The Curious Cases [Bonus]

Tia reclined languidly in the black leather chair, her slender legs elegantly draped over the table. The tantalizing gleam in her eyes danced greedily as she surveyed the small magical tools, a pouch of silver coins, and a collection of wands sprawled before her.

'I will have to survey them later. Maybe I can learn something useful.' With a graceful wave of her hand, her ring flashed transiently, its mystical gleam swallowing all the items.

Slowly, she pivoted to face the duo of mages still pinned against the wall, their bodies pinned in an unnatural, painful posture. "Tell me, where can I find more mages?"

Confusion and surprise painted the faces of the enforcement officers, replacing expressions of fear.

A tinge of amusement mixed with impatience tingled in the depths of Tia's mind. 'Quite predictable, given the banality of my question.'

Her impatience grew, festering like a wound. Her eyes, now shimmering with a predatory light, split the silence as she exerted an even more brutal force against them, pushing them against the hard concrete, the sounds of their bones snapping reverberating.

The men's faces rapidly transitioned from a shade of deep red to a violent purple, their eyes bulging grotesquely from their sockets.

Her voice, though stern, carried a dangerous tone, "Speak up now!"

She slightly loosened the strength, and the two enforcers gasped for air.

Seeing that, she continued, giving them time to catch their breath, "You see, I just arrived from abroad, and I would really appreciate your cooperation. Do you really want to risk your lives and face excruciating pain for a piece of trivial knowledge?"

The words came tumbling out of one of the enforcers, a frantic urgency in his voice betraying his fear, "The Pedersen street! Follow the concealed path there—magic will guide you."

With an agile grace, Tia sprung up from the chair, her hands smoothing down the fabric of her skirt as she adjusted her coat meticulously. Her face was devoid of emotion, with only a bit of pity in her eyes as her hand moved in a casual, dismissive wave.

The necks of the enforcers twisted in a grotesque fashion, their bodies crashing lifelessly to the ground, their falls dampened by the expensive carpet.

'No loose ends,' was Tia's cold, rational justification as she gazed over the corpses with unaffected ease. In her world, pragmatism overruled mercy. Still, she spared them a second of contemplation: 'A swift end—they are worse ways to die.'

Even though she derived no pleasure from it and even harbored a subtle aversion to the act of killing low-level grunts who mirrored her own struggles beneath their superiors just like she did, she knew it was a necessity.

'Only those willing to wield death can thrive in this reality.'

With measured steps, she advanced, the gravity of her actions adding a heaviness to her gait. As she navigated over the lifeless forms, a mere wave of her hand orchestrated their dissolution, the magical ring on her finger swallowing them whole and erasing all physical evidence of the crime.

'Three dead mages in my ring. I wonder if I can make something out of them.'

POV Someone:

In the scantily lit confines of a cramped room, where the gentle pulsating glow of various monitors cast eerie shadows on the walls, a middle-aged man sat hunched over, his eyes gradually widening in disbelief as he scrutinized the footage before him. Wisps of smoke billowed from the cigarette precariously perched between his lips, unfurling into the room's still air as he drew closer to one of the screens.

A young girl with pale skin and long hair that seemingly looked like waterfalls of molten platinum walked down the corridor in the grainy footage from the camera.

A cyclone of skepticism and bewilderment swirled in his mind as he considered the witness's testimony. 'Was he telling the truth? No, that is impossible, but how did she get in and where did the body go?'

A dead body has vanished without a trace—it was a crime, one scandalous enough to catch the attention of the local news.

He leaned back, the leather of his cheap office chair groaning under the shift in weight, and released a burdened sigh, letting trails of smoke escape into the room. The slightly sweet scent of tobacco mingled with his rising apprehension as he muttered to himself, 'So another one on the list of bizarre cases.'

He was a detective for a long time, yet the last few years were becoming weirder and weirder with unexplainable cases happening all over the city—murder victims with their organs missing without any external injuries and claims of entire bank vaults vanishing from one hour to another without any lead.

'Something dark is going on.'