The woman lived fairly close to the area, closer to the edge of the city than the vast majority of the other residents. She’d said once that she liked the quiet and preferred more isolated areas. Isaac believed her, but he’d also noted the way other Solonell City humans seemed to avoid her when she did walk along more busy streets, often giving her a wide berth as they passed. He’d never seen her speak directly to another human before, which had always struck him as odd, given the woman’s friendliness.

He supposed it had something to do with that supposed past she wasn’t proud of, the one she’d spoken of while the two of them watched Aster and Olzu training from the sidelines. They’d stood nearby, eyes fixed to that pillar of silver light, the small demon determinedly flapping his wings inside and yelling at the fey below him, brimming with life.

Isaac moved faster, practically running past the mishmash of buildings until he reached what looked like a tall, pale, modern apartment complex. Despite its many floors, he’d learned early on that Rosalinde was the only resident, taking up a single room on the second floor that he now knocked against.

Isaac tapped his foot against the hardwood ground, eyes sweeping around the empty hallways as he waited. A place like this would never exist in Chrowall, he thought absentmindedly. There, every inch of space was a precious commodity.

His eyes drifted out the wide open windows as he waited. Though Rosalinde’s room wasn’t particularly high up, this building was situated next to a string of smaller huts and shacks, which, combined with the vast, blank red sky, gave it a sense of grandeur and scale nonetheless.

Isaac spun around when he heard a click, and the door soon swung open, revealing Rosalinde, appearing as pristine and elegant as usual. Her expression, however, was serious.

“You’ve returned,” she observed.

Isaac nodded. “I, uh, I saw the alley.”

“Ah.” Rosalinde nodded in understanding and stepped aside to let him in, continuing to speak as she led him past plain yet well cared for furniture over to a simple and elegant coffee table carved out of dark wood. After giving the room a brief sweep, it was the object with the most personality in the place. There were no decorations or other personal touches that Isaac could see—no paintings, no vases, no little baubles or trinkets.

“A fairly large crowd gathered after you left,” Rosalinde continued. “Fable cleared them and told me to clean up the alleyway once I was done gathering evidence.”

“So the body…?” Isaac’s voice trailed off.

Rosalinde frowned, shoulders tensing slightly as she stepped over to a pile of papers and carried them over to the table. She gestured for Isaac to sit, which he did. The seats were hard and cold.

“It’s in another room. Fable brought the others as well, to keep them all in the same place.” She sat down across from Isaac and shook her head. “I was told Fable would take care of disposing of them later. Personally I’m not particularly fond of sleeping with them gathered so close by.”

Isaac could only imagine. It made him shudder just to think of all the victims, piled together into one room, mutilated forms tangling into one fleshy mass. What did it smell like? The thick metallic scent had already been so sharp when there was only one victim. Did demons decompose differently? Or was the smell of death universal?

The rustling of pages snapped him out of his thoughts, and Isaac looked up to see Rosalinde pulling out what looked like a page of notes written in elegant, neat dark letters.

This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

“I couldn’t find any possessions left behind by the murderer,” Rosalinde admitted. She looked genuinely apologetic. “If there was anything, it was too… messy to separate out.”

“Oh.” Isaac felt his shoulders deflate.

The woman cleared her throat. “That being said, I did notice some curious details that I believe may prove useful.” She pulled out a second sheet of paper, and for a second Isaac braced himself for a photograph of the corpses, but instead he found a series of simple, but precise pencil sketches of various shapes scattered across the page. He furrowed his brows as he stared down at them, trying to piece the drawings together.

“They’re not the most detailed, unfortunately,” Rosalinde said, “but I tried to recreate the wound shapes I saw.” She tapped the center of the paper, where a cluster of crescent-like shapes were gathered together. “Every victim had similar slashing wounds on them.”

Isaac frowned down at the page, scrutinizing the drawings. “So someone attacked with a blade?”

Rosalinde hummed. “Perhaps, or they may be something akin to claw marks.” She shook her head. “There were so many layered on top of each other that it was difficult to tell the difference.”

Isaac’s eyes shifted over to the other sketches situated around the main clump. They looked somewhat similar in that they, too, began in rough crescent shapes at their ends, but their centers were rendered in explosive, rough, scattered rays and splashes. He tapped one. “What about these?”

Rosalinde was quiet for a few moments. “Those were found on the humans,” she finally said, voice slow. “I’m not sure exactly what created them, but they appear to be the result of some sort of… internal explosion.”

A million different questions ran through Isaac’s mind, but in the end all that came out was a simple, “How?”

Rosalinde shook her head. “Given that the slashes are still present, it may be some sort of poison or venom that entered the bloodstream through the cuts and detonated. I can’t imagine how else wounds like this could be formed. The cuts themselves were completely torn apart, as though something had ripped them open from inside.”

Isaac forced himself not to picture it, not to think about the scattered lumps lying in a pool of red, keeping his mind laser focused on gathering more information. He swallowed. “You said it was only the humans?”

Rosalinde nodded, and the Traveler frowned. Why would the humans and demons have been killed differently? Had the humans been higher level, perhaps, and thus more dangerous? That would mean they would have to be higher level than Villard had been.

Isaac rubbed his forehead. Or maybe it was the opposite. If it really was some sort of venom or explosive, it might not have been as effective on demons.

“That’s certainly a possibility.”

Isaac’s head snapped up, and he realized he’d been muttering out loud. Rosalinde looked contemplative. “Demons do tend to be more sturdy than humans,” she remarked.

So whatever caused the explosive wounds had to be weak enough to not work on demons—including lower level ones, Isaac thought with a pang. He leaned forward to scan the paper again, committing the shapes to memory.

“Was there anything else strange?”

Rosalinde was quiet for a few moments, thinking. “Well,” she finally said, “I wasn’t there myself, but I did notice the bodies Fable brought from the Inferno were somewhat damp.” She shook her head. “I’m unsure if it’s simply a result of the natural climate of the realm.”

Isaac nodded, noting that down. The area was rather humid, especially in the tunnels, but he’d never seen any natural water there. It could be that there was a source of water deeper in the tunnels. That, or it had something to do with the method of killing.

“Thank you,” Isaac said sincerely. “Really. You didn’t have to get involved, but you’ve helped a lot.”

The woman shook her head. “I only wish I could’ve helped more,” she said. “Please don’t hesitate to come by with any more questions.”

Isaac nodded, rising from his chair. He paused, however, as he turned toward the door, glancing back hesitantly. Rosalinde waited patiently, and he finally asked, words careful, “Do you know who any of the victims were? Fable showed you the list?” He didn’t mention her having seen the bodies. He doubted they were at all recognizable without the list of names to identify them.

Rosalinde didn’t speak for a long minute, and Isaac wondered if he’d pushed too far. Guilt settled in his stomach. He opened his mouth to apologize when Rosalinde interrupted him, voice perfectly even and calm.

“No,” she said. She rose, the sharp screeching of her chair against the floor a harsh contrast to her smooth voice. Rosalinde stepped over, dress flowing fluidly behind her, and opened the door for Isaac with her usual smile.

“Take care,” she said. There wasn’t a trace of visible emotion in her expression.

Isaac frowned. Rosalinde didn’t move from the doorway, and the message was clear. Should he apologize? He glanced over at her again, and her smile hadn’t shifted an inch. She was so different from Sharil, and yet it felt like he was back in the Inferno again, the demon looming overhead, an unspoken and a spoken vow. Unknown history and even less knowable anger. Isaac clenched his fist.

With one final look between the empty hallway and back at Rosalinde’s serenely smiling face, he nodded slowly.

“Thank you,” he said. “I will.”