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To most, it’s a mere party trick. But I’m glad to see one of my spells paying off.
Leaning down into the soil, I begin matting around the fur, looking to understand how these creatures died. In the dae, I find no puncture wounds, but as I reach around, feeling the dae’s stomach, a drop of black ichor-like substance grazes my finger.
It burns.
Kicking the dae over suddenly, its cold body hitting the ground with a thud, I find a pool of tar-like liquid covering the dae’s front. But there’s something else that escaped my recognition.
As I move my hand around the dae, feeling its muscles and skin, I push down lightly, and the skin nearly falls inward.
There’s no blood in this creature, save for the stray droplet on the ground.
Whatever killed this animal, and the many lining the path, progressed from mangling the corpses to removing all the fluids entirely.
My mind turns back to the council and what they told me about the killer. Dritz’s unsettling voice fills my mind. “Torn apart, flayed open, burned, the moisture sucked out of every orifice of their bodies…”
This must be the killer. Aside from the burnings, this matches their gruesome depictions perfectly.
Perhaps, if I can take a sample of this ichor, I can determine an identity and start proving my innocence.
But I need to act fast, lest the trail run cold.
Spurring myself into motion, I try to think of what spells I know that could help me here. I have a spell that can trace an object’s history, but it’s risky and I’ve never succeeded in casting it. Also, that spell isn’t necessarily designed for living matter.
Taking a deep breath, I close my eyes, letting my mind try to remember the images from the pages of my studies. My books are miles away, and I don’t feel comfortable leaving this scene.
When I think I have a memory of the page, with its numerous cautionary scribblings and disturbing images, I open my eyes, trying to hold the image in my mind.
My hands rummage through my rucksack, finding a silver dagger. The blade cuts me as my finger discovers it, and I now note that my bag contains several drops of my own blood.
But not from the right part of my body.
I look at the silver dagger closely, turning it around in my hands. “Not yet,” I tell myself. “That needs to be the final step.”
First, I take a vial out of my pack and do my best to put a drop of the ichor inside of it without getting it on my hands. It doesn’t seem like a big enough sample.
Then, I settle on taking out a pair of leather gloves and moistening the ichor with my canteen so that I can gather more of it. The ichor is goopy but easier to collect.
I rustle around the forest until I find the right kind of poisonous berries, putting ten of them in a pouch. Their blue-green coloration is well-hidden among the forest, blending in almost perfectly with the leaves.
Finally, I grab a pouch of silvery powder, which was very expensive and hard to find, out of my bag, as well as a mortar and pestle. I mash the berries in together with the powder, driving the pestle through counterclockwise.
I sigh, looking at the bowl in front of me and the dagger at my side.
“Here goes nothing, I guess.”
If I mess this up, I will die. There are no questions in my mind. My memory of the skulls on the page explicitly calls it out.
I almost talk myself out of it before I remember the scowls of the dark elves in lowtown. I run my hands along my cheek, still slightly sticky from residual tizret juices.
With no more hesitation, I bring the concoction up to my mouth and swallow it, tipping the mortar up as I tilt my head backward.
I start to gasp as the powder fills me up and my throat starts to close, already irritated from the poison.
I pick up the dagger, gathering what little strength my failing body has left, and pour the vial back into the mortar before taking the dagger and carving gently into my side, attempting to hold the mortar against my stomach.
A trickle of blood pours out from me, and the goopy, magical gel congeals with the ichor in the bowl, blending as steam rises out of it.
My vision blurs, my strength leaving me.
