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Chapter 196: A Gathering of Crows
🕑 Added 2025-02-10 12:00:19 +0000 UTCCN: Description of Harm to Animals, Death
Theora’s first thought upon hearing Fentanyle died was, ‘No she hasn’t.’ Nobody had died on the train. Theora wanted to give Omi that assurance, but Omi was already hurling herself toward the teleporter.
Theora rushed after. Others followed. Within moments, Omi entered the Lavish — the door stood wide open and led straight into a meadow.
It was littered with dead crows.
Omi dashed up the slope, half jumping into flight, until she reached the precipice. Theora got there a second later. They’d reached a cliff overseeing a massive, mountainous forest.
Inside that area were the remains of a giantess amidst clouds of crimson.
Though, ‘giantess’ didn’t quite do Fentanyle justice. She wasn’t the size of a dinosaur or a whale or a building. Her size was geographic. She stretched as far as the eye could see. No wonder she’d exerted such a presence; no wonder she’d seemed so far away. The train must have shrunk her down for her to fit.
That overwhelming presence of hers was gone now.
Theora frowned. How did that happen? Fentanyle had appeared completely fine the day before. Now, she lay there unmoving.
Omi ran to the first lifeless crow she could see; lying there in the grass, its feathers strewn about. She gently rocked it. Then Omi jumped up again to dart to the next, and the next; gently rocking each and every one to see if one of them would wake. Finally, a hand softly grasped her underarm, stopping her. Omi stared up and found Raquina.
Raquina’s voice rang out against the wind of the meadow. “I’ll call for Montaparte.” The breeze tousled her hair and played with her dress but she appeared serious. She pushed a strand from her face, clearing her throat. “I’ll get the doctor too. Don’t mess up the scene. You might make it difficult for them to figure out what happened.”
And so, amidst Omiaradne’s sobs, the people Theora understood to be the trains’ resident physician Dr. Alp, as well as a passenger called Montaparte whose specialty was the solving of riddles and problems, proceeded to conduct an investigation, while Dema went to try and console Omi.
Montaparte was a dark-skinned, black-haired woman of about thirty years with a deeply purple puffy dress. She carried a matching magical umbrella — its underside offered a glittering look at nightly stars. She held herself with grace but appeared somewhat clumsy, letting out little ohs and ahs as she stumbled across the grass, inspecting the scene very closely through her monocle.
Montaparte occasionally exchanged a few words with the doctor, who was a bulky figure wearing a practical coat; it offered lots of room to store magitek devices which he made use of aplenty in his investigation of both the crows on the ground as well as the body in the distance. He had several types of glasses that offered him access to diverse ranges of magical filters, and at some point Ulber came in with a little vehicle that was capable of flight, to let them go inspect the body up-close. Theora watched in misplaced envy as they hovered to the horizon.
“Not how I expected this morning to go,” Treeka mumbled.
Theora had completely forgotten she was holding her. She wasn’t sure what to say. All she knew was that her thoughts didn’t correspond to the reality she was seeing. As empty as her head was, she still had hope. Still hope that this was all wrong, and that the investigation would reveal a certain truth; the only one Theora would be willing to accept.
Because of Fentanyle’s size, the inspection took about two hours. Two hours during which Theora simply stood and stared, trying to sort her nonsensical thoughts. The Lavish was now filled with more but different people. Omi was nowhere to be seen, and Dema had disappeared as well. Instead, Qyy had joined as an onlooker, as had Ulber and the young man she’d talked to in the diner.
Theora’s heart pounded when Montaparte and the doctor finally returned.
“We managed to narrow down the time of death to this morning at around 3:00,” Montaparte announced, her words giving Theora a cold shower. “I will be conducting interviews with all passengers, if you don’t mind, to help us piece back together how this event came to pass.”
“Wait, what?” Theora frowned so deep it almost hurt. “How?”
Montaparte adjusted her monocle. “What do you mean, how?”
Theora gestured to the mountain of a person laying at the horizon. “You’re saying the body is real?”
Montaparte flinched slightly in surprise. “You thought it wouldn’t be? That’s a curious assumption to start with. Sadly, yes, it is.”
Theora couldn’t help that suspicion of hers. She pushed it away. “An accident?” she asked.
Montaparte turned the umbrella in her hand, then looked over to Dr. Alp.
He sighed. “Physical examination of the body revealed a number of traumata — contusions, bruising, bite wounds, among others. However… well. The most salient piece of evidence seems to be that the heart of the main body suddenly stopped beating. That could have different causes, but…”
“But?”
Dr. Alp pinched his right hand with his other thumb and index finger, massaging it. “As the resident physician, I receive access to the entirety of all the patient’s ability sheets, and all data we have on them, to ensure their safety on the train. In short, it is my responsibility that something like this” — he gestured to a dead crow — “never happens. And Fentanyle? Let’s just say, she was probably our most resilient passenger. She was a Pillar of Reality, if you know the term.”
Montaparte nodded. “If you’d be so inclined to share it, I would like a glance at the sheet as well. However, I would like to agree. A heart stopping doesn’t mean immediate death. Fentanyle could have gone for help. Could have rang the alarms. But didn’t.”
“It must have been an accident,” Theora murmured. “But even then…”
Dr. Alp and Montaparte shared a glance. “What has you so sure?”
“Well…” Theora had difficulty expressing herself. All she knew was that something felt off. “If a person had died on the train, like you said… wouldn’t someone have noticed?”
“We did notice,” the detective deadpanned, and gestured to the body.
Theora sighed. “That’s not what I meant.”
Montaparte raised an eyebrow. “What did you mean?”
“I mean that nobody died on the train tonight,” Theora said, trying to word it calmly as frustration slowly built in her chest.
“Clearly someone did. What are you trying to tell us?”
“I’m saying nobody died.”
In a matter-of-fact, non-violent gesture, Montaparte pushed her umbrella into the soil to pace forward. “But there are traces of foreign magical interference inside her body.” She waved to Fentanyle. “A body which no longer lives.”
“But maybe the body was artificially created?” Theora ventured. “Didn’t Omi say the Lavish may just be a representation of what it shows? Maybe this is an illusion.”
Montaparte and Dr. Alp exchanged another glance, one that did not seem to speak in Theora’s favour. Still, Montaparte sighed. “Sure. We can test again for illusion magic and construction, maybe even divination. You want us to redo our investigation with the assumption that the body is fake?”
Theora nodded. “It is fake.”
And so, they redid their investigation, meticulously detailing the procedures to Theora. About halfway through, they added Qyy, whose archive provided various pathways on how to hypothetically create fake bodies and unveil them. Montaparte had taken on a gentler tone by then, almost pitying.
She seemed to be trying to help Theora out of her stage of denial.
And so they conducted tests on the integrity of the Lavish. Investigated if the smallest particles in the area were properly discrete, and evenly sized, to exclude this being a simulation. They checked for signs of illusion magic. They compared the body’s signature hash to her magical creations left on the train.
The conclusions after their meticulous work—
This was a dead body.
This was Fentanyle.
This was reality.
Dr. Alp even went as far as to outline the process to Theora: “Magic is fleeting and doesn’t leave many traces in the world; it will be reintegrated to the flow of reality fairly quickly. Except for a special set of circumstances. Specifically, when magic is used in a place it’s not supposed to be used. One such case is inside the body of another person. Bodies have special defences that make it hard to use foreign magic inside them. Say, for example, if you can manipulate blood, like your friend can—”
“Girlfriend,” Theora supplied.
“… Right. But it doesn’t necessarily allow her to control the movements of other people, even if they are filled with blood. That’s, of course, disregarding the fact that Dema might be powerful enough to do so anyway if she so chose. What I’m saying is, it’s more challenging — and doing so would leave residue from the violation of bodily autonomy. And now… if you look closely at this body, you will see exactly that. Residue.”
He offered Theora a looking-glass. It revealed clouds of otherworldly bright purple around Fentanyle’s heart, and nowhere else.
“But does this necessarily mean harm was committed?” Theora asked. “Say, if someone tried to reanimate—”
“Yes, yes. I know. Any magical interference will leave this type of residue. But let me assure you that this layout looks a lot more like malicious interference than help. This is a single precision strike. Meaning whatever it meant to accomplish, it seemed to have satisfied the caster. Does this result look more to you like it meant to heal or to kill?”
Theora let out a sigh.
“In other words, the facts are clear,” Monataparte stated when Theora had run out of things to test for; when Theora herself had to conclude that there was no wiggle room left. Montaparte gave her a solemn look. “When you have excluded the improbable, whatever remains — however unhappy it makes us — is the likely. So, what now? Between our options, only one is reasonable.” She gestured over the dead crows littering the ground. “All things considered, this appears to be a murder.”
Silence ensued, with Dr. Alp biting his tongue.
After giving them a moment, Monataparte continued: “So what we need to figure out now is the why. Why did a killing happen? Who benefited from it? Who had the opportunity? Who had the means? That, I will find out.”
Theora fidgeted with her thumb against her index finger. She glanced at Fentanyle — this was, from Montaparte’s and Dr. Alp’s position, undoubtedly a dead, murdered person. But…
Theora gazed into the sky.
‘I need your help,’ she thought at it.
“You already know the answer,” Head in the Clouds supplied.
‘But that answer is…’
“Correct.”
Theora stared back into the grass, finding a dead crow. It wasn’t that she didn’t trust the doctor’s and Montaparte’s judgment — their conclusions were beyond reproach. This was reality.
That said… Theora was doing well now. She’d made plenty of mistakes in her life, but none of them compared to this. Her errors stemmed from lack of sleep, from irritation, from doubt. But she’d solved many of her personal problems lately, had a much clearer head. Thus, there was no doubt in Theora’s mind: if someone had been in such grave danger the preceding night, she would have noticed. She would have woken up. A task like saving someone else’s life, Theora would have never failed.
But the detective and the doctor did have an actual body to show for their claims. There was a death Theora would have prevented. There was a body Theora would have saved. Opposing truths were clashing. Two realities overlapping. Both real, both irrefutable. It did not make any sense — and yet the situation rang vaguely familiar.
So, what now? Either Theora had made a mistake, or, somehow, reality had split in two overnight. Between these options, only one was reasonable.
But that opened up another question.
What had caused reality to split?
Comments
Vorpal Corporal
Only Theora could think "reality splitting" lol
