The Masquerade

Asteri's red eyes narrowed behind his mask, and he took a protective step forward in front of Mira. This was completely unnecessary, of course - Mira was probably more of a capable fighter than he was thanks to her time training with Thanatos, but he didn't like how someone was implicating his best friend in the murder. As the thought crossed his mind, the room suddenly became much colder - so much colder that he could see people's breaths as they breathed.

"She was fumbling with her cup," he said. He pointed at Mira's cup, which was now sitting on the table. "Besides, Mira couldn't have killed him."

"Asteri-" Mira started to interrupt.

"You know I'm right," he argued back, turning around to face his friend with crossed arms. "Mira, you're one of the most knowledgeable people I know when it comes to magic, but you wouldn't be able to pull something like this off. You can rarely do spells to their full potential-"

"Asteri," Mira said, "your tail."

She was pointing behind him.

He turned his head.

Horror flickered across his face - visible only in his eyes - when he saw that his tail had popped up from underneath his shirt and was now angrily swaying side-to-side. He was able to still the movements once he picked up on what he was subconsciously doing, but the damage had been done. The combination of his horns, tail and unusual hair and eye colors would make something very, very clear.

He was a demon.

"Was I talking to you?" Raiden shot back, crossing his arms and glaring at Asteri. He ignored the tail and the fact that the dude was a demon- he'd been through enough in his life to ignore at least that much about the guy.
"I was asking her," he said, gesturing behind this demon.
"Unless of course," Raiden said with a shrug, "you helped."

Taber immediately fixated on Asteri's tail. "Wow!" he said, "I have one just like it. Well, it's bigger and fluffier and grayer, so not really, but."

Turning her head back so she could see past Taber and get another look at the chaos, Eremia sighed. She couldn't quite hide a smile, though, even as she talked about something much more serious. "I have my doubts that Mira, or anyone else here before the lights went out, could be responsible. Nothing save unnatural speed could have allowed him or her to murder this man. That is not to say, of course, the murderer is not among us right now."

"Well, duh," Vala said. "It's overkill. Why wouldn't they be here?"

Maahes turned to stare at his friend, narrowing his dark eyes in confusion behind his mask the longer he thought about what she had said. "Vala, what are you talking about?"

"Murdering 101," she continued, taking a step forward and peering down at the deceased. "You either do it to get out of a nasty mess, or you hate the person you're doing it to. Go with the first option, and the murder is going to involve a lot of improvisation, and the person is going to run away the moment the crime has been committed. They didn't want to do it, and they don't want that murder to be weighing on their consciousness."

She looked back up. Maahes knew that Vala had to be talking from experience there; with her line of work, how could she have not been forced to kill someone at least once or twice? Even the members of the SGC had undoubtedly had to kill threats to avoid getting in harm's way.

"That right there, on the other hand, is a crime of passion." She gestured at the entirety of the body. "It's premeditated. Why else would there be all the things meant to intentionally mislead us? Whoever the murderer is had planned on killing Keith for quite some time, and they just took advantage of the masquerade to do it."

The woman dressed in scarlet cast a brief glance in Rendra's direction. Maahes would have normally missed the subtle look, but the woman in question was standing only a few feet away from him. The two held each other's gazes for several seconds before the woman asked, "Then who knew?"

Vala raised an eyebrow. "Excuse me?"

"Then who knew?" the woman innocently repeated. "Who knew the full range of everyone's abilities? Whoever committed the crime didn't pick a series of miscellaneous weapons. They picked things specific to the people present, things that weren't guaranteed to be at this place. So, I ask again, who knew? Or who had the ability to learn that knowledge? Could there have been someone who saw Asteri use his ice, and someone who noticed that Lorcan had fangs?"

James watched the conversations unfold, quietly listening to tone and watching body language. He was most interested in the woman who suddenly appeared out of the crowd and Mira, who had yet to answer the question. But when the unnamed woman accused Rendra, James looked over to the goddess, then back to the woman who questioned her.

"I think we're all aware that Rendra knows about everyone here. She's already made that clear. Of course, Rendra, you would also know if anyone else had access to the same information you did. And while I'd like to know the answer to that - I'd also like to address that the man in the dress's question still has yet to be answered as intended. Because, with all due respect, Asteri, Mira can answer for herself," James said.

The temperature dropped a little more. "Mira didn't do it-" Asteri started to angrily reply, only to fall silent when he noticed that Mira looked like she was about to speak.

"I was fumbling with my cup," Mira said. She pointed the cup in question, which was currently balancing quite precariously at the very edge of the drink table. She took a shaky deep breath. "And Asteri is...Asteri is right. I'm not half as good at magic as I would have to be to pull something like this off."

Her gaze dropped down to the ground. Her magic was always a sensitive topic, especially after she had been trying so hard lately to make it work the way that it was supposed to. Asteri hesitated for a moment, then leaned over and pulled her into a tight hug.

While he was surprising her with a hug, Rendra was preparing to answer the question that had been asked of her. She still looked as pale as a ghost - and grew even more noticeably pale when her gaze wandered in the direction of the body - and her voice shook when she answered the question. "It was just me and Kartiel," she said. She shoved her hands into her pockets and slumped her shoulders down. "We-We finalized the list for the masquerade together. But I don't remember the abilities of everyone here, so-so maybe there's someone who can dig through someone's memories and find information like that?"

Raiden shivered slightly, before pulling out a notepad and pen from somewhere in his gown. He began scribbling things down as Mira spoke. As Rendra spoke, Raiden's scribbling intensified.

"Hmmmm..."

Oh, no. If mind-reading were a possibility, I would not stand for it, I had secrets to keep, and I would not part with them for free. Not in today's economy.

"Why waste the time and energy on such a complex method, when we can simply state our abilities ourselves, and you can verify if they are true? I shall start. I am proficient with the dagger, though lacking in supernatural speed."

"We've got shapeshifting to a serpentine form, manipulation of shadows, supernatural speed and strength, and lots of poison," Viper says. "Kratzer's just a vampire. Both of us are trained assassins but he's pretty far-sighted."

"Am not," he denied.

"I can cast spells," Mira said, "but...but not well. My magic doesn't like to work the way that it's supposed to."

Asteri gave a worried look in Mira's direction before pulling away. "I can create and manipulate ice." He held out a hand and let a crystal of ice grow out of his fingertip. It sparkled in the light of the ballroom. "Like this."

He saw Lorcan and Second glance at each other out of the corner of his eye. Second leaned over and gave the taller of the two's hand a strong squeeze after grabbing onto it. "Lorcan and I have the same abilities," Second said. "We can switch our forms between human and our natural ones, and we can control darkness. But we can't do either one right now because our contractor isn't present at the masquerade."

Vala shrugged. "I'm just a really good thief."

Maahes hesitated.

"I can change my form to anything," he finally said. "I can control fire and wind. I can do multiple different types of attacks, too, but I don't know too much on how to use them."

The woman in scarlet looked around at the other people in the room.

"I can cast some spells," she nonchalantly said.

Raiden pointed his pen at the woman in scarlet.
"I'm gonna need more than that," he said, giving her a look.
"What kind of spells? Are they super complicated? Also you," he pointed at Mira, "I'm gonna need more than just 'spells'," he made air quotes as he spoke, "because spells could be anything vaguely magical. Can you do enchantments, healing spells, arcane magic or is it passive magic? I need answers."

"If there's a spell for it," Mira said, taking a deep breath. "I can theoretically do it. I just need to know the words. I can't be anymore specific than that. But when I...when I try using my magic, it doesn't work right. Sometimes spells don't work to their full extent, and when they do...they tend to be corrupted."

The woman in scarlet looked between Mira and Raiden. "My magic has a similar range to hers, though my spells tend to be much more successful."

"I have personality!" Taber said. When Eremia coughed, he bowed his head and said, "And claws and stuff like that."

"Wind magic," Eremia said. "I cannot say I see the point in mentioning abilities to someone who may choose to lie about her awareness of said abilities as she wishes." That was why Eremia avoided talking about either her power or her stranger magic.

James was mildly annoyed. Listing their abilities wasn't proving to be very useful, and he had a feeling most of it was stuff Rendra knew. He was more interested in the motive behind the murder. But for the sake of cooperation, he played along.

"I don't have any magic, and any combative skills I have aren't relevant to the means by which Keith was murdered. But I am interested in the look exchanged between you - " he pointed to the woman, still unnamed. "I don't know your name. But when Rendra was revealing Keith's identity, you shared a brief glance of shared knowledge or understanding. So by all means, elaborate."

The woman in scarlet smiled. "It's already come up, so I don't see a point in bringing it up another time when there's other things we can be focusing on." She thought for a moment, glanced over at Rendra once more, and added, "To answer your last question, I was looking at her because I wanted to see what she was going to say. Is it a crime to look at our party host?"