Explorer of Edregon

"How did my people solve crimes?" Alka repeated, turning to face him and giving her Slayer-trainees a very much needed break based on the thankful looks they were giving him as they doubled over and focused on catching their breath. It appeared as though she'd somehow managed to construct a rather intense looking obstacle course for them to run through, one complete with quite a surprising number of sharp objects they were expected to avoid. "I'd say poorly, seeing as none of them managed to figure out I'd been poisoned."

"Wasn't that because it was one of the nobles that poisoned you though?" Vin pushed, figuring her world had to have a regular police force for commoner-on-commoner crime. "Come on, I could really use a lead here if you have anything."

"I don't know what abilities the Guards had, but I imagine they had passives or skills they used for that sort of thing," Alka shrugged, whipping her head around a hundred and eighty degrees without warning and catching her trainees mid-flinch. "Did I say stop?! Keep running the course!"

"So no magic ways of telling how someone was killed, for example?" Vin asked, realizing Alka was probably not the first person he should have asked. If it didn't involve killing monsters, she generally didn't care much about it.

"Sorry Vin, can't help you," she said, rotating her head back to face him. "But if you figure out who killed your mystery person you're obviously trying not to tell me about, feel free to let me know if you need help taking them down."

"Someone was murdered?!" Shia asked, her eyes widening as she immediately read between the lines of Vin's question.

"Not officially," he hissed, glancing around to make sure nobody heard them.

Though he wasn't sure why he bothered.

He'd found Shia meditating out on the edge of the forest dungeon, obviously working on another spell. If it was anyone else, he would have warned them that distracting themselves like that right next to a monster-spawning hotspot was probably a bad idea, but based on the scattered monster corpses around her and the blood dripping down Blossom's wooden fangs as the cat stood watch, Shia was probably doing just fine.

"So, someone was murdered… and Spur wants to figure out who did it without alerting anyone," Shia surmised, tapping her chin as she thought. "That's definitely going to be tricky."

"No kidding. Kinda why I was hoping you could help me out."

"Sorry, Vin, not to make the Sacred Forest sound like some perfect, crime-free paradise, but we didn't really have to worry about stuff like that," she shrugged. "There was definitely the occasional passion-fueled murder every few years, but all the culprits pretty much immediately turned themselves in to the Ancient Ones. The only one I can think of that didn't immediately come clean confessed without hesitation when one of the Ancient Ones arose from the forest floor and asked her if she was guilty."

"I guess you wouldn't need detectives when all it takes is your literal Gods asking who did it," Vin sighed, realizing Shia was a bust as well. He'd hoped she would have some sort of fancy nature magic that would help, but it seemed that wasn't the case.

"Honestly, I'm surprised you didn't start with Scule," Shia said. "I mean, he is our resident crime expert. Even if he tackles it from the opposite side."

"I thought about checking in with him first for that very reason," Vin admitted. "Except…"

"Divine magic," Scule answered bluntly, turning away from the alchemy lesson he was giving. Vin had been surprised to find Scule teaching not only Bill, the alchemist from wave 3, but a rather tall and heavily scarred man he'd never met before.

Right up until he'd realized it was just Theodore again.

"How was there any crime at all if your city was crawling with as many divine classes as you say?" Theodore asked curiously, finally ending his disguise skill after Vin realized it was him. "I wouldn't think many would risk doing anything untold when the Gods are always watching."

"You have to understand, the citadel is big," Scule tried to explain. "Sure, there were a few thousand divine classes. But there were over a hundred thousand regular people as well. Not to mention, we pretty much had an unending ocean of monsters attacking the walls over the last few years. Most of our divine classes were a bit busy trying to keep everyone alive. They didn't exactly have the time to run around solving every theft and random killing."

"But you just said the answer to solving a murder was divine magic," Vin countered. "So they had other ways as well?"

"No, that was pretty much it," Scule nodded after thinking for a moment. "My point is plenty of murders didn't get solved. You can believe anyone important that was killed received an investigation, like a family member of a divine classer or a respected member of the city, but for the rest of us chumps? If we were found dead in a ditch somewhere, they'd just chuck our bodies over the wall and be done with it."

"They tossed the corpses to the monsters?" Bill asked, giving Vin a nervous glance as he finally joined the conversation. "Isn't that a bit… sacrilegious?"

"Not really. My people don't think anything of bodies," Scule shrugged. "For us, it's the soul that's important. That's what flies off and joins your God when you die. The empty meat sack you leave behind is pretty much just junk, and the bodies would occasionally distract the monsters, giving our warriors on the wall a better shot at killing them."

Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

"What an interesting way of looking at death!" Theodore grinned, shooting Vin a curious look. "Dare I ask… what brought this about anyway? Is Spur hiding something from us?"

Realizing the Spy would almost certainly know exactly what was going on by the end of the day, Vin rolled his eyes.

"Enjoy your alchemy," he said, getting up and starting his search for his next target.

He had one last lead he needed to check in with before his search brought him out of camp.

Vin stared at Reginald, watching the rat squeak and squeak as he did his best to answer Vin's question. Occasionally, Reginald would gesture with his tail or rub his nose, and Vin couldn't tell if that was part of the explanation, or if he was just itching it. After almost thirty seconds of continuous squeaking, Reginald finally stopped, looking patiently up at him as if asking if he'd gotten all that. Sighing, Vin pulled out his journal and sat down, nodding at him to continue.

"Okay, one more time, but slower, if you would."

Vin hesitated as he stood before the dungeon corridor leading back to the Underside. After how he and Lumel had parted ways last night, he really didn't want to show up asking about best practices for solving a murder. He still wasn't exactly sure what was going on between them, but even he was smart enough to know that was probably a topic to save for at least a second or third date.

However, they very well might have a serial killer running around on the loose, and he couldn't just sit back and wait for them to strike again.

Sighing, Vin clutched the to-go lunches he'd grabbed as he finally walked down the corridor. Hopefully, Lumel would forgive him for the strange choice in conversational topic when she caught sight of the sandwiches The Big Three had prepared for lunch that day.

Poking his head into the Underside, Vin couldn't help but smile as he spotted Lumel sitting ramrod straight on one of the stone chairs he'd left behind. Unlike her usual appearance when it was just the two of them, she had her hood fully up, concealing her face as he approached.

"Hiding from something?" he teased, causing her to jump slightly as she realized he was there.

"No… Just thinking," she said, reaching up and slowly lowering her hood as he came closer. Already, he could see the bright red splotches of blood shifting around her face as she blushed, and Vin smiled as he handed her one of the sandwiches.

"Here, you have got to try these things. The Big Three made them once before, and they are just fantastic."

"The Big Three?" Lumel asked, her confusion seeming to overpower her embarrassment for a moment.

"Ah, sorry. Apparently, that's the name our top three Chefs are going by now," Vin shrugged, digging into his sandwich and barely stifling a groan as the sauce and meat juices spilled out across his tongue. Whatever skills those Chefs had were absolutely amazing.

"Seriously? Our head chef called himself 'The Hidden Ruler,'" Lumel giggled, picking up her sandwich and taking a tentative bite, before quickly taking a much larger one as she dug in with relish. "Maybe Chefs are just weird across the board?"

"He was at least royalty though, right? You joked he was above you in line for succession at the very least."

"You remember that?" Lumel asked, clearly taken aback. "Yeah, he's actually my older cousin. Though like me, he had no interest in the goings-on within the palace, and pretty much abandoned his status to pursue his love of cooking."

Vin desperately wanted to ask about how on Earth cooking worked when you lived underwater, but he realized if he went down that rabbit hole, he'd probably end up asking Lumel about her world for the next few hours. And as much as he wanted to do just that, he had a mission to take care of.

"Lumel…" he started, seeing her flinch slightly at his gentle tone and nearly choke on a too-big bite of her sandwich. "I know you and I have some stuff we need to talk about, I really do… But I actually need your help with something first. It's sort of time sensitive."

"Oh?" she asked, clearing her throat and giving him an apologetic smile. "What do you need?"

Vin quickly explained the situation to her, before asking the same question he'd asked all his friends.

"Did your world have any special ways of solving murders?"

Lumel tilted her head to the side slightly, giving him a curious look. "I mean, I don't know how your world solved them to know if you would consider mine special by any means. But the process was usually fairly simple. They normally just called for my mother and had her ask them."

"So your mother had some sort of truth magic she used to interrogate the suspects?" Vin asked.

"No," Lumel giggled. "My mother isn't really a people person. Doesn't play well with others and prefers to be alone whenever possible. But she doesn't mind talking to the dead."

Vin stared at the banished princess, his mind struggling to comprehend what she'd just dropped on him. As he tried to process that revelation, Lumel took another bite of her sandwich, watching him sputter.

"What?" He finally managed.

"I told you she was the court mage," Lumel explained as soon as she finished chewing. "She wasn't a purist like me; that's the term we call someone who only studies one magical affinity, and the category the vast majority of mages fall under. Though she wasn't quite as crazy as you are with all your different affinities. She was skilled enough to achieve a rather impressive mastery of both death and water magic, and one of the spells she knew was False Life. So long as the skull was relatively intact, she could temporarily revive even a severed head and ask it questions."

"That's so… I don't know, messed up?" Vin decided, wondering how he would feel about someone reanimating his head if he'd up and died. "And she what, just asked them what happened?"

"Pretty much," Lumel nodded. "I watched her do it a few times. It wasn't a flawless technique, because it was reliant on the victim actually seeing what killed them, but it worked more often than not. It is a pretty low level spell as well, tier 2 if I remember correctly, and one of the easier ones at that, according to my mother. I bet you could learn it if you wanted."

Vin stared at his hands, wondering if he was willing to learn something like that. He was a firm believer that no magic was inherently bad, so it wasn't that he had any sort of problem with learning death magic. But reanimating a dead person?

"Well if it's a tier 2, I guess I don't need to come to that decision until I learn the preceding spells," he sighed, looking at Lumel hopefully. "…I don't suppose you know the runic formations for the spells, would you?"

"Sorry, I'm a dimensional one-trick girl through and through," Lumel smiled apologetically. "Though I'm pretty sure I know where you can find them…"