Ranun sat in discomfort as Jaxton’s lighter flickered a small flame. It was bad enough that Gordon smoked a cigar in the back of a closed-off carriage, but to add Jaxton’s cigarette? That was a whole new level of suffering.

Ranun pleaded with the window to open, struggling with the lock. The rusted old metal eventually carved its way out of the deadbolt, and Ranun pushed the square window open to vent the smoke out.

Sitting in the back didn’t help, as a mix of rich and poor tobacco combined into one hefty swoop as it exhausted past Ranun’s nose and outside the carriage like a fireplace tilted on its side.

“Watch the clouds, Ranun,” Gordon grinned. “Wouldn’t want to dab ash on your pretty face.”

Ranun chagrined.

Ranun never liked smoking, even when he was young. Tobacco was once pricer than it was now, but that never stopped Gordon from spending a fortune on it. He often had to clean his chest plate as ash fell from the embers and dirtied his suit. Ranun never got a straight answer whenever he asked for the price he spent, but Gordon often grunted in a way that seemed irritated, almost like he was embarrassed.

Ranun wore his favorite jacket, orange, matching Gordon’s armor. Pristinely pressed, it never failed to stand out. Then again, orange was as piercing to the eye as a color could be.

Jaxton had a talent for multitasking. In his lap, Jaxton had a book he flipped through with his right hand. He wrote down notes with his left hand, the pad on the bench to his side. And with Jaxton’s mouth, he smoked his cigarette. The young man stuck paperclips into the cores of each one, and as the ash started reaching farther and farther down to the filter, the ash held until the end.

He was always a crafty one, coming up with that trick by himself. Having people like Jaxton on your side was a blessing Ranun would never underappreciate again. Some worked hard to be as smart as they were, spending their childhood holding onto books rather than swords. But then there were kids like Jaxton who were… gifted.

Talent took many forms. Some great swordsmen like Kinler were simply born with natural ability, while others like Gordon worked day in and night to reach their potential. What unsettled Ranun about Jaxton was that he didn’t work hard for himself. Instead, all the effort he gave—and he contributed a lot—was centered on Gordon.

There wasn’t an assistant in the world who was more overqualified in raw talent than Jaxton. Ranun, at times, figured him capable of being a Towerly Scholar, or something more rewarding, like an anthropologist or something.

But today, and as of late, Jaxton helped a lot on the Igor case. He studied and studied, learning everything about the town he could through books alone. Most of the content referencing Igor was scarce, placed in encyclopedias of all Soucrestian towns.

Sadly, Ranun doubted his ability to find anything useful in books detailing various harvesting methods or architecture.

Then again, the book in Jaxton’s lap was thinner than most encyclopedias Ranun knew of.

“What are you reading, Jaxton?” Ranun asked.

Jaxton turned his head. Dropping his pencil, he pulled his cigarette out with a puff. “An autobiography of a middle-aged woman,” he said, closing the book with his finger keeping a tab. Jaxton showed Ranun the cover photo, depicting a woman in front and center with a man in the background holding two children. “As the title says, her name is Mylen.

“Her grandparents immigrated to Soucrest from Wargon, where they opened a smithy in Steepcreek. Business politics back in the day were… how do I say this… dumb? Anyway, Mylen’s father set her up with a local armorer boy in an effort to merge their companies to form an all-in-one sort of partnership.

“Mylen, who at the time, fell in mutual love with an impoverished street urchin, vehemently denied marrying the boy her father wanted. Strife arose, one thing led to another, and Mylen ran away with the street urchin.”

“To Igor?” Ranun guessed.

“That’s right,” Jaxton said. “Igor was the cheapest place for them to go to. And since Mylen’s father disowned her, and Payden—her lover—had no possessions other than the clothes on his back, they started with nothing.

“They described Igor as a place where you lose everything at the worst and keep what you have at best. Mylen worked as a bartender from six in the morning to ten at night. Payden worked in the mines, and while growing sick to the gruesome work mining entails, they together still couldn’t get to a comfortable place.

“They birthed their two children in poverty, and life was a mess. Their relationship turned shaky once the both of them started partaking in Gem Candy.”

“Gem Candy?” Ranun asked. He was aware of the drug but was unaware of its influence in his country. He thought it was a foreign problem, something always across the border.

“Igor, per thousand adults, was Soucrest’s highest consumers of alcohol, enough so that they eclipse Lavenbay’s number of one drink a day per person with an astounding three. While these numbers don’t precisely align with Gem Candy consumption—a statistic that’s hard to determine—we can correlate an alcohol problem to a Gem Candy problem.”

“Hmm,” Ranun said. “If that number is so high, then would that rule out the syndicates distributing the goods?”

“Maybe, maybe not,” Jaxton said. “I’ll need to learn more about Gem Candy to really determine that, sir. And the information about the drug is hard to come by, as its effects haven’t yet been studied. There are two things we know about Gem Candy. One, it’s made out of Soulgems, and two, it grants the consumers memories of a past life—presumably from the soul harvested.”

Ranun’s forehead wrinkled, and the troubling thought made him sick. Yet, he couldn’t turn away. He wouldn’t. That would be a slap in the face to those murdered in Igor. “Tell me more about Mylen. Does she possess any other clues to what could have happened?”

Jaxton shook his head. “It ended happily, with the wife and husband growing sober. Your impact as king improved their lives tremendously, but not enough so for them to carry themselves out of the abyss of Igor. They dedicated their careers to their children, hoping to send them off to another town or city to live better lives. Overall, while everything wasn’t great, it was better. And they found a sliver of happiness, and Mylen and Payden rekindled their love.”

Jaxton sighed, opening the autobiography once again. His cigarette exhausted the entirety of its tobacco, leaving only propped-up ash that provided no smoke. “This book was published two weeks before the massacre.”

Ranun’s heart sank in his chest, and he struggled to lift it back into place. He leaned forward, nauseated.

“Whoa there, Ranun, you alright?” Gordon asked. “Should we pull over and take a break outside?”

“No,” Ranun shook his head, straightening his back on the bench. “It’s just the smoke. It’s hard to breathe back here.”

Ranun refused to take a break. He didn’t deserve one. Igor faced a problem Ranun never took the time to solve himself, so the least he could do was bear the responsibility of the disaster that came of his neglect. Being a king was much like being a parent.

Losing a child when you did everything you could for them was a pain unlike any wound of war could match. But a child you neglected? That solid pain turned into liquid guilt, so much Ranun was drowning.

“You don’t look alright,” Gordon said. He then squashed his cigarette in an ashtray. “I’ll stop smoking with you inside the carriage. Jaxton, you too.”

“Yessir,” Jaxton said, flicking the ash off, discarding the filter with the paperclip sticking out.

“Oh, right, as if you could quit smoking for one hour,” Ranun lowered a brow.

Gordon, looking offended, scoffed. “I can quit anytime I want.”

“Then do it,” Ranun said. He found humor in the banter, and it pulled him to the surface. “I bet you can’t last a day.”

Gordon frowned. “You’re on.”

Ranun grinned, quickly prompting Gordon to do the same. Jaxton, however, looked concerned. He likely wondered what he would do now that Gordon would no longer join him on his smoke breaks. Part of Ranun figured Jaxton only smoked because of Gordon.

They settled in a moment of silence. Igor was only a few miles away, and the darkness was growing more palpable by the second.

“Do you think,” Ranun started, feeling vulnerable as he spoke, “that when we find those responsible, we can deliver a punishment worthy?”

“Well…” Gordon trailed off. “What could we do? Execute them?”

“That seems like the worse we could do,” Ranun said. “Torture is barbaric, but… it’s the first thought in mind. Is that wicked of me?”

“Oh, let me tell you, Ranun, I want nothing more but to tear those responsible limb from limb. But you would never stoop to such treatment. That’s not the kind of justice you’re about. You would tear their fundamental beliefs down before you would break their bodies. Whoever we find, you’ll not find the punishment worthy of the crime, but worthy of those they affected.”

Ranun sighed, in disbelief such justice could exist. Hundreds of victims and families pleaded for anything to get them back.

Some poor souls were optimistic. They thought that since there were no bodies found in Igor, they were hauled away, alive instead of murdered. They took the reports of bloodshed at the scene as the aggravators fighting the victims rather than merciless killings. Ranun, for as big as everyone said his heart was, couldn’t crush their hopes.

They started closing in on Igor, and from the window outside, Ranun could see the broken-down town past the driver.

“We’re stopping here!” the driver yells so the carriage could hear him loud and clear.

“What? Why?” Gordon asked.

The horses suddenly stopped, and the motion whipped Ranun and Jaxton to the left, closing Jaxton’s book in the process.

The driver turned to the window to look Gordon in the eye. His white eyebrows curled. “These horses of yours are expensive. Do you really want them to walk through all this glass?”

Concerned, Gordon stood up and rushed out the back door of the carriage. Ranun and Jaxton followed behind them, walking around to see the main road coated in glass.

Most, if not, all windows shattered. Blood splattered on the walls and concrete sidewalks, with steps walking from where the puddles dried up.

Ranun, hurting to look, choose to pet the horses instead, keeping his attention distracted for only a moment. The horse looked at him with eyes that almost said, “Go on, you know why you’re here.”

He sighed, wrapping his arms around the long neck of the horse in an embrace. “Thanks for taking us here.”

“Come on,” Gordon said. Ranun turned to his brother, seemingly undistraught by the brutality of it all. But while his expression could hide his emotions well, the cigarette in his mouth couldn’t. He always resorted to that when he was stressed.

Ranun hurried up to join them, noticing Jaxton looking almost relieved to be smoking one himself. He did well to look down in the center of the street. For someone who devoted himself to figuring out the crime, the shock was so much for his young shoulders to bear.

But for Ranun, he’d seen this bloodshed before. Back then, he contributed to it. Friends lay in the same fields as enemies. As it was now, Igor was like an image of Ranun’s teenage years.

The thing about war for Ranun was that it only felt traumatic to think about after the fact. He never thought twice when he took a life but thought a thousand times in years after. Regret and shame for who he once was, and doubt about if he was better now than he was back then.

Thousands and thousands had a certain perception of who Ranun Spring, the King of Soucrest, really was. They praised and praised, deified him to be someone bigger than he was. But only a select few knew the true Ranun and how shallow he often felt underneath.

Gordon had been around Ranun’s side long enough to tell. He could see now that Ranun’s eyes were flashing, blinking open and close from his past to the present.

“You should go back to the carriage,” Gordon said. “You don’t look well.”

“No,” Ranun said with determination. “I promised to give it my full effort.”

“You coming here at all is effort enough,” Gordon said. “We don’t need a Ranun that is hard and cold. Soft Ranun does Soucrest well.”

“Nonsense,” Ranun said, walking up to meet their pace. “I’ve seen blood before. And I’ll see blood again. Better to adjust to the sight now than shake-up down the line.”

Gordon reluctantly nodded.

Jaxton was the first to stop, looking into one of the buildings. “A pub,” Jaxton said, looking inside at the bar counter dyed in blood. “This was the apex of the massacre.”

“What? How can you tell?” Gordon asked.

“Mylen spoke a lot about how the busiest time for the pubs are early in the morning before work and late in the night after work. The report of the massacre came to us in the afternoon of that very day, meaning with all this concentrated blood, the slaughter took place early in the morning.”

“You bastard,” Gordon said. “You’re quick with this. All that shit you’re reading actually paid off. And I thought it was all pointless.”

“Is there any good in knowing when it happened?” Ranun asked. He forced his eyes to stay focused on the inside. He walked in after Gordon and Jaxton, careful not to step in any blood.

“Not right away, but it could prove useful when more information is discovered. We could ask around in nearby towns and see if anybody saw anything suspicious before the report surfaced. Narrowing the time frame, in this case, could help our cause greatly, especially as we assume they used carriages to haul the bodies.”

Ranun nodded, feeling a slight glimpse of hope, seeing Jaxton puzzle together pieces before his eyes was a sight to see. His mind was enviable, and Ranun wondered what his mind could do with more proper resources for him to work with.

They toured the bar. Ranun noticed a hole in the back seat of a booth, coin-sized, too big for a bullet from a gun. Then, Ranun’s eyes caught the jukebox in the back, broken, pierced by a crossbow bolt.

The feathered end of the bolt pointed back to the booth, maybe indicating a single crossbowman. However, the blood across the room was too great not to be from a majority of swords. This was undoubtedly the doing of a big group of people.

But… where were the leads? Ranun stood in the center of the disaster, yet he hadn’t a clue as to who had done this. Or better yet, “Why? Why would anyone do this?”

Jaxton looked up into the ceiling.

Gordon shrugged. “The bodies are the only motive I have in mind. The Soulgem market is always tough; many criminals would do whatever’s necessary to get their hands on them.”

“Something’s wrong,” Jaxton said. He continued to look up at the ceiling, readjusting his glasses to cover over his eyes.

“Huh?” Gordon asked. “What is it?”

“I agree Soulgem hunting is the likeliest reason or motive for why this happened. But that just brings up a lot of questions. For instance, why go to the lengths of slaughtering a town when it would be easier to simply raid a graveyard?”

“Sport?” Gordon suggested.

“That’s an option,” Jaxton said coldly. “Are they after the trophies or infatuated with the act? Both? A massacre this large, on a scale that there were no survivors… these were professionals, an established group.”

“A syndicate?” Ranun asked. That was their presumption going into this investigation, but the confirmation would be nice to have going forward.

“Again, likely,” Jaxton looked down at the jukebox. “I can’t help but think there is a key element we’re missing here. The question we should be asking isn’t who or why they did this—for Soulgems is the obvious reason. But, why Igor?”

“They wouldn’t be missed?” Gordon added harshly. “Not that I mean it, but they weren’t well looked upon by the nation.”

Ranun shook his head at that.

“What about Gem Candy?” Ranun extended to Jaxton’s thought. “If Gem Candy had a stronghold over Igor, what if an opposing Syndicate wanted to upend the distributors by lashing out on the consumers.”

“That might be onto something,” Jaxton said. He turned from the jukebox to look at Ranun. “Maybe Gem Candy does have an involvement in this, but to take such measures to put such a hole in an opposing organization isn’t worth the risk, I would think.”

Ranun sighed. He threw a random idea from his mind out there and wanted to see how Jaxton would react. “What if their distributors were responsible?”

Jaxton froze, his eyes shifting left and right to calculate. “Why would they do that? Killing your consumers for their Soulgems seems kind of low. Unless there was a benefit we haven’t considered…”

“I can think of none,” Gordon said.

“Me neither,” Ranun said, defeated.

Is a seventeen-year-old kid really heading this investigation, Ranun thought, while two men in their forties are lost out of their minds?

“My most curious question; is there a benefit to harvesting a Gem Candy addict’s Soulgem over a sober individual? If so, what would that be?”

Ranun paused, trying to think about everything he knew about Soulgems. “An ordinary person leaves behind a quart-sized Soulgem. A small fraction to the one installed in my boot. Three hundred quarts can sum up to a big Gem, however.”

“An ordinary person?” Jaxton asked. “What about unordinary people? Any variance in yield, you know?”

“Some say soldiers or warriors often leave behind larger Soulgems than non-combatants. But… an old friend of mine once said that is likely due to consuming Gemchemy products, mostly potions.”

Jaxton raised a brow. “Gem Candy is a Gemchemical product made of edible Soulgems. I would assume that same effect applies to them.”

“Wait a moment,” Gordon said, glowing red. “That implies the Igor citizens took in a lot of Soulsickness. How deadly is this drug?”

Jaxton scratched his head under his glasses. “The Candy is a harsh drug that leaves a long-lasting effect on any who consume it. But compared to potions, the duration is much longer, taking six hours to dwindle down. Remember, they experience somebody’s entire lifespan in those few hours, and the sense of time leaves a scarring effect that induces memory loss.

“The potions you use in war often last an hour at most. Soulsickness is less intense the longer the duration of the effect.”

Ranun frowned. “But you’re suggesting the Candy modified the gain of Soulgem harvesting. If their Soulgems are larger after death, then that means that by killing three hundred victims…”

“They could get a harvest of several thousand Soulgems,” Jaxton said with some confidence.

Ranun’s heart dropped.

“It’s fair to say,” Gordon said, putting a hand on Ranun. While he was rough, and the hand at any other time would hurt, it comforted Ranun. He then smiled at his king brother. “We’ve found our motive. Now we just got to find the bastard.”