82. Came back to haunt

I approached Ophelia, who was resting to the side, massaging her ribs after catching a kick from Myhur. When I discussed her progress with him, he said she was ready to start reforging some of her mana into Qi once she gathered enough.

I also agreed she should be gathering mana by instinct from the magic crystal. She wasn’t capable of proper meditation before seeing into herself, but she was starting to build the circle.

But today’s bout didn’t go that well. Both he and I agreed she seemed somewhat distracted, which earned her a kick to the side.

I guessed I would have to talk with her. But that came later. For now, I was going to do some teaching.

“Those are talismans,” I explained to Ophelia, showing her a piece of paper with some lettering in Arcane and a string attached. “It’s made from paper soaked with a mana-rich liquid and an arcane circle for a single spell. You can activate it by either tearing the lower part of the paper,” I said, pointing at a part where the talisman was slightly thinner, guiding any tear so that you didn’t destroy the arcane circle in the process of activation. “Or you can extend yourself toward it and activate it with a thought.”

After finishing my explanation, I handed her the paper, and she took it, starting to look it over with curiosity.

“They were used in the past by everyone as a way not to use their own mana when it was scarce. But the original purpose was mostly for training or long battles where you didn’t want to burden yourself with even the easiest casts.”

“I assume I will be training with them?”

“Yes. You need to get used to mixing spells with your attacks. Myhur told me you are making good progress, but the problem is your fighting style lacks magic. Adding it later can be tough, so I want you to use these: shield spell, cut spell, pierce spell, and force spell.”

As I said that, I gave her the corresponding talismans. “They are the basics for non-attributed spells and your best friends in a fight. Mix them in and always have the talismans on you.”

Ophelia nodded.

“That also goes for your rapier,” I added.

“What?” She furrowed her eyebrows and turned to me. “Why?”

“You need to get used to carrying a weapon. You’ll look silly, but it will be normal soon enough, I guarantee you.”

I expected her to argue a bit, but she just looked straight ahead and nodded.

I knitted my eyebrows together, looking at her.

“I will most likely be going on an investigation, and I don’t know how long it will take. So you will be focusing on the battle lessons and, once again, reading.”

I saw that her eyes shot wide open. “Can’t I go with you?”

“Not this time, Ophelia. This time it will be dangerous even for me.”

“Then I can come with Myhur and…”

There was some desperation in her voice, enough for even me to pick up on it. I raised my hand and stopped her.

“What is going on?”

She went silent and visibly deflated.

“Nothing.”

That was a lie so obvious it practically screamed at me.

“Right. I might lack empathy, but even a rock could tell that something’s up after this.” I then spoke in a serious voice. “You are distracted during lessons. Your progress slowed down. And now you are desperate to get away, even when I tell you it will be extremely dangerous. I don’t make a habit of snooping into your private life, but as your teacher, I need to know. What’s going on?”

Ophelia hesitated for some time, but then finally opened her mouth to speak. “It’s about my mother. She gave me an angry call that some scary men were threatening her and asking about me. She said that I killed a boy and that I’m to come and explain and repent for my sins and so on.”

“Oh?” I raised my eyebrows. “Tom’s father, I assume.”

Ophelia nodded lightly. “Yes. He sent some thugs to my mother, and they are looking for me, and I’m not sure what to do. So… I was hoping you could, you know, scare them off or something?”

“What you meant to say was you were hoping they would show up when I happened to be around, and I would scare them off anyway. Right?”

She stayed silent.

“You think whoever works for a wealthy doctor high up in Big Pharma will be scared by threats?”

“Well then, beat them up slightly?”

I looked at her in silence. She didn’t understand what she was asking.

“You know that if I showed them proof of magic, I would need to kill them, right?”

“Why? You showed it to Daniel, Liam, and Emma? You didn’t kill them… right?”

I chuckled at the uneasy question at the end. “No, I did not. But they were dumb students with even dumber parents. They could rave on about what they saw and be painted as crazy. A grieving, angry, and most of all, wealthy man is another thing. He probably got some strange story about a non-existent tribe in the forest. If he received proof of magic enough to do some digging, it could become a problem. Showing magic itself is rarely an issue. Some mages work as… well, magicians, and each time they fuck up and push the line, Penn & Teller get a call to fix shit. A spell or two isn’t a problem.”

“Peeeople with power doing some digging is,” came Myhur’s voice from the side as he approached us.

“Exactly. Someone with enough pull to be a problem, getting them the proof, is a big no-no. And Big Pharma can be a pain in the ass like no other. So we can’t risk it. Even if Tom’s father signs a cyrograph, someone with power and a grudge knowing about us is still a big issue. So he would be marked for extermination anyway.”

Ophelia went a bit pale. “So can’t you do, like, some mind thing? Or, give him false leads through the cats or monitor him with, like, a house cat.”

I watched with amusement as she proposed some theories. “No. I can’t. How about this: if it bothers you that much, I can fix it.”

I saw her relax slightly, but I was about to change that.

“I will go and exterminate everyone involved. Make it look like suicide. Should be believable.”

“What?! No. You can’t.”

I raised my eyebrows at her. “So you not only want me to fix it for you, free of charge, but also to do it your way?”

“Well… I mean, can’t you just scare him without magic… somehow…”

“It’s not about that. You need to understand. Getting others involved in your issues means you give them power over the solution. And I can’t afford mercy against someone who attacked me, Ophelia. If I get involved, it will be taken as an attack against me. My family isn’t big, as you can see. If I show any mercy, it can give others the idea to try as well. So if you want a less bloody solution, if you want your own solution, fix it yourself.”

Ophelia stayed silent and nodded slightly.

I smiled and approached Myhur before whispering to him, “Tell the cats so that it won’t turn into a disaster, and help her out if possible. I’ll be away for some time.”

Myhur nodded, and we held each other’s forearms.

I then said my goodbyes to Ophelia and went on my way to prepare for the next job.

On my way home, I started making a mental list of things I needed. Being up against an anomaly meant that anything could happen. Some didn’t even obey the tier system. I would need to commission stronger potions from the witches as well as some elixirs. Take my complete alchemy set just in case.

***

It took another three days before I got a reluctant call from Q’Shar.

“Check your email. I sent you something interesting.”

I opened my email and checked a link I received. It was a post from some unknown person from a small town.

“Two dead after an overdose at a party. Are our children really safe…”

I skimmed through the post. It was about a party that ended up in a disaster due to drugs. Nothing interesting about it, really. I checked the location of the town in the text, and, sure enough, it was around the area where the Hook should be found. But that’s it. Curious about how the cats made the connection, I went back to the call.

“Okay, got the post. So did you find some ancient scroll and it turned out that the Butcher was actually a drug dealer?”

“I wish. No, a mortician’s cat contacted us. He’s one of our old informants, but now retired. The overdoses looked strange. He didn’t get a good look at the bodies but said that the doctor started drinking and having nightmares after seeing them.”

I nodded. That was a good lead, but many different magic phenomena could cause that.

“Anything else?”

“Yes, here comes the kicker. He tried to get into the morgue, but said he felt a presence coming from the bodies.”

“So a ghost?”

“No, just the presence of the bodies. But a mixed one. Much weaker than that of a ghost, but fragmented.”

“It sounds like something happened to a soul. Good catch.” I nodded in appreciation.

“Not many things in this world can fuck with a spirit, so it should be your hook or something related to the Butcher.”

It should be.

“Thanks. I’ll go there as soon as possible.”

“…Sam. Please do watch out.”

“I’ll be on edge, don’t worry.” Saying that, I disconnected.

Most of the things I had commissioned were already here. I was just waiting for a sleeping draft, and then I was good to go. Well, that and my last part for the preparations.

Today was as good a day as any other. I was at my full strength. But should I? This could get me bedridden for quite some time. But the warning about an anomaly did get to me. Last time Ester had only one trick up her sleeve, and it was already tough to deal with. What about a real anomaly?

I decided to take the risk.

I went to the storage room and looked toward the chest holding the altar. After learning from last time, I took the gargoyles and moved them to the farthest corner and placed them facing the wall.

Once done, I approached the altar and began praying.

Just as before, I heard other voices in the room with me, chanting right behind me and around me. The music and drums then joined. I sat there as a multitude of strange feelings rose inside me. Until finally the music reached a crescendo, and it was time to ask.

I was nervous, as much as I could be, at least. I never learned an eldritch spell that way. Visions of eldritch nature were not something I could withstand. Usually, learning abyssal magic took a very long time studying strange texts written in an inhuman language. Despite all my studies, I only knew three abyssal spells. And now one would be shown directly to me.

“Geth’sahra,” I spoke and waited.

There was a reaction. Something extended into my mind. I felt a finger touch my forehead, and I drifted into a vision.

This one felt different. Eldritch visions, unlike those about forbidden knowledge from the material world, were even worse. There was no sense to them.

What I saw was a monstrous, ever-moving black mass. Screaming faces of all species in existence were etched into its surface, moving underneath the veil that seemed to hold the thing together. It was impossibly big, its flesh stretching through untold distances as well as untold eons.

From it, things constantly fell as if an unceasing rain of living matter fell into the void underneath. They were creatures, uncountable creatures, locked in an unceasing cycle of rebirth and death. They fell from the god as newborns and then aged, turning to dust as they fell into infinity.

Whatever I was supposed to learn, it had better be quick, as I felt I was about to die with my head splitting in half. And then came the vision. A vision of thousands of the favored creatures that fell from the black writhing madness.

A movement— all I was shown about them was a movement— before the vision thankfully ended, and I was back on the floor.

A name came to my mind. I tried translating it from Abyssal. It would be something along the lines of “Utterance to the Anger of the Young.”

Mastering the spell would still take me a lot of time.

As to what the spell would do? Not a fucking clue, at least for now. I would need to gather myself and analyze the spell. I should be able to get an overall understanding after a rest, but understanding the mechanism could take me months. All I knew for now was that the name of one of the Thousand Young was needed.

What was interesting was that the spell didn’t invoke the power of my god, but rather another from the abyssal pantheon. I knew that my family studied other gods, mostly by branch members. As a result, most of that knowledge was lost, aside from the Pnakotic manuscripts and some passages in the Necronomicon.

Was the spell a suggestion? Should I seek out that knowledge? Or was I reading into it?

The spell was relatively easy for the third tier, probably at the lower end in power, so maybe that was why it was chosen?

Eh, not a clue.

There should be the name of one of the Thousand Young in the Necronomicon. I assumed the spell would act differently based on the name chosen, but I wasn’t spoiled for choice. If I ever meet the Black Goat, I’ll have a chat about her children.

But for today, dealing with the splitting headache was the first thing on my agenda.

I tried getting up but lost my balance.

Headache and vertigo, I corrected myself.

And tomorrow I will be on my way to deal with an anomaly. No way to prepare, no way to know what was waiting.

How exciting.