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thegoldenboyjayce · 1 month ago

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Rook was halfway through her second cup of wine when Lucanis slumped face-first into the casserole.

For a moment, no one moved.

Then Harding dropped her fork. "Oh, shit. Did he die?"

Davrin leaned over the table to get a better look. "That was a strong pour, but I didn't think it was that strong."

"Dead," Emmrich said dryly, not looking up from his own glass. "Or very committed to the bit."

"Ooh! Are we doing dinner theater now?" Bellara asked brightly. "I love improv!"

Lucanis did not move.

Rook set her cup down with a quiet clink and muttered, "Please don’t be dead. I am not emotionally prepared to give a speech about your contributions to the team."

Neve, who hadn't touched the casserole at all, crossed her arms. "He’s breathing. His shoulder moved."

Harding crouched next to the body, cautiously poking Lucanis in the ribs. "Buddy? You okay? Did you choke on the mushrooms or just…decide to nap in your food?"

Lucanis peeled himself off the table like a man resurrected. Casserole clung to his cheek.

"It was a test," he grumbled. "To see how long it would take you to notice I was dead."

A long pause.

"And?" Taash asked.

"You failed."

Davrin snorted. "I dunno, I think Emmrich called it pretty fast."

"He always calls it," Harding said. "Last week he said my soup was 'one step removed from a death curse.'"

"It was," Emmrich replied. "You put pears in it."

"I wanted to try something new!"

Rook raised her hands before the soup argument could escalate again. "Okay, can we just—focus? This dinner was supposed to be relaxing. A team-building exercise. No magic, no weapons, no murder."

"In my defense," Lucanis said, wiping casserole off his face with a napkin that definitely wasn’t his, "no one actually died."

At that exact moment, a distant crash echoed from the pantry.

Everyone froze.

Bellara perked up. "Did anyone else hear that?"

"Probably just something falling over," Davrin said. "The pantry's packed so tight, you sneeze near a sack of potatoes and the whole shelf topples."

"Good thing we stocked up when we did," Harding added. "No one was expecting the Eluvian to break, and now we’re stuck until Bellara can fix it."

Neve stood. "So we’re trapped in a magical house inside the Fade with no exit and a fake death during dinner. Great. Nothing bad could possibly happen next."

Taash looked around. "Wait. Is anyone missing?"

Everyone instinctively turned toward Emmrich, who glanced up with a faint frown. "Why are you looking at me? I’ve been here the entire time."

"Manfred’s here too," Bellara said, pointing at the skeleton, who was wearing a very small chef’s hat. No one asked why.

Rook stood up slowly. "I’ll check the pantry."

Harding grabbed a fork like a weapon. "I’ll go with you."

Davrin followed. "I’m just coming to watch."

The pantry door creaked open.

Inside, lying awkwardly between the sacks of flour and a crate of questionable root vegetables, was a man. A dead man. Dressed in a butler’s uniform. With a note pinned to his chest.

Harding blinked. "We don’t have a butler, right?"

Rook stared. "No."

Bellara ducked in behind her. “Ooh, that stitching looks Tevinter. Probably ceremonial. Or cult-related. Or maybe one of those banquets where they chant between courses.”

Neve plucked the note from the corpse’s chest and read aloud, “‘I know what you did.’”

The silence that followed was long. Unearned. And deeply foreboding.

Davrin snorted. "Well. That’s ominous."

Emmrich finally stepped into the doorway, took one look at the body, and sighed. "This seems excessive, even for a dinner party."

Rook looked from the body to the rest of them, then wordlessly returned to her seat and topped off her drink. “New rule. No more fake deaths unless we agree on them ahead of time. And absolutely no more cursed casseroles.”

Davrin shrugged. “Bit late. I already had seconds.”

The entire group migrated into the pantry a few moments later with all the solemnity of tourists gawking at a crime scene.

Neve had already pulled out a notebook from somewhere. Rook didn’t ask.

��Let’s start with the obvious,” Neve said, flipping to a blank page. “Who the fuck is this guy, why is he dead, and which one of you thought this was the best time for a murder?”

Taash crossed their arms. “Not mine. If I kill someone, I don’t dress them like a bottle of discount wine.”

“Helpful,” Neve muttered.

Emmrich adjusted his glove and crouched beside the body. “No visible trauma. Still warm. Likely recent.”

Harding frowned. “Warm? In here? Lucanis keeps this place freezing.”

“He likes the air actively depressing,” Davrin added.

Lucanis didn’t move. “I’m going to kill one of you for real. And it won’t be theatrical.”

“I’d like to note that as a threat,” Neve said, scribbling something down.

Rook rubbed her forehead. “Bellara, is there any chance he came through the Eluvian before it shattered?”

“Not unless he burst through half a glyph in secret,” Bellara said. “Which—okay, would be impressive.”

Harding held up something triumphantly. “I found a clue!”

Everyone turned. She was holding a potato. A lumpy one.

“It looks like a face.”

Rook gave her a long look. “Put it down.”

“I’m keeping it.”

Emmrich brushed flour off his knees and leaned in. “There is something in his mouth.”

Bellara lit up. “A message? A cursed talisman? A trigger glyph with a death—”

“It’s a button,” Emmrich said, pinching it free with visible disdain.

Rook blinked. “Wait… that looks like the ones from my coat.”

Everyone turned toward her at once.

She instinctively glanced down.

All her buttons were intact.

“Oh,” she said. “Okay, no, false alarm.”

“But it looks like yours,” Neve pointed out.

“Yes, because apparently I wear extremely murderable fashion,” Rook snapped. “Can we move on?”

Neve flipped a page. “Documented aesthetic hazard. Got it.”

Davrin held up a handful of breadcrumbs. “I also found these. Possibly suspicious. Possibly from the snack I ate in here last week.”

“Possibly not helpful,” Neve muttered.

“I am helping,” Davrin said, indignant.

“You’re not,” Lucanis said.

Bellara crouched beside Emmrich. “If I take a sample of the fabric, I can trace the magical decay timeline! We might even get a psychic echo—”

“No experiments in the pantry,” Rook said automatically.

Emmrich straightened, brushing his pants off with a huff. “He’s not a spirit. That’s what disturbs me. The Fade should’ve intervened.”

Bellara squinted at him. “Are you saying the Fade is ghosting us?”

“The Fade doesn’t ghost,” Emmrich snapped. “It manifests.”

Harding, now rifling through a nearby crate, pointed at what looked like a bootprint smudged in the flour-covered floor. “Does this count as a clue?”

“Possibly,” Neve said. “Is it yours?”

Harding looked at her own boots. “...Yes.”

Rook sat down on a sack of grain and rubbed her temples. “This is my nightmare.”

Neve was already pacing with her notebook. “Alright. We need a suspect list, a motive list, and someone to keep Davrin from contaminating the pantry.”

“I’ll interrogate…Manfred!” Davrin exclaimed, pointing dramatically at the skeleton, who waved back.

“I just wanted one normal dinner,” Rook muttered, as Bellara sprinkled glowing powder on the corpse’s coat with the casual glee of someone baking a cake.

Rook had seen things—haunted bodies, Fade-warped beasts, a very upsetting mirror incident—but this might be the one that finally broke her: Neve pinning a parchment labeled Suspicion Index to the library bookshelf with a dagger while the butler’s body remained very much dead in the pantry.

"We’ll be proceeding in order of likelihood," Neve said. "I’ll be assigning points based on motive, opportunity, and overall vibe."

"Is that a feelings chart?" Davrin asked, leaning over to get a better look.

"It’s a legally-adjacent analysis matrix," Neve said. "Harding, you’re up first."

"Why me?"

"Because you found the potato."

Harding sat across from her like a war criminal. “For the record,” she said, holding it up again, “it still looks like a face.”

She held up the shriveled lump. Rook didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.

Harding reached into her pocket. “Also found this rutabaga. Suspiciously spherical. And this lint smells like cinnamon.”

Bellara gasped. “We don’t use cinnamon in the laundry!”

“You are wasting ink,” Emmrich said. “You’ve drawn a triangle around Davrin’s name and labeled it ‘bad vibes.’”

“Triangulation is a legitimate method,” Neve replied.

Emmrich turned to Rook. “Do you want me to perform an actual autopsy or let them keep building this root vegetable tribunal?”

"That’s exactly what someone with something to hide would say," Neve muttered, adding a tally mark next to his name.

"You’re not even using consistent criteria," Emmrich snapped. "Harding has five tally marks and three stars."

"The stars are for enthusiasm," Neve said.

Bellara bounced on her heels. "Can I go next? I ran a magical aura sweep. The corpse is faintly guilty."

Neve looked up. "What does that mean."

“Residual emotion. Posthumous regret. Possibly moral confusion.”

“That’s not—”

“Also,” Bellara continued, “I think we should all touch this cursed rock and see whose fingers fall off. Then we’ll know who’s guily.”

She held it up. It pulsed faintly. Everyone took a step back except Taash, who poked it.

“Feels like indigestion,” they said. “But my fingers didn’t fall off.”

"Not admissible," Emmrich said, folding his arms. "And cursed rocks do not qualify as forensic tools."

"You’re not in charge of this investigation," Neve said.

“No,” he gritted out. “But I’m still right.”

Neve tapped her pen against her lip, eyes sweeping the room as she considered her next target. Lucanis hadn’t moved. He was still leaning against the chair, coffee in hand, looking entirely unbothered.

“Lucanis, do you have something you’d like to share with the class?”

Lucanis lifted his head, expression unreadable. “No, I—”

Suddenly, his eyes flickered purple. A faint, eerie whisper curled around him like smoke.

“MURDER,” Spite intoned. “DECEIT. NIBBLING.”

The room fell silent.

Davrin blinked. “Okay, I have no idea what that means.”

Lucanis blinked, and the glow faded. He took another sip of coffee like nothing had happened.

Neve gave him three tally marks.

“This is farce,” Emmrich sighed.

“I have a theory,” Taash offered. “Slipped. Cracked his head. Note’s unrelated. Maybe a grocery list.”

“Oh,” Bellara whispered. ”That’s beautiful.”

Neve snapped her notebook closed. “Only one suspect left.”

They all turned to Rook.

She stared back. “You cannot be serious.”

Neve held up the button.

“All my buttons are still on.”

“Which means you replaced it. Classic misdirection.”

Rook’s jaw dropped. “That’s not even—”

“Proximity to the corpse: extremely high,” Neve went on, undeterred. “Motive: unknown, but probably food-related. Means: documented history of punching.”

Bellara gasped. “She does punch things.”

“And she does get hangry,” Harding added.

“Thank you,” Neve said, flipping a page.

“Do you think she did it?” Davrin asked.

Emmrich scoffed. “She hasn’t left my side.”

“And if she had?”

“I’d help her hide the body.”

Rook buried her face in her hands. “I just wanted one nice dinner.”

The library door creaked open.

Assan padded in, claws clicking against the stone. In his beak: a torn piece of the butler’s sleeve. He dropped it at Rook’s feet and sat down proudly.

Manfred skittered in behind him, holding a second piece and hissing joyfully. His chef hat was askew but still upright.

No one spoke.

Rook didn’t lift her head. “Why,” she asked the floor, “do we live like this.”

“Technically,” Bellara offered, “we’re trapped by magical catastrophe. It’s different.”

Rook sighed into her hands. “Wonderful.”

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