ITS NOT DEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAD!
Chapter 2: Tales Told in Blood
The two red orbs that were once the eyes of the emotionless homunculus were barely discernable through the sheer amount of blood that clotted on the face of the corpse. It made it only more revolting to look at. How something could have such dead and dull eyes while its mouth was open in what would likely be a scream was something Caules could only attribute to the mind of the alchemist that made them.
It had been a less than pleasant experience to be awoken early in the morning by the sounds of frantic knocking against his door, only to find his sister, utterly panicked in a way he had rarely seen her before, telling him to come to her room immediately.
Needless to say, the sight that had greeted Caules when he arrived at her quarters told him that -- without a doubt -- he was the only one that Fiore could trust with this.
He’d been lucky to not have eaten breakfast yet, or otherwise it might’ve joined the red mess that covered the room. Even now, he felt gastric fluids claw at the back of his throat, threatening to flood out if he let his guard down against them.
The first thing a Magus must do is accept to live among death, but even for that kind of person no one with their sanity intact would find the sight before them anything less than disgusting, boundary breaking on every level. The mere thought that anyone outside of fiction would utterly mangle someone else so badly consumed him, threatened to push the bile in his throat upwards and outwards to add to the bloody mess--
No, he had to keep calm. If not for himself then at least for Fiore, who had been averting her eyes very deliberately from the moment they entered the room again. There was no way he could blame her for something like that. If it wasn’t to help her, he wouldn’t lay an eye on something like this himself.
“You,” Caules started, “You found it, just like this, right? Door locked and everything?”
“Y-yes. I haven’t touched it, and the door was definitely locked.”
Caules frowned at that. He looked to the body once more and paled at the sight of it. He gulped down his anxiety and disgust as best as he could. He couldn’t trust anyone else to do this. It would be the way it had always been, the two of them looking out for each other. He would not allow her fate to be in anyone else’s hands but his own. He’d have to do it, simply because he would allow no one else to.
“I-I think I can do this, yeah,” Caules spoke as much to himself as to Fiore. “Sis, do you, uh, what do you want to do?”
“I should go,” was all Fiore had to say, at an almost panicked speed, like she had decided upon those words minutes ago. “I can’t be in the same room as t-that any longer.”
“I… understand. I’ll come talk to you when I’m done.”
As soon as he had confirmed that she had left, Caules pushed his spectacles up the bridge of his nose, rolled his sleeves up his arms, and went to work, taking deep breaths through his mouth to avoid the rank scent of the dead.
Where to start, though? he silently asked himself, stepping around a puddle of blood as he approached the ravaged thing that could generously be called a carcass. Right now he wished more than ever before that his Residual Thoughts Playback worked, but here neither the victim nor the murderer seemed to have left any particularly strong memories behind.
“Analyze the basics of the situation before anything else. Once you’ve done that much, you can find heads and tails of this much faster.” A voice that Caules recognized at once spoke up from behind him.
“Archer.” Caules was surprised, but not startled by the Servant’s sudden appearance. “Finally decided to show up?”
“Please don’t imply I’m not taking this seriously. Fiore did not contact me about this before just now. Were it not for my duty aiding in the composition of Lancer’s stratagems I would’ve been here and made sure this did not happen to begin with.” Archer’s response was composed and completely free of hostility, simply ignoring the playful tone that he reasoned Caules used to calm himself more than to actually chew out the diligent bowman.
Just now, huh. He thought this would’ve been their little secret, but there really wasn’t a reason to try and keep the sharp-minded Servant in the dark. If anything, his presence alone was an asset that would aid in unraveling this grotesque mystery, to say nothing of the keen eye Archers were rumoured to possess, or the wisdom this particular one was famous for.
“Alright,” Caules replied, as he once more resumed his attempt to decipher the corpse’s final moments. “What do you make of this entire situation, then?”
“I have only just arrived, I know about as much as you do. Though for starters, you should have a look at the wounds.”
Careful not to disturb the corpse too much, Caules got close enough that every detail of the damage was clear to him. Bile rose in his throat again but he bit through it.
Multiple small cuts across the arms, torso and shoulders, deep enough to be caused with a knife, but more likely, fingernails of...moderate? length was much more likely due to the sheer number and their relative position to each other.
The tenseness of the shoulders implied a struggle, or at least an attempt at resistance. Given that a household homunculus would probably have been far more aggressive towards an intruder than simply trying to escape the attacker’s grasp, it’s likely that the murderer wasn’t noticed until it already had the homunculus at his mercy.
No, wait, that wouldn’t be possible given the location of the murder. Given the scattering of blood everywhere it’s undeniable that this was the place where the murder took place, but a homunculus has no reason to enter a Scion’s room in the dark of the night. For whatever convoluted reason, the murderer must somehow have gained the trust of the homunculus, or perhaps captured it, entered the room and then killed it there.
The question now was who could have been responsible. It should be nearly impossible for an intruder to even get this far into the Fortress unnoticed, which would imply it was someone on the inside. But even if the door was wide open, not even Celenike, the most gore-obsessed and horrid member of the clan he knew of, and his first guess as the most likely culprit of the incident, would have a reason to do something like this.
Why? Why here? Caules just couldn’t piece this puzzle together. He looked to Archer, and the Servant smiled assuringly, reliably, despite the gruesome situation. “Have you something to say, Caules? Or would you rather ask something instead?”
“I don’t need to be told how it died. That’s crystal clear,” Caules replied with a modicum of confidence. “What I don’t understand, which I’m hoping you could spell out, is the motivation needed to do something like this.”
“I empathize with the desire to understand,” the sage replied, “but is that the part of the mystery you should be so focused on?”
Caules had to think on that for a moment. Just for a moment, and then he turned to again regard the Servant. “Archer, have you ever heard of the ‘locked room scenario?’ It’s a common occurrence in mystery novels. From a conventional viewpoint no one can get in or out of the site of the murder, yet there’s still a victim and a culprit to be found. That staple is considered to be one of the ultimate challenges for a detective.
“That scenario is utterly trite for a Magus. We break our own locks and make our own keys. We don’t even need to be physically near someone to kill them. A Magus culprit’s involvement would very easily make it a cold case for even Poirot, Marple, or Holmes. A properly-equipped Magus who aims to solve a killing would have just as many tools that would make it seem like child’s play.
“The who and the hows, they’re gimmes, Archer. Why someone would do this is the real question.”
“Is this not a part of the philosophy followed by magi?” Archer asked in a tone that was more rhetorical than quizzical as he gestured to the state of the corpse Caules was attempting to go over.
It was such a professorial thing to do.
“I know, I know!” Caules tried to shake his head. He also tried to nod it at the same time. His tumult would have been plain to anyone, much less Archer. “Risk and reward, if it’s worth dying for it’s worth living for, I get that. I know how Sis lives. Things happen for reasons, good or bad.”
“You speak of ‘knowing thy enemy,’ as the adage goes.” Archer replied.
“I guess I am.”
“Well said, then. It is a basic, essential stratagem, key to the formulation of much potential planning.”
“So I’m not too much of a simpleton for trying to figure out a thing like that?”
“Not at all,” Archer replied. “Now then, continue to lead the way, Caules -- let us find out as much about our killer as we can.”
‘This can’t be happening.’ Disbelief was still heavy on Fiore’s mind, and the only thing equal to it was the relief of being away from the horrible sight.
‘This is a bad dream.’ She wished that to be true oh so much, but no dream ever felt this real. How the blood had splattered everywhere in more exquisite detail than her dreaming mind could’ve detailed, and how the blissful illusion of relief from conquering her illness was instantly replaced with fear and disgust at the opening of but a door -- no dream was ever so cruel.
But the true source of her disbelief, the very thing that still had her fingers shaking as she slowly retreated towards the dining hall was not the corpse, but the implication that came with it.
Someone had been in her room, with murderous intent. At any time, they could’ve ended her life, which seemed more fragile than ever before.
A Magus walks with death their whole life. That she had been told, and had lived by. But now that death’s cold touch seemed to have faintly skimmed her neck, it felt unfamiliar beyond belief. The entire philosophy of her craft shattered in an instant.
It was as if something had been let into her mind. Something that caused it to destabilize horribly. It was fear, it was doubt, it was many things, but none of them all the same. Something completely unfamiliar, alien even.
That something had crawled its way into her mind, nested within, and refused to leave. Its presence weighed her soul down. It made her arms heavy as lead, made her wheelchair plod along glacially through the castle’s halls.
Fiore hated that feeling.
“What are you thinking?! Are you trying to break my toes?!”
Fiore had little time to properly direct self-loathing to her helplessness any longer. Not when an angered Celenike suddenly was in front of her, glaring at her menacingly. She hadn’t even felt their collision.
“Look where you’re going, girl! Otherwise it’s your arms that are next, you hear?”
“I’m so sorry!” Fiore finally managed to sputter out. But it was too little, too late.
“Must I spell it out to you? Get out of my way, you slag!”
Fiore frantically backpedaled away as quickly as she could from the venomous woman. “I’m really sorry!” She prostrated when she thought she had reached a safe enough distance.
“Just watch yourself, you sickly thing.” Celenike replied, her venom now diluted, but still foul. “Thinks she can miss out on an important meeting and then the rest of the world no longer matters to her.”
“I did not intend anything of that sort,” Fiore protested, “I was… simply not feeling well.”, but it sounded as hollow to her as it surely must have to Celenike the moment it left her.
“Oh, you were not feeling well? Of course you weren’t. You crippled wretch, we’re in the middle of a war! The most important event to occur in our lives is happening as we speak, and you were worried about a cold? Do the lives of everyone under this roof mean so little to you, huh?!” The intimidating glare from the witch made Fiore sink even deeper into her chair.
She couldn’t protest. Celenike was completely in the right. She’d skipped out on something so important without even informing Grandfather, surely causing Archer humiliation in having to report on her behalf. She had not even thought to ask him of the details. Being talked down to by an individual so grotesque as this woman made her want to shout in protest, but not one coherency assembled in her mind.
“I…I’m sorry.”
“Is all you can do apologize and excuse yourself?! How did such a pathetic wretch ever become the Master of a Knight Class, much less the heir of Yggdmillennia? You ought to know your place!” With a barrage of insults, Celenike raised her baton, and Fiore winced in panic as she was about to bring it across her face, closing her eyes. Fiore nearly whimpered at the anticipated impact, trying to helplessly bring up her arms to defend her face.
“Celenike.”
A voice as cold as the ninth circle of Hell echoed against the fine masonry of the walls, and the sound of wood being swung through the air halted, the only sound in the room coming from Celenike gasping in surprise.
Fiore recognized that voice, of course she did. No man in this entire fortress save its new lord spoke with such an authority, and she saw exactly what had happened when she forced her eyes open, still holding up her forearms over her head.
Just to the left of her and Celenike stood her Grandfather Darnic, his hand-carved black cane of obsidian-colored wood held out between them like a scepter of regality. Celenike looked as if she was about to leap out of her own skin in fright. Darnic’s neutral yet dour expression betrayed no anger, and yet when he locked eyes with the witch of Icecolle, Fiore had nearly expected to see her drop dead. If looks could kill, Rider’s Master would already be in bloody red chunks on the floor.
“You are going to walk away and do whatever you were about to do now, without a word, and if you never bother my heir again, I will mercifully pretend this never happened.”
Like a single wrong motion could have her skull caved in by his cane, Celenike slowly nodded her head, gulping once, her face full of the fear of imminent death.
“Good. Now get out of my sight.”
As soon as he was done talking, the woman slowly stepped backwards, once, twice, before breaking into a run, a run like it was for her life, like Darnic had a spear pressed against her spine and would run it through her at any moment.
Knowing his Servant, that was certainly a possibility, but in this case the spear was merely his hawk-like gaze, following her until she rounded a corner.
“Sometimes I wonder why I ever let that woman become a Master. Did she hurt you, Fiore?” Though his features had relaxed, and his voice softened, the commanding air never disappeared around Darnic, even at his most tender. He was a born speaker, and had he not been a Magus, he would’ve certainly been a most influential politician.
“Insults to my person aside, I’m fine.” Wearing a mask of confidence in the face of berating insults wasn’t her strong suit, but when it came to appearing strong in her Grandfather’s presence, where a single wrong word might mean the ruination of her entire family’s history, she was far more vigilant.
“I see. And since you are fine, should I assume you were fine yesterday too, and merely skipped out on our strategy meeting out of leisure?”
Her blood ran cold. He had cut straight to the heart of the matter.
“I-It is not like that, Grandfather.” Fiore started to explain. She silently prayed that her words would be enough. “Please believe me when I say that I was sick yesterday, but that I have now overcome my illness, whatever it may have been, and woke up feeling fine this morning.”
“Ah, so you were conveniently ill, despite your otherwise perfect health, your legs aside, on the one day it was imperative for you not to?”
Of course, it sounded as unconvincing to her ears as it did his. It was an excuse like that of a student who was skipping a boring class, no doubt one Darnic had heard many times as a Clock Tower lector, taking his reputation as an disliked teacher into account. Truthfully, he was even in the right of suspecting her, but he couldn’t, not yet, be informed of what had went on.
“It… is as you say. If you find reason to distrust me, Caules can vouch that I was feeling out of it yesterday.” She felt like she was at the bottom of a well, no, at the bottom of existence itself, a worm begging for its life before Darnic brought his polished shoe down on it.
Darnic stared down at her trembling eyes for a few moments, assessing the currently non-existent worth of her life. Finally, he clicked his tongue and held his forehead in one hand, an action rife with borderline dramatic flair.
“Very well, I will let it slide this time, on the condition that you immediately after breakfast go get yesterday’s meeting summarized by Archer. You are not to do anything else, unless an emergency comes up, is that clear?” And like that, the worm beneath his shoe had been spared simply because he would need to clean it off afterwards.
“Absolutely, Grandfather, I understand.” She finally averted her eyes from his snake-like face, a gesture of submission.
“Do not disappoint me.” His cane clacked against the floor once, twice, many times, as he walked away, down the long corridor, in the direction of his office.
As soon as he was no longer fixated on her, Fiore breathed out the air trapped in her lungs, sighing in relief, before she went to the cafeteria, the hunger that had been suppressed by fear finally making itself known. She felt a headache begin boring itself into her skull as she found a place at one of the tables.
Hopefully this breakfast would be worth all of this stress.
“Let me run through this again.” Caules said. “The killing took place in Sis’ quarters. That is irrefutable. All evidence points to it. There is no way that it didn’t die here.”
“That has already been established,” Archer replied, more affirmatively than berating towards Caules’ observation.
“Anyway, the door was locked, that’s what Sis told me, and I’ll trust her. She wasn’t the one to open it up.”
“Then whom do you think is the most likely to have committed this murder?”
“It…” Caules started, his words trying to sync up with his thoughts. He tried to make sense of it all, and once he made the connections in his mind he went to give Archer his answer. “It has to be the Red’s Assassin. That bastard must’ve snuck in, and the only evidence to suggest that he was even here is this corpse in front of us!”
“Really, now?” Archer asked.
“Our enemy must have done it, somehow. Assassin can sneak past any security like it’s child’s play, and we’re none the wiser for his wanderings.”
“Even with the passcodes in place?”
“I said ‘somehow!’ I don’t know the enemy Assassin’s skills. He could flat out walk through walls for all we know. I can only guess, but he can’t be discounted yet.”
“So you think that Assassin, the class most suited for killing Masters, was able to successfully penetrate the castle’s defenses, a headquarters where the Masters of Yggdmillennia’s are present, and--did not kill any Masters.” Archer said, matter of factly. The Servant did not review the theory with any particular inflections. He spoke it as-is. The lack of an inflection was an inflection in of itself.
--Caules had suggested an idea, and Archer made to casually deflect it.
“Archer?” he asked his sister’s Servant.
“--It’s a possibility.” The wise man merely replied.
‘It’s a possibility,’ meaning that it is nothing BUT a possibility.
“Fear and discord are tactics that an Assassin can use, right?” Caules interjected. “To show us Blacks that the Reds can expose any of our vulnerabilities at the drop of a hat, a gesture to show that we’re still bugs under their thumb!”
“If they were in a position to strike at us, and there was a Servant most qualified to do so, would they have not indeed done so had the opportunity presented itself? That is the way of Magi and of war, and when the two are met that is the way strategy will go. To slay a mere servant in the drawing room of a Master, when the Master is only a single unlocked door away, the probability of a miss like that is that is astronomical, or fully intentional, as you say.”
“I’m saying that it was intentional!” Caules aggressively agreed with the secondary point Archer brought up, the one he had a feeling that he only humored for Caules’ sake. “Maybe Assassin had no idea that Sis was a Master, since you were nowhere nearby. Or maybe it’s like this, that real life’s not a game of chess! Everyone means to make the best possible moves that they can, to achieve the goal of victory over their enemies, but anomalies happen! Maybe the Servant has twisted tastes, or the Master is the twisted one, or their goal wasn’t assassination in the first place, or their mission was compromised and a server had to die, or something else!”
“I see, Caules.” Archer answered, with a hand to his chin as he stared intently at the body. “It’s a possibility.”
‘It’s a possibility.’
Though he didn’t want Fiore’s Archer to see, Caules scowled.
“I do not intend to utterly discredit your idea, for there is much we do not understand about this atrocity. What I suggest is that you keep an open mind until the truth has been pieced together.”
There was no love lost between Caules and any of the other members of the organization, save for his sister, nor was his heart fully into the ideal shared by the coven of Magi he was a part of only in name. That didn’t mean that he wanted to distrust any of his fellows, for the stifling weight of the Clock Tower’s venerable traditions, a tree that grew tall and thick, whose roots ran deep, but it was so solid that it was inflexible. Yggdmillennia was a tree of its own, but it grew differently. It grew fast and fat even in the shadow of that bigger tree, like a weed after a rainstorm, seizing upon opportunity as it presented itself. Its roots went wide as opposed to deep. Give it time, sap away from its progenitor, and it would grow to the same heights, and with the spread of its branches the latter tree would choke out the former; if paradigms were to shift within western Magus society, they would be at the helm. But, that would only be if they could maintain their semblance of unification.
Again, Caules cared little for the politics. But, he was in this with Fiore, so his interests were at least superficially inclined to be in favor of Yggdmillenia’s so long as she was a part of it. It’d be for the best if they all got along on the surface. To do otherwise, that wasn’t a healthy thing beneficial to his survival. Archer’s inference brought unhealthy fears to the fore of his mind.
Keep an open mind? What that meant, when contextualized against his idea about a foe from the outside?
The answer was obvious, clear and present.
There was a body. The body was found in Fiore’s room. The room was locked, with no way in and no weapon at the crime scene. ...is what the classic scenario would be, but with Servants in tow this locked room case was no locked room at all. Of course there would be no weapon to be found at the crime scene, all Servants had their weapons at their beck and call. Of course the murder weapon was the Servant itself.
Caules heard Archer’s imagined voice in his head say once more ‘That has already been established.’
He knew that as much as the wise man did! He didn’t need him, the real-life version or the fantasized one, telling him that. There, in Fiore’s room, just a homunculus was killed. A mere homunculus. If the culprit were the enemy Assassin then it had seriously missed out on taking out a prime Yggdmillennia target.
That is, unless the threat had come from within Yggdmillennia itself.
Fiore had summoned her Servant alongside the rest of them. She was the heir-apparent, that much was to be expected. Naturally, she was also expected to be quite the asset to their cause.
Yet, circumstances beyond her control had kept her from being involved with the rest of the Black team. Darnic’s chosen one, the girl who was guaranteed to be an asset, had not been there for them. Despite her disability, her strength as a Magus was undeniable.
Yet, when it was their moment to be together as a group, weakness had overtaken her.
Which one of Yggdmillennia’s numerous members could’ve taken exception to this? Who had interpreted the message as a symbolic gesture, and answered it with one of their own? Who had taken a homunculus, something strong yet weak in its own ways, and brutally taken it apart in Fiore’s room as if it were meant to be a horse’s head left in her bed? Who wanted her to step up, lest she be stripped of all her strength, and it allocated to someone perceived to be more worthy?
“Archer.” Caules spoke up.
“Yes, Caules?”
“...I think someone amongst us in this castle has their eyes set on my sister.”
“--I won’t deny that it is a haunting possibility.”
A/N (Christemo): I'd like to end this on a note to say that we're both really sorry for the delay. Initially it was just a exam/end-of-school-year stuff that had us lacking the time, but as it turns out it's even more difficult to coordinate for us during the summer than it is during our normal schedules. Do keep in mind that I and IRUn live 9 timezones apart, so it can be quite a challenge. Anyways, we both hope you enjoyed the new chapter! Tell us if we missed any errors!
Originally Posted by Christemo
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