It flows really well. The contrast between magus and mundane also helps both sides look even better.
It flows really well. The contrast between magus and mundane also helps both sides look even better.
That contrast is one of the most interesting thing when planning out the story. It's fun to plan an investigation from two vastly different angles.
Ragnarok, come day of wrath
That fallen souls might bear our plea.
To hasten the Divine's return.
O piteous Wanderer.
Another good chapter.
The hardest part of these mystery stories is being able to piece together the entire mystery as the author. A lot of people just come up with a few parts of the crime and wing the rest and end up painting themselves into a corner, or get writer's block.
He never sleeps. He never dies.
Battle doesn't need a purpose; the battle is its own purpose. You don't ask why a plague spreads or a field burns. Don't ask why I fight.
Haha, motive, method, all those things were already fixed. The mystery part of the story is at no risk of making me drop it.
I would be genuinely impressed if anyone managed to figure out what's going on before the story spells it out though. It should be possible to do, if unlikely.
Ragnarok, come day of wrath
That fallen souls might bear our plea.
To hasten the Divine's return.
O piteous Wanderer.
A magnificently devious ploy to make the world once and for all acknowledge the unbridled glory, magnificence and superiority of Gilgamesh, and how he's much better than that overwanked spiky-haired Faking scrub.
I got nothing.
Originally Posted by Arashi_Leonhart
Nah, no canonical Type-Moon characters involved (well, Leonard might name-drop a few famous magi I guess?). This is America, land of the OCs.
Last edited by Siriel; June 1st, 2014 at 12:21 AM.
Ragnarok, come day of wrath
That fallen souls might bear our plea.
To hasten the Divine's return.
O piteous Wanderer.
Jon is the culprit.
You read it first here.
No, no, the Butler did it.
It's fun to read too. I'm really enjoying this so far, and I'm liking the OCs. Subscribed, and looking forward to more.
- - - Updated - - -
So we're not getting any cameos from Strange Fake? 0/10 drop and derec.
But seriously, I'm normally wary of OCs, but you do yours nicely.
That was my first thought too, but it's too early.
He never sleeps. He never dies.
Battle doesn't need a purpose; the battle is its own purpose. You don't ask why a plague spreads or a field burns. Don't ask why I fight.
Jon's probably a magus, I'm thinking. Small time, so he can't do shit to help Douglas, but understands his plight.
For most of the district, the captain’s orders meant that they would have to go out in uniform and walk through the streets while trying to look intimidating.
For Douglas it meant that he had to go and find out what actually happened. Not that he couldn’t guess; someone had gotten a little too drunk, or maybe a little too drugged up, happened to come across someone they didn’t like and then things had gone to shit.
Normally that wouldn’t really warrant a show of force, not when there hadn’t been any serious crimes reported, but the mayor had been putting pressure on the police force for months now. It seemed that being the first popularly elected mayor of the last two generations was a bit stressful or something, and that meant that grunts like Douglas had to dirty their hands.
Well, to be honest it wouldn’t take that much effort. All he had to do was find where Murphy was, and odds were good he was at the same spot as always, and ask him. He’d even picked up a pack of smokes just for that purpose on his way from the station.
Murphy McManus –Douglas would bet his monthly salary that that was a fake name; the guy wasn’t even Irish. - was one of those ‘soft’ dealers, the kind that nobody would bother to mount an operation to catch. He didn’t sell to kids, didn’t aggressively go after his clients and didn’t sell the hard stuff. What he did sell, he didn’t keep on him.
So really there wasn’t much to build a case against, and nobody that would look too deeply into it when all they would get out of it was a twenty-something, slightly unwashed American.
As he expected, Murphy was the same street corner as always, right next to a convenience and just out of the way of the security camera. He was always there on Tuesday, like clockwork, and Douglas had never really figured out why considering it wasn’t exactly the best place to get clients.
Murphy had already spotted him by the time he was close enough to talk, a dirty hand holding a cigarette raised in greeting.
“Yo Doug, been a while.”
Of course, God forbid that the man greet him with complete sentences.
“How are you doing, Murphy?”
As he approached, he subtly breathed in to test the air. There was a hint alcohol, Murphy probably drank a bit more than adviseable last night, but that was his own problem. The smoke smelled too rough to be any of the local favourites, so it was probably just a normal, perfectly legal smoke.
That was good news. He more or less liked Murphy, but if the man thought that meant he could openly break the law, he would have been sorely mistaken.
“Not bad, not bad.” With an exaggerated nod that made him look stoned out of his mind, Murphy gave a teasing smile. “I’ve seen a lot of your blue buddies though. Something I should know about?”
A safe question to avoid letting it be known that he might have any information. It was kind of like a game, give-and-take.
“We heard there was a bit of roughhousing last night.” A bit of understatement, considering knives were involved. “The mayor is frying our asses to make things safe, so the captain unleashed the hounds.”
It was pretty insulting to call patrolmen dogs, but some sacrifices had to be made; derigatory comments made people like Murphy feel that there was a greater difference between inspectors like Douglas and the ‘ordinary’ cops.
“Really? That sucks for you, buddy.”
The fake empathy was touching really, just a year ago and Murphy wouldn’t have bothered with it.
“Yeah, well, you know how it is by now.” The sigh wasn’t entirely fake, he really hated politics. “If you know anything that could help, I might be able to convince the captain to relocate our efforts elsewhere.”
How much a small-time crook like Murphy knew about police ranks was anyone’s guess, and Douglas sure didn’t have that kind of influence. He knew for a fact that the captain couldn’t keep up this kind of pressure for more than a few days, and then the complaints would start coming in. If Murphy actually bought that Douglas had a hand in calling the patrolmen off, all the better.
“Sure I do.” Well, that was oddly direct. Murphy almost seemed eager to share. “It wasn’t the local boys that kicked things off this time, it was the fucking immigrants.”
Well, that explaiend why he was so open about it, but immigrants could cover a pretty big population in Portland.
“The Italians are muscling in on the neighborhood?”
He hadn’t heard about any rising gangs recently so he had to take a guess, if they were about to have a gang war on their hands…
“Nah, nothing like that.” He seemed almost amused now. “Those guys, I don’t know where they came from, but they were pretty whacked man. Just walking around and selling their nasty shit to anyone who walked up to them. Didn’t look like they knew the first thing about territory.”
“Then what makes you think they’re immigrants? Maybe they were just some stupid rich kids with a meth lab.”
It wouldn’t have been the first time that something like that happened.
“Because that shit they sold? It was nasty man. And I don’t mean the taste.” Lowering his voice, something he did instinctively whenever it came to details, Murphy leaned in closer. “A guy I know took a hit, he was curious you know? He’s still getting weird vibes.”
Was that really it?
“That’s above average, but it hasn’t even been twenty-four hours. I know your friends, Murphy, that could just be the alcohol.”
“No man, yesterday is just when they got kicked out. He tested that shit four days ago.”
Okay, that was pretty freaky. He wasn’t any sort of expert, but he’d never heard of a drug that still had effect after more than a day, let alone four.
Although considering Murphy’s friends, there was no guarantee the man hadn’t taken other things since. There was a reason he didn’t make a habit of hanging out with Murphy, after all.
“Yeah, I can see why they had to go.” Although he could say that about any dealer, Murphy included. “But about yesterday, mind telling me what happened exactly?”
The question seemed to shake Murphy out of his thoughts.
“Yes, well, it really wasn’t worth bringing out your buddies. Three of the whackjobs were walking around the street, about as subtle as my aunt’s snores, and a few of the local guys took offense. Things escalated and they ended up running off.”
Not enough details meant that something illegal had gone down, beyond the drug-selling. The ‘local guys’ had probably ended up resorting to weapons, hence the reports about knives. Murphy wasn’t thick-headed enough to cover up manslaughter though, so that was probably as far as it’d gone; a few indesirables sent to the hospitals.
Or more likely their buddies’ couches, but that wasn’t Douglas’ problem.
“Alright, thanks a lot Murphy.” Reaching into his pocket he tossed out the pack of smokes that the dealer caught with practiced fingers. No hesitation, no shaking, so Murphy definitely hadn’t been smoking his own medicine recently; good for him. “I’ll see what I can do about calling off the search.”
He was about leave, hopefully before the scent could get into his clothes, when an unusually worried tone stopped him.
“Hey man, you okay?” Murphy hadn’t reached out to him, but he’d definitely stepped a bit closer. “You’re always distant and I get that, our jobs are a bit incompatible, but today it’s like you’re going through the motions.”
He suspected some other motive for about a second, but no, there wasn’t anything that Murphy could get out of this. So he was genuinely worried, imagine that.
Should he share? The two of them weren’t exactly close or anything, but what the hell. It wasn’t like it was anything classified.
“I’m just worried a bit.” That kind of admission wouldn’t help his street cred any if anyone overheard, hopefully Murphy would know to shut up. “You heard about the murders?”
“Sure, who hasn’t?” His eyes widened slightly just after he finished the nonchalant answer. “Oh, I get it. You’re on the case, huh?”
“Yep. This could finally be it, my big chance. If I get this guy, they won’t be able to keep me down anymore.”
There weren’t that many psycho killers around. If he could catch this one, then it would finally push him high enough to get promoted off the streets. Off the streets and, if a man could dream, away from Conroy’s little game.
“You’d deserve it man.” A friendly slap on the back reminded him that Murphy wasn’t just a bad guy. “I don’t know that much about how things work inside the blue house, but you’re smarter than any other cop I know. If I hear anything about this, I’ll be in touch.”
The promise carried a lot of things, and Murphy probably wasn’t being entirely altruistic by making it.
Still, it brought a thin smile to his lips as the dealer walked away. Today really wasn’t a bad day at all, and maybe Jon had even found out something that would let them crack the case.
He snorted at the thought.
And while he was in dreamland, maybe Conroy had slipped in the shower and broken his neck. Wouldn’t that be nice?
Last edited by Siriel; June 2nd, 2014 at 11:58 PM.
Ragnarok, come day of wrath
That fallen souls might bear our plea.
To hasten the Divine's return.
O piteous Wanderer.
Nice update. Keep up the good work.
This is brilliant. I was initially going to peg down the mystery as being some sort of ancient magical conspiracy but now, it seems more in line of some magi trying to pull off a solo venture. Rogues from the Clock Tower perhaps?
His first order of business after he returned to consciousness had been to slowly, carefully stumble from his secret chamber to the dining room.
Projecting his consciousness into another’s was a task that only a genius could handle, but it came at a great cost. In fact if it weren’t for the special preparation that had gone into his ritualistic seat, he would most likely have died from bloodloss as a result of the sacrifice.
The prospect of brushing death simply to obtain information would have been a daunting thought to an ordinary person, but to Leonard Conroy it was something that barely deserved mention. That iron will, however, proved insufficient in shaking off physical exhaustion, which was why he made sure to have dinner prepared for when he emerged from his trance.
After having regained his energy, he could finally turn to analyzing what he had learnt from the experience. That was why he now found himself in his library.
As ordered, one of his servants had set documents aside on a table; the main sources that they had found that matched the symbols on the crest. Mindlessly searching through an entire library or worse, the internet, was a tiresome task best left to his inferiors.
The realization that the servant was nowhere to be seen brought a frown to his face. Having been robbed of free will, they should have stayed on the spot awaiting further orders, unless a biological imperative said otherwise.
He quickly found her hidden behind a row, sitting in a ball and crying.
“Is it that time already?”
Lifeless eyes looked up at him, and he couldn’t help but feel a pang of pity. This was the downside of long-term hypnosis; leaving the victim an empty shell that wouldn’t be able to act by themselves even if when it was over.
Of course, that was the reason why he used it sparingly on more useful individuals like the detective. A simple tool would quickly end up jobless after their complete lack of initiative was noticed.
“You poor thing, look into my eyes and remember that you have a purpose.”
Despite his already diminished reserves, he made certain to bind her completely this time and took a note to check the others soon; it would be dangerous if one of his attendants suddenly turned into a crying wreck in the middle of an important task.
Dismissing her with an order to go rest, he sat down at the table and began to inspect his notes. The first source of new information was of course his previous experience, which had given him three clues to narrow down the possible suspects.
- The symbol was meant to attract the attention of God.
- The killer, or killers, had most likely been forced away from their previous territory.
- Portland had been chosen because of the power of names.
Those three facts might have seemed useless to a lesser man in identifying the killer, but he could easily determine a series of facts from it.
First, as he had suspected, the killer wasn’t a traditional magus. While there were magi who still held on to the old rites and made offering to the gods, and there were families that had been converted to Christianism or had originally been Christians, there were none that he knew of who actively mixed the worship of one true God and ritual sacrifices. The Church had a tendency to frown on bloody sacrifices after all, and there was no recorded instance of a magus obtaining power from ‘God’ as a result of such.
A quick look through the notes gathered by his servant confirmed his suspicions. There were symbols of several sources, and not all of them had a known match. Judging from the presence of what appeared to be a representation of a pitchfork, it was likely that this was an older ritual, perhaps unique to the region from which the killer hailed, that had been warped when the natives had converted to Christianism. Assuming, of course, that the criminal was some sort of cultist and not simply a madman that had made it up himself.
It was the second clue that made him suspect that this wasn’t the work of some random madman. Being chased away implied a certain organization, an awareness that it was better to cut your losses. A lone madman sacrificing to his made-up vision of God wouldn’t have backed down, but rather become more and more violent as the community rejected his faith. The fact that they had successfully evaded the law in this modern age also indicated that they had at least some small talent.
The prospect of being chased away also meant that there had been a clash somewhere. Clashes left traces, even if the people doing the recording didn’t know the truth behind them. He would have to instruct his sources to look into past incidents that matched this one; the police had most likely already thought of it, so there was no point in looking through official records.
The third clue, which should have been the most telling, left him somewhat perplexed. The notion that names had powers wasn’t a new one, and even the most novice of magi knew that the image that they invoked was essential. The true purpose of an incantation was to put the magus in the right frame of mind, after all.
But even setting aside conventional magecraft, he couldn’t imagine why a name would lead someone to Portland, Maine. ‘Portland’ itself would indicate a location near water, but that hardly seemed to be a ritual-defining element, considering that the symbols that he could recognize on the crest carried no such implication. If the target hadn’t been the name of the town itself, then there was no point in further deliberation; it could be anything, and unless he located the killer first he wouldn’t be able to know what to look for.
However, the fact that a name had led them here was itself an important clue. The ritualistic murders weren’t meant as a simple claim of territory, nor were they random; there was a definite purpose behind them. A purpose that had been known to the culprits before they had even moved at that, which meant that it was a long-term plan.
With that realization, the fact that he had felt nothing at the scenes of the crime made more sense; the murders were simply early moves on the chessboards, meant to prepare for something greater.
A foreboding feeling grew in his heart and he smiled. There was still the possibility that he was overreacting and it was simply a particularly quirky killer, but his instincs said otherwise. Something big would happen soon in Portland.
In his city.
Did they think they could simply wander in and do as they pleased? He would have to disillusion them thoroughly once he found them.
Rising to his feet with determination, he paused as the room swirled in front of him and he stumbled from exhaustion.
He concluded with a depreciative smile that the ritual, followed by a thorough hypnosis, had taken more out of him than he’d thought. He should know better; this recent business wasn’t worth letting go of his self-restraint.
First he would sleep, and then he would contact the detective and his other sources to put things into motion.
Last edited by Siriel; June 3rd, 2014 at 06:33 PM.
Ragnarok, come day of wrath
That fallen souls might bear our plea.
To hasten the Divine's return.
O piteous Wanderer.
This guy's for real.
I'm liking this more and more. There isn't too much description, but just enough prose to put us in the right frame of mind and convey what the story needs to. I personally tend to overdo it, so I have a lot of respect for you for balancing things nicely.
Thanks. I'm often afraid I don't use enough prose, so that's good to hear.
Ragnarok, come day of wrath
That fallen souls might bear our plea.
To hasten the Divine's return.
O piteous Wanderer.
Is it bad if I prefer Doug over Leo?
Leonard mostly exists to let me pretend that this is a Type-Moon fic.
- - - Updated - - -
More seriously, I don't see how it could be bad that you prefer one character over the other. I'm always interested to hear what people have to think about my characters.
Last edited by Siriel; June 3rd, 2014 at 10:22 PM.
Ragnarok, come day of wrath
That fallen souls might bear our plea.
To hasten the Divine's return.
O piteous Wanderer.
Obigitory good update
Reply With Quote
