“Our General is a wonderful cook! He’s even mastered and perfected the cooking of your sorry race of smiths masquerading as cooks. He’s well known to have a deep knowledge of everything know to the worlds!”

          “Well, our General…” The chef stopped suddenly, realizing she had nothing to go on. Her honor prevented her from lying and any achievements she could think of where of the General’s smithing…

          “The Black General is a cook? I had not heard of that before.” Knowing her dilemma, Tavliel stepped in. “I am sure we have all heard of his accomplishments in battle, but would you happen to have tales to tell us while dinner is being prepared?”

          “Naturally! The best tale of them all is when General Black took down a mad undead dragon and took over its hoard! Of course, he was also the one to kill it and turn it undead, but that’s beside the point. My cousin was one of his daughters, so I heard it straight from her! Course, she died about a week after she told me and I was told never to share the tale, but I’m sure it’s fine now.”

          A collective eye-sharing took place as the listeners briefly weighed their lives against their curiosity.

          Sadly, anyone who actually held their life at any real value stayed home from this trip.

          Quenloc surveyed the scene with what he thought was a remarkable amount of calm. All things considered, getting thrown into this mess as head of security from hell wasn’t the worst, at least he wasn’t in charge of relations like the twins. Still, he had things he’d rather be doing, such as getting his toes gnawed on by hellhound.

          “What do we know?” He looked at the collection of the low-level cannon fodder that’d been added to his battalion for the tournament.

          There was a shuffle as one of the weakest of them got shoved to the front.

          “Uh, well, you see, um, sir….” The grunt glanced at the misshapen body covered in blood and the scorch marks surrounding it, “it appears, to be dead?”

          “…and?”

          “P-probably, a demon?”

          “……and?”

          “…we think, and this is just guess…sir, but we think…fire? Fire, might have been involved?”

          “Hmm, yes. A fair guess, but just to be sure, how about we try and recreate the scene with a few extra dead weights I find myself surrounded by.”

          “Oh, yeah! Great idea, sir! Where are the dead weights and we’ll get right on it!” They all started nodding excitedly, investigating was one thing, but setting things on fire was their forte... It was also something they were good at.

          Remembering what his teacher would say in times like this, he turned to his actual subordinates that just arrived on the scene. Not giving them time to settle, he immediately repeated his question.

          “What do we know?”

          “Demon, approximately 200, male, member of the delegation team. Cause of death appears to be fire related at first glance, but discoloration of the skin which indicate a poison, and a bullet hole in his shoulder imply other factors are involved and a proper cause of death with prove difficult to determine.” The demon Quenloc always called One, he never could remember their names, started as he examined the body.

          “Witnesses?”

          “No, sir. The…” Two picked walked over from where she had been throttling the extra baggage for wasting their superior’s time, “new fellows, discovered the body and for once followed procedure and allowed no one but you in, as apparently no one else tried. Not a soul out of this room knows.”

          “Mute them and proceed to cover up the incident.”

          “Sir, what if this was done by those bas-”

          “Zip it, Three. We cannot allow this to go sideways. Especially if Teac-, the General is on his way here.”

          “…it’s Bargrl, sir.”

          “And you still think I care.” Quenloc rolled his eyes but continued to survey the area as the rest were moving the body discreetly to examine it further in a safer location and removing the tracing of the murder.

          They had found a poisoned dagger of demonic make, a human’s overly complicated trap mechanism with a recently fired gun, and concentrated scorch marks reminiscent of the angels’ preferred method of execution.

          A smile slowly spread across his face, it looked like this was going to be a fun puzzle. All sides were jumpy with the poorly kept secret that the Generals teamed up and were probably on their way here, this must have been done by the war faction.

          “I can’t tell if they were sloppy, or if this was their plan.” One muttered what they were all thinking as he picked up the dagger with a clear family and battalion crest on it. Flipping it over, they could all see the individual’s name as well.

          “No, no one is that stupid. Even with nerves being taunt with the impending doom, this is beyond stupidity.” Three, known only to her family as Bargrl, rolled her eyes.

          “Unless that is their plan, eliminate themselves from the subject list by luring us to think that exact thought…” Two rubbed her chin, eyes gleaming.

          “If you think too hard from the get-go you’ll forget things. One, send a shadow to run down the dagger’s owner and follow them for any suspicious movements. Two, talk to the Twins about the corpse and get them to cover for his absence as well as find out if this might be personal. Three,”

          “Bargrl”

          “Gargle, grab me a drink from the kitchen.”

          “But!”

          “Four and Five, continue to monitor the angels for any suspicious movement, and due to the fact that you haven’t mentioned any I’m going to guess nothing out of the ordinary on that end so far?”

          “Well, how do you define ‘out of the ordinary’. Cause they’re weird. Murder weird? Admittedly, no… but what kind of sick monster puts tomatoes on ice cream? I think that’s enough to wage war over myself, but that particular bast-fellow hasn’t moved from his room. I think it’s stomach aches.” Five happily babbled. Four rolled his eyes and nodded to agree that nothing was suspicious from their observations.

The two of them were skilled with shadow manipulation and could track hundreds, let alone the 30 or so of heaven’s delegation.

          “…would you like us to help One with monitoring everyone?” Four asked after thinking for a moment.

          “No, they’ll notice you if you slip even a little. Keep your focus on keeping the shadows around the angels.”

          “…fine.” Five stuck his tongue out at him and got dragged away by Four.

          “My drink is where, Three?”

          “…I’m going, I’m going.” She grumbled as she turned towards the kitchen, “But I’m telling mom when we get home.”

          Ignoring his daughter, Quenloc began to set up a plan.