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It was a quiet, peaceful day. The sky was blue and the few clouds present were fluffy and bright white. The old oak overhead shaded me from the spring heat. The cool breeze from Lake Tirulis wafted in and caressed my skin. I reclined on a bench and gazed out over at the magnificent, lovingly-kept garden of roses, daisies, lilies, magnolias, hydrangeas and tulips in front of me. The beige marble facade of House Taravel’s estate in this city loomed beyond that, stained glass windows throwing their own colored light onto the garden to mix in a wonderful amalgamation of hues. For the first time in days since arriving in Velcaros, I felt at peace.
Naturally, an Inquisitor arrived to visit just right then.
The man was cleanly shaved all along his head; not a single hair to be seen there. His face was chubby and his body portly, and he was dressed in the appropriate purple silken finery you might see from any noble out in the city.
But the way he walked, the expression on his face so at odds with his general appearance, gave it away. His reddish-purple eyes gleamed with a sort of intelligence I knew not to dismiss. He walked with a long stride and an orderly gait, and his back was completely straight. Most blatantly, a sword hung at his side. It shimmered with an ethereal light even through the scabbard, and I knew that was a blade of pure mythril.
The moment I noticed the man, I scrambled up to greet him. “Greetings, Inquisitor.” I curtsied deeply. “How may I be of assistance?”
He scowled and raised an eyebrow, likely surprised at my immediate recognition of him. Oops. Most people probably didn’t know what he was so fast. “Good noon, little miss.” He replied briskly, running his eyes up and down my entire self. “If I may have some of your time?”
I inclined my head in favor, so he continued: “I will be short with you right now,” He said curtly. “Archmage Yoletin is dead. Dead since at least last night.” He leaned in. “You were seen leaving the Volispire that same night, according to several witnesses.”
My heart lurched faster than I thought it even could. Archmage Yoletin, dead? But how? That hadn’t happened in the last timeline! And I had not interacted with Yoletin in any shape or form so far in this one!
The Inquisitor, observing my look of shock and my delay, sighed and added: “Just to clarify, this is not an accusation.” He intoned. “Just a statement of fact. You were not the only one in the tower, of course. The Volispire is never truly deserted.”
I sucked air in deeply and exhaled. “May Medarda bless him.” I bowed my head. “I- I didn’t know the Sir Archmage was dead…”
He snorted. “Most don’t. You are one of less than a dozen who do know, right now.” He held out a smooth hand and gestured. “Come, let’s take a walk.” He said.
Eyeing him carefully, I obeyed and joined him on the cobbled pathway as he began walking along slowly. “With all due respect,” He began. “We are not stupid enough to think that a little girl like you could have killed Yoletin. Not in that way, at least.” He grimaced slightly. Just how gruesome was the death? I wondered with shock.
“Of course, sire!” I shook my head. “By the gods, I wouldn’t know how to kill a dog!” A blatant, shameless lie considering my past life, but that was hardly something an Inquisitor here could dig up evidence for.
He harrumphed mightily. “I very much hope so! Anyways, I am not here to prove your guilt or whatever. What I am here for is to collect a statement. Evidence, if you will.” He fished out a piece of parchment and a quill from a jacket pocket and left it out in the air. They floated alongside him and the quill hovered near the parchment, clearly ready to record my statement.
Whatever I would say from now on would be written and recorded neatly for the Inquisition to read. Very well then. I took a deep breath and began with an account of what I had been doing last night in the Volispire. Digging through ancient historical records, particularly in the realm of Arallia’s old kings and queens, as was the truth. I did embellish somewhat, however; rather than say it was to satiate my own curiosity, I insisted my governess Glaverra had put me up to it. Supposedly, the harsh mistress didn’t let up with my education even during the Twenty-Seventh Summit itself. It wasn’t particularly far off from the truth.
My entire time in the Volispire had been spent in it’s deep underground levels, since that was where the older records tended to be kept. Mages and Archmages like Yoletin, meanwhile, tended to congregate for research, debate and experimentation near the tower’s upper levels, where the effects of their powerful spells would be contained by the Danara stone walls and not propagate through Velcaros’ underground. It was simply very unlikely for me to be anywhere nearer than a few hundred feet from the now-dead man.
But I avoided making any of those judgments or observations for the Inquisitor, who simply closed his eyes and nodded along as the quill immaculately wrote down everything I said in curved, angular script. I had always wondered how those worked. Was the Inquisitor simply writing all that with a great deal of precise control over his soulbound items in the air, or was there a sort of spell shortcut devised by the Circle of Ten to allow anyone with sufficient mana to write out these intricate things? As I learned more and more about the true limits of magic, I leaned towards the latter.
When I was done describing how I had exited the Volispire, where I had simply just made a straight line for the exit after rising from the underlevels, the Inquisitor nodded. The quill stopped writing and he snapped his fingers, erasing the slight ethereal glow to the two as he gingerly took them and rolled them together back into his pocket. Touching a hand to his heart, he bowed and said: “Thank you for your cooperation, Miss Taravel of Arallia.” And with that, he simply strode off, as if we had not just been talking about the death of a powerful Archmage.
I was left with my mind running endlessly on, well, everything. Who killed Archmage Yoletin? And how? Why? Was it related or not to my reincarnation? Would the killers come for more people? Wouldn’t this cause a major uproar quite soon when news broke out, considering it was the Twenty-Seventh Summit? How paranoid would the Emperor and the Nine High Lords —my father chiefly among them— get? How badly would this derail the timeline? Did the Inquisition actually suspect me? Was I going to be taken and summarily beheaded?
Less than half an hour ago, I had been enjoying the sublime coolness of the breeze and the view of the blooming garden of the estate in spring as I lazily laid down on a bench. Certainly no worries on my mind then.
Now, though….