London.
A sombre sky filled with rain was usual for the great capital of the former empire.
Despite the normalcy of such moodiness, this was a sign of the mundane world persisting as usual. Nothing was terribly amiss. The world hadn't gone to shit just because of the heavy downpour, so there was little reason for morbid thoughts.
Such wasn't what coursed through the mind of the young rising star of the Clock Tower, one Lord El-Melloi II, as he found himself standing in a morgue overlooking a corpse.
It wasn't the worst place to be in. He'd been in more dire straits, after all. No. His concern right now was what would come next after studying the deceased as they peacefully slept under his investigative gaze. So much so that when he opened his mouth, the words to come out were chased by a tired sigh.
"I need a smoke…"
Waver Velvet tried to reach for a cigar in his coat pocket but the morgue staff nearby clearing their throat had him frowning disappointedly. He knew it wasn't permitted to smoke in the facility, but could they blame him when the tension was so thick you could carve it with a stick? Bad enough the only source of a distraction was the bloody radio with a muffled report going on but it had been about the same incident he'd heard of since last night that it was starting to grate his ears too.
If there was anywhere else he wanted to be, it wasn't this place.
The young Clock Tower professor rolled his eyes, discontent with the delay of his business preventing his escape. "Ugh… I want to get out of here as soon as humanly possible."
"Do you fear the dead might come for you, Lord El-Melloi?" a male voice spoke from behind as Waver turned around to greet his fellow Lord. "Not to worry. I sympathize with you. I, for one, am concerned that some would rise up, seek me out and have me repay my debts."
"You believe they may have reasons to want you dead, is it, Lord Animusphere?" Clock Tower Lord Marisbury Animusphere, a well-known, respected and extraordinarily wealthy member of the Clock Tower himself, stopped by Waver's side. Since coming through the morgue's doors, the man's eyes had not left the face of the dead since. Waver could tell just by looking at his dour expression.
"Not dead, necessarily. Tortured, maybe. Some more than the others."
Such were the base desires of retribution that follow after dealing with any of the other lords. Waver rarely mingled with them, but that was primarily because he was a new face. An upstart very few had respect for, especially since he seemingly usurped his own professor not a decade after returning from the same ritual that killed the Archibald family's heir.
Still, the grey-haired Marisbury was very much an exception. Having always been busy with his own department, he cared little for the other Lords' pomp and reputations. To the only known survivor of the Fourth Grail War, the man remembered not a single day when a small smile hadn't graced his peer's face. Right now was a rare instance when such a smile was entirely absent.
Waver extended a hand to shake Lord Animusphere's. Though he accepted and firmly returned the gesture, Marisbury hesitated and chose not to remove his gloves. Rudeness aside, Waver went over the victim's body once more, stopping first on the face mottled by long flowing red hair. "Hard to say if my predecessor died from such torture or not with his expression."
"You would be surprised." Marisbury didn't give anything away, taking the look of the dead in stride. "Doctor Heartless is a peculiarity even for us magi. As a professor, I respected his work ethic to remaining cordial even when burdened. As a human being, well… Treating our own kind as such is even rarer, most certainly amongst ambitious peers."
"I highly doubt the former head of my Modern Magecraft Theory department had that many rivals, to begin with."
"You'd be surprised again," Marisbury repeated. "Despite his lackadaisical handling of the position, there were no few people who wanted Adashino Kurou out of the office."
A dry smile formed on Waver's face. "Is this how Clock Tower professors usually retire? Because, if so, I may need to reconsider how to handle my current position."
"I don't think you need to worry about being eliminated because of your seat in the Clock Tower. For one, our dear Doctor's body still exists, which tells me whoever it was that was after him isn't as likeminded as our peers that have a penchant for making you disappear. If not outright recycle your pieces for worse." Marisbury said it all with a straight face and Waver hadn't denied it any, knowing full well just how savage some clans could be.
"This rules out any mage from the Clock Tower's upper echelon. God knows just how much those people despise wasted material or evidence lying about."
"Indeed. And seeing as how the dear Doctor has no family clamouring for his remains at present, we can rule out 'death by kin' from domestic disputes."
It wasn't that much of a secret that magi clans could get so ambitious. Some would even resort to killing their own children or parents if it could get them a leg up in their endeavours within the clan's field of study, research, or even for political gain. The number of such causes being attributed to for murder in magus society was about two-thirds of the time. Statistics showed it may be higher.
However, "The Doctor actually has a family. Sadly, she only ever found out about his whereabouts after he'd been reported dead."
Marisbury eyed him sharply. "Oh? A person of interest?"
"Not so. Just… Doctor Heartless' half-sister. She's been looking for her long-lost sibling for quite some time now without a clue as to what he's been up to. At the moment, I believe she's grieving about the news with only several bottles for the company in a nearby pub."
As much as the annoying Hishiri irritated Waver, he could spare some sympathy for a woman who believed she wasted all that time searching only for her family to turn up a surprise corpse. Marisbury sympathized with a nod. "I suppose it was only a matter of time. None, if any, manage to survive a sentence from the upper echelon of Lords."
"Not even when one of said upper echelon Lords aids them," Waver mumbled, casually pulling out a half-burned letter from his coat pocket. Handing the almost-destroyed evidence, he made sure to keep the Animusphere family seal out of sight from the passing morgue staff. Marisbury accepted it without even looking at its contents. "Tell me, professor. Am I the only Lord privy to your dealings with Doctor Heartless and your hiring him as an investigator?"
"You're the only one who has concrete evidence of my partnership with him, yes. Or, you were before you handed this back." He gestured to the piece of evidence Marisbury pocketed in his own pocket. "The others might have suspected me, but no more beyond speculation. It is rather normal of practice to hire those targeted by Sealing Designations as a means to achieve our goals. Take it as a lesson from your ageing senior, why don't you. Perhaps you'd resort to it in the future."
"Even if I relied on so many others before I was placed into my Faculty, I'd rather avoid working with people who get special attention from the Enforcers more than I already do." Waver sighed again, a sign of growing fatigue over the years as his stint as a professor with a peculiar class filled with even more peculiar students. "I'm rather surprised you're so nonchalant about admitting what is essentially a breach of protocol."
"Indeed, it should be. Had it been any other Lord, this would have been the perfect means of slandering my clan."
"Making a mockery of my being the lowest ranked of the batch, are we?"
"Not so. Despite your lowly position amongst our top twelve, I find who you are and not what our traditionalist system labels you as of far more interest." The corner of Marisbury's lips shaped a wry smile. "In terms of achievements, this investigation alone would have you trouncing my good name quite easily. 'How the small-time magus of a genius professor revealed the corrupt acts of a haughty superior' or the like is, to put it mildly, a prime stepping stone for any ambitious individual. The castigation alone may have a few hyenas on the prowl, waiting even before a carcass is found. However, since I'm in the presence of none other than the famed and humble detective Lord El-Melloi II, I'm assured that none of this will ever reach the public eye."
"Your expectations are misplaced. I was simply involved in this on account of finding him in my own office…" Waver shook his head but never took his eyes off the dead. "My infamy does not measure up to the same standards as yours. Or his. And I would much prefer to keep it that way."
God knows just how many problems would arise if the 'placeholder' of the Archibalds would spark conflict with the Animuspheres. Set aside the rumour mill it would spark within his own Department, a certain brat wouldn't let him off easy should he act on her family's behalf without her input. Reines would stick more than a boot up his ass even if he dared say he wasn't at fault. And he wasn't about to let his imagination of what she would actually do run wild.
"In any case, it is quite peculiar, no?" Marisbury moved to stand across from Waver on the other side of the table Heartless lay peacefully on. "Why would your wanted predecessor appear in your home in his last moments? Curious, isn't it?"
"It is. Though I never met the man personally, my perplexment is overridden by caution." Waver resisted the urge to actually pull out a cigar to light. He was already at the peak of anxiety yet it wouldn't do to break composure now.
"I might have a theory. Care to take a gander, professor?" Though he had yet to answer, his fellow professor began. "Now, before you'd become a Lord—"
"'Forced to'," Waver interrupted. "Please keep the distinction in mind."
"Very well, then. Before the title had been foisted upon you, Professor Waver Velvet was a simple lecturer of the Clock Tower, yes? One with little to no prospect of joining the big leagues on account of your… lacking capabilities. No offence." Waver waved it off. It was the truth. No sense arguing about it. Hell, he hardly cared for insults trained on his glaring flaw nowadays. His fellow Lord, however, seemed to focus on something else. "Despite this, there are a couple of things that set you apart from many of your colleagues. For one, a burgeoning talent as a theorist and researcher. Being he who managed to salvage the scattered remains of his preceding Lord's work, the compiler of 'Lord Kayneth's Encyclopedia', your comprehension of a craft you can't really emulate is… astounding."
"Setting that cluttered old fool's work straight was more of a challenge than finding someone to prove the veracity of his findings. Arcane secrets or not, that fossil's issues lie more in his stubborn old-fashioned preferences than anything you can fault with my skills." His eyes narrowed, annoyed at being reminded of the cause of his shackles. "But enough with the flattery. I highly doubt I'd be haunted by a dead man walking because of my compilation skills."
"Fair enough. How about the fact that you survived Fuyuki City's three-centuries-old ritual? The 'Holy Grail War'? I believe the one you participated in was its fourth iteration, yes? Being a survivor when even the great Kayneth himself lost his life to it, I'm certain that would pique interest. Wouldn't you think so?"
'Shit… She was right.' The way the man framed the question, it was as if it was the original intent, to begin with. So astonished was Waver that he couldn't help but grimace.
"Something on your mind, Professor Velvet?"
"Only speculations as to how it could possibly be related," Waver muttered more to himself before stepping closer to Doctor Heartless, or Adashino Kurou as the label stated on the clipboard left by his unmoving head. He'd already gone through the usual procedures of an autopsy before he arrived. But knowing Marisbury had arrived here before him… that had Waver a little suspicious. "Have you been informed of how he died?"
"I've yet to read the reports. So no."
"Considering he'd been marked by a Sealing Designation, you and I both know there will be no such reports on the record after today. So long as the Mage Association is concerned, our world will remember that Heartless had died. Details will soon be relegated as 'irrelevant'. However, for you and I both, knowing how he was felled is a serious matter, especially since both of us can clearly tell it wasn't due to our Association's Enforcers. Nor had the Church been involved. Which begs the question," Waver placed a single finger square centre on Heartless' chest. "Why exactly would the infamous Doctor Heartless have his Magic Circuits frayed beyond repair? It's as though the Magus Killer had hunted him himself."