Young Writers Society

Anna pointed to the photo of the village. “That is the village in question. Souritesym, I believe meaning something to the effect of final light in the dying sun. I don’t think the name has anything to do with what happened, but that is quite the name to have for what appears at best to be a partially abandoned village. The population according to our most recent archives is believed to be forty-seven, which is honestly higher than I expected.”

Anna tapped on the identification document. “And that’s the one other piece of evidence we have. The crime was reported to local authorities where it passed enough red flag checks to be relayed to us and this is the one picture the local authorities were kind enough to send us.”

Anna raised her hand again. “Now I’m not certain why we only have the one picture of an id. The details tell me that it was either a sandstorm that prevented the local forensics team from taking more than a photo, or it was a sandstorm that took out the local Wi-Fi leaving this as the only image successfully sent.” Anna shrugged. “So yeah, we don’t really learn anything from that besides the fact that we’ve only got this to work with.”

“Well, it tells us that there’s sandstorms there that could interfere with our own equipment,” pointed out Sally.

Anna rolled her eyes. Sure, it was a valid point. That was an observation that could be made from that particular set of data, but a desert village half buried in the sand is usually all the evidence one needs to realize sandstorms exist near said village.

Thankfully, Sally didn’t seem to have noticed the eye roll or she’d ignored it so Anna could continue without another interruption.

“So, long story short, all we have is an id from the victim in question. We’ll have to actually fly out to get a hold of all the other details to be gleaned from the victim. Of course, they did send us a report on their findings, which basically amounted to the fact that magic or some form of unnatural force was used in this killing and that it was clearly done on purpose.”

“So, they followed the rulebook to the letter and sent the agency the case the moment it even slightly intersected into our jurisdiction?” asked Safi.

“They did, yes,” said Anna nodding, “contrary to popular belief, people actually do obey those guidelines because unless the case is somehow personal to them most people would simply jump at the chance to pile their work on someone else.”

“Reality is a harsh mistress,” echoed Serafina.

Safi proceeded to chuckle. “Don’t’ tell that in front of Captain Hardy.”

Serafina proceeded to glare at Safi. “She’s not going to smite me just for criticizing reality.”

Safi raised her hands, shrinking back a little. “Sorry, sorry. I was just trying to make a joke. It was in poor taste. I’m sorry.”

Serafina’s glare was gone as soon as it appeared. “No. I’m the one who’s sorry. That was an overreaction. My bad.” Anna tried her hardest to look away from what was definitely a private moment, but her traitorous curious brain had other plans.

Safi reached out a hand to Serafina. “Truce then. We both messed up.” Serafina masked a lock of shock with needle like precision as she took Safi’s hand. “I can accept that.” They shook on it and turned back to the board.

Anna scrambled to point at the highlighted name of their victim. “So… Mr. Von Blah Blah…”

“Anna, you alright?” came Sally’s voice from the side.

“Huh?” Anna twisted towards her confused.

“It says quite clearly Vionan Blogh Blau.”

Anna could feel the tiniest of blushes making its way to her face even as she fought valiantly against it. “I saw that. Just checking to see if you were all paying attention.” She tried the ‘Embarrassed Teacher’ smile. Her mind tried to point out that thinking in terms of the ridiculous names Sally had come up for Anna’s various smiles were not helping with the ongoing efforts to fight a blush, but she pointedly chose to ignore that voice.

Anna was saved by Safi.

“Mr. Von Blah Blah is a good way to remember,” said Safi. “That’s not the easiest of names to pronounce much less remember.”

“Precisely,” said Anna. “I was banking on that. So yes. Blah Blah here is our victim. Let’s talk about that. In detail. For a while.” She was going to run with that until Sally inevitably called her out again.

Thankfully, it seemed that Sally was in a forgiving mood because she nodded. “Blah Blah is good enough I suppose. We don’t want to use the actual name too often anyway when we reach those parts. You never know who connects to whom in what way until it’s a little too late.”

Anna nodded vigorously. “Absolutely, absolutely. That. That. So. Blah. Blah. Details. What do we have. Not much obviously, but its still more than nothing. Anyways. So that’s name. Now we do have date of birth. That’s the Konivian system so 4th of Argian 4016 is roughly the 3rd of December 1987 or thereabouts. Which isn’t too much of a clue. That’s around the age you’d be wondering that area all alone like that so nothing out the ordinary.

Anna pointed to the final detail that was highlighted. “Now that right there is the one singular clue that makes this seem just a little bit more out of place in an otherwise almost perfectly clean slate.”

“The membership,” said Sally, almost immediately. Anna smiled. Sally really was very sharp.