After a not-insignificant period of laying on the floor, steadily puking and coughing out less and less water, I forced myself to stay awake. Then barricaded the door using one of those thin wall-hugging valet tables and the remains of the bathroom door. I laid on the bed and thought through what I knew. I really should have been doing this earlier, the very second I got here.

First, what had just happened? That wasn’t normal water, so that meant that some sort of Water Affinity attack was most likely. I have to say, the creativity of it was almost impressive. I was able to appreciate that now, the fact that I wasn’t dead helped a lot. Of course there would be ‘not-magic’ magic-bullshit involved in this murder mystery, I couldn’t just have a nice Clue mystery.

I coughed up a water bubble and spat it out onto the rich carpet, damn my lungs hurt. There was a fraction of the healing left from taking it out of the shitty cowboy and I pushed it into my lungs and closed my eyes as I tried to recall the sound of the retreating shoes… heels? Potentially.

I know that drowning is a pretty devious thing. Even after someone has recovered from a ‘drowning incident’ and for up to 24 hours afterwards, hospitals would still count ‘drowning’ as the cause of death if they died from any reason. The risk was huge. The ache soothed in my lungs, at least mostly. I wouldn’t die in my sleep. Probably.

Thinking back on it, it wasn’t necessarily how I would have done an assassination mission, but also, I really had no idea what the fuck I was talking about. Who actually knows how to assassinate someone? I would have just gone in shotgun blazing then stabbed whatever still moved.

That said, if I was being honest, it had actually been pretty slick. We’ll see how slick that person is when I catch them and carve them into fucking pieces.

I sighed and fidgeted around trying to make myself comfortable. The bed was a pretty damn good one. I could just fall asleep… maybe I would, did I lock the door?

I sat up. Wait, I did lock the door. I also had both keys. Was there a third? That seemed… possible, but unlikely. It wasn’t like they could just use a card machine to print another one, they were physical keys.

A master key? Someone had a master key, that seemed likely because those things totally existed in murder mysteries. That wouldn’t be… the young master, would it? Were there two master keys?

I sighed again, even I was getting tired of sighing at this point. Can’t I just make a few random guesses and call it a game? I felt a deep sense of wrongness toward that, like it would conflict with my Oath. Too broad to just go around accusing everyone. Maybe I could do that with one or two suspects, but not everyone; though, even that was just a guess.

Dammit. Maybe I should just kill everyone, problem solved. Wait, no. No. That’s not a solution. Actually though… it kind of is, there was some, but not a ton of pushback from my Oath on that one. I shook my head and focused inward for a moment before finding the usual culprit, Dark Affinity, cheering on that chain of thought. Greasing it along, like some slippery slope. Jesus that was insidious.

There was something with Dark Affinity and Oaths… I didn’t like not knowing the specifics of that particular interaction. There was a lot of stuff I didn’t know with Dark Affinity. I was glad I wasn’t squeamish and probably had my time on the bus- ambulance to thank for that. It was a good thing considering the apocalypse was a violent one, obviously, but there was definitely something else pushing me on.

The Master Order of Operations was still in effect. Murder Mystery SubOp being…

Ask Morrigan about a Master Key. Find out who has a Water Affinity. Find out who… I checked my watch, 22:20. Find out who can’t account for where they were from 10:10 to 10:30 tonight. Make it 10-10:30. Why did I keep my watch on military time if I’m just going to convert it anyways? I coughed out another splash of water.

What else… Actually, that seemed pretty good for now. There were other thoughts that were sitting on the back burners, about Oaths, words that had been mentioned, but they were ephemeral things. I didn’t want them to dissipate so I left them cooking on the backburner as vague concepts. For now.

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Teeth snarled and snapped then melted into shadows. Cursed kin-killer. He had wounded her, badly. Only by the fact that she healed faster from wounds he caused her had helped her survive this long.

She slid out of a shadow and dug into a rabbit’s sleeping burrow. A few quick bites finished it, she dug deeper and brought her teeth to the rest of the family. She needed more. She hacked and a red-tinted glob of shadow spilled from her maw.

She snarled and melted into the shadows before reappearing nearby to face in the direction of the voice. A wolf. Kin?

She let loose another snarl

Good natured this time,

The big wolf snarled and other wolves came out of the brush from around him.

Damned, she had not brought enough attention.

She melted into the shadows, then came up through the moonlit shadow of a large root, teeth bared toward the alpha’s throat.

A crackle of electricity flared and she jumped back through the shadows as dangerous arcs pushed her back.

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Two figures lay in a colossal bed, both nude, or close enough to it, one wrapped around the other.

“He’s immune to my charms.”

“From what I’ve observed, you haven’t been trying too hard.”

“I have!”

“It almost seems like… you aren’t doing it, on purpose.”

“I am, I swear it! It doesn’t usually take that much.”

“Well try harder. Sleep with him if you have to, you’re good at that. I. want. him. enthralled. Do you understand?”

She hurriedly dressed and left the room. She could read the mood, he was unhappy. As she paced the corridors she and her feet shuffled over the cold marble floor she couldn’t help but wonder, why wasn’t it working?

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I woke up to a knock.

I also woke up in a trashing near-panic. Oh… good, that’s comforting. For a second, for just the briefest second, I was worried that I was going to start sleeping too well.

Then there was a series of knocks, though these were as patient as the first.

“What do you want?”

“Tom? Are you up yet? It’s quite late.”

Fucking Morrigan.

“Yeah, yeah. Give me a second.”

I pulled the bathroom door of questionable integrity and wall table from their bracing positions and removed one of my keys I had placed in the lock hole. I wasn’t about to get ambushed twice in one night.

I swung it open, “Come on in.”

I turned back into the absolutely savaged room as Morrigan peeked past me, then followed.

“Poor sleeper? This room was supposed to be one of the better ones.”

“Room was fine,” I turned to study him from the side of my eye, “Company could’ve used some work.”

He was studying the bathroom door frame itself and then his eyes trailed to the piecemeal door laying in the center of the room, “You don’t say.”

“I do.”

“Oh?”

Coy-rich-people-bullshit. Exhausting, but I’d play.

“I was quite impressed by the quality of the bath, how are you getting hot water… and electricity, I presume?”

“Backup generators and Electro Affinity. A wonderful combination. Soon to be installed, before all of this.”

That was pretty lucky, “and the water?”

“Thankfully the well-infrastructure is quite prevalent on the estate.”

“Thankfully, yes. I did enjoy it.”

He turned towards me and I pressed on, “Does Water Affinity interfere with that?”

He shook his head, I wasn’t sure if he closed his eyes to hide a lie or if that was just a normal thing of his. Dammit. I shouted ‘Mrs. White in the kitchen with a gun’ in my head. Nothing. I’d get it eventually.

“If anything, they are quite useful to assist with blockages and other issues.”

“Do you have many Water Affinity users here?”

“It’s a relatively common Affinity.”

“Would you have a list of them?”

“I do not.”

“Could you make a list?”

“I can bring them to your attention when it’s convenient, if that works well enough.”

My stomach groaned, “Breakfast?”

“Nearly over and served with a brilliant white.”

Brilliant white? Ah, wine.

“That sounds fine enough.”

What the fuck, that was exhausting. It also felt like a massive waste of time since I got nearly no useful information out of it. Well that’s not true, there was some information. He had seemed only casually interested in the damage done to the door and the room in general but maybe it was just a ‘oh I’m so rich I don’t give a shit about my stuff being shredded’ thing. I kind of thought it was more than that.

I really just wanted a damn break. I should definitely start blasting first next time, if I wound someone then I can just stroll around and see who has a bulletwound. Then I’m definitely going to be going on a stabbing spree. Probably. I mean I’m still kind of committed to having a murder mystery vacation and not going all younglings-in-the-jedi-temple-thing. Though, I wasn’t necessarily ruling that out.

I started to change as Morrigan busied himself looking around the room and I put on everything, EVERYTHING, as he finally asked, “So… you were unharmed? By this attack?”

I turned my head as my eyes narrowed, “Yes. It was an insidious thing though, I think I will be much more prepared for the second attempt.”

“You think this person would attack again?”

“You… don’t think they will?”

“Well, I would presume that this was some sort of attempt to test your abilities. Perhaps an opportunistic attack.”

“Why would someone do that?”

He shrugged, “You’re not the only one who can play detective. It seems like the attack was aborted fairly quickly.”

“Well, I’d imagine when I exploded the door that probably forced the issue a bit.”

“You… exploded it?”

“Yup.” I was not going to be giving out information about my capabilities. I could never be that stupid.

“Hmmm.”

“Either way, if they have any sense they wouldn’t. I have a few… more lethal tricks up my sleeve. Especially for sneaky people.” I mean I didn’t really, but I guess I could always set up Tom’s Patented Outdoor Alarm System. Ideally I would have done that from the start. I mean, the bathing facilities were just ‘chef’s kiss’, of course I got distracted.

“Well then in that case, hopefully they do try again.”

Nonplussed, as this guy always seemed to be. I’m pretty sure that’s the right word.

As he turned away, I focused intent to kill him and felt the Oath rear its head. It was more of a ‘this a very bad idea’ feeling that didn’t feel… organic. After all, after this little conversational dance and last night’s little assassination attempt I was feeling pretty pissed, the hesitation wasn’t much coming from my end.

There was another… weird interaction that swelled with my Oath… Nope. Not doing it. Right now, I just wanted breakfast.

“Are you alright?” Morrigan had turned around.

“Uh, yeah, I’m alright.”

He resumed walking slightly in front of me, to the side. Hmmm, so my Oath was still in effect. That meant that killing the Oath holder was out of the question. I was going to assume that went both ways, otherwise, what was the point of an Oath? I’d have to revisit that assumption though, who knows what sort of Penitent bullshit could be in store, though, I hadn’t run into anything overtly… unfair per se.

Sure, if you were an idiot and wanted mother-goddess-earth ‘Gaia’ to be your best friend, you were probably going to get fucked, but I had the feeling that Oaths were mutually binding. Because again, otherwise, what was the point of them?

Which is a roundabout way of saying… I don’t know how he could have tried to kill me. I thought about potentially setting someone else to kill Morrigan. Nope, it kicked up again. So by rule of reciprocity, I guess him sending someone else to kill me was also out.

I cursed Gabby, as I had every day since this had started. The Penitent system was making this much more difficult than it needed to be.

Dammit.