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7. Annette

“Okay, okay… You can do this,” I whisper to myself.

In front of me, the city gates burn with midnight flame. But the guards still haven’t left. At night, the village should be warded, so that the guards can find sleep. Clearly, that’s not the case tonight.

Mellara must be on high alert.

“This is unreasonable,” one of the guards says to himself. His eyes are forced open through misguided determination, body staggering.

“It’s the job, Gray,” the other guard, posted across from him, says. “If you want me to tell the council you’re not up to the task, maybe we can have you moved…”

I sidle closer, concealing myself behind a bushel near the town entrance.

“Please don’t,” Gray says.

The other guard sighs. “When the killings stop, maybe they’ll ease up.”

I try to remember why, on the cusp of my exile, I now find myself at the gates of a village that could have put me to death. I still feel like I haven’t found anything for a solid case.

Among the elves and humans in Mellara, few would believe that the one responsible for so many macabre deaths was a demon. Even elves, who give plenty of attention to superstition, have trouble believing in demons laid to rest beneath Protheka. These are creatures of fiction, not beings who manifest their wills in the realm.

I’d have better luck claiming somebody on the council committed the murders.

I chuckle to myself before ducking sideways to get a better view of the front gates.

Both dark elves watching the gates are seemingly gone, and the town gate is wide open. How I didn’t see or hear them leave is beyond me.

I feel my eyebrow raise.

“No,” I whisper. “Surely not.”

I crawl out from behind the bushel, turning to watch the gates one more time. There’s a very good chance they just walked away and are currently returning to their posts.

Suddenly, the two guards are standing at the city gates again, and I rub my eyes in disbelief. I am easily within sight of them, and my gut tells me to duck.

But instead, I stand up and begin casually walking toward the gates, where the two dark elf guards stand watch.

“Gonna put your feet up when you get home?” one of the guards asks the other.

“Yeah. Just got to get through another shift. Can’t believe what they’re asking of us,” Gray says.

I squint in confusion.

“I’ve seen this before,” I say aloud.

As I approach, the two guards show no signs of recognizing me. I stand close to one and bring my hand toward the guard’s torso.

And, as I suspected, I nearly fall through as my hand fails to connect with the programmed illusion.

“But surely,” I say aloud. “They’re not just leaving an illusion to guard their city?”

I move around the walls of the city, finding no signs of wards or alarms.

“If this is the best Mellara has to offer, they must be really losing touch.”

I return to the city entrance and stride between the eyes, closing my eyes as I anticipate some hidden alarm or ward that I failed to recognize.

But nothing.

Before me is a seemingly empty, dark city, completely devoid of any presence.

“Huh,” I say to myself.

As I find my way to the council hall, ducking behind houses as I find the occasional midnight straggler, I think about how badly I failed.

I might be out here looking for proof of the killer, but I know what I saw in the forest. That creature – whatever demonic presence he might be – was clearly responsible for the killings.

“But I don’t know that,” I whisper to myself, a shred of doubt still crossing my mind. He didn’t seem altogether malicious despite the very nature of what he was. In fact, once we got past our initial confrontation and began talking, he actually seemed kind of nice.

I reach the council hall, putting all thoughts of guilt and regret out of my mind. Even if I could have brought him in and convinced the elves that a demon was responsible for Mellara’s deaths, I had no way of subduing him.

I did everything I could.

Outside the council hall, a single solitary guard stands watch, a torch burning brightly in his outstretched hand.

“Illusion?”

I don’t know what comes over me as I speak aloud, my voice barely a whisper.

“What was that? Who goes there?”

The dark elf leaves his post, moving toward the sound of my voice.

I silently curse my imprudence, scrambling to find someplace to hide.

If I’m discovered, there’s no mercy about it. Via Mellara’s own bylaws, I will be put to death as an exile breaching the city walls.

There’s a statue of Goran, whose stone karasu perches on the statue’s arm, but it’s far too obvious.

There’s a spell I think I remember, but it only lasts a few seconds and it would leave me slow and exhausted.

I sprint quietly away, hiding behind a nearby market stall.

Carefully, I try to control my breathing as I see the guard’s feet enter my vision. But I realize that I’m far too loud, and his face enters my vision, peering out over the top of the stall.

I run through options about how I might take out this dark elf despite everything I’ve ever vowed when the situation immediately changes.

“Hey, Gray,” a nearby dark elven voice says from a distance. “We found another cold one!”

“What? Who was it?”

I hear their footsteps patter as the actual body of Gray and the other guard dash away, clearly looking into the site of a murder.

With this much disturbance, things are bound to escalate fast. I get my bearings, bringing myself to full height before rounding the corner toward the council hall.

It’s eerie, being here in the evening. As I breach the front arch, noting the fruit that remains lying on the ground, I move as silently as possible, determined not to cross any potential wards or traps.

Dritz was always deeply paranoid, so it wouldn’t surprise me if he took extra precautions.

But to my surprise, as I scan every inch of the main room as expediently and thoroughly as possible, I find nothing. There are no stationed guards, and no unnecessary surprises.

It almost feels too easy.

I find a door on the side of the main room and turn the handle. I follow the stairwell up, getting a view of a door leading to an outside balcony and several rooms in a long hallway.

From the balcony, I can hear the commotion outside escalating, as seemingly some of the midnight stragglers discover the murder site.

If I got caught now, it would be really bad. In the eyes of the council, I’m not sure how I could defend myself.

The first room on the right is a bath chamber that doesn’t look like it’s been used in weeks.

But the second of the four doors contains exactly what I’m looking for. Shelves and shelves line the walls of the large room, filled with books and scrolls. Along the walls are five desks, each belonging to one of the council members.

“They’ve got to have some sort of organizational system,” I say to myself.

My mind drifts back to the monster in the woods, and I try to flush the thoughts out of my mind because they make no sense to me.

The lights outside aren’t nearly bright enough, so against my better judgment, I cast a spell, and a small blue light flies from out of my fingers.

“If I were murder files, where would I be?” I whisper.

I can imagine Dritz coming in here and discovering me, even though I know he probably went to bed hours ago. I can see the smug smile on his face as I seem to confirm what he already thinks he knows.

I sigh.

“He had a pretty detailed account of the murders,” I whisper. “Maybe he’s got the files.”

I look over at the shelves beside his desk, rifling through scrolls and books about town censuses and dark elven histories. There are several tomes here, too, but I know that if I take anything from the offices, they will know and I’ll only attract undue attention to myself.

Finally, I give up on looking at the shelves. I lie my head down against the wood in defeat, the light moving with my eyeline.

Outside, the commotion seems to be dying down, meaning that the elves will soon return to their stations. I know that now is the time to leave, and that if I don’t go now, I’ll miss my window.

“Hang on.”

It’s spoken far too loudly for somebody who’s supposed to be hiding.

There, on Dritz’s desk, is an open scroll among a pile of case scrolls. Some of the words are too gruesome for public records.

I stride over to the open scroll, unraveling it on the desk.

There, immediately before my eyes, is a detailed description of one of the murders and all of the associated information.

On a surface glance, it all seems conventional. It’s about as bloody and brutal as he described, and there’s nothing that doesn’t already confirm what I already suspect.

Then I start looking at the names, and they seem familiar to me.

“Sprin Whelbeck… Barron Afty…”

They’re familiar to me because all of the names have a reputation within the community. Each name is either associated with the human slave trade or with deceiving and conning dark elves. In the former case, the names are dark elves, and in the latter, they’re humans.

Of course, the first is entirely forgivable, and even encouraged by dark elven customs, but the second is a heinous offense to even elves.

I think back on everything the creature in the forest told me. It’s true that he didn’t say anything to ease suspicion off of himself. He might have offered me mercy, proving himself not entirely sadistic, but the descriptions still match him perfectly.

It no longer seems as important to question whether the creature is responsible for the killings. Instead, I shamefully start to question whether they might somehow better the world, even if he is behind them.

I’m not sure, but I think I might need to find him again.

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