What Would My Mother Think

(Morgan Pov)

Gael, you just had to try something slick. I knew you were following me, I didn't know for what reason. Everything was made clear when I baited you into this alley and you showed up with a weapon drawn. And look where that got you… dead.

Subtlety is a necessary tool to have when you want to do anything illegal. It's how you avoid an unnecessary confrontation. If a person is expecting a confrontation, then escalation is more than likely. When that happens you have to be sure you can take the other part on.

Gael that dumbass did not know who he was dealing with, magic is such a versatile tool. It can be quiet, yet it doesn't lose any of its power. And most importantly, if a person is skilled enough it doesn't leave a trace. This is one less thing I have to deal with now.

I got to hide the body and clean the blood that is everywhere. The body is the easy part, but the blood is going to be tricky. I still think using Perforate was the right call, even if the result was messier than I intended.

A regular Pierce spell would have done the job, but I went with the El-level version just to be safe. The pierce spells by design are the most lethal spells in my arsenal. To get that result I had to trade away the ease of use and precision.

At a glance this spell looks simple, I just stick out my index and middle finger then I fire. When Pierce spells are fired, they move extremely fast and travel a large distance. Getting to that result requires that the caster have a high level of control over large quantities of magic.

The first step is concentrating magic around the tip of my middle finger. The second step is rubbing the tip of my index finger alongside the tip of my middle finger right before I fire. Nudging toward the right adds a clockwise spin. Nudging toward the left adds a counter-clockwise spin

The added spin gives the spell its penetrating power, but it also makes it fly on a straight path. That is the extent of control I have over the trajectory of the spell. The sheer speed at which it travels and the control needed to get to spin in the first place leaves me little room for error.

The deadliest aspect of these spells is not the concentration of magic, but the properties behind the magic itself. Put simply, I'm firing a curse bullet. There are two curses involved, the first one hinders the regenerative abilities of a person.

The second curse negates healing magic used on the victim. How long both curses last depends on whether or not healing magic was used on the victim. If healing magic isn't used it lasts about an hour. If healing magic is used then it lasts for almost a day.

The curse can still be dispelled by a regular Restore staff, but that is something you need to prepare for. The speed, strength, and range of the Pierce spells are ideal for ambushes. It is a high-risk, high-reward type of spell. My aim needs to be precise to make full use of the spell.

Magic is dense when it's concentrated onto a single point, which is the tip of my middle finger for the pierce spells. This not only puts a considerable strain on my fingers the longer I hold the spell, but it also makes it harder to adjust my aim.

As long as I can hit my target, then it's worth taking the downsides of the spell. If I hit a vital area of the body, there is a high chance of getting an instant kill. Even if I miss or it doesn't kill, I still inflict a debilitating wound that can't be healed immediately.

The problem with aiming for a fatal area is the amount of blood hemorrhaging from the wound. Which is not ideal when you are trying to get away with murder in broad daylight. Now that I think about it this is going a lot easier than I thought.

I can hide evidence by storing it in my inventory. I can use my insane sense of smell and hearing to detect people out of sight. This makes getting away and identifying potential witnesses easier.

That being said, how am I going to deal with all this blood? At this very moment, I don't smell or hear anyone in my general vicinity. I do have some time to take care of this problem, I'm just unsure how much time I have to work with.

The ground is solid dirt, I could replace the blood-stained topsoil with fresh soil from the surrounding area. Though that would stand out in its own way. People might think I buried something in there.

Hmm… maybe I should bury something in there. I could use the animal entrails I saved to make sausages. The entrails could be used to explain why all that blood is there. They are also fresh so it would be like they were recently disposed of.

Then again with my luck, the person who discovers my crime scene might confuse human entrails with animal entrails. Just to be safe, I should throw in some animal bones to really spell it out for them.

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Should I leave a skull in there? Or is that too much? I think just the ribs are good enough for this set. Either way, I should hurry up and cover up this hole so I can move on with my life.

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Even if someone were to dig up that suspicious patch of dirt, they wouldn't be able to tell that a human was murdered here. At best, they will know something is off, but they have no evidence to continue an investigation.

Man, this entire situation feels kind of wrong. Not from a moral standpoint, but from a professional perspective. Here I am, a former police officer tampering with a crime scene. The worst part about this is I am going about this crudely.

I know I can do a better job than this with or without magic. I know what information could be useful to a good investigator. Most importantly, I know what sort of things investigators hate to see.

I just feel so dirty using my experiences as an officer of the law to commit crimes. I did many things in my career, but being corrupt was not one of them. My work standards were one of the few things that allowed me to face my mom with pride.

I had a great relationship with my mother, but my god was it a stressful one on my end. She was also my boss, so that really put a harsher light on me. When it came to work, we had a lot of disagreements. She did not like the way I approached or handled certain cases.

Most of all she hated what sort of work I liked to take. Despite all of that she could not find much fault with how I conducted myself at work. She knew she could trust me as a professional to get the job done properly.

It also helps that my career was successful, which helped me out tremendously when our fights got bad. If I screwed up, it would have been harder on her than on me. She would have thought she failed her job as a mother and as an officer, but she would never consider blaming me.

What would she think of the situation I'm in?

…Hmm

When I first became a police officer, she told me something I can never forget. I don't care what you do, just come back home. My mother was no saint, she was simply a mother. She would try to understand why I did it.

Or she would try to find a way to justify why I did it. She wouldn't hold it against me, if anything she would help me get away if it. It would have destroyed her doing so, but her love for me would help her get through it.

She was an emotional person for sure, some might say she was at the extreme end of the scale. For better or worse I took after her in that regard. In some strange way, we kept each other in check.

I found it so much easier to put pressure on myself to be a better person. The alternative was screwing up and watching my mother beat herself down. Which is why I am feeling angry rather than feeling remorseful at this moment in time.

I am a police officer using my experience on the job to cover up a crime I committed. That is the type of person my mother despises with every fiber of her being. A corrupt cop murdered my grandfather, by her account she hadn't been the same since then.

What scared her the most was that he almost got away with it. How he used the rules and manipulated others to hide nearly everything. Nearly left my mother without any closure for my grandfather's death.

I was already treading a fine line in my first life. My skill set is very adept at dealing with people and I always knew how to use rules to my advantage. The only thing that reassured my mother was knowing that she raised me right and that I would never do something like that.

I can't even fathom turning into the type of person my mother would hate. Yet here I am straddling that fine line I worked so hard to avoid. Looking at just the facts, this is something in line with the behavior of a corrupt cop.

I really need to think over my actions more. Even now, deep inside I'm still telling myself it was self-defense. The truth is I let my emotions get the better of me and I lost control. Nothing wrong with that, it's only a problem if I let it continue to be a problem.

Dark magic doesn't change you, it just amplifies what is already there. I was never a rational person. I was always an emotional person that presented myself as a rational person. I made a mistake, but I can learn from it.

A person is the result of many successes and failures. It's good that I noticed now before it was too late. I'm glad my mother isn't here with me because I don't want to experience that kind of guilt. Not because I can't handle it, far from it.

Lying just comes naturally to me, I can tell a lie in even the worst circumstances. The worst part is no one can ever tell when I'm lying. I even leave the people closest to me with so much information and they can't see it.

I can live with the guilt, I have experience doing so. I just don't want to get to that point ever again. Then again I'm also a coward, I can't reveal the truth without being confronted by others first. I tell lies because I don't want to hurt others, yet the act of lying can be hurtful.

An infuriating paradox that continues to plague me even today. I can only hope that I don't have to keep a secret or a lie that brings nothing but guilt in the future. The sad truth is I probably won't regret telling the lie in the first place despite being hurt or hurting a loved one.

Either way, life will move on with or without you. That phrase is a lot heavier standing near a corpse. I should probably start getting rid of it now instead of standing here like an idiot.