“Even in my long career, the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever seen were those noble brats who thought only they were allowed to kill others then either get outraged or baffled when other people fought back against them. Like, which idiot put that moronic idea in their heads?” - Bjork Sanhill, retired mercenary.

“Well, well, look at the big rat we have here,” said Aideen as she rose to a sitting position on her bed, her hands still firmly clasped around the killer’s wrist. The man was rather weak, average at best in terms of fitness, and Aideen easily held his hands in place with just pure muscle strength. She had trained her body to as far as a human her size could go after all.

That, and when one considered how the killer had first tried to sedate the three of them, he likely never had to actually fight anyone he killed.

It was not like the killer had grown complacent either, since given the short time between Aideen’s sending of the letter and his arrival, not even a day had passed. If anything, the killer should blame his own people for their failure to provide him with proper intelligence. While Aideen, Celia, and Kino had hidden their nature as unliving while in the region, a proper intelligence network should have been able to pick up clues.

“What are we going to do about him?” asked Celia who was still covering the killer’s mouth with her hand while Kino tied the man’s arms and legs together with some rope. Despite the killer’s attempts to struggle, he was outnumbered three to one, and Aideen was stronger than him by a fair bit, so his attempts were futile at best.

“Tie him up first, then I’ll make him talk,” said Aideen confidently as she sealed the killer’s mouth by fusing his lips together with her magic. At that point no matter what the killer did, all he could do was to make muffled noises. “Now, then mister killer, I’m going to ask you some questions. Blink your eyes once for yes and twice for no, do you understand me?”

The only answer she received was an unblinking stare from the captured man.

“Wrong answer,” stated Aideen nonchalantly as she laid a hand on the killer’s right shoulder. Before Celia’s and Kino’s eyes, the man’s whole right arm – they had bared his upper body while searching for other weapons – seemed to roil as his muscles and veins protruded under his skin. The man himself made a loud, muffled scream as his arm kept twitching and twisting on its own.

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By that point of time, Aideen was very familiar with the human body, and had a good understanding of what makes a person tick. What she had done was to touch and activate all tiny nerves in the killer’s arm that she knew sensed things like pain. As a result, the man nearly keeled over from agony despite the touch leaving no injury on his body.

Even after the pain, the killer still stared defiantly at her, though.

As such, Aideen changed her tactics. The man was clearly not one that would break with pain, so instead she touched on different parts of his nervous system. First she made the man feel an unbearable itch all over his body – he even scratched the palms of his hand bloody with his own fingers – but that also failed to break his will. As such, she resorted to a means that she had hoped she wouldn’t have needed.

She touched on some parts of the killer’s nerves that caused him to feel as if he was being tickled all over his body, all while also heightening the man’s sensitivity severalfold.

After a quarter hour of uncontrolled movements and muffled laughter, the killer gave up and signaled that he would speak.

Aideen had Celia write down every word of the killer’s confession, which included just about everything he knew about the corrupt practices of the local nobility as well as many of the people compromised by them. To no surprise, that included the entirety of the town guard’s upper echelons as well as people from the messenger’s guild.

The killer also admitted that he was the “Mord” behind the murders of late, all done under the order of the Baron. He hid nothing, and even admitted things that none of the three ever even heard about, crimes from decades ago that had been long forgotten, as well as other things that they failed to discover in the week they’ve been around.

All those created a rather long list of documents that were more than sufficient to sentence the Baron to a death or worse, and the extent of the corruption going on almost nauseated the three, especially with the excesses of the current Baron. Under Mord’s own admittance, the previous generations were corrupt, but still kept themselves in check, while the current one had done whatever he wished to do and bit everyone who displeased him like a mad dog.

While the killer was by no means innocent – he had done many of the killings on the behest of multiple generations of Barons after all – Aideen could actually sympathize somewhat with him. He had never known another life, other than that of a street urchin struggling to survive from one day to another, so while he deserved punishment, she was not as inclined to give him a fate worse than death compared to some other people she had met in the past.

After all, there was a large difference between people who did horrible things while fully aware of it yet chose to do it anyway and people who never had an alternative but to do horrible things.

As such, she then asked the killer about the security of the Baron’s mansion, the schedule of the guards, and the likes. If the killer failed to return by the morning, it was likely that the Baron would be alarmed and become wary, so Aideen chose to act that very night instead. Meanwhile, Celia and Kino left the town quietly with the tied-up killer carried between them.