.·✧☆Stellarium☆✧·.

Chapter 9

Alexander, Coincidences and Connections | 2,670 words

It's been about a week since we started searching for the suspect, and we are as close as it gets to answers. I guess this Arthur guy was actually dumb enough to use his real name before performing a high profile heist. From here it's going to be easy to discern motivation and whereabouts, it's obvious to me that he hasn’t got much experience cleaning up his tracks. Ever since we got into the train fight with him both Sybyll and Nova have been acting weird. Nova is more twitchy and Sybyll has been more quiet, not sure what changed in both of them but I can say it's been different since we got our hands on that artifact. Surely the train fight didn't bring up that much baggage? I wasn't present for it, but it seems like there wasn't any major harm to either of them from the scene analysis. In any case we need to figure out why he was after it in the first place. We get walking to the museum, there’s definitely a pattern. My eyes are turned to my notepad, tapping the non-writing end of the pen on the paper rhythmically. I flip the pen around in my hand and just jot down ideas: old items? Magical items? Definitely historical. I underline the last one thrice.

I feel a tug at my sleeve, and look to where it comes from. “Alex, we’re here,” I rip my eyes away from my notepad and see a stark white pillar “You were about to walk into it,” says Sybyll. I follow both her and Nova into the building and take a look around. It's a pleasant space, parts are sectioned off in historical order. Nova approaches the person at the front desk and asks him to call in the curator. He seems to luckily be in today, so we can get the artifact returned and analyzed. He enters and greets Nova, shaking her hand and leading us through the museum, giving us a short tour.

“So, we were able to recover what the thief was after. Can you tell us about it?” She asks. “Ah yes,” He starts “This is an extremely rare artifact recovered from a place of worship in an ancient Crystalian city.” Subtly out of the corner of my eye I catch Sybyll shifting in place, is this boring her? “After an unexplained natural disaster the great city fell to ruin,” The curator is very animated in his explanation, waving his hands wildly while he talks “what we currently theorize is that this is part of a series of tablets and decorations that outline what they thought the creation of the world entailed.” Nova nods her head, seeming to understand while I start listing the important facts with my notepad. “From what we here have tried translating, we understand that the angels had created each aspect of the world and gifted Crystalians the first spark of magic. We have some names of the angels, but they have been difficult to pin down because of how inconsistent the information is.”

I take note that Sybyll seems to shift after hearing this, it’s a little strange how ancient artifacts surrounding magic keep coming into play. My brain starts to overheat trying to connect the dots. Why would anyone go out of their way to take this stuff? “Names and places whatever it may be, we have still unfortunately lost a different tablet by accident” the curator says a little sadly. Seems like he got away with something after all. “Do you know what was on the tablet?” I ask. “Why yes young man, I do. The missing tablet is actually quite important to this collection, as it's right at the climax of the story” He jumps right in to acting out what occurs, “because of her betrayal, the angel of magic is sent to court-” The curator falls to one knee feigning hurt “but instead of complying with death she rips out his heart and eats it,” he mimes ripping out his own heart, skipping the eating part. “Where she then inherits his power, and becomes the angel of death herself.” I notice that Sybyll has been more and more uncomfortable since we got here, so I’ll try to wrap this up as soon as possible. Nova shoots Sybyll with what I think is a sympathetic look.

“I think that's exactly what we needed, thank you so much for coming and talking about this with us.” Nova says, putting on a very warm voice. “It's been my pleasure Princess,” he replies and gives a bow “come back anytime, and let me know if you find any more stray artifacts, I still seem to be missing one.” We say goodbye and make our way out of the museum, and honestly I still have the same level of confusion as when I went in. It answered absolutely none of my questions, we are at a dead end information wise. We sit down on a bench outside, as I slouch and rack my brain for any kind of motive. Maybe money? That wouldn't make sense, he could have stolen smaller items from the castle while he worked there. I set my pen down and put my hands in my hair while I close my eyes. I just need to think. This is my first real case, I can’t get stuck here. “Hey, Alex,” Nova places a hand on my shoulder and turns to me “It's going to be okay,” I notice how dark the circles under her eyes have grown recently and feel a little ashamed. This case should have wrapped up by now. “He’s too clumsy to not leave a trail, we just have to look for it.”

“But it's not just that, I’m having a hard time establishing anything, like nothing he’s been doing makes sense.” The words spill out of my mouth, as I’m speaking without any thought behind it, “Why steal artifacts? The usual explanation is for money or a personal collection but he has neither a collection or reason to need money. The bullet is enough to prove that this isn't about that.” I exasperatedly seem to mime the hand gestures of the curator from earlier, though unintentionally. “Why do any of this? Why so clumsily? He was prepared to kill the conductor on the train– a completely random person to him, but spare you–” I gesture to Nova, “Someone who is a million times more trouble than a conductor.” I rest my head against my palm again and stare at the ground. “This was supposed to be my first big mission, if i was able to complete this I’d be able to graduate into a real investigator.” The sun lowers in the sky as noon is soon reaching its end once more. “I was supposed to complete this in record time, and come home, and everyone would tell me how good of a job I did, easy peasy. And now we’re in a different country way in over our heads.”

“We may have thought this would be easier than it is,” Sybyll replies “but that doesn’t mean we won't be able to finish this ourselves. We’ve been pursuing this nonstop for the last few days, we should go and take a break to clear our heads.” I can see that Nova visibly disagrees with this idea, and I want to as well seeing that we just rested, but Nova also visibly needs this rest the most. “Sure,” I say. “Lets go and find somewhere to relax a little and debrief. Maybe we will get ideas while we eat.” Nova seems to want to say something in protest, but ultimately decides against it as we get up to go find a restaurant of some sort. Truthfully, I’ve never gotten out much so I’m not sure what is good here. We walk around and find a sort of seafood place that doesn't seem too bad called Seawells. As we get seated Sybyll and I realize very quickly this place is very touristy, and that Nova is having the time of her life.

Our waiter comes around and asks for drinks, and Nova takes the liberty to ask for a kids menu. They hand her a sheet of paper with a maze and treasure chest, and these colored wax sticks presumably to use on it. Everything in the restaurant is ocean themed, and they have a gift shop not too far from the right of us that we will have to herd Nova away from later. “So, what are you thinking about getting?” I ask open-endedly to the table. “I’m not very hungry myself, probably just an appetizer or something.” Sybyll says without looking up from the menu, “Nova, please don’t tell me you’re going to order off the kids’ menu. ” Nova looks up from her sheet, “Look, I'm almost done finding the buried treasure. Plus, I am still technically a kid, and I thought that we were here to relax.” Sybyll slumps a little in her chair, “Okay, but are you relaxing?”

“No,” She says a little sadly. “I think that the fried brightfish looks good, what do you guys think?” I cut in, this is turning into the strangest meal I think ever I'll eat with anyone. “I think that we should all see who can get to the buried treasure the fastest” what is this with buried treasure? “Nova, you do realize that buried treasure isn't a real thing yeah?” I say. “What?!” She looks genuinely shocked. “But then why is it in every pirate book and play?” It's a little funny that she knows so little about this. “Because it's entertaining, my family is full of sailors and they run into pirates all the time. There's no such thing as buried treasure, and pirates aren't as cool as they are in books.” She almost looks heartbroken when I tell her this. “Sybyll why did you give me all those books if they weren’t true?” She looks at Sybyll with big pitiful eyes. Sybyll looks away from everyone and to the ground “ …I thought..pirates were cool too.”

She seems almost embarrassed as she says this. I can't help but chuckle a little, neither of them know what pirates are actually like. I’m honestly a bit surprised regarding Sybyll, as she’s been out more and experienced more than Nova. She always seems so closed off to me as well, icy almost. This is the first time I’ve seen her even slightly embarrassed. In response to me chuckling she puts her head in her hands. “I thought it was cool how they could just be free, like do whatever you want when you want, okay?”

“Sorry, sorry, I didn't mean to ruin your books for you or anything. Pirates are just very different in real life.” As I say this, Nova looks like she's thinking about something. “Does this mean some of my other books also aren't true?” “Yeah if they include the word fiction in them without ‘non’ preceding it.” She sighed at my comment, “I know that, but out of the books that are supposed to be realistic. I’m just sheltered, not dumb.” I stopped to think for a second, “Probably some, but it's usually not malicious. Sometimes people just get facts wrong by accident and it doesn’t get edited out.”

“What are pirates actually like anyways?” my face reflexively shifts a little. “Not fun. Encounters with them often get bloody fast.” Nova has a wide eyed concerned expression as she asks “Alexander do you have a kill count??” Sybyll looks like she’s going to laugh, “No I don't have a kill count. I never went on any expeditions nor did I encounter a pirate. Everything I know is from my brothers and dad.” Nova whips her head around, curls hitting her in the face “Sybyll don’t laugh!” prompting Sybyll to immediately burst out in laughter. “Sorry it's just the question… I’m not sure how you'd expect him to have killed anyone.” I scoff and say “I am very capable of killing someone.” Nova rules her eyes and points at me with her fork “Now that I think about it, no way you could do that. I mean you wouldn't be able to get me at least.”

“You know that's not a fair comparison, one Nova is like the equivalent to 10 average men.” Nova twirls her fork between her fingers as if she’s doing pen tricks, “Nuh uh, at least 20 average men.” I look at her and raise an eyebrow, “That's too many men, there’s no way you could take them down.” Nova looks away petulantly, “I could take down 100 men if I so chose.” Sybyll decides to speak up as she's finding different ways to fold her napkin, “You’re pushing it Nova, 100 is a lot.” Nova opens her mouth to protest, but the waiter comes back around and asks if we’re ready to order before she can. I end up ordering the brightfish like I said I would, Nova actually does order off the kids menu, and Sybyll gets the smallest thing that they offer.

Afterwards, we start walking back to the tavern to rest and get some ideas together. Though getting dinner has been fun and all, I can't help but shake the feeling that we still have tension here. It feels like everyone but me is hiding something, both Nova and Sybyll have been weird since the train station. Sybyll more so than Nova. I keep thinking about how many small ‘quirks’ that add up to be suspicious. Sybyll barely eats or sleeps, she was the first awake in the tavern this morning and somehow she's doing better than both Nova and I combined.

Speaking of Nova, she’s been really twitchy and averse to taking care of herself. Part of this is that I think it's really weighing on her hard. She wouldn't have a good reason to be in cahoots with all of this Arthur business. Not unless she plans to abdicate the throne, maybe run away and live a normal life outside of Stellarium’s gates. Maybe I’m just projecting and wishful thinking from me though. I shouldn’t think these things about them anyways, they both have been nothing but good to me throughout this but as I keep digging for answers more and more weird things keep popping up. I mean, silver bullets require organized crime. This crime ring or whatever it is has enough resources to make multiple nearly full silver bullets, as well as have one of their own infiltrate the castle for an undetermined amount of time. There could even be multiple informants.

I really need to stop thinking like this. It's not good for me, I need to trust my teammates. That's literally rule one of training, trust your group and stick together Alexander. I feel a tug on my sleeve again, “Alex, you really need to watch where you’re going.” Sybyll says holding the arm of my jacket. As I look up I realize I was about to walk into a wall again. I probably do need to kick that habit. I guess I never really thought about it before, but when did they both start calling me Alex? It makes me feel weird to know they're warming up to me like this and I’m thinking frankly treasonous things.

I walk up the creaky steps of the inn to our room. I just need to collect my thoughts and create a plan… if I could just get my hands on some corkboard. I kick off my shoes and immediately start connecting names and places using my pen and notepad. Not sure how I didn’t think of this sooner since it's basic stuff, but I need to stop chasing the motive and connect the dots. The motive will come naturally once all the pieces are together. Number one priority is finding their home base of operations.