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Abbey House Dining Hall | 5:55 AM | Third Day
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right there, behind us," Seth said, gritting his teeth. "If only I''d checked to see if him and Theo were with us.. If I hadn''t been such an idiot..."
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formal, sitting there and reading that thing, I thought he was doing some weird bit. I didn''t know what the hell to make of it..." He smiled bitterly. "Eventually, I asked him about the magazine. Like, if he was into that sort of thing. You know what he said?"
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we''d first met. I''d come upon him in the library, which was one of the parts which had been rebuilt after the bombing. They had some condescending plaque set up there across from where we''d both gone looking for a required textbook, and had got to expressing our frustrations. I''d spent most of my life without feeling like my beliefs were really fleshed-out-- Too busy worrying about other things. So hearing it from him, I''d started to feel like a whole new world was opening up for me.
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No. Stop thinking about that. Save it for later...
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believe so, but I don''t truly understand how this happened to begin with. The entire area was encompassed by the barrier..." He frowned doubtfully. "No, that''s getting ahead of ourselves. The point is that we made a mistake letting our group get divided, even slightly. From now on, we should make sure everyone stays within each others line of sight, no matter what."
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sucks. But..." They looked upward. "Maybe I don''t have a right to say this. I don''t know you guys as well as you know each other-- We haven''t hung out much outside of the academy, and I know I''m always busy with stuff? But from everything I knew about Bardiya, he wouldn''t want us to just sit around feeling shitty. He''d want us to get to the bottom of it."
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useful we could surmise here , and this room is hardly defensible. It would be better to move forward and try to gather more information about the situation as we go."
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Because someone here could be the killer.
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I''m saying."
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She means that it''s obvious there isn''t enough evidence to establish absolutely what happened. So the most that can possibly result from this is us casting suspicion on one another and compromising our ability to work as a group, the logical part of my brain explained. It''s all in the way she said ''useful information''. As in, we might learn things, but only enough to make things worse.
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justified suspicion, could be the difference between life and death when we were all watching each others backs.
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am an expert in this field, master Ikkuret," Linos spoke. Even this very slightly humorous tone felt forced; hollow. "Plus, I''d expect going through several walls took a lot of power out of the shot."
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how the shot went off at all, when there was nobody there to do it."
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Anomaly-Divining Arcana at a strength big enough for the whole building a few minutes ago," Ran said. "Other than the ambient ones the sanctuary still have active, there were none in effect recently other the ones we cast openly... And two specifically in the kitchen." Her eyes flickered towards the door. "We''ll get back to that. But the point is, unless both Su and Ophelia botched their incantations completely, then there wasn''t anyone else in the building."
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how the shot went off," Fang said, still toying with the object. "The real question is how it went off in that moment."
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did have the safety active (but still managed to make me jump), they pulled back on the band where it gripped the trigger, stretching it away and causing it to release, before letting go, whereupon it snapped sharply back into place. "It''s elastic. Super tight."
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Oh, I get it.
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This makes Fang uniquely suspicious, I realized. It''s true that we saw the pistol, but not at all clearly until they''d physically handled it, giving them the unique chance to flick or wipe away the evidence. And judging by the word ''mostly'', they''re aware of this.
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not to do it, y''know?" They sat back a bit. "The worst thing that can happen it that it fires at a bad time, like when we were all out in the hall talking about clocks, and even then you haven''t lost anything."
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very much like to hope you''re not suggesting what it seems you are."
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sitting here was probably a part of it. This isn''t a group therapy session. We can''t mince fucking words."
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not helpful, Ezekiel," Kamrusepa said.
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was set by somebody in our group. For all we know, something could be going on that''s completely over our heads."
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dark, and to find some oil like you asked for, but we could still see okay from the light out here. I knew where all the tinned food was ''cause I was in there for a bit yesterday when dinner was getting put together, so I went straight for it and just started packing a bag." She swallowed the air, tense. "Then we heard the shot. Seth said something, uh..."
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Object-Manipulating Arcana, and the other the World-Deafening Arcana, used to lock the door and to silence everything in the kitchen for about four minutes."
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World-Deafening Arcana had been one of the ones Neferuaten had used, hadn''t it...? Could the culprit have stolen her scepter? It hadn''t been on the body.
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where they were cast from, right?"
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Okay. So it feels like what happened was that the culprit waited for as many to get out of the room as they could, locked the door and silenced everything, and then, uh, did the murder. Pretty simple, I guess."
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all of this had been going, since the start.
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