Into The World Of Magic

London, 2019

"Ma'am, the venators are here." Said a stoic young man standing by the doors to a huge room. He is neatly dressed from head to toe, wearing a suit and tie, with a pair of thick rectangular glasses.

The smell of old books and tea fills up the room, the bright light shines from the window and fills up the room. The room is at least ten metres tall, a huge window lies at the other end of it, showing the building across and bookshelves filled with books lined both sides of the room. The desk lies at the opposite end of the door, facing away from the window, on one side, it is piled high with books while on the other side, lies a steaming cup of tea.

Thomas looks up at the bookshelf on his right. There, Rosalind is standing on a small floating antique silver dagger while her right hand held a book she was reading from. She had her left hand is facing straight down with her palm open, facing towards the dagger, maintaining the magic on it that makes it float.

While continuing to read her book, she didn't look away from it as she said, "Let them in." Thomas backed away from the room while making a very slight bow, his movements were smooth and swift. Moments later, two men dressed in jeans, simple t-shirts and black leather jackets entered the room. One of them was in his late twenties while the other was in his early forties. Both of them took a few steps into the room and then stopped. They were amazed by the books that lined the bookshelves and how grand the old the room looked.

Suddenly, Rosalind floated down to the ground with her dagger still beneath her feet, when it hovered around a metre away from the ground, she jumped down then grabbed the dagger that was still hovering.

The men waited while she walked back to her desk, sheathed her dagger in the sheath that was placed on the side of her desk and sat in her chair. She closed the book that she was reading all this while and placed it atop her pile of documents on the other side of her desk.

"Who's he, William?" The woman asked while pointing towards the younger man. Her voice was low and stern, she was wearing reading glasses despite her seemingly young age, a delicate face with almond-shaped eyes and straight fully black hair that goes slightly beyond her shoulders. Her face showed not a single emotion as she waited for her reply.

"He's Wilson, a newly promoted Venator, he's attached to me for a few months before he gets a hang of the job."

Rosalind stared at William for a few seconds before turning to Wilson. Something about him makes her feel a little familiar. Not thinking too much about it, she pulled out a black file between her pile of documents.

"This is you the girl you need to find." She said as she held out the file towards William. The two men walked towards her desk and William took the file from her. As he opened the file to look, it showed a picture of a young woman, not more than twenty years old. "That picture was taken twenty years ago, her name's Su Yi. Though the picture was twenty years ago, her appearance shouldn't have changed much since she's a nine-tailed fox."

"What's the mission?"

"Find her. I need her alive. She was tracked to Singapore nineteen years ago when Alium was sealed."

"Anything else I need to know?"

"Everything you need is in that file, I suggest you check out Los Angeles. She was recently spotted there. You may leave now." Rosalind replied stoically as she waved her hand, signalling for them to leave while she continued reading her book.

As they left the room, the door to the room closed on their own.

"So what now?" Said Wilson.

"We check out Los Angeles."

Los Angeles, 2019

"Where are we?" Wilson said as he stared at the small and old bookstore they were standing in front of.

"This one of the entrances to the U.S. Bureau of Magic."

"Are you sure?" Wilson asked, doubting that such a plain, old, dilapidated store could even remotely be linked to the federation.

"You'll see." William said as he entered the store with Wilson following close behind. When he entered the store, he looked around the store before he found the cashier tucked away in a corner at the other side of the store.

"Anything you looking for?" Said the cashier looking bored. He stared at us while William was checking and looking for something in his messenger bag.

"Ah, here we go." William said as he placed a card on the cashier's desk. The card was black and transparent, with two deep dark purple squares overlapped with each other to form an octagon.

The cashier widened his eyes the moment he saw the card, clearly shocked.

"Give me a moment." The cashier said nervously. He flustered about as he picked up the card and swiped it at the cash register. A gate opened up magically the side of the store next to the cashier. The cashier returned the card to them and said, "Just enter the gate and go straight, the receptionist will tell you where to go.

They followed his instructions and enter through the gate. The gate leads to a completely white, circular and grand building, filled with people going about their day and dozens of corridors spread around leading to various places. There were no signs to guide on where to go, everyone seemed to have memorised all the locations by heart, save for a few who were looking very stupid, staring at their cards while waking about. Like the cashier said, right in front of them, in the middle of the huge room was the reception and they walked towards it.

"How may I help you today?" The receptionist said as she makes a slight smile towards them.

William passed his black card towards her as he says, "Department of Investigations please." The receptionist took the card from him and placed it on a pad on the side of her desk. All they heard were the sounds of keyboards typing before a brief flash of light shone from the pad onto the card before the receptionist returned it. "Follow the directions on the card and you'll find where you need to go."

"Thank you." William said as he flipped over the card. At first, the card was completely blanked, but moments later a bright red arrow appeared on it. Now Wilson knows why some of the people were looking at their card stupidly.

"Why is everything here different from the London bureau?" Wilson asked.

"What do you mean?" William said as he looked at Wilson strangely. "This is the same for all the other bureau overseas. London's the headquarters, which is also the first and oldest, that's why it's different. Haven't you been dispatched overseas before? China?" William asked suspiciously, remembering that from his file when he first met Wilson, he's been to China's bureau for a few months as an intern.

"Ahhh, the bureau was under renovations there, so the bureau was temporarily located at an office building nearby," Wilson said convincingly as he made an awkward smile towards William. He didn't think much of it as he continued to follow the directions to the Department of Investigations while Wilson secretly breathes a sigh of relief.

After around ten minutes of walking through countless corridors, the arrow on the card finally points towards a room. William knocked on it a few times before someone answered the door. It young woman not more than twenty who answered it.

"Can I help you?" The young woman said as she stared at them with only her head poking out from the door.

"We are from the headquarters, here to get some information. Your department was informed already right?"

"May I have a look at your card?" The young woman said as William passed the black card to her. She looked at it for a few seconds before she went back into the room, the door closing shut behind her. Moments later she was back, her hands held a black file similar to the one that Rosalind had given them. "The head is currently not in the office right now, I was only told to give this file to you." She said as the passed the file and card back to William. "Now, if there's nothing else, have a good day." Before they could reply, the young woman shut the door to their faces, leaving them a little stunned.

William looked at the files while they walked back the way they came from.

"What does it say?" Wilson asks.

"It appears that Su Yi appeared around Los Angeles a few days ago, an agent of theirs was dispatched to investigate and follow her, the last contact they received from the agent was two days ago in...."

"Where is it?"

"Singapore. Looks like we're going on another trip." William said as he sighed, feeling more sick of this by the second.

Singapore, 2019

As Kenneth was ransacking his brain for ideas on what to do, he heard the leaves behind him rustled and voices quickly approaching. In his desperation, he quickly removed his jacket, spread it out on the grass and quickly transferring the little fox onto it. He wrapped the jacket around, carried it, and quickly ran behind a tree to his right. The voices quickly approach, soon he can clearly hear the voices conversing where he stood before, it was two people and they didn't sound like they are Singaporean.

"The magical trail from the alleyway where leads here and stopped." William said while pointing towards the patch of abnormally long grass and blood spills on it.

"She probably ran this way and judging by the amount of blood, she was probably injured by the agent before he was killed and collapsed here. Question is, where is she now? She can't have just disappeared, she was injured so she couldn't have teleported away..." Said Wilson as he deduces what happened.

Kenneth was eavesdropping on the conversation. He was afraid of being found out so he kept really silent, but was shocked to hear that a little fox like this could kill a man.

William knelt down by the side of the grass patch and found something next to it. "Hey, look." He held up a small glass vial with still a few drops of light blue liquid still left in it.

"What is that..." Wilson was fascinated at the vial of blue liquid. He was really excited to be able to work on his first big case and travelled all the way to a foreign country, all this had made him want to find out more but William was still withholding a lot of information from him.

"Let's get this back to the bureau, they should be able to find out what this is," William said as he took out a small clear bag, place the vial inside and returns it to his messenger bag. They turned to leave with Wilson walking behind him.

Just as they were leaving, Kenneth breathes a sigh of relief, then Wilson stopped.

"What's wrong?" William asked.

Wilson looked to the direction of the tree where Kenneth was hiding behind. He squints his eyes and focused on the direction before he turned back and said, "Nothing, though I heard something, probably just my imagination." Then they continued walking, a few minutes later they were gone.

Kenneth did not dare to move, for twenty minutes after they left, Kenneth froze behind the tree, afraid that they might come back. Then he turned around at looked at the spot where they stood, looked around to see if anyone is coming, after confirming that there's no one else, Kenneth placed down the fox wrapped in his jacket that he was hugging the whole time.

He opened up the jacket and see the fox still unconscious, he slowly turned it around to look at its wounds. It was still there, but it was mysteriously less serious than before and it stopped bleeding. It started to breathe normally now like it was just in a very deep sleep. Kenneth still had completely no idea what to do, he sat there for the half an hour looking at the fox, thinking of what to do while further confirming that the two men did not return again.

After such a long time of thinking, Kenneth finally decided on what to do. He removed the backpack he was carrying and removed all the textbooks and worksheets in it and placed them to the side. He wrapped the fox up in his jacket again and slowly, while carrying the fox, move it into his bag, luckily the fox fit in just right, lying at the base of the bag, then he zips it up while leaving a gap at the top to ensure the fox doesn't suffocate.

He carefully put the straps of the bag over his shoulder and slowly carrying it, while both his hand were occupied with carrying his books and worksheets. He cautiously walks out of the trees and onto the pathway while careful not to be seen by others, after looking around and ensuring that no one else was nearby, he quickly walked back home the way he came from.