Duelcrest Academy

"How is it possible?"

If no one was missing then... it wasn't a murder this time?

I looked at the list of victims. A new name had been added to the ranks of the fallen:

Frank Boyle.

As usual I didn't know him except by name. Fortunately in cases like this I could turn to Amy.

She immediately told me that he was the son of a baronet. He was decent at magic and in the top thirty in the rankings.

«I'll try and find out if his friends know anything about what happened...» Amy whispered, sliding away towards the desks at the front of the classroom. Chaos now reigned in the classroom as the teacher imperturbably continued the lesson.

Amy came back to me shortly afterwards, looking worried.

«I asked a boy I know... apparently, Frank wasn't feeling well. This morning he said not to wait for him for breakfast and that he was going to the infirmary.... What do you think happened to him?»

He wasn't feeling well... Had he died from a sudden illness??

"I should go to the infirmary later and check if he actually went there."

There was also a much darker hypothesis about what had happened.

"Suicide."

It wouldn't have been surprising if someone had cracked under the pressure we were under.

Boyle could have lied about feeling ill so as not to worry his friends.... After all, I had done the same thing a few weeks ago.

But the fact that he was one of the top students made suicide less likely than if he had been in danger of being eliminated.

In any case, it seemed that Frank Boyle's death had nothing to do with Mary Stillwater's murder.

After all, her killer was in the classroom with us; they couldn't have killed him.

Unless...

No, it didn't make sense.

Mary Stillwater couldn't have died of natural causes, otherwise we would have found her body.

But then... why did I still feel so uneasy?

This uncomfortable feeling was the reason why, at the end of the lesson, instead of going to the infirmary as I had originally planned, I asked Amy to go there for me.

Then I walked in the opposite direction, towards the student dormitories.

I wanted to check out his room. If Sophia hadn't found his body in the infirmary, she would have gone straight there afterwards.

After all, if he had really killed himself, that was the most likely place to find his corpse.

In reality, I had a strong desire to meet that girl. Of course, I was determined to find the murderer myself, but perhaps I could tell if something was wrong just by looking at her expression.

But I was not lucky. I arrived at my destination without meeting her.

As I approached the room, I noticed that the door was still intact between its frames.

"So Sophia hasn't been here..."

Was Boyle in the infirmary after all?

But as I got closer I noticed that the door was slightly ajar.

"Weird."

The doors to our rooms were enchanted so that only the owner could open them. A security measure, the rules said.

Sophia's power was the only way I knew how to get around it.

Which meant it was Frank Boyle who had left it open. Maybe he felt so sick that he ran out and forgot to close it?

I put my hand on the door handle when I heard a noise coming from inside.

Someone was in there. Obviously it couldn't be the owner of the room. Maybe Sophia?

I mustered my courage and opened the door.

The girl in the room jumped in surprise. She was not who I thought she was. Her light blonde curls could not have been more different from Sophia's raven black hair.

I immediately recognised Celeste Fitzroy, one of the people I had identified as a possible rival among my classmates.

The girl seemed to recover quickly from her surprise and gave me a polite smile.

«Ah, Elizabeth! You thought of coming here too, huh?» she asked amiably.

'Huh?'

«Um, have we talked before?»

Of course I knew who she was, but we had never spoken. Why was she talking to me as if we were friends?

«Oh, sorry! Since I've seen you checking out a lot of my duels, I thought we could skip the introductions! Anyway, nice to meet you, I'm Celeste!»

She offered me her hand.

"So she noticed me, I should've been more careful I guess..."

I took it anyway: «Nice to meet you, I'm Elizabeth.»

«Well, good thing you are here! I can't wrap my head around this mess!» she said, after shaking my hand.

"Mess?"

I looked behind her.

That sudden encounter hadn't made me notice the complete chaos in Frank Boyle's room.

The desk, which all our rooms had, was on the floor. Various books were scattered around, covered with ink stains. Not far away a chair was broken and on it lay a crumpled man's uniform.

«What the fuck happened here?!» I exclaimed.

«I have no idea!» Celeste replied energetically, although mine was more of a rhetorical question.

«But look closely here, this is the strangest thing!» she continued, motioning for me to approach the fallen desk.

My gaze shifted to where the girl was pointing with her pale hand.

Fresh blood.

In a hurry, I bent down to look at the floor under the desk. There were traces of blood there too.

«The first thing I thought was that the poor guy fell, hit his head and kicked the bucket here... But-»

«Where's the body?»

«Exactly, that's the question!» Celeste chirped, «he either survived the hit and ran out of the room on his own or someone moved him... Or maybe there's a zombie running around the school!»

«But we were all in class!»

«Right... And I don't think your friend Sophia moved it... so I guess he really ran to the infirmary but...»

Not that me and Sophia could really be called friends, but how did this girl even know that we even talked to each other?

I guess there was that time I dragged her out of the classroom. Anyway, Celeste seemed really sharp, as I thought, she was going to be a problem.

But there were more pressing issues.

Something still didn't add up.

«The blood stains stop here...»

«You noticed too, uh?» Celeste patted me on the back, «If someone had dragged his body around or if he had gotten up on his own, with a wound like that, he would have left quite a trail of blood behind... don't you think?»

«Right...»

Everything pointed in one direction, Frank Boyle, after getting injured, had vanished into thin air.

Just like Mary Stillwater.

«Celeste...» I started.

«Yes?»

«Do you think Boyle was murdered-»

«By the same person who killed Mary! Great minds think alike!» she gloated.

Her attitude could not have been more at odds with the words she was uttering.

«The fact that we're facing a disappearing corpse makes me think so... But I guess you're also asking yourself the same question, aren't you?»

Celeste looked at me with a playful smile:

«How did they manage to kill him if they were in the classroom with us?»

She was right. Aside from the body disappearing, that was the main issue. All the other students were in the same place at the time of his death. However I looked at it, it seemed like an impossible murder.

Unless...

«A remote murder...?» I whispered softly.

«Bingo!» Celeste exclaimed.

«But how...»

«Well, that's the tough part... I don't think I know of any spell capable of killing someone hundreds of meters away, through several walls... A trap, maybe? But then there's the issue of the body still..»

Maybe not a spell...

But what about something else?

I happened to know of something that transcended the rules that governed normal magic.

"An innate power..."

Of course I was not going to say anything about them to Celeste.

After proposing some unlikely conjectures, the latter waved goodbye to me cheerfully:

«It was fun talking to you. We should have tea together sometime!»

She was really nothing like I imagined her to be. Due to her high social status, I thought she would've been an even more arrogant version of Sophia.

The truth couldn't have been further from that. Although she exuded a certain air of elegance, typical of the high nobility, she seemed extremely sociable and down-to-earth.

However, I found her cheerfulness kinda unsettling, given the situation we were in.

"I should keep my eyes open around her..."

But now I had much more important things to think about than an eccentric noble.

I was certain that my deduction was correct. An innate power user had already killed two of my classmates and I had to stop them before they claimed a third victim.

That night, the air was extremely cold. Winter was still far away, but the Academy must have been located in a particularly northern region. They could have extended the spell that kept the inner courtyard warm to the rest of the school!

I crossed the dark corridors of the school, shivering. I was headed to Amy's room. Today we had planned another of our study sessions.

After my conversation with Celeste Fitzroy, I had met up with her and, as I suspected, she hadn't found anything in the infirmary.

Frank Boyle's body was nowhere to be found.

Amy's room was on the opposite side of the dormitory from mine. Because I was so used to going there, I walked without looking ahead, lost in my thoughts. Maybe that's why I didn't notice someone lurking around the corner.

It all happened in a flash.

A blade was pressed against my throat.

«...!»

I didn't have time to scream. The blade lowered, and a hand covered my mouth.

«Don't yell!» a irritated voice hissed.

I recognized her pissed tone instantly.

«What the hell are you doing out of bed at this hour?» Sophia asked.

From what little I could see of her face, she was quite annoyed.

Finally, after my murmurs of protest, she understood that, if she wanted an answer, she would have to move her hand.

«...Ah... I could ask you the same thing!» I whispered.

«I'm patrolling the corridors...» Sophia replied, «I don't think I need to explain to you why.»

«So, you too realized...»

For several minutes, we talked about what had happened that day.

As I assumed, Sophia, after checking the infirmary, had immediately gone to Boyle's room and found the door wide open. No trace of the body, neither there nor in the rest of the school. So, she had come to the same conclusion as me.

«From now on, I'll be on patrol at night. I want to catch this power in action...» she explained.

«Isn't it dangerous? You could be the one getting attacked, after all we don't even know what kind of power it is. If you wander around alone at night like this, you could be the next victim!»

«I could say the same thing to you...»

«Touché...»

I hadn't thought about it. Perhaps from today we should forgo our nighttime study sessions.

Exausted the main topic, a tense silence fell between us.

«Well, I'm going now...»

«Okay...»

«Sophia...»

«Yes...?»

«Be careful.»

«You too.»

We parted ways.

She was working hard to find the killer. I needed to step it up.

With those thoughts in my head, I reached Amy's room.

The door was half closed.

Nothing strange. Amy usually took a nightly bath before our study sessions and made me wait in the room.

She said it helped her understand what we studied better...

My half-smile faded when, after entering the room, I found Amy's body lying on the floor.