It was dead-silent in the room.

So many people all packed together, but not a word or a sound passed between them.

Everyone was too shocked or too grief-stricken to speak, not with the body of King Scott Major of Rivendell, eyes slid closed postmortem and body carefully arranged inside the open casket, in front of them.

As the rulers, they had all been invited to his funeral. Was invited the right word? They had known him best, his fellow coworkers, the people he had fought and worked and lived with.

The people who all blamed themselves for his death.

~~~

An invisible spectator, hovering by the rafters as the priests began to read the obituary and will of their brother.

Xornoth had not meant for this to happen. Despite everything, despite the years separating them, he had not meant for Scott to die.

Their soulbond was meant to keep him alive; as long as Xornoth lived, so too did Scott. How was he gone?

How had Xornoth failed so insurmountably, and killed the one, sole person in all of the empires he had wanted alive?

They were already enough of an enemy of the empires. They did not need to know that Xornoth really was the monster he pretended to be.

No one needed to know who was truly at fault for the Elvenking's death.

~~~

How had this happened??

He wasn't that powerful, was he?

Scott didn't deserve to die! Just because he had rejected Jimmy, that wasn't- he didn't deserve to die for not being in love with him!

Nobody could find out about this, he- Jimmy needed to have control over his cod-god powers, he couldn't just be murdering people because they insulted him, he- no one could know.

If he didn't tell anyone, no one would know. Right? There was nothing connecting him to Scott's death. They were friends before he- before Jimmy had killed him, however unintentional.

No one would know, he could hide this.

~~~

This was baaaad.

Lizzie really needed to get her overprotective older sister instincts in check.

Beating a guy up because he hurt her brother was fine, but killing him? And a ruler, no less.

She hadn't even realized she attacked him- the rage must have completely blacked her out.

Lizzie needed to make sure this never got out.

The Ocean Queen was composed, powerful, in control. She did not go into rages and murder people.

Well, it wouldn't matter anyways. Because no one was going to find out that she had killed Scott Major.

After all, what's a few more deaths, to protect herself and her family?

~~~

Joel was decidedly not thinking about the Elvenking.

Listen, it wasn't his problem the man had died, okay?

Even if it was his fault- it wasn't, probably, but that wasn't his problem, no one knew, no one would find out anyways, unless he said something, and he wouldn't.

He absolutely could not tell anyone he had killed Scott, especially not with something as stupid as sending him a tea blend with poisonous azalea in it instead of the normal mint he traded to the northern empire.

It would be fine, no one would ask him, and if he did he'd just kick them out, he was the coolest ruler, no one would question him.

~~~

The Vigil was all too satisfied with itself.

Why had he been so stupid? The Vigil didn't think as humans did, it probably thought it had done exactly what Pix had wanted.

He had asked the Vigil to watch over Scott Major, and it had killed the elf.

Pix was supposed to be able to control the eldritch creature living within his empire, he had reassured everyone. They couldn't know he had accidentally set it on one of his fellow rulers.

Scott would make it to the afterlife and be fine, and as long as he never breathed a word, no one would ever know of his and the Vigil's involvement.

~~~

This was so bad.

Katherine didn't mean to kill Scott. The magic to stop the corruption had worked, but at what cost?

She knew it would take from the natural magic of the empires, but she didn't think it would take so much as to kill a ruler.

The spell and the components to power it had been shoved deep into a chest underground, hidden well away as evidence to a murder should be.

No one would find out she had anything to do with it. And if they never found anything, Scott's death could stay as a random accident, and it would be fine.

~~~

Why was she like this?

Shrub couldn't do anything without it backfiring back on her, could she now?

A murder. She had killed another ruler.

No one could find out, Shrub had nowhere to go if they came after her.

She would simply hide away the runes she had carved, old gnome magic, the last of her culture.

It would be fine. No one would find out that Shrub's interdimensional magic had attacked one of their own and killed the Elvenking. She would be fine, it was safe in this realm.

She couldn't flee yet another universe. There was no option but to hide the murder.

~~~

Joey didn't care about the elf king. Good riddance, he said. One less pretentious annoyance to pretend that he was better than Joey.

Still, it would be inconvenient to have to deal with being on trial for murder, or whatever it is would be done if anyone found out he had cursed Scott Major to death.

He was the richest man in all of the empires. A little gold here and there, and no one would ever be the wiser of Joey's accidental curse-death.

See, this was why he was so amazing! No one else could accidentally murder someone and get away with it, could they? Only Joey, the best person in existence.

And now there was no one in his way to keep him from finding and marrying his adorable demonic crush. All for the better, really.

~~~

Magic didn't work like this!

Scott wasn't even a component in her spell, it shouldn't have affected him at all! Gem had spent so many nights casting spells to conceal her involvement in Scott's death.

She was the Head Wizard of the Crystal; Cliffs, the most powerful wizard in generations. She could conceal one tiny murder, not even her twin brother would know.

Just a few more spells, and this would all vanish. There would never be enough, if any, evidence to connect Gem to the crime.

They didn't need to know! He was dead and that was that, it did her no good to be imprisoned or killed for an accidental murder.

~~~

Why had he done this? Why had he done any of this?

Sure, he had killed plenty of people before, but a ruler?

He had to make sure this never got out. No one could ever know that Sausage had killed someone so important, it would be the death of him, and there would be no returning from the afterlife for him the second time around.

No one would ever know. No one would ever find out! Sausage was too good at covering his tracks, he was a master assassin.

He wasn't going to be caught, they'd never find out it was him. It would all be fine, he'd covered up plenty of murders in his time.

~~~

This was what he got for selling TNT to an ice elf.

Of course the idiot had found some way to end himself with it, probably ate the gunpowder or something.

Still, by all legal terms and such, this death was squarely on Fwhip's shoulders. He had killed the king of Rivendell, even if Fwhip firmly maintained it was the elf's own fault.

You couldn't blame the dead for their own murders, sadly.

This would be fine. Hiding a murder wasn't even hard, he'd gotten away with arson and worse before, what's a little more destruction of evidence and erasure of crime?

He wouldn't lose anything, wouldn't go on trial, wouldn't lose his license to continue to create and sell bombs, and that's what mattered.

Scott would have a happy afterlife, or whatever. That was Scott's problem, not his.

~~~

How was a soulbond so effing strong?

As far as Pearl knew, beating up someone's sibling did not kill the person she hadn't even touched.

Maybe Xornoth had transferred the damage to Scott or something, but the technicalities didn't matter. Scott was dead, and Pearl needed to make sure no one found out she was connected to it.

They wouldn't find out, no one was looking at her anyways, she would be fine. She had already found a perfect alibi for when she had fought Xornoth, and no one knew she had even fought the demon at all.

There was no connection between her and the death of Scott Major. She would be fine.

~~~

Scott had been killed by his own stupidity.

Just because he was the champion of Aeor didn't mean that he could just walk up to a completely wild stag and try to ride it.

It had gored him to death and left him, where he had been found by some servants gathering berries in the woods.

A completely natural death, completely unconnected to anything else. Xornoth and Scott weren't Conal and Alinar, and so they didn't have a soulbond, and so Xornoth didn't die.

Scott had died a natural death, survived by his sibling, the demon Xornoth. It was no one's fault but his own.