Ninjago Oneshots

The Murder At Wishwood Manor

CW: Gorey descriptions, video game violence, lots and lots of blood, character death (they come back it's okay)

The gridded ground reached out towards a visible vanishing point, disappearing into a white void when the program deemed the render distance far enough. Stretching along an invisible wall, several bright doors wore various unfamiliar game titles like Doggone Days at Doomsville or Cook It 2. Jay bounced fearful glances at each of the doors.
"I really hope we're right about Prime Empire customizing its end game prizes, because getting through all of these to meet Unagami would take forever."
Cole gestured a reassuring wave at him.
"Well, it'll only take one of us winning one game to find out if we're right, so just find something you'd be good at," he explained.
"Speaking of--!" Zane interjected.
A small panel read a sample blurb about a door he stood in front of, The Murder at Wishwood Manor. He shot an excited glance at the ninja.
"It's an investigative strategy horror game. I think I'd be good at that."
"You're into horror games?" Kai questioned, tilting his head.
The others mirrored his disbelief. Zane cracked open the door, revealing a sliver of a dark, misty forest.
"Some of the best narratives are in horror games. That, and I just think they're fun," he said with a smile.
A spine-shivering creak rang out as he opened the door the rest of the way. Jay began to voice a protest, but Zane had already entered the game, his presence registering with a ping! and small menu relaying his profile. With a flash of blue light, three small hearts appeared beside his name. The others filed behind him and the game recognized them similarly, though with only one heart next to their name. Jay hung back a second.
"Secondary players only get one life here?" he asked with a panic.
Nya rolled her eyes, pulling him by the shoulder. He eyed the door as they passed through it, but it vanished behind him, leaving only the forest. The desaturated surroundings faded to shadow as fog obscured the middle distance and beyond. Jay patted his pockets for any light that could help them, but looked down to see their brightly-colored gis had been replaced with a range of dull suits. When he looked back up, the others also inspected their new outfits.
"Egh, this is already weird," he commented.
Nya pushed down his new homburg hat so that it covered his eyes. He immediately fixed it.
"At least it looks good," she said with a laugh.
He forced a smile, but it didn't lighten him up much. Zane adjusted the lapel of a long, gray trench coat.
"I'd certainly call it an upgrade," he said.
Seemingly from the heavens, a low, rumbling string bass voiced an eerie warning. The dirt path beneath them was thin and winding. Almost at once, the path ended with a large, ornate gate and a fence that stretched beyond it on either side. A short noise prompt materialized a text box in front of Zane. He read its message aloud.
"Detective," it read, "the McMillans will be happy to hear that you finally decided to do your job. They couldn't stick around, but they said they left the main gate key somewhere close. I'm sure you can find it."
He inspected the lock. Its keyhole was unusually large. Thinking he may be able to pick it by hand, he felt around the inside of the lock, but the pins inside were much too deep to reach. The others began to poke around in various leaf piles and irregularities in the path. Zane opted to continue prodding at various parts of the gate, searching along its bars mostly by feel.
With an instant lurch back and an involuntary 'aah!' in a high tone, Jay nearly created a domino pile of ninja. He searched for something in the distant wood that could've made that distinctive metallic snap, but the others failed to share his concern.
"Did you guys not hear that?!"
"We heard you," Kai huffed.
Jay stuttered a protest, but an unmistakable distant rustle in the woods made his argument for him. Lloyd spoke with sudden careful quietness.
"Ookay, we should probably keep it down."
"They definitely already know we're here," Nya reasoned, voice shaking.
The search for the key became slightly more frantic. Zane observed the huge decorative waves and flairs in the main gate, featuring not a lick of rust despite its Victorian design. Arching bands of metal formed itself into a sort of circle of circles and a crest occupied the middle of it. Each side was perfectly symmetrical, aside from a straight bar that ran right down the middle, having two small grooves that stuck out on one side. He tugged at the bar slightly, which came loose without protest.
"Got it!" he said, holding up the key.
It fit perfectly into the keyhole. An eerie, whiny chirr rang from the gate as it opened. Beyond it stood a very large house somewhat obscured by fog. They continued on.
"Ooh, great job finding the key to that creepy gate," Jay mocked to himself, "now you get to go inside this creepy house, isn't that fun?"
A clean pavement replaced the dirt path beneath their feet, but the woods continued through the gate for a fair distance. Dull and foggy greens, grays, and browns lined their view on either side. Occasionally, it seemed something shiny would catch the light just right as they passed by, but Zane chalked it up being some simple land marker.
"Hey, Nya, you were the last one that went through the gate, right?" he asked suddenly, "did you close it behind you?"
Nya halted for a moment.
"Uh, I don't think so," she said.
"Nya!" Jay immediately interjected in a faltering, scolding tone, "that thing could've followed us in!"
"Who even closes doors behind them in video games?!" she argued.
"In horror games you do!"
"I don't," Cole commented.
"Jay, you don't even play horror games," Kai added.
A burst of argument and attempts to quell it broke out among them. Silencing them at once, a long, wooden creak rang out through the air, not behind them, but in front of them. After a moment of tense silence, Zane prompted the others to follow with a head cue. He quietly led them through the rest of the clean path and up some steps to a large, ornate door. It was open. Ignoring a vigorous protest from Jay in the form of a head shake, Zane entered and the others followed. Another quick ping! brought forth a text box, coinciding with a terrible smell.
"Detective," he read aloud, "aside from some sample collection, we left everything just as it was. Making a chalk outline would've been... quite the task. You'll see."
The door opened into a wide entranceway, then into a grand hall that split off into several massive rooms. There appeared to be no light switches in sight, but a few lit chandeliers, candles lining the walls, and floor-to-ceiling windows gave enough warm light to dim the place. From the main left branch of the grand hall lay a gallery, where Zane saw some blood splatters and general indicators of commotion. The others had started trailing a lot closer behind him.
As he turned into the gallery, the full scene came into view. Hanging from a pair of antlers on the wall was a severed head and torso a few feet off the ground. Before it, in a semicircle pattern, were five forearms laid carefully and spaced evenly. Coagulated blood pools and dried splatters drenched the room.
"Dear God, what-?"
Jay was cut off by his own efforts to not throw up.
"Could be," Zane considered, "but antlers hold quite a few meanings in different cultures."
He turned his focus to the chaotic sequence of bloody footprints that lined the floor and the various stain patterns on the walls. The others did not join him. After overviewing some main features of the scene, another text box appeared.
"Detective. I'm sure you had no trouble finding the main exhibit in the gallery," it said, "you'll find some slightly less spectacular scenes in the study on the west side of the second floor and in the wine cellar. If you need any more information, I've emailed you all the relevant files."
A small tab with an envelope symbol on its face appeared from the right side of the text box, prompting a press. It opened a laundry list of various files, including everything from the profiles of particular bloodstains to possible suspects. Zane closed the tab for now, getting back to exploration. After another string of silence, he spoke.
"There appears to be no streak stains along the floor, suggesting that this victim wasn't dragged here. That could mean he was either dismembered here and his limbs were carried elsewhere, or that the murder was done somewhere else and the head and torso were carried here. Both methods would leave paths of drip stains, but given that there's no clear line of going out of this room, it suggests the latter idea," he explained, "do you see where I'm going with this?"
Zane had never been the comforting type, but he did manage to mostly replace the unease in the ninja with confusion.
"Uhh, maybe?" Cole eventually answered.
He sighed.
"If the murder was carried out elsewhere and the body was carried here, then there's probably a drip trail leading from where it originated to somewhere nearby. I think some of you should go look for the trail while I try to piece together what happened in this room."
Wide-eyed glances bounced about the group. Nya instinctively grabbed her nose to silently convey a 'not it.' The rest quickly followed, but some faster than others.
"So, does that mean it's Cole and I?" Lloyd asked.
"Wha-! Why do I have to go with you?"
"Well, I'm definitely not going alone."
Zane was quick to break up the argument this time.
"You both should go together. Killers are less likely to act when there are possible witnesses around," he said.
Cole gave him a sideways glance.
"Thanks for the reassurance, pal."
The detective dismissed the line with a vague gesture and the two were off. The remaining stood ghostly still as he redirected his focus back to the scene, as if in hopes that he would forget they were there.
"Now, these footprints don't make sense," he commented, sending a new wave of unease among them.
"What do you mean?" Kai asked.
"I just can't draw a logical line of movement. It reads more as multiple people wearing the same shoe than one person making these steps."
Jay, after a twitch that broke his stillness, approached Zane and threw a rough hand across his shoulder, facing him with a sudden casual nature.
"Hey. Zane. Buddy," he said, a staccato tamber breaking through his light tone, "you're not suggesting that there's multiple killers, are you?"
The detective met him with a bewildered look.
"There could be," he said carefully, "it's one theory. These could also be the steps of victims."
Jerking back, Jay left Zane to his devices and paced around the remaining group.
"It just had to be a horror game," he mumbled to himself.
Quietly hoping that the interruptions would end here, he turned himself back to the scene one last time, now looking at the scene as a whole.
"There are the limbs of four people in this room and an approximate four liters of blood as well. However, we're assuming that at least one of these victims was killed elsewhere, and unless each of the other victims were brought here and each lost over a liter of blood, then is it likely some of it belongs to the killer," he said, then shot a glance at Jay, "or killers."
Zane pulled up the documents tab and scrolled through some various files before selecting one titled 'SCENE A: BLOOD SAMPLE TEST RESULTS.' As he read through some of its findings, his face gained a sudden concern.
"According to the test results, the blood around the gallery has three main sources: the victim whose head and torso was pinned to the antlers, a missing person whose arm was laid alongside others, and, somehow, a deer."
The ninja traded troubled looks between them. Kai nudged Jay.
"I guess you were right about that 'deer god' thing," he said.
Nya shifted uncomfortably.
"So, what? A guy murdered a bunch of people, made an altar for some weird cult, then put deer blood everywhere?"
Zane inspected the scene as a whole once again. He shook his head slightly.
"I think it's a bit more complicated than that. These blood patterns seem to be the result of a struggle between multiple people armed with slashing weapons," he explained, directing his focus back to the file, "and if the deer blood was spread by hand, that would leave behind DNA, but there's no reports of that."
Approaching footsteps halted conversation, stunning the group into place. They relaxed again when Lloyd and Cole turned the corner back into the gallery. They seemed shaken.
"There's definitely a drip path leading from upstairs to this general area," Lloyd said first.
"But there's also definitely something up there, so we didn't follow it," Cole added.
Jay shivered. Zane closed the file he was looking at and tilted his head slightly.
"Like what?"
"We saw its shadow in the light reflection of one of the windows upstairs. It was too fast to see what it was, but it was there and it was big."
The detective didn't reciprocate their fear, but considered their description.
"Perhaps it was a lapse in the lighting engine or something. Games are typically more obvious when a threat is present," he said, "we'll head up there together, though, following the drip path. Considering what the report said, it most likely leads to a room on the west side, where the next scene is."
Jay gained a sudden defensive demeanor.
"Hey, Zane, I dunno if you've ever played a horror game before, but big shadows don't just fly across a window for no reason. There is a murderer up there."
Zane moved past him, stepping back into the grand hall. He dismissed the claim with a 'tch.'
"Well, I don't know if you've ever played a horror game, Jay, but shadows and fast movements are some of the most common methods of building suspense, even when they don't mean anything," he retorted, "but if you want to stay down here with the sacrifice altar, that's your choice."
Jay huffed but didn't say anything. Lloyd and Cole led the others back to the end of the drip trail, where Zane took the lead once again. The trail started about halfway up the stairs, a considerable splash on each step. He glanced at each stain as he passed them.
"The manor is quite large, but if the trail ends this far from the gallery, it could imply that the victim was carried around for a while before being put on the antlers, or at least that he was left to bleed out for a considerable time," he thought aloud.
He stopped a few steps out from the top of the stairs, drumming his fingers along the railing as he continued ranting to himself.
"But if the victim's blood was in the gallery, perhaps he was placed into some kind of bag as he was carried down the stairs. Such an item, if we could find it, would definitely contain the fingerprints of the killer."
"Y'know, Zane, you should write crime novels," Cole interrupted, "Because you're really good at describing gross crime scenes, and I think I speak for the rest of us when I say it's a little nauseating."
He snapped a glance to each of the others. They looked a bit pale.
"Apologies," he said awkwardly, "though we've only been to one scene so far. You'll have to get used to it."
He followed the trail to the west side. Long, tall bookshelves split the main upstairs, irregularly turning and forking like a maze. The trail led through them into another lobby with several doors lining the wall. Drenched and dried carpet laid at the foot of one of them. Though it was closed, the door didn't seem quite latched to its frame. Zane opened the documents again, scrolling through a few before speaking.
"It says here the door was locked when the police first entered the manor and had to open it by force," he said.
"That seems a bit secondary to the giant pool of blood beneath it, don't you think?" Kai argued.
The detective smiled something smug at him.
"All evidence is valuable, Kai," he said, "but if you're interested in blood pattern analysis, there's a report here that mentions some pooling on the east side of this floor."
"Oh, no, no, take your time, detective," he backed off immediately.
Zane turned away from him and carefully opened the door, holding it to its hinges. The tattered remains of a small study room lay inside, fallen books soaking up dark pools from the floor. A large, ornately carved desk held upon it the torso and leg of some unidentifiable remains and several smear stains. Though the raised ceiling spanned an easy four meters, large smudges reached almost to the top. He struggled to find a standing spot in the room that wouldn't disturb the scene.
For several moments, he meticulously looked over every detail, eventually fixating on one handprint near the top of the wall. After checking his pockets, he referenced the documents once more.
"I can't find anything in here that measures the height of the handprint," he said, troubled, "or even anything measuring the handprint itself."
Hesitantly, he stepped back out into the lobby and peeked into the other rooms. When he found another study, he quietly rifled through the desk drawers until he found a long roll of ruler ribbon. Once he had carefully closed the door behind him, he turned.
"Kai, could you get on my shoulders?"
Kai smiled a sweet 'no' and took a few steps backwards.
"Y'know, someone should really look at those bloodstains on the east side," he explained.
He grabbed Jay's arm.
"And I'm taking him with me."
Jay darted anxious glances around the room, refusing more than a half step back.
"Since when did we get to choose partners?!"
"Hey, we already had our turn," Cole said, gesturing to himself and Lloyd.
"Have fun, Jay," Nya waved.
He glared wide-eyed at the group, but let Kai pull him away. They argued in hushed voices as they turned into the bookshelves.
"Nya?" Zane asked gently.
She sighed.
"If you drop me and I land on that body, there'll be two murder victims in there," she warned.
"Noted."
Zane briefly struggled to balance as he stepped back into the study with Nya, but reestablished it before she could complain. She prepared a stretch of the ribbon, though peered at the stain for a moment.
"Are you sure it's a handprint? It's really big," she asked finally.
"The documents identified it as one. They speculated that it's unusual location could be from the killer or victim standing on the desk, though since there's no evidence of shoe prints or similar there, I'd say it's unlikely."
She held a portion of the ribbon from the tip of the middle finger to an estimated wrist.
"Did they say anything about its size?"
"They mentioned that the wide spacing between fingers could be caused by the hand skittering across the wall, but it seems even more far-fetched. That's all they said," he explained.
"Length from second fingertip to wrist looks to be about... thirteen inches."
Zane shot a sudden, concerned look up at her.
"Are you sure that's not a mistake?"
"Do you wanna get up here?" she retorted.
He turned slightly to glance at Cole, who shook his head. Nya readjusted the ribbon.
"Width is a bit harder to see. I think it's about six inches," she said.
Finally, she held a portion of the ribbon to a midpoint of the print and let it roll to the floor.
"And the print is about three and three-quarter meters high."
Zane sighed to himself. Carefully, he moved out of the study and let Nya off. He paced a bit as he thought, eventually pulling up the documents again.
"The remains in the study have had far longer to decay than those in the gallery. Reports estimate a full two days passed between these two deaths. However, the forearms in the gallery hadn't decayed as much, even though they've been identified as belonging to this person," he explained, "and unless our killer is ten feet tall, there's no way that handprint could be that high up."
He paused, trying to force any kind of cohesive narrative together.
"Maybe it's, uh, poor game design?" Lloyd half-heartedly suggested.
Zane ignored him.
"I thought this would be an open-and-shut case about a sacrifice to some local cult," he sighed, "but it's highly unlikely that someone who broke in could hide this body for two days before completing a ritual in an entirely different location. This manor has a cleaning staff, they would've noticed it right away."
He mumbled some forensics jargon to himself as he rifled through a number of files.
"I'm gonna have to agree with Lloyd on the poor game design thing," Cole commented, "I mean, it said it's a strategy horror game, right? All we've done so far is open a gate and look at blood."
A quiet ping answered his question. A small text alert appeared before each of them, paired with a simple eye icon.
'Hide to stay out of sight. Check the icon to make sure you aren't seen,' it read.
"I just had to say something," he sighed quietly.
From the east side of the floor, books were one-by-one pushed off a distant shelf with a series of dull thunks. The sound stunned them into panicked stillness, shifting into franctics as it approached. They all fled into different studies and closets, except for the detective, who curiously peeked around the bookshelf corner. He prepared himself to attain as many details of the threat as possible.
"Zane! What are you doing?" Nya spat at a loud whisper.
He snapped his attention to the lobby and rooms adjacent to the study, but didn't find her. He whispered back to the general area.
"If I hide now, I won't be able to get a profile of the murderer, or at least one of his accomplices. Not to worry, however, I'm usually good at evading-"
In an instant, the detective was tossed like a rag to the back wall of the lobby, knocking the wind out of him as he slammed against it. A massive slash to his abdomen leaked a faucet of red. Concerned, he looked at a few drops on his fingertips.
"That's... not what's in there," he said slowly.
His form abstracted into a white light, afterwards dissipating with a sad electronic arpeggio. Just as quickly, he found himself standing at the entrance hall of the manor once again. Immediately checking his torso, he found that his wound had disappeared.
"That's one of three," he mumbled to himself.
He darted straight for the second floor. To his disappointment, only a line of fallen books evidenced the murderer's presence. When he returned to the west lobby, the others had already emerged from their hiding.
"Did any of you see them? What did they look like?" he asked.
"The last thing I saw was you getting minced," Nya said, "this game is way too into its gore."
Lloyd spoke with wide eyes.
"I think I saw a shadow at one point. It was huge, but I didn't even hear any footsteps or anything."
"I saw the shadow too," Cole added.
Zane quickly opened the files and made a keyword search for 'suspects.'
"What did the shadow look like?" he asked.
"It was really tall and lanky," Lloyd began.
"I saw it as being kinda short, but really bulky and hunched," Cole continued.
"And it had these really big, spread out hands."
"It was definitely holding something, like a knife."
"It sorta lumbered around, like really methodical."
"It moved really fast at one point, barely even a blur."
The detective shot incredulous glances between the two of them.
"Those are... contradictory statements," he said finally.
The two looked at each other, both sure in their accounts. Zane sighed.
"Nothing is less reliable than a human eye-witness," he commented, mostly to himself.
He looked with annoyance through the list of possible suspects, though, unsurprisingly, none of them remotely matched the impossible description. Nya interrupted his search.
"Hey, are we sure that Kai and Jay aren't dead right now?" she reminded them.
Zane lurched back suddenly, turning back towards the bookshelves. The others followed him closely.
"Ooh, nothing less reliable than the detective's attention span," Cole teased.
He was met with a lighthearted elbow jab, but no verbal response. The maze of bookshelves continued through the east side of the floor, though without any blood trails or fallen books to hint at a correct path. Luckily, their distant arguing didn't need to be seen.
"Dude! You didn't realize you shut the door on me? That would've easily been the worst way to die in this game," Kai scolded.
"You found what you wanted, didn't you?" Jay retorted.
Nya heaved a sigh of relief, though kept it to herself. Rounding the corner, the east lobby opened into a much larger area: a wide hall ending in an ornate kitchen with a large pantry at one side. Across from it, Jay and Kai stood next to an industrial type door, cool mist flooding out from an unseen room. They immediately redirected their attention to the others.
"Did you see the murderer?" Zane asked as they approached.
"Murderer?" Kai repeated.
"Yes, someone came down the west side knocking books off their shelves. The game directed us to hide from them," he explained.
"And Zane totally got himself killed," Nya added.
Jay looked squarely at the detective with a bewildered expression.
"Well I didn't see anything," Kai huffed, "probably because this guy locked me in the freezer while I was looking at bloodstains."
"Whoops," he said lightly.
Zane attempted to form a mental timeline of events.
"How long were you locked in?"
"Well, I was in here for, like, ten minutes, but I only realized it was locked after a bit, so... five, six minutes?" he estimated.
The detective addressed Jay.
"And did you hear or see anything?"
He shook his head.
No clear timeline formed itself. With a somewhat frustrated sigh, Zane stored that information in the back of his mind for now. He changed the subject.
"What did you find in there?"
Kai began to walk into the freezer, but stopped himself right at the door, shooting a short, accusatory look at Jay. He remained still, but gestured to a large, industrial container inside.
"There's a small blood pool at the bottom of that freezer, and some stains in the ice surrounding it. It could just be some kind of meat, but there's none in there," he said.
The detective walked past them and inspected the container. Indeed, a dark red lined the bottom interior, though it held only various dairy products and frozen produce. Cole, Lloyd, and Nya had followed him inside, followed shortly by Jay, but Kai kept near the door. The chill of the freezer stopped them from taking more than a few steps inside.
"I thought I remembered seeing something about..." he trailed off.
He pulled up the files once again, searching through various suspect interviews and profiles he had glanced over earlier. Soon enough, he landed upon a specific profile.
"One of the first people the police interrogated about this case was a man named Joseph Amato, the head chef for the McMillans. Investigators assumed some sort of hacking weapon must've been used to dismember the victims, and thought he would have ready access to them. However, he confirmed in an interview that the McMillans were vegetarian, so he had no use for such tools," he said.
Lloyd crossed his arms, sighing a visible breath.
"So that definitely shouldn't be in there."
"Yes, but it could explain why the forearms belonging to the victim in the study weren't as decayed. They were preserved here temporarily."
The other ninja began inching themselves towards the door, but Zane remained planted next to the container.
"Makes sense to me," Nya said.
"Though, that raises the question of how the killer had access to both the study and the freezer, and how they kept the remains unseen," he went on.
Cole gestured with a shiver for them to leave the room, but the detective focused entirely on his own thoughts.
"It lends itself to the idea that it was someone the McMillans trusted or had hired, but if they knew someone of that sheer size, surely they would've already been arrested."
Kai, already cross from standing in the cold before, turned away from the door, though kept his foot at its edge. Zane glanced over several random details of the case.
"Furthermore, the east and west halls had entirely different sets of cleaning staff. It wouldn't have been outright suspicious for someone to cross into the other hall, but it certainly would've been noteworthy."
Jay tilted his head, expression stiff and incredulous. The detective, if he even noticed, didn't acknowledge it.
"None of the interviews mention recent visitors or guests, either. I'm inclined to say they must be lying, but everyone's stories corroborate too well."
"Can we talk about this outside the freezer?" Nya snapped, "You might have two lives left, but we just have the one."
Zane returned the annoyed glances directed at him with an apologetic surprise.
"Oh-, uh, yes, sorry," he stumbled.
They gladly turned around and exited the room. Aside from their footsteps and the click of the door latch, the hall stood at an eerie silence. The detective leaned against the wall in deep thought. After some moments passed, he stared at Jay, who returned the look with hostility.
"What?" he barked.
Zane turned back to the ground, apathetic to the aggression. He took a step towards the bookshelves.
"Hopefully the cellar has some answers we don't," he sighed.
He turned, letting the rest follow. Jay stood to follow last, but Nya hung back with him, walking at his side. She smacked his shoulder.
"Jay, your fear is making you argumentative. Quit it," she huffed.
The 'sorry' he responded with stung so greatly with insincerity that she smacked his shoulder again. He said nothing. Before going down the stairs, Zane inspected a window across from them.
"Was this the window you saw the shadow in?" he asked Cole and Lloyd.
They shrugged to each other.
"Uh, I think so, why?" Lloyd eventually answered.
"I wondered if..." the detective trailed off.
He inspected the window, running a hand along its low sill. It had gathered a very fine layer of dust. His eyes gradually traveled up the thing, stopping at its highest point near the ceiling. Eventually, he faced away from it with a wave and continued down the stairs.
They wandered from hall to hall, even crossing through the gallery again as small conversation broke out among them. The detective never kept his eyes still for even a moment. Other than the unfortunate scenes, detailed paintings and intricate statues lined every wall and corner. Indeed, the rooms repeated themselves in design.
They soon came upon a short, wide hall, lined with liquors and a tall countertop with high chairs. At the back of the bar laid an angled door, almost like a storm shelter, but more ornate. It pulled open with a wooden chirr, revealing a staircase that led into darkness.
"... Do we have to?" Kai asked slowly.
The detective stifled a short laugh and inspected the bar. Luckily, candles were plenty in stock. He took a few in holders, then rifled through some drawers for a match. Once lit, he passed them out. Kai initially refused, confidently flicking out his hand to conjure a flame, but a few failed attempts made him sheepishly accept the offer.
"There's probably more candles in the cellar," Zane assured.
He kept an eye behind him as he led them down. They held their candles at an eye level, searching for any details in the walls or low ceiling. That was, except for Jay, who left his candle on the bar top, blank stare only visible by the light beyond the cellar. Strangely, he closed one of the doors behind him. The bewildered looks he received did nothing to deter him from closing the other one.
"Didn't think you of all people would want to actively add to the horror ambience," Cole huffed with a passive-aggressive sting.
The stairs opened into a gravel floor, worn bricks lining the walls. Candles did line the walls in a consistent pattern, though they struggled to hold more than a tiny lick of flame with the humidity. The detective lit them anyway.
"With all their money, you'd think they'd invest in electricity," he said.
The light reached no farther than half a meter from the source.
"I think that really is just poor game design," Lloyd added.
They came upon a wall that branched out on either side in a 'T' shape. As he lit the remaining candles along it, something shiny on the right side reflected the light. In small portions, the detective slowly revealed a small blood pool, several old barrels, a much larger blood pool, and a body. The others recoiled at the sight.
He knelt down at the smaller pool and carefully dipped a fingertip into it.
"You're gross," Nya complained.
The detective didn't even look up.
"The blood here seems fairly recent compared to that in the study, though older than the gallery. Perhaps the killer retreated to the cellar after killing the victim upstairs," he thought aloud.
The body itself had two missing forearms and a leg, though inspection of its head told them this was once the barkeep. The barrels bore a few scratches. The detective wandered the light around the sight aimlessly for minutes on end, mumbling to himself at seemingly irrelevant corners and walls. With an uncomfortable glance backwards, he addressed the others again.
"Hey, Lloyd, can you take Kai and Jay to inspect the other end of the hall? I need to analyze these scratches," he said.
Lloyd's fearful apprehension silently pleaded with Zane, but he didn't back down.
"Umm," he searched, "are... you sure you don't want to do that?"
Kai joined in on his silent protest, but the detective had already dismissed them.
"Yes," he said simply.
Jay, who had reacted none to hearing his name so far, jolted upon being beckoned by the other two. He waited for them to start walking first, then apathetically trailed behind with no regards to the darkness or the awkward stares. The detective waited until he saw their candles disappear beyond a turn and then some. He turned to the remaining.
"What's wrong with Jay?" Cole broke the silence first.
"Yeah, he gets 'loud annoying' when he's scared, but never 'creepy annoying,'" Nya added.
Zane nodded slightly, putting together concepts in his head.
"Given that this is a game," he began, "the case here may be much simpler than I've been attempting."
"Hm? What's that?" Nya asked.
"I believe the murderer isn't human."
They exchanged glances, shrugging to each other.
"That... makes sense, but I don't like it," Cole said apprehensively.
"Well, if not human, then what?" Nya asked.
"There exists in some First Nations' folklore a malevolent spirit that is thought to bring about greed and hunger among humans. Though, in modern culture, it's often depicted- inaccurately- as a shape-shifting, deer-like creature with cannibalistic habits. It could be a wendigo."
They lingered on that explanation for several moments. The sacrifice, the deer blood, the handprint, the conflicting descriptions, Jay's weird behavior, it all sharpened itself into a single narrative.
"So, are you saying that Jay...?" Cole trailed off.
"It isn't. I noticed upstairs that Jay was missing freckles and his hair was a bit darker. I thought it might be the lighting, but nothing changed in front of the window," he confirmed.
"I thought he looked pale," Nya sighed, "figured he just wasn't doing well around all the... everything."
The detective ran his fingers along the cuts in the barrels as he held his candle up to them. However, he didn't let it break his attention.
"I believe the monster took his form upstairs, right before we heard the books falling."
"So, did you just, like, send Lloyd and Kai to die over there?" she crossed her arms.
Zane recoiled slightly, gaining an awkward undertone to his calculated speech.
"It was necessary," he insisted, "I had to believably send the killer away so I could explain my theory to you two."
Cole snickered and shook his head.
"You're really thinning the herd here, man."