Suyan said,

There were three of them, hooded and masked, average in build and height, scrambling after her in the dark.

And then, one of them caught up, and grabbed one of her antlers with a gloved hand, and dragged her to the ground. She didn't even have time to fully buck against their hold before a second one was upon her, raising a slim and shining knife over her back.

The knife went in. The hand gripping it--this one, ungloved, with a little ring on the smallest finger--slipped and slid down over the blade, opening a long slice across the palm. There was a muted curse, but no other noise, just the blood running down into the cracks between the paving stones. It shone wetly, red in a way that nothing else was in the dark.

Suyan stared. She said,

She couldn't say how many people, just that there had been more than one, pounding after her in the dark.

Hawk prompted.

The face had been masked and hooded, the hand that stretched out towards her from the darkness nondescript.

Hawk said, gesturing at the running feet, the reaching figure. She looked up at him.

Suyan said, looking around.

As she said that, the facade of the glassworks seemed to suddenly be there, in stark detail: the uneven long windows, the moss in the corners, the glass sign shaped like a gently curled fist hanging above her head. Even the edge of the makeshift tent and cord that blocked off the crime scene came into a sharp focus.

The glassworks wasn't a particularly tall building but it seemed to loom over her anyway, fading upward into a black silhouette against an empty sky. Something about it made her shake.

Hawk said gently. She turned to look at him with huge eyes.

< Y-you can follow back the path... > Hawk trailed off at Suyan's questioning look. She craned her neck to peer into the space inside Hawk's ever-shifting many wings, where a particularly clear silhouette had come into view, but she seemed to disregard it as Hawk tried again. < It is possible they take your keys? >

< Ah, maybe, > Suyan mused, perking up somewhat. < Hmn...I reached my door. > The recollection didn't stop her, though, from going to look at the ground again. < I took out my...keys. >

She had done that--the movement was clearer now, of her head and the lanyard laden with objects in her mouth.

< There was some movement, or maybe it was a light-- > 

Whatever it was had been bright or hot or threatening enough for her to let the lanyard drop from her mouth, and the whole affair fell onto the stones, etched clearly now--the lanyard, attached at one end to a couple of cards, a key-shaped object, and a little charm shaped like a hedgehog. She'd left it there as she turned, bunched up, and sprang away--

< --and I ran. >

Suyan lowered her head and squinted into the moss growing in the cracks between the stones as if trying to bring it into focus. When her nose was within an inch of the moss and it showed in every fine detail, she paused, mute.

Hawk prompted awkwardly. She raised her head a little, staring.

After a very long time, she said, Something about a white flash, a lanyard strung with objects in midair. She continued thoughtfully, The white flash was behind her, illuminating her in silhouette for just a moment. She turned and looked up into Hawk's shifting faces as though only just realizing.

Hawk asked.

Suyan trailed off, as though she had forgotten temporarily. Then she looked around.

She stepped over to the side, where the edge of the sidewalk was just visible, not seeming to notice the featureless shapes of people watching from somewhere just beyond that. Hawk's many faces followed her.

Hawk leaned over to look. There was nothing obvious in the gutter where she was now searching.

Suyan replied, now busy peering at the outlines of the stones.

Hawk asked.

Suyan stared up at the figure with huge eyes. Finally, she said,

"Aw, shit," Hawk muttered, and a flurry of movement went through the many heads as he looked round. "Uh, hey, can anyone--I need help translatin'."

The heads all aligned themselves to point into the shifting space beside him, where the shape of wings shrugged half open and closed. A silhouette came vaguely into sight there, as featureless as if seen through a thick fog. Maybe it spoke, but the words were inaudible, and it didn't elicit any reaction in Suyan, who merely looked.

"Ok, uh," the heads turned back to Suyan, coming somewhat more into focus as they lowered to her level. Skull-like, eyeless sockets, a long muzzle that was somewhere in the vicinity of a beak, serrated along the jaws in the approximation of teeth. He addressed her in clumsy Aetherian. he corrected himself.

she replied pleasantly.

[Double update today! Click back to make sure you saw the first page!]

He gave the impression of being multi-headed and multi-limbed, or else that his head and limbs were moving ceaselessly, leaving behind vague shadows. The stripes on his tailfeathers inked trails as his tail fanned, lifted, switched sides, set down. Parts of him--the edge of a long face, a taloned paw lifted in greeting--swam somewhat closer into focus, but the rest of him was like looking through a fogged glass.

"Hi," he said, in a voice that seemed equally indistinct.

[Double update today! Click forward!]

"What was her name?" Hawk asked no one in particular. The crowd was small: a few people pausing on their way to peer into the alley at the white figure pacing it, a few other fuzhu decked in leather harnesses and piercings clustered together.

"Suyan," one of the fuzhu replied.

"Swan?" Hawk tried to repeat the name. Another fuzhu looked around at him.

"Su-yan," they said, slower for his benefit.

"Okay." Hawk stepped forward out of the little throng. Heads turned towards him, the movement drawing their attention away from the ghost.

The mouth of the alley was cast in a cool shade. She was wandering across the cobblestones underneath a glass sign that was worked into a hand grasping its own suspension cables. A short distance beyond her, the alley was roped off by a cord strung with rectangular signs, and further obscured by a cloth tent that stretched from one side to the other, weighted by bricks along the bottom edge.

"Suyan?" Hawk called.

She had been looking idly down at the ground, but her head snapped up and towards him immediately.

A palpable shudder went through the small crowd--even over Luu and Vlad, who had ostensibly been expecting this. Hawk just raised a hand in a sheepish greeting.

"Hi," he said.

[Teige (still a little hungover) is meeting with a spirit who is tidying a stack of papers.]

Spirit: And with that, the paperwork is done. Welcome to R.I.T.! Next you'll need to report to the University admissions office for enrollment. R.I.T. will check in quarterly on your coursework to make sure you're getting along all right. Please be diligent with your studies!

[Teige nods and gets up from his seat.]

Spirit: By the way, I think it's really great that you are doing this. Almost all the potential recruits we get from Earth want to join the field divisions. So many of them wash out, but even then it's hard to convince them to try volunteering for another division. Some of them even get offended at the idea of doing something other than combat! They all have very strange ideas. It's nice to meet an Earthling who doesn't have to be convinced how important our support work will be!

Teige: [laughing awkwardly] Haha! Sure!

"Well, sure." Vlad shrugged uncomfortably. "A violent death, probably pretty sudden...that'll get you a ghost. But the cops usually dispel any ghosts that start haunting in Escalus. They're usually quick at it, too..."

"It's part of their job to dispel ghosts quickly," Dina snapped. "They're just terrorizing people at this point. And you know if anyone else tries to dispel it, they'll get into trouble."

Vlad made a noise of agreement.

"Wull, can't they, uh...try to get evidence from the ghosts, or somethin'?" Hawk asked awkwardly. Luu looked at him with a raised eyebrow.

"Hah? It isn't as though you could simply interview one, they can't see or hear you." They paused, and then added thoughtfully, "Perhaps watching one might be helpful, in case they do anything that might be a clue..."

"The investigators aren't even doing that!" Dina said angrily, as Hawk hesitated. "Even if they could just talk to the ghost, they wouldn't bother."

Finally Hawk cut in, looking resigned. "Well, I can," he said. "Lemme talk to them."

[Housekeeping: we'll have a couple of one-off break comics for the next two weeks before getting into the next short! Thanks for reading!]

"The only person that Terrya d'Ubis hates more than any given offworlder is the Cynn."

"He's such a goddamn asshole," Vlad growled as he got up to join them at the door, brushing the seat of his pants off. Hawk stayed quiet as the three spirits kept talking; he stood to one side, rubbing his neck and frowning.

"It's no wonder they've treated the site of the killing like they have, if he's in charge," Dina said irritably. Luu glanced over.

"I hadn't heard that they'd found it already," they remarked.

"Aye, it happened on Bendh Truq, in front of that glassworks with the hand-shaped sign."

"Oh, Palma's," Vlad interjected.

"Yes. But all the investigators did was seal off the scene and then leave," Dina continued. "They didn't talk to anyone...but word's got around fast, I've already heard the victim's name floating around."

"See, you were right, Vlad--all they'd have to do is ask someone."

"And they could have asked anyone. It wasn't hard for people to figure out who she was! Her ghost is still walking around in the street!"

That brought Hawk out of his thoughts.

"Ghost?" he said, and all three spirits looked at him. "There's a ghost?"

< I have asked you to identify the victim's species, and you have done that, > the officer said, and gestured with a gloved hand. < Thank you, you may go. >

Vlad glared at them for a long moment, and then stormed out of the tent, cursing loudly enough under his breath that the officers and witnesses that he passed looked around at him.

"So I went," Vlad concluded irritably. "See, even if the Treiha does want to solve this, that's what they have to work with."

Hawk rubbed his throat. "...Whatta fuckin' asshole," he muttered.

"Let me guess:" Dina said, "that was Terrya d'Ubis."

"You bet," Vlad replied.

"Ah, of course it was." Luu frowned.

[Hello all, rare mid-story housekeeping Phooka here. Regular readers may remember that I left the webcomics collective Hiveworks a couple years ago without really any explanation; after a lot of ~stuff~ behind the scenes, a group of current and former Hiveworks artists have put out a statement about it via the Cartoonist Co-op, which you can read right here. I also detailed my own experiences on my Tumblr right here. The TLDR of it is that you shouldn't trust your money or projects with either of the two people who were in charge of Hiveworks, but the actual artists involved deserve your support!

Anyway I am now part of the Chimera Comics Collective, which is a webring that several of us put together just to keep our sites linked after leaving Hiveworks. My site currently has no ads on it so the comic only makes any money from my Patreon. I am considering adding an ad slot for Comicad.net to the left sidebar at some point though--this would only advertise other webcomics and feels like a nice way to pass the same $5 around between creators, as is webcomics tradition. Whenever I get around to it, I'll let y'all know, in case you'd be willing to whitelist my site on your adblocker.

Back to the comic! Thanks for reading, y'all! <3]

Vlad's incredulous voice caused both officers to look at him, the taller one with something of a glare. Undeterred, Vlad continued,

A condescending little smirk slid into place on the taller officer's face. they replied.

Vlad sputtered.

The officer held up a gloved hand to cut him off. vullar, > they said smoothly.

Vlad continued.

The taller of the two officers leaned away. they said dismissively, and turned to the other officer.

Vlad couldn't pull his eyes away from the disembodied head as the words rang in his ears. The blood on the white surface beneath it, the way it sagged to one side, the cloudy eyes under long lashes, the ring in its nose--Vlad's brow knit with anger.

"You can't be compelled to tell a truth seer what you don't know," Vlad said pointedly. "You see what I'm getting at, right?"

Hawk looked at him. "Yeah," he said after a moment, and then turned back to Luu and Dina with a shrug. "Look. It's just, I was told we could get the machete right to the Treiha. An' that even if it belongs to a cop, the Treiha would still go after 'em. So..."

He trailed off. Luu regarded him with some scorn. "Who told you that?"

Hawk gritted his teeth. "I can't tell ya that," he said. "You'd just have to trust me, I guess."

"Ah, well," Dina said irritably. "You showed such great judgement last night, after all."

Luu snorted. Before Hawk could retort, Vlad spoke up again.

"You might be right about the Treiha, hon, but the cops have already made it pretty clear to me that they don't give a shit about this murder."

Hawk frowned. "How's that?"

"They practically told me, when they made me come out this morning to identify the victim."