Amelia has spoken her peace, and done her best to talk Muncy out of this. But there's nothing left now but to finish this quickly, the gondola is ready to fall, and children are at stake. Let Mama talk to distract the insane man, she will not let him succeed.
Laughing crazily when Mama suggests that what happened to Muncy was bad, the Inspector slashes at Mama Frill once more, "What happened to me is of no consequence!!! And even my Rebecca and angel Adelaide were lost to a higher purpose!!! Don't you see how it all led to this? How I must take up the blade and defend our city?"
...again, his balance betrays him and he is fortunate not to fall from his precipitous place. Unable to stop her, Muncy scowls as another two children are freed from the gondola. Seeing an opportunity, Amelia swings at the inspector... but misses as he nearly topples from the wheel...
"Muncy, you can't kill the innocent alongside the guilty!"
Vera presses the attack, still flanking with Amelia.
Gasping at the pain of Vera's rapier piercing his trailing leg, "And then we all lose!!! If some innocents die for the greater cause... is that not a worthy and noble sacrifice" he says something else but it is lost beneath the screams of the children as the gondola suddenly lurches forward...
...and then, gasping with the exertion and an increasingly desparate look on his eyes, Muncy stabs forwards once more.
Gar continues ferrying children over to the other gondola!
"No, it is not, for you are not giving them the choice. Only if they chose to die would it be a noble sacrifice. Because you murder them, you are only an evil corrupt thing, no different than that which you seek to kill. For, you and these things both kill innocent children, them to take their place, you to keep the creatures from taking their place. There is no difference between you and them, you have become the monster you sought to protect others from. You are pathetic."
Frill stopped trying to talk sense to the Inspector. Sadly, he was too far gone. The murder of his family was just too much for him. Mama would have plenty of time to feel sorry for him later, but for now, she had to get the children free. She chopped away at the bindings of two more of the little ones.
Gritting her teeth and no longer engaging the Inspector in what must surely be a fruitless persuasion to get him to cease his madness, Vera stabs once more...
Muncy, sweating and panting now, slices wildly at Vera... but is thrown off-balance once more by the lurching of the gondola behind him. Groaning and creaking, and still with five screaming children aboard, the gondola is precariously tipping forwards as the failing joints crack and shatter...
"Get those kids out of here Gar!" Amelia shakes her head. "I have no more time to play Muncy, I had hoped you would see reason, but since you won't, it's time to end this."
Her eyes hard, she brings the scythe around in an arc that intersects Muncy's neck, sending his head rolling across the gondola as blood fountains from his staggering corpse.
"Vera, get the kids."
Frill slices at two more of the sets of bindings, trying to get the children loose. ”Vera, Amelia, if you two can help me get the rest of these babies free, I can wild shape and get myself to safety while you two get to safety,” she advises the group.
"Ugh!" grunts Vera as Muncy brutally skewers her. Clutching the bleeding wound in her gut, Vera sheathes her blade and assists Frill and the Ghost of Gar with freeing the children from the sabotaged gondola.
Screaming even louder as Muncy's eyes, still blinking in surprise for those last few seconds, stare up at them from the footwell of the gondola - the children are, at last, safe. As for the rest of the Inspector, his decapitated body topples from the high girders and crashes, each time with a sickening cracking of bones and ringing of metal, against several wheel struts on its long fall to the ground below... Realising that they have little time left, the group work together to free the five remaining captives and have them moved into the neighbouring empty seats literally seconds before Muncy's acid finally dissolves the last of the bolts securing the gondola to the wheel... with a terrible shearing of metal, the entire seating arrangement peels away from the wheel itself. The last of the mechanism disintegrates... and the gondola, Muncy's head falling free of it as it spins, plummets - crashing against the structure of the wheel in a cacophony of damaged ironwork - to the ground.
Suddenly, everything is peaceful once more... the hurdy gurdy music of the Fayre somewhat distant below the group and the children mute from either shock or relief. For a moment, beneath the light of the moon, the friends have time to look out over the great city - their vantage point at the summit of the isle of Festival affording them a view to either side of the river - a vast swathe of urban smear lit by gaslight and pyrebeetle, there is maybe a feeling of relief that - thanks to the investigations of the group - Bloody Jack will not, as Muncy had threatened to do, stalk the streets of the city tonight.
Amelia, having leapt to the nearby gondola, smiles at the children, and begins to sing. An old song often sung to children in the city when bad things have happened. SHe's not sung it in 30 years.
The little boats are gone from the shore of the Styx
The dark ferryman is stranded on the quay
Sure the docks are empty
And Child, we are now free
Where the Strawberry beds sweep down to the river
You've wiped away the worry from my brow
I love you well today and I'll love you more tomorrow
If you ever love me, Child, tell me now
T'was the only life I knew it was hard but never lonely
Guarding you made a believer of me
And it's time to remember what we have
And sure it's over now, the dark is past I hope you can see
Well now I'll tend the yard and I'll spend me days in talking
And I'll here them whisper of how we did
But Child, we're still living and darling we're still young
And Child, it's up to you to say how we lived...
As she sings, Gar's ghost slowly fades away...
Frill scampers down the mechanism and runs out of the range of the falling debris. She pats the children on the head and smiles at her two friends. ”Well, babies, I think we can call this a success. Mama’s glad the rest of these younguns don’t have to worry about Muncy threatening them anymore.”. She couldn’t shake the thought about there still
Being more of those spite waifs and doppelgängers waiting hidden among the townspeople. And children.
Blood still oozing from the wound in her gut, Vera takes a small vial from her satchel, uncorks it with her teeth, and swallows the contents. She then closes her eyes a long moment and sighs as the potion stanches the bleeding. "Uhhmmm..."
"What a case! But that's one hell of a view."
For killing an Inspector of the Watch, even one possibly on the verge of committing mass murder, the investigators find themselves quickly surrounded by constables when they finally reach the ground once more... and badly outnumbered, are summarily arrested. Their last view of the stars, at least for a couple of days, is from the boat that ferries them into the gates far below the highest buildings of the Capitol.
Unsurprisingly, and despite several requests, they are denied access to a barrister nor are they given any information as to what the full charges laid against them are. For several days, at least it feels that long with no real means of tracking the passage of the sun and the moon, the investigators - erstwhile slayers of Bloody Jack - are left to cool their heels in a windowless cell and speculate upon the next steps.
It is after their third meal, the only real measure of time down here in the depths of the Capitol, that they see an unknown visitor speaking to the desk sergeant before departing. A few moments later, the desk sergeant unlocks their cell, returns their possessions, and gruffly informs them that all charges against them have been dropped because he has just received orders that their actions were clearly for the good of the city... and when asked who the visitor was who brought this news, he informs the group they should feel extremely lucky because that was an official from a high city office. It was Crown Justice Braken himself, the name that appeared in the register of the Archives several days previously, who ordered their release...
Amelia spends the 3 days arguing with thin air. "No, it was not my fault you got killed. I didn't tell you to keep mirrors around, you know how bad mirrors are around here." Is a common refrain.
When they are finally released, she takes a makeup case from her bag and begins to pat the air where a bundle of energy coalesces, and begins to sing again.
I lit up from below
I was hunted by twenty hounds
Didn't get no sleep that night
'Till the morning came 'round
I set out a runnin but took my time
My friend the Devil, she's a friend of mine
If I get home before daylight
I just might get some sleep tonight
I ran with the Devil
She loaned me twenty gold
I spent that night in dark and fear
My heart afeared, her hand to hold
I set out a runnin but took my time
My friend the Devil, she's a friend of mine
If I get home before daylight
I just might get some sleep tonight
I ran down to the river
My friend the Devil, she found me there
She took my twenty gold piece
And she vanished in the air
As she finishes singing, the purple smudge of energy coalesces into an angry looking tiefling with burning red eyes and purple complexion.
Turning to Mama and Vera, she bows. "Thank you for your help with Lilly and Gar, they are at rest now. If you need me again before you die, you can find me at the Bounty Hunter's Guild."
Whistling a tune, with a semi-transparent purple devil flying over her head, she turns and walks off into Castorhage, her scythe swinging in time with her tune.
With a sigh at Ameila's departure, Vera offers he hand to Frill. "That was one hell of a case... and I was nearly certain that our reward for all that hard work was a one-way trip to the gallows! I hope our paths cross again. If you ever need my help, you know where my office is. My door is always open to you."
Taking her leave, Vera returns to her apartment above her office and draws a bath, trying to wash the stink of this case (and the city dungeons) off her body.
A few hours later, washed, refreshed, and enjoying a pot of tea enhanced with a large dose of brandy, the doorbell to her office rings. Rapier in one hand as she answers the door, she finds an older woman standing on her stoop.
"Ms. Marshall? My husband has disappeared, and the Watch couldn't be bothered trying to find him. I hear you find missing persons... are you taking on new cases?"
Vera opens the door wider and shows her in. "Yes, come in, and tell me exactly what happened..." She then pauses and asks, "Say... you don't parchance have any mirrors in your flat, do you?"
Fin
Frill nodded to Amelia and shook hands with Vera. She stood there and watched her two friends take their leave.
She looked around the street and pulled her hood tightly over her head. ”Guess it’s just you and Mama again, Millie, you sweetheart.”. She begins walking toward the shadows, heading back to her familiar street and sewers.
”Let’s just go get some rest. You just know they are gonna be needing us again real soon around this place. Real soon...”