Disclaimer: I have never been to Liverpool so forgive me if what im writing isnt entirely correct.
After leaving the Sanctum, Liam took a taxi to Liverpool, following the Ancient One's directive to investigate a small dimensional tear that had recently appeared there.
As he walked through the thin layer of snow covering Liverpool's streets, he took out his phone to search for a nearby hotel. During a recent training session with Mordo, he had asked how long missions usually took.
"Turns out they can last quite a while," Liam muttered with a sigh, kicking a pebble in front of him. "Figures, given how little information I got for this one."
'I'll book a room for seven days; that should be enough,' he thought as he reserved a hotel. Walking toward the area, Liam's thoughts went to the event expected in October. 'There wasn't a precise date for the fight between Obadiah and Tony in the movie. After this mission, I'll need to hurry over to Los Angeles.'
Once in his hotel room, Liam unpacked a few spare clothes and set up his laptop to search for any signs of unusual activity in the area. "Let's hope it's not a tear to the Dream Dimension," he muttered. "That would mean searching all of Liverpool. Even though I have this Mystic Pendulum to detect dimensional energy, its range is small, and it only works if I walk slowly."
He glanced down at the pendant hanging around his neck and couldn't help but complain, "Who makes artifacts that require you to walk slow?" The pendulum was supposed to glow brighter the closer he got to dimensional energy, but it wouldn't work if he moved too quickly.
'Anyway, that's not important right now,' he thought, starting his search for recent news articles. Typing keywords like murder, supernatural, disappearance, and haunted, he knew he'd have to go through countless exaggerated reports about hauntings and ghost sightings. 'This'll take time. And the tear may not even have released any minions or leaked energy yet.'
He made a list of "haunted" houses, disappearances, and murders in the area, but nothing stood out—no pattern, no big group of strange occurrences to make the search easier.
"It's 4 p.m.," he said to himself. "I'll check out a few of the nearby locations before calling it a night."
The sun was already setting. As Liam stepped outside, he looked at the people around him. Unlike the rush of New York, Liverpool was quite peaceful. He saw students, a few years younger than himself, laughing and joking around. An elderly couple sat on a bench, watching the sunset while feeding a stray cat.
Liam's hotel was close to the first 'haunted' house on his list. However, his pendulum didn't react when he arrived. "Figures it wouldn't be that easy," he muttered, moving on to another location a few blocks away. After visiting six haunted houses with no results, he finally headed to his last checkpoint of the day, a recent disappearance site, but found nothing unusual there either.
The next few days passed with little progress. Then, while waiting for a taxi to the next crime scene, he saw a news alert that caught his eye: "Brutal Murder on Wilson Road." He clicked on the article, reading: "Police have found pools of blood along with what appears to be chewed-up flesh and bones."
"Well, after a week of searching, looks like I've finally found something," he said.
When his taxi arrived, he asked the driver, "How much to get to Wilson Road?"
"That's about 25 miles from here. It'll be around seventy pounds," the driver replied.
"I'll give you a hundred if you get there fast," Liam offered.
"I can take a few shortcuts," the driver agreed, starting the car. Liam refreshed the news site for updates on the brutal murder, but there were no new details. After a shortened ride of 32 minutes instead of 40, the driver stopped close to the scene.
"I'm afraid I can't go any further; the road's blocked by police barricades," the driver explained.
"That's fine. Thanks for the quick drive," Liam replied, handing over the money and stepping out of the car.
Liam slipped past the police barricade, moving stealthily toward the crime scene. As he got closer, he noticed the pendulum glowing, it started glowing brighter with each step. After confirming that the area contained dimensional energy, he removed the pendant to avoid drawing attention and pulling up his hood.
He overheard bits of conversation between the officers, some of whom were visibly disturbed. A few newcomers were even throwing up from the sight. Observing from a distance, Liam took in the gruesome scene. The body parts looked chewed up, like a leftover chicken leg, with bones scattered and a large pool of blood staining the ground.
But something else caught his eye—burn marks on the walls and the pavement. "Fire marks," he noted, studying them closely. "These burns were made with dimensional energy—that's what the pendulum was reacting to."
Liam took one final look and started exploring the area around him. ''It's a low level tear so the creatures act mostly based on instinct, I will scan the area around here and that will most likely bring me to it.''
---
There will be a flashback explaining Liam's thoughts about the last chapter in one of the next chapters, don't worry :).