Chapter 130: An Absurd Deduction
"Our… our working theory," the forensic officer stammered, his voice thin and reedy in the oppressive silence, "is that the charring on these drowners is… consistent with the searing touch of Holy Light upon undead flesh."
The detectives converged, their boots squelching in the mud. He was right. Many of the bloated corpses bore the strange, contradictory wounds: flesh that was dripping wet, yet branded with deep, carbonised marks as if pressed by a white-hot iron.
One corpse was a particularly gruesome tableau. A perfect, boot-shaped scorch mark was branded into the center of its chest. It was as if its killer had stomped on it with a foot wreathed in divine fire.
"He's correct." Sebastian adjusted the knurled dial on his monocle, the lenses clicking softly. A faint, golden luminescence, invisible to the others, still clung to the edges of the wounds. "The power of the divine remains. But look closer at these cuts." He pointed to a series of deep gashes on another drowner.
"Damnation. Another complication," Officer Rothes growled, scrubbing a hand over his tired face. "Which church sends its holy men slumming? The Church of Hieronymus? The Order of Nodens? Perhaps one of the Lake Goddess's fanatics? This is a blasted mess." Dealing with the clergy was a bureaucratic nightmare on the best of days.
The detective with the handlebar mustache knelt for a closer look. "One can often identify an order by its choice of arms. But these wounds are… peculiar. They look as if they were made by a dagger, or a short blade."
"A very sharp one," the forensics man confirmed. "Approximately ten inches in length, based on the depth and shape of the incisions. It was sharp enough to sever bone. Is that significant?"
"Significant? It is absurd," the mustachioed detective scoffed. "Paladins and holy knights do not wield daggers. They consider them the tools of footpads and assassins. It is anathema to their code. They carry longswords, war hammers, flails… weapons of honour."
"Could our holy man have been caught unprepared?" another detective offered. "Forced to use a dinner knife, perhaps?"
"Never." The rebuttal came from Rothes, and it carried the weight of absolute authority. As a knight himself, he spoke with conviction. "A knight of any true standing would sooner fight with a broken table leg than a coward's blade. Besides," he gestured to the wounds, "look at them. That is no dinner knife."
He was right. Every man there, from the greenest peeler to the most seasoned detective, had seen enough violence to know the difference. The clean, efficient cuts spoke of a weapon designed for one purpose: killing. It was the kind of blade an assassin would favor, the kind they had pulled from the ribs of countless victims in the city's dark alleys.
A holy knight, wielding a murderer's weapon. The contradiction was jarring.
"Gentlemen, I believe you are looking through the wrong end of the telescope," Sebastian interjected, his voice calm amidst the growing confusion. "You assume a paladin from one of the city's established churches. What if our man belongs to a… less conventional flock? A heretical sect, perhaps."
"An underground church?" a constable asked, bewildered. "But what would a cultist be doing with the Holy Light?"
"That is the simplest part of the equation," Sebastian explained. "Think of the old gods. The mystery cults from Egypt, the followers of Ra. Their priests can call upon the sun's righteous fire, yet their rites are steeped in blood and sacrifice. The same is true of the Norsemen who still call upon Tyr. Their traditions are ancient, and they have not abandoned the sacrificial knife."
Ra, the Egyptian sun god. Tyr, the Norse god of justice and war. The older faiths, born in a more brutal age, still clung to their blood rituals. Their priests could indeed wield the Light, yet they would see no dishonor in carrying a ritual blade, perfect for slitting the throat of a sacrificial animal… or a man. The theory, as strange as it was, had a chilling logic to it.
"First a necromancer, now a mad cultist. Splendid." Rothes's mood soured further. "Why is it never a simple stabbing? If this were an orthodox priest, I could at least knock on the archbishop's door and demand answers. How in God's name am I supposed to find a phantom from a secret cult?"
"We will watch for any signs," the tall, thin detective assured him. "For now, the scene. Sir, what do you make of those?" He pointed towards a different cluster of bodies: desiccated, leathery husks and a few bare skeletons, picked clean of all flesh.
"We don't know," the forensics officer admitted, shaking his head. "They're not fresh, that much is certain. But as for what could do this… we are at a loss."
"More undead," Sebastian stated flatly, his monocle fixed on the remains. "The necromantic energies still cling to them, though faintly. They are puppets whose strings have been cut; the magic that animated them has been siphoned away."
"Crucial. That's a crucial piece of the puzzle." Rothes nodded, a flicker of something like triumph in his eyes. He was beginning to see a shape in the madness. "Mummified servants and skeletons… that is the hallmark of the Egyptian sorcerers, is it not? They have a passion for such things." He paced back and forth, connecting the threads. "So, our combatants: an Egyptian priest, a servant of Ra, most likely, and a necromancer. They came to blows, and these poor souls, and my peelers, were simply caught in the crossfire."
No one argued. It was a leap, a wild conjecture built on a mountain of horrors, but it was the only theory that fit all the grotesque pieces.
"It is not only the priests of Ra who wield the sun's power in Egypt," a more scholarly detective added quietly. "The followers of Horus and Amun also lay claim to the solar domain. They are all masters of Holy Light and ancient, formidable curses."
"Right." Rothes seized on the thread. "Check the manifests of all ships arriving from the Mediterranean. I want a list of any passengers from Egypt, or who passed through it. And put the word out: any Egyptian or known associates of Egyptian cults in this city are to be reported to me directly."
"Sir!" A young constable, eager to carry out the order, turned too quickly. His foot slipped in something viscous, and he went down with a yelp and a curse. "Bloody hell! Who left a puddle of gore right here?"
"Do not contaminate the scene, you clumsy fool!" Rothes roared, his fury erupting at the rookie.
"That's… a lot of blood," Sebastian mused, peering down at the dark, viscous pool. "Enough to kill a man several times over. But where is the body?"
There were no drag marks in the mud, and the pool was isolated, far from any of the other corpses.
"Perhaps the necromancer took it," a detective suggested. "For raw materials."
Sebastian frowned. The necromancer had left dozens of bodies untouched. Why would he take this one?
Their attention shifted as detectives began to inspect the nearby alcoves, the wretched little caves carved into the embankment where the city's forgotten slept. "Anything?" Rothes called out.
"Nothing, sir. Just the usual squalor. Filth and… some strange graffiti."
No one paid any more mind to the pool of blood. No one noticed how, in the deepening twilight, its surface did not lie still. It seemed to catch the light of the twin moons hanging in the sky, the crimson fluid swirling slowly, languidly, as if it possessed a slow, dark life all its own.
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