Dark Magus Returns

Kelly had to make sure she wasn't imagining things and jumping the gun, as she shook her head to recalibrate what she was thinking. Magic was spectacular; it could do a number of things and contributed to a number of large advances in the world, giving them what they had today.

However, one of the things that wasn't possible was full communication with other animals, a way to speak to them or decipher what it was that their noises they made were trying to communicate.

However, she also knew that animals could be very smart; they could often understand people's emotions, their body language, and understand a relatively large number of words. So it was possible that this was just one of those cases.

"I know you want me to go to the book, but right now I'm more curious whether you can understand me or not," Kelly said out loud.

With that, a response had occurred with another meow, and the cat had even tilted its head off to the side as if it was observing her.

"If you can understand me, then meow twice for yes, and once for no," Kelly asked.

Immediately, with no hesitation, the cat meowed, and then proceeded to make a second noise right after that, following up.

"No, it could still be a coincidence, I need more than this," Kelly said. "Raise your paw."

Immediately, the cat raised its paw.

"The other one!"

The cat responded following the actions again, and Kelly went into a frenzy as she repeated orders one after the other.

"Meow again, spin around, jump up, lie on your back, lick your paw!" Kelly continued to order, until the cat had eventually got fed up and ran toward the edge of the bed and leapt, jumping right towards her, and with its claws extended out of its hand, it gave a large swipe right at her face.

Immediately, Kelly raised both of her hands.

"Lingering Wind!" A wave of magic wind had occurred, and the cat was now floating in the air, with its fur all puffed up.

"I'm sorry," Kelly said as she reached out and grabbed the cat by under its arms, holding it steady. "I just couldn't believe it, but it appears you can really understand me."

Right after, the cat climbed on top of the side of Kelly's arm, and went up until it was sitting on the side of her shoulder. Then, with its paw, it had pointed straight ahead to the book on the bed once again.

"I understand, you want me to look at the book, right?" Kelly moved forward toward the magic circle on the ground, or the markings left behind by the magic circle. Just in case something was inherent that could still activate, she had stepped around it.

In doing so, her foot soon landed on a small notebook. Moving her foot off the book, she could see a name written on the front of the book.

"Sophie…is that the person that lived here?" Kelly said.

In response, the cat meowed twice once again.

"Is that a yes?"

"Meow, Meow!" The Cat answered.

"Well, for now I don't have a name for you, as it doesn't seem like your owner is in at the moment, is it okay to call you Sophie?" Kelly asked.

To which the cat responded with two meows again, almost smiling.

Finally, she had gotten to the bed, and planting herself down on it, the cat went on the bed as well. Standing next to the book, Kelly knew the cat was keen for her to see it. She picked it up and immediately she could feel residue of magic.

'This is a magic item… or at least it was. I can feel strong power coming from it, but the power is fading, even now while it's in my hand.'

When looking at the front of the book, there wasn't much sign as to what it was. It was black in color, with a few large indented circles, swirled and patterns. It reminded Kelly of some of the magical item books she had seen obtained from other worlds.

It was part of her university studies. Opening up the book, she could see writing all over the pages; it was Alterian writing. The book was clearly being deciphered on the go.

Reading the words on the book, Kelly continued to flick through the pages, and as she did, it didn't take her long to figure out what it was. Suddenly, her eyes opened up wide as she looked at the black cat.

"Now I know why you can understand me," Kelly said, to which the cat's eyes had almost become teary at that point.

Harvey had returned to the police station in a relatively bad mood. He had been looking forward to this day for a while now. Things at work weren't going the best for him.

Due to one of the cases he recently handled, more eyes were placed on him. The suspect had died once again, rather than being captured. It was something that commonly happened on Harvey's cases.

The good news was, they were more bothered about them finding out information left behind by the Dark Magus, an order that had been received from the top.

However, Harvey himself, had been looking into other things; he had been looking into the Grand Magus, as tasked by the Dark Spirit.

He had made note of all of the guilds that seemed to have close connection to the Grand Magus. Investigating the guilds ran by the Grand Magus's themselves would be tough.

On top of that, he doubted that they would get those close to them to do the dirty work; that way there would be a longer lead heading back to them, and they could always blame it on the others.

Through the investigations, Harvey had found one of the guilds that worked with the Glory guild, which had been destroyed.

The police force had run an investigation and had brought in a number of items from the scene as well as reports. It wasn't a case he was working on, so he and his team were analyzing it themselves.

As Harvey walked past one of the screens, he could see one of his staff members have strange text on his computer from the scene.

"What is that?" Harvey asked , approaching from behind. "You've been staring at that for a while now."

"Yeah, I know," the officer replied. "I was using the computer's database to try and analyze it against Alterian language and text, but nothing is coming up. On top of that, I even had an expert look at it.

"They think that it's some type of language, but it's not any language that we have found on Alterian before. It's the first of its kind."

"What, like some type of Ancient language that's just been found?" Harvey asked.

"Well, that's the thing, it's not Ancient language, judging by what it's written on, and the age of the tools used. Although they aren't the typical tools we would use, it seems like it's only a few years old at most."

Harvey looked at the strange writing for a while. There were times they would come across text form other worlds they wouldn't understand, so it was quite possible this was the case as well.

What was bothering him, was where the text was found, and why no one had bothered to try and decipher what it meant. Usually there was a team that worked on these things in case it was important evidence.

"It could be nothing, but send it over to me," Harvey ordered.

Next time he met the Dark Spirit, he would hand it to him; who knows, maybe it was useful to him.

"There is one word on here," the officer replied, as he scrolled to the bottom of the scanned image. "This was written in Alterian."

The words at the bottom spelled out, P A G N A.