Wizard World:Struggles of dimensions

125 Crow

Loud sirens howled as a police van arrived at the crime scene, police cars were already present surrounding a magnificent hotel, professionals were moving around the building collecting evidence, taking pictures, maintaining a proper crime scene, a few officers took out a body bag from the scene and dropped the cargo into the police van that was already ready to go.

There was a sudden but noticeable opening in the busy scene as most officers consciously drew a distance from the plain clothed man who had just arrived. He was a middle aged man with a noticeable moustache dressed in a white shirt and trousers with a noticeable golden insignia of a crow with tears dripping from its eyelids, the insignia was even a kid was taught to recognize although most people did not remember the official name the sign represented but they all knew its nickname which was ‘crow’.

Apart from the fact that the insignia was in the shape of a crow the main reason the violent semi-secret organization was called ‘crows’ was because their presence represented death, doom and disaster. There was a popular saying if the number of crows in a city became more than 1 then war would occur.

The man ignored the weird gazes around him, he had already grown accustomed to the present scene after all he has been stationed in this city working with the police on a large number of cases for quite some time.

“Who is the victim.” He asked as soon as he reached the deputy who was in charge of the case.

“Victim is Ratcliff Chekov, suspected professional, gang leader, controller of the slums and smuggler, arrived at the hotel around 5 in the evening with two elite professional soldiers as bodyguards accompanying him.”

This was part of the change caused by the star fall event 30 years ago, the barriers to becoming a professional, and the difficulty to upgrade became increasingly low and numerous new professions emerged from, even every day normal careers could also become professionals and as a result of this changes even an underground gang leader could possess 2 elite level bodyguards, it should be noted that before the star fall event, elite level professionals were the top of the food chain while the higher legendary levels were like nuclear existences they would not easily make a move, but now elite level professionals were not as good as dogs and in some cases, there had even been numerous instances of legends making a move as the numerous foreign matter that had descended to earth during the star fall event still possessed extraordinary power and were basically artifacts, it was even rumoured that the numerous deity’s who had awoken had also descended back to the world during the event.

This gave rise to various cults, religions, sacrifices and weird phenomenon. Since the star fall the spread of certain actions involving extraordinary power once expanded to a certain scale would constitute a ritual and summon and attract monsters and various hidden existences, and so anything involving professionals was strictly dealt with so as to avoid spread or contamination.

This lesson was naturally learnt with blood and tears of the federation, of course, not all cases required such care and it was the job of people like David who possessed the investigator profession, a career that had been handed down for a long time to find out and discern whether a case required the full force of the federation or not.

.....

“Has the preliminary analysis come out.”

“Yes, our elite stage coroner has identified the course of death,” the deputy said while handing over a document. The document simply showed the test and the results of the test, on the physical side the corpse showed that the cause of death was a spontaneous failure of vital organs while the memory extracted from the corpse soul although showed no evidence as to how the death occurred the victims last memories did give them a vital clue showing that this was a premeditated murder as a symbol was shown appearing in the victims last dying moments. When David saw the skull mark depicted on the file it confirmed the speculation that this was a death caused by extraordinary means and the symbol pointed towards the perpetrator ‘the reaper’ David murmured to himself.

The reaper was a fairly famous killer for hire, he didn’t take on many jobs but his assassinations were unique in the sense that he never confronted his target head on and all the deaths he caused could be classified as accidental ones, if not for the bizarre way of death and the mark he used to identify his victims one would think that the people who had died were merely unfortunate and died as a result of an accident.

Because of the unusual methods of killing, he was given the moniker reaper in the underground community.

“Check all the staff that had access to the door, and every individual that the victim met in the last 12 hours.”

The deputy had no idea why he was acting so disturbed although the reaper was a killer almost everyone involved in law enforcement would not spend so much energy on him after all, the reapers targets were never innocent individual

“The problem isn’t with the reaper, it’s with his target,” David replied indifferently solving the deputy’s doubts.

David wasn’t exactly sure what exactly was wrong but his professional characteristics were warning him that something was wrong and as a member of the crow this was never a good sign.

In a dark dilapidated warehouse deep in the heart of the slums a muscular man with a fierce face walked in through the shut doors, the muscular man upon entering the warehouse couldn’t help but shiver and with each of his steps one could see he was in extreme fear.

Once he had walked some distance he immediately went on his knees and faced the thick darkness in silence.

“Has Ratcliff returned yet,” a hoarse voice suddenly asked from the darkness, it didn’t sound like a voice a human could ever make.

“nooo myy lllord, he hasss been killed by the rrreaper” the muscular man who was on his knees managed to stutter out.

Upon hearing this piece of information a short but joyous laugh resounded in the dark warehouse, the laughter came to an end with a figure stepping out of the shadows only revealing his red eyes twinkling with joys saying three words “finally found you.”