FIFTH INVESTIGATION

[whimsicalism]

It's a week until Nursery Rhyme's deadline. The castle is beginning to change slightly now that Alice is gone and it's not for the better. You can't put your finger on it, though.

No, it's time to see if anyone decided to kill once more. That'd be silly, right?

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JUNGLE

[whimsicalism]

[In the jungle, the mighty jungle...

[octopups]

[Anyone in the jungle wondering where the body is won't have much trouble, because Amdi is desperately shouting at it.]

Seven!! Seven!!

[He is running all around it frantically, poking the body here and there, clearly in denial. Just cause his head's gone doesn't mean he's dead, right??]

[whimsicalism]

[Well, unfortunately, he's definitely dead. There is a bloody axe next to the body.]

[octopups]

[An axe?? Is it one of those ones the vending machine keeps spitting out?

Was the axe used on Seven, or just (presumably) the tree?]

[whimsicalism]

[It is!

Strangely, it doesn't look like the tree is chopped down. However, it does look like it's been used on Seven. There is one wound on the back of his wrist and several wounds on the other side.]

[octopups]

[Axe wounds on his wrist? Was... someone trying to chop off his hand?

A couple of Amdi are also looking very carefully at the bear trap. He's seen anti-personnel weapons like that.

Also for real though, how obvious is it that Seven is definitely dead? Is the crush damage just sickeningly severe? Is there a very large pool of blood?]

[whimsicalism]

[It's more on the upper forearm than anything else.

There's a rope tied to the bear trap. One end is untied and the end is covered in blood.

As for how dead he is... there is a major artery in the forearm. He's bled out by now from his arm injuries.]

[octopups]

[In that case, yeah, after getting a full enough look at the wound and the blood pool, even Amdi's childish last hopes are gone. He can easily calculate volumes and estimate a scaling factor for Seven's height, he knows what that much blood means.

But... now that he's thinking a little more, he looks at the rope. is the bloody end cut evenly like a pre-measured length of rope, or is it frayed? How long is it from the trap to the free end? Is there anything else around here that it could have been tied to?]

[whimsicalism]

[Cut evenly like a pre-measured length. It's probably not super long from the free end and there might be something it was tied to. He can do the math to see what it could fit around but there's nothing that he could see that sticks out as it being obviously what it was tied around.]

[octopups]

[Okay... Amdi's gonna look around a little wider now. He probably has no hope of moving the tree trunk off of Seven, but he's investigating it from every angle.

Is there any blood on it beyond what could be expected from it falling on someone? Is there a nearby stump that the tree was clearly felled from, or is it just, like, a huge log??]

[whimsicalism]

[Well, there's some on it around where Seven is. Probably from his leg and arm wounds.

But that's the strange thing. It's a full tree, not just a log. There's no stump, either. It fell over, roots and all. Obviously not all the roots are out of the ground but this tree wasn't chopped down.]

[octopups]

[Okay, that gets Amdi's attention. He may be a castle boi, but he's got enough intuition about friction and surface area and such to figure out that pulling up a tree is VERY difficult.

Definitely gonna look real close now for any indication that something was attached to this tree. Was that rope long enough to get around it?]

[whimsicalism]

[Amdi probably is the only person in the castle that can look at the rope and realize that it is long enough to wrap around the tree easily.

There also seems to be something strange with the place the tree once was, too. The dirt is looser than it should be. Amdi might be a castle boi but he probably can realize that trees probably don't like loose dirt. The fallen tree's roots, too, don't look like they have a lot of dirt clinging to them, either.]

AREA CLEAR

[whimsicalism]