so sickly sweet it burns

For Azrael, it had all begun in 2189, Earth-years, on the sordid, stinking of oil-and-vomit streets of the Vekar Empire. They had found a body, mutated to the point of horror. Newspapers had quickly dismissed the first death as either accident or suicide. Such gruesome deaths weren’t uncommon in the Vekar Empire, where technological and magical experiments could easily go wrong. It was a glaring flaw in the empire’s system, but the Vekar Empire had always been far from a perfect place. At least it had the tech-magic advances to boast for it all.

That is, until it happened again. Another body, this time, limbs turned into a bloody, misformed goop. And then another: their claws unnaturally extended out so far that they stabbed themself. One was even thought to be unrelated, a heart attack - until they realized the cause of the heart attack was due to a freezing of every part of the body’s systems. All the murders could be linked with one trait: a spiraling, delirious smile plastered onto their faces, as if their greatest joy had been achieved at the moment of their death.

People first suspected some kind of mass suicide cult. That was, until the DNA tests came through: each of the suspects had been injected with a serum with a similar makeup, but not identical. It was a clear sign that the murders were experimental subjects, not suicides.

As the head Knight Detective on the job, recruited by the Vekar Empire’s royalty themselves, straight out of the ranks of Dienan Royal Knights, Serving in Honor to His Highness, King Callum, it was Azrael’s job to figure out who in the Great Dragon’s name was the culprit of these murders.

Number one on his list was the mafia: testing out a new drug to sell to the population or within the underground world at a later date. They had both the resources and manpower to pull off such an operation. Number two on his list was some low-down, cult organization. Number three was a rogue.

The good thing about the first option was that the mafia was an easy find. Small cults and rogue culprits could be much harder to identify if they didn’t even know where to start looking. There was any manner of suspects: people born in Hasnetania and the Vekar Empire, or citizens from entirely differently galaxies, crossed through the newly-opened Warp Gate, courtesy of thousands of years of knowledge of alien civilizations and the high-tech scientists of Sloniris. Opening it had been a dangerous gamble, but so far, it had only been a blessing to their small world.

Azrael frowned deeply as he stamped his approval on the most newly printed decree: the temporary closing of the Warp Gate, until the murders were solved. At that moment, the gate had already been closed, to catch their potential murderer off guard. There was no way they could have left already: the last murder had been reported a mere five minutes ago.

Now, Azrael thought as he leaned back in his chair, scratching at the orange fur on his chin, it was down to the matter of finding this serial killer. The knight force wouldn’t be enough to cover the entirety of the Vekar Empire’s capital: it was time to employ the people.