Furfur and Marzy.

Dead, right in front of us.  No words escape my mouth as I start crying, then and there.  I'm in such a state of shock that I don't even feel that I'm crying, but I know it.  

I don't know if I actually hear the announcement over the loudspeakers, but I can imagine the words in my head:

"A body has been discovered!  You know the drill- you've got one hour!"

"Everyone, back up," Stolas orders. "If you all want to be helpful, then you'll know to not get in the way.  Go investigate elsewhere if you must."

I feel a firm hand on my shoulder.  

"Sophie."

I wipe at my eyes and whisper, "What?"

"We need to solve this.  You must wipe your tears and, if you must, save them for later.  We have some investigating to do in order to ensure that we don't go into this trial blindly," Stolas murmurs.  His tone is slightly softer than usual.  Not that it's soft, but it's clear that he's trying.

Thankfully, everyone else has started scouring the rest of the music venue by now.  I take another deep breath as I feel my digital handbook vibrate in my bag.  With a heavy heart, I remove it and turn it on.

Case Update

Name of Victim: Florence Jaye

Talent: Ultimate Geologist

Time of Death: 1:20 AM

Cause of Death: Stab wound to chest

Name of Victim: Marzy Farlay

Talent: Ultimate Biologist

Time of Death: 1:25 AM

Cause of Death: Slit throat

Stolas reads over my shoulder. "So Furfur was killed first.  That's good to know."

"Where do we even start with this?" I mumble.

"With the big question- how did they get here and why?  Obviously, there must be a reason why they were out of their rooms so late at night."

It's hard to think with my head spinning so much, but I manage to realize something. "The tree branch?  That was loud."

"I think you may be correct," he agrees. "The sound could have lured them out of their cottages, especially if they were the two closest to the tree."

"Does that mean whoever did this cut the tree on purpose?" I ask.  Trying to focus my attention on solving the case isn't easy, but it's helping me channel my emotions towards something actually helpful.

"That's what Caim, Will, and I noticed when we were looking at the branch," Stolas explains. "It was separated rather cleanly from the tree.  There is no doubt that it was chopped off."

He then walks further into the room and bends down next to Furfur's body, gently moving her as he inspects her injuries, then crosses over to where Marzy is sprawled out lifelessly.

"Anything?"

Stolas frowns. "Nothing that we didn't know already." He looks past me and towards the chess board. "Scotch Game."

"Hm?" What language is he speaking?

"The chess opening.  It's the Scotch Game."

"Oh."

Stolas turns away and says, "I need to make a run back to the cottages to check out the tree quickly.  I must make sure that my suspicions are correct, and that nobody has messed anything crucial up just yet."

In other words, he wants me to continue analyzing the crime scene while he's gone.  I watch him leave before looking back at Furfur.  I can't believe how small and helpless someone like her can look when... dead.  The stab wound seems to pierce all the way through her, and her back is soaked with blood.  I follow the blood pooled beneath her to the smear that goes back out into the music venue.  There's no doubt that she was the one who had caused it.

I'm about to go check out Marzy when I notice something odd.  Furfur's neck is covered in bright red marks.  Why would those be there... unless there a chance she wasn't killed right away?  In fact, now that I'm looking closely, the mirror has small blood spatters on it.  Hardly noticeable.  Maybe when she was dropped in here, she was still bleeding, and some of the blood splattered.  I turn and walk over to Marzy.  As the case update said, his throat has indeed been split.  I carefully lift his head up to see if there are any visible markings beneath all of the blood when I feel something on the palm of my hand.  It feels like a bump on the back of Marzy's head.  Weird.

Everything seems so much clearer now that I'm searching much harder for clues.  So clear, actually, that I immediately notice something gleaming tucked away between some boxes in the back.  Cautiously moving around the crime scene, I bend down and pick up the item.  It's a knife soaked in blood.  Guess I found the murder weapon, then.

"I see the culprit did not choose to rip out Marzy's throat with their bare hands," a voice muses from the doorway.  I don't need to turn to know that a certain shady, emo boy has found the gruesome scene.

"Yeah, maybe that's because something like that is a bit inconvenient and time-consuming," I remark.  

Flauros tilts his head, strands of his long black hair falling in his face. "Of course, a demon such as myself could, if able to return to my true form, slice his flesh with no trouble.  However, I am confined to this mortal body, so it was not I who caused such a bloodbath."

Sure, whatever, it's not like you could've still used the f*cking knife or anything.  I hold my tongue, though, and just decide to ignore him.

A few minutes later, Stolas returns, slightly sweaty but nowhere near out of breath.  He sees the kitchen knife in my hands but makes no comment.

"I apologize," he tells me. "I had to check, and I seemed to be correct.  Will and Caim, just a few minutes before I arrived, had discovered a discarded hatchet tossed into the woods."

"Where the hell do you get a hatchet from?" I ask.

"The corral."

"Why would- oh." Right.  The cow.  There had to have been a hatchet nearby for that to have even happened.  Meaning there was, in fact, a hatchet accessible at the corral.

Stolas takes a closer look at Marzy. "Have you found anything while I was gone?"

"Yeah, it looks like Furfur might not have been stabbed right away.  Was there a chance she was knocked out somehow first?" I point at the geologist's body.

He crouches to observe what I'd found. "Hm, it certainly looks like something was tightened around her neck.  She seems to have been strangled with something."

"What, though?" I point out. "I don't really know where you'd get a rope around here."

"And you're correct.  The markings are much too thin to have been a cable or cord.  It had to have been a rope or strap, judging by the width," Stolas observes.  Something then catches his eye, and he approaches the chair sitting in the middle of the room, removing a small, slightly familiar-looking bag, rectangle-ish in shape.  He then takes the small bag and stretches the strap, comparing it next to Furfur's neck.  

"Something like this very well could have done the job quite nicely," he comments before setting the bag aside.

"There's a bump on Marzy's head, though," I add. "I don't think strangulation does that."

"It seems that the two of them were incapacitated before their deaths.  What's rather odd is that you're correct, both of them seem to have been incapacitated differently," Stolas after feeling for the bump on the biologist's head.

"So the killer knocked them both out and brought them all the way over here," I think aloud. "That's a long way to drag two people."

"Well, the killer seems to have had time on their side," Stolas reminds me. "They had all night, after all."

"But if they had two people to drag, surely at least one of them would've regained consciousness," I realize. 

"Perhaps that's why there were two different methods of incapacitation.  One used for each, because if whatever was used to strangle Furfur stayed around her neck to prevent her from escaping, then it couldn't be used on Marzy as well, just in case."

"Why can't this just make sense like the one in the Pharmacy did?" I grumble. "This one just doesn't make any sense no matter how much sense it makes."

"One of the most important rules of any situation is to not expect it to be easy," Stolas says sternly, turning to look back at me. "In fact, even thought we knew that Ryn did it, it didn't make sense until a motive came to light.  Crimes almost never make sense unless the motive is provided."

"Okay." I pause. "Who do you think did it?"

Stolas bows his head. "I need more time to piece it together.  I have a strong lead, but nothing that makes perfect sense."

Damn.  That's not great to hear.

"Do you mind if I come look?" a familiar British accent asks.  I see Evangeline enter my periphery as she goes to look at Marzy.

"Oh," she says softly. "How terrible."

She turns to Stolas. "Please tell me you have a suspect."

Stolas exhales deeply. "Just one.  But I'm afraid it's just a hunch."

"What a terrible thing," Evangeline says sadly, her eyes brimmed with tears. "Just plain terrible."

I know this is a really serious moment, but I just need to say that there's something about Evangeline's voice that is so comforting.  Just hearing her accent makes my heartbeat slow and my breaths even out.  

"Hey." Azrael appears in the doorway, hands buried deep in his pockets as usual. "We found something a little weird."

Stolas immediately makes a move towards the poet. "Show us."

We follow him out into the music venue, where he points to a stool on the stage. "It looked a little wobbly, which is weird, because it definitely was fine last time I saw it.  So I checked it out, and some of the legs are broken."

Stolas goes and lifts up the stool, carefully inspecting it. "Hm.  Perhaps it made very strong contact with another surface."

"Well, the door handle was broken," Azrael recalls.

"That makes a lot of sense," I say, looking over at where Stolas had set down the door against the wall.  Now that door handle really won't work.

"So, anything else we need to do?" I add, turning back to the combat specialist.

Stolas responds by turning on his heel and walking back over to the storage room.  He stands in the doorway for what feels like ages as he takes one last scan of the area.

He says as I'm almost falling asleep from waiting for him, "I believe that all we can do now is wait until the trial, when we can try to get accounts, or perhaps worm the truth out of the culprit.  Should it come to it, I know how to break a suspect down mentally and get them to talk."

"Let's, uh, try to keep that to being a last resort," I insist.

"Wait, isn't there anything else we can do before the trial?" Evangeline inquires.

Stolas shakes his head. "If I had to estimate, our hour is most certainly too close to being over for us to even begin to investigate something else.  We're simply just out of time."

As if they were waiting for this exact moment, the speakers crackle to life as Ace's shrill voice floats through the air.

"BZZT!  You're time's up, kids!  Make your way back to the center island so we can have some fun!  And by we I mean me.  I'M going to have fun.  Whether you all choose to or not isn't my problem."

"What a b*tch," I hear Azrael hiss under his breath.  Such a foul statement from the person who won't even make eye contact while speaking half the time causes me to snort.

"I'll admit, I'm quite nervous for this," Evangeline speaks as we exit the music venue. "If Stolas isn't certain, then I myself have less than zero ideas of who it may be."

"You shouldn't limit yourself by what my opinions are," Stolas says. "For all we know, someone like Caim could have it all figured out if he happens to know something we don't."

"Then for our sakes, let's hope he does," Azrael huffs, somehow shoving his hands even deeper into his pockets.  I wonder if he'll hit the center of the earth eventually.

However, we do indeed run into Caim as we set foot onto the center island.  And needless to say, he does not look like he knows something we don't.  In fact, he looks more lost than the rest of us combined.

"Please tell me you know who did it," he squeaks to me as we approach the escalator up into the statue.

I bite my lip. "Yeah, no."

Caim forces a smile. "Hey, maybe if we all work together, we'll be able to do it."

By god, I hope he's right.  Maybe the power of friendship can actually prevail for once.  Then again, friendship is the reason that the previous killers managed to get within killing range of their victims.  Friendship is controversial as f*ck, then.

"Hope you're not rusty on your detective skills!" Ace says cheerfully as we exit the elevator and take our places at our podiums.  Moranity is once again tied upside-down and dangling from the ceiling next to Ace's throne.  Poor guy.

Right as the last few people are getting into position, I look over at Stolas and see the familiar gleam in his amber eyes, signaling that he's once again in control of the situation.  Thank god he's figured it out, I almost had a heart attack.

"Let's get this party started!" Ace declares, standing up on their throne. "Let the trial commence!"

***

(2233 words)

Okay whodunnit ===>

Also because I just realized I never asked y'all who do you think did the chess boards ===>

Aight let's see if I can fit the trial into one chapter (It'll probably be two)