Chapter 37: Crimson crow
The Three Barrels Inn was a sanctuary for travelers, adventurers, and locals alike.
Its name came from the three different types of famed ale it offered, and tonight, like every night, the inside was teeming with life.
A thick mixture of ale, meat roasting on a wood fire, and the scent of damp cloaks hung in the air.
The crackling of the fire in the hearth accompanied the cheerful but off-key song of a bard and the roars of laughter erupting from the tables.
Waitresses skillfully glided through the crowd with heavy wooden trays in hand, delivering steaming stews and frothy mugs of beer to the patrons.
It was a picture of a well-deserved, carefree rest at the end of an exhausting day.
In one of the loudest corners of this tableau, a group of five adventurers was enthusiastically clinking their goblets.
Their crude armor and the common swords at their belts were proof that they were no elite warriors.
The burly man with an old scar on his face, who appeared to be their leader, swallowed the morsel in his mouth with difficulty and then let out a bellowing laugh.
"I told you!" he roared. "That stupid goblin-clearing quest was a gold mine! You should’ve seen how those weak-kneed rookies were begging for it, but they tucked their tails and ran the second they found out it was ours."
The others at the table joined his laughter.
"You should have seen the face on that brat who tried to take the caravan guard job last week," one of them said. "He nearly wet himself when we ’gently’ told him the job was ours."
In truth, the word "gently" was a cover for a broken arm in a dark alley and a bloody threat to never set foot in the guild again.
This group was the parasites of the adventurers’ guild.
Lacking the courage or skill to face powerful monsters, they had bullied their way into a monopoly on the easy and profitable quests by targeting newer, weaker adventurers.
This way, they lived in luxury with little risk, squandering their ill-gotten gains every night at the Three Barrels Inn.
Their boisterous celebration was being watched by a crow perched on the sill of the inn’s fogged window.
It was different from an ordinary bird.
Its feathers were as dark as night itself, but its eyes... its eyes glowed like two embers, an unnatural crimson filled with intelligence and a cold intent.
These eyes weighed every movement, every laugh, every word of the five men inside, studying them with the patience of a predator watching its prey.
The hours wore on.
The bard played his last song and retired to his corner, the crowd in the inn slowly thinned, and the fire in the hearth turned to a pile of embers.
The five adventurers, now so drunk they could barely stand, stumbled towards their rooms, leaning on one another for support.
A deep silence fell over the inn.
It was then that the crow silently spread its wings.
The window to the first target’s room opened without the slightest creak.
The crow glided inside and landed on the back of a wooden chair in the corner of the room.
The room reeked of cheap wine and sweat.
In the bed lay the burly man, their leader, snoring loudly.
The crow watched him for a moment with a look of disdain. A scornful amusement bloomed within it as it contemplated the order created by this simple, predictable, and weak being.
Then, a transformation that defied the laws of nature began.
The crow’s jet-black feathers rippled and drew inward as if they were smoke that had lost its solid form. For a moment, its small body became a dark shadow.
The shadow silently elongated, expanded, and from within it, a human silhouette emerged.
Silvery-white hair shone in the moonlight, and crimson eyes continued to burn like two coals in the dark.
Cassian walked to the head of the bed with steps as silent as death itself.
As he walked, a dagger that seemed to be condensed from darkness itself materialized in his empty right hand. The dagger’s surface was smooth and matte black, reflecting no light.
When Cassian reached the man’s side, he did not hesitate for a second.
He plunged the dagger in his hand into the sleeping man’s heart, between his ribs.
The man’s eyes shot open with unimaginable pain and shock. He opened his mouth to scream, but only a choked gurgle escaped his lungs instead of air.
His body convulsed, but there was something more terrifying than the cold steel piercing him.
No blood flowed from the wound.
Instead, jet-black flames began to travel through the man’s veins. These flames were not hot; on the contrary, they carried the cold of an absolute void that consumed existence itself.
The flames ate the man from the inside out—his flesh, his bones, his soul, and even his last agonizing memory.
In a matter of seconds, nothing was left of the large man in the bed but an empty bedspread, as if he had never existed.
When Cassian withdrew the dagger, it too melted away in his hand.
He then turned to the next room.
The same silent game was repeated four more times.
A shadow, a moment of terror, and then an eternal silence.
Each of them, in the darkness of their own drunkenness and arrogance, was erased from existence without the slightest resistance.
After disposing of the last man in the same manner, Cassian sat on the chair in the middle of the room. He listened to the silence for a moment.
There was his own unique logic and cold calculation behind the murder of these men.
The first and most obvious reason was their very existence.
They were parasites who preyed on the weaker, exploiting the system for their own gain.
Perhaps they weren’t a great evil, perhaps they had no plans to destroy the world, but in Cassian’s eyes, such small, filthy beings—fools who thought themselves something despite their weakness—were the most satisfying to kill.
These worthless men, who blocked the paths of others by making their own rules, deserved to die.
Eliminating them was a way for Cassian to test his new ability, to master stealth, to learn how to eliminate those he deemed enemies easily and without much effort.
The second reason was far more pragmatic: gold.
These men had found what they thought were clever ways to hide the money they had extorted. Cassian began to search the rooms one by one.
He lifted loose floorboards under the beds, checked for hidden compartments in the wardrobes, and inspected loose bricks in the walls.
He soon found a considerable amount of gold and a few small gems.
The dead had no need for money, and Cassian needed resources to achieve his goals. For him, this was a simple transfer of property.
He transferred everything he found into the dimensional storage pouch he had taken from the leader of the slave traders.
When he was finished, he returned to the edge of the window.
Outside, dawn was about to break, and the sky was turning from indigo to violet.
The town below was still asleep.
Not a soul had suspected a thing.
The innkeeper, upon finding the rooms empty and the fees paid, would think his customers had set out early. As for the guild, when no one heard from them after a while, they would assume they had either found a better job and left, or had died quietly on some mission.
No one would look for them, no one would mourn them.
Their deaths, like their lives, would be insignificant.
A faint smile appeared on Cassian’s face.
This was only the beginning of his Doppelgänger ability.
Shapeshifting gave him the power not only to hide, but also to infiltrate, manipulate, and most importantly, create chaos.
Today he was a crow; tomorrow, perhaps a nobleman, a general, or a trusted friend.
The possibilities were endless, and each one was more delightful than the last.
His body shuddered and changed form again. The silver hair and crimson eyes vanished, replaced once more by the jet-black feathers that blended into the night.
The crow flew out of the window and soared toward the first light of dawn, disappearing from sight.
It left behind rooms completely cleansed of the five men’s existence, and a silent justice that no one would ever notice.