Hastum

62. Pieces don't fit

Ophelia looked at the thing curiously. “What is that?”

“An artifact. It used to be very popular among summoners and ritualists.” I raised it slightly. “It’s a container for souls. They are relatively rare these days and seldom used.”

“So we can’t rule out an anomaly.”

“Yes. There had to be a proper mage in the family at some point.”

She was getting the hang of it.

“Can you go in there and get the younger brother’s soul?”

I shoo...

61. Obsession

“Speaking,” I said.

The voice on the other end was young. I considered hanging up, expecting a prank call with the “Samuel the exorcist” title, especially as my broker didn’t inform me of any clients. But there was something in the voice. A tinge of fear and desperation that made me stop and answer.

“Are you really an exorcist?”

“Yes.”

“Can you come and help us?”

“Depends. What’s the problem?” I asked, half expecting them to say that t...

60. Possession

Daniel didn’t know what to do. His brother was acting more and more strangely. He walked around half-asleep, groaning and grunting throughout the day, and then screamed or sleepwalked at night.

And it was the sleepwalking that was becoming a problem. Each time he left his room, he would do something nasty. It had been three days since the first incident, when he had walked into the room of one of the girls and stood over her bed, breathing heavily. When she tried to push him away, he ...

59. The reading

The old woman sat me down at the table, and then went out back. After a few seconds of rummaging, she came back carrying a crystal ball. I could sense an energy radiating from it. The air started to smell like parchment, and felt warm and wise in a way that is hard to describe.

It was an altar to the god of records.

She placed the crystal ball on a small, circular table in a special stand in the center. She then sat right across from me.

“So, sonny. What ya want? I can rea...

58. Fortune teller

The next week was spent on my new routine. I would teach some basics of magic to Ophelia, then let her meditate on the cube and read. In the meantime, I was digging through all the clutter in the storage looking for the designs of my family’s old mansion or an explanation on why the judgment ritual was suggesting my orbit was not complete.

But for now, there was nothing. If the Vatican organizes the Sabbath sometime soon, I could try to talk to the Egyptian delegation. Maybe they stil...

Interlude 6 - Oppression

The party died down pretty quickly after the Ouija board incident. Daniel and Matheo got into a screaming match. Daniel called him an asshole for picking on his younger brother, and Matheo called his younger brother a scared bitch. Of course, the person who got caught in the crossfire was Liam, as he just sat there wishing he didn’t exist at that moment.

His brother was treating him like a child, not even trying to pretend he hadn’t asked them to be friends with him, and to make it ...

57. Your consciousness

“The god I serve is different from other gods. Much like the contract I have with it, it is unique. But what sets us apart is that if I ever gain any Faith in my god, that means I’m losing my mind.”

“What… do you mean?” Ophelia looked at me, concern clear in her eyes.

“The gods normal people believe in are the gods of this world. They live in planes connected to ours. But the god I have a contract with is one of the higher gods, the gods of the universe, god...

56. Secrets, Mysteries and Enigmas

“Let’s say you went through the first two stages. You activated the mana with runic symbols. You told it that you want it to create a flame. Now comes the most important part. Mana listens to your intent. It basically asks, ‘Well, what do you mean by flame? Big or small? Colder or hotter? Wild or calm?’”

Ophelia kept taking notes, but I placed my hand on her notebook. “You can write after. I need you to get this part.”

She nodded and lowered the pap...

55. First magic lesson

“So, um… weren’t we supposed to start with magic lessons?” Ophelia asked me as she slightly adjusted her crouching position.

“That’s exactly what we’re doing. Technically speaking.”

“Riiiight.” A bit of awkward silence settled in as she finally realized I wasn’t going to elaborate. “So why do I feel like we’re breaking into a house?”

“We aren’t breaking in. I have keys.”

“Then why are we watching it from the bushes?”

“Well�...

54. Apprentice returns

I was watching a video on my phone, trying to relax after spending the entire morning struggling to open the pouch. But opening it was impossible, at least not before my first ascension. Every attempt to attune to it backfired. The seal had so many decoy frequencies I couldn't pick out the true one.

Right now I was completely out of mana and had a dull ache in the back of my skull. I lay in bed with a mana crystal resting on my chest while I mindlessly scrolled through videos. Not just ...

53. A path forward

They stood looking at each other awkwardly. Neither knew what to say in this situation. Ophelia was the first to break out of her stunned silence. She noticed that the woman looked at least a couple of years older than she remembered. The memories of the barn, the damp smell of old straw and wood, all rushed back.

"When did you get back?" she asked, not knowing how to start the conversation.

"Yesterday."

Silence descended once again.

It was the older woman who broke it...

52. Hesitation

Ophelia woke up looking at an unfamiliar ceiling. She was in a hotel room that the cats had found for her yesterday.

She continued to lie there, staring ahead, her eyes fixed on a wet spot next to the ceiling fan, as her mind wandered. The past few days had been like a strange dream or a nightmare. Right now, without any pagan worshippers of a strange forest god, without any talking cats or the strange man with hollow eyes, everything felt surreal in the quiet that followed.

The t...

51. Some time to breathe

It squirmed and pulsed with sickly, unnatural light. I looked in fascination upon the meteor traveling through the void of the universe, its surface remembering the strange eons before the age of gods or men. The strange, indescribable light once shone upon the world before the planes separated and gods walked the earth.

It drew me in. The ethereal flame started to burn my skin as I clawed my way through the unending emptiness, just to burn in the cold radiance of the colors outside of ...

Interlude 5 - Ester

Liam was not happy with the plan. Not happy at all. They sat around the board with candles lit everywhere. Everyone except him was considerably drunker than before.

To make it worse, his brother was in an increasingly worse mood, as his chosen crush was not paying him any attention. And as if that was not enough, after a few bottles, she seemed to be coming on to Liam a bit. It was an obvious joke to get him to drink, but neither Mateo nor Daniel seemed to pick up on it, as his brother ...

50. No way forward

“Please wait, I’m getting dressed!” I screamed back at the doors. I then turned to the cats and whispered. “What do we do?”

“WE are going to go through the window. What you two do is the problem,” Q’Shar answered, pointing his tail at me and the tiger. He then approached the window. “No use going through here, the police are in front of the building.”

“Shit!” I swore. “Where is the car?”

“In an alley at the back of the apartment complex.”

49. Poor craftsmanship

The cat looked at me flatly. “Okay, where are you going with this, aside from torture critique?”

“The torture critique is the point. I thought that they figured out the curse and then smashed his head. But now I think it was the other way around. They smashed his head, and someone really sensitive to magic sensed the curse let go as the flesh was destroyed. All this setup was done afterward. In a hurry,” I said, looking around, trying to picture the scene.

“Okay, but why...

48. Red room

I managed to replenish around half of my mana before I felt it. My curse started moving once again. As the cat suggested, after a few hours, as the sky turned grey with the first light of the dawn, our target was on his way.

I stopped meditating and tuned back in to what was happening around me.

“So why were the veins shattered?” asked Ophelia, who was getting the basic rundown of magic society.

“They were shattered because of a war, a massive one that gave birth to on...

47. Not a good plan

I went back to Ophelia, who was now sitting with her eyes closed. I took a look at her aura. It was calming down, like a sea after a storm, with the waves slowly flattening out.

“Ophelia,” I said softly, as being suddenly ripped from meditation was not a pleasant sensation.

She slowly regained her focus, opening her eyes. She looked much better, some color returning to her face.

“We will be going after the last guy. You can either stay with us, or we can get you an esc...

46. Friendly fire

I landed on the chasing car. Armor spell already cast, and two other second-circle spells ready. I could sense three mana signatures inside. To my surprise, all were in the second circle, though at early stages.

As I landed on the car’s roof, the bowman aiming for Q’Shar released the arrow in surprise. The projectile missed the car entirely as it embedded itself in the concrete. But he was not in the second circle for nothing.

The man immediately collected himself, pulling ano...

45. Fast and feline

Ophelia looked back after they left Samuel in the storage unit's backyard. She watched as he stepped to the side, and the chasing car swerved into a wall. The crash was the last thing she witnessed before their car drifted onto the road, and she lost sight of the fight.

“He will be fine,” the cat reassured her. “The asshole knows what he’s doing. We, on the other hand, might encounter a few enemies.”

“What?” she exclaimed. “I thought he stopped them?”

“Th...

44. Rookie mistake

We were driving from the airport in the direction of the broker's house, looking around for any suspicious activity. The streets were mostly empty in the middle of the night, only the main roads seeing any movement at the late hour.

“Do you see them?” asked the cat, keeping his eyes on the road.

“I think so. The black sedan has been popping in and out since the airport. I think that's them,” I replied, turning in my seat to look behind us.

“You ready?” the cat as...

43. Cats' origin

After the cat stopped hissing at me, I went to tell the one stewardess on board that we would like some privacy, as Q’Shar needed to make a phone call, as explaining why the animal was using the telephone would be hard.

As he went to the plane phone, I saw that Ophelia was looking more and more often at me, the question clear in her eyes.

“What do you want to know?” I finally asked, stopping my study of the new spell.

“Are cats really not from Earth, or are you makin...

42. Emergency return

I left the hut where Ophelia rested, happy that my new apprentice was doing relatively well. I quickly paid a visit to Astrid’s house, but she did not explain to me about her eyes, this apparently being a secret enforced by her god.

I tried some strange things to see if she would react, but she either did not see them or kept a stone face. However, she did seem to follow me with her eyes, so I wasn’t sure.

I did explain to her how I found out the god’s titles, as it was stil...

41. Never fear your own power

Ophelia woke up from a nightmare. She had dreamed about the strangest things. She dreamed she had been taken by some pagans, that she was going to be a priest of an unknown god, and that… she looked around, realizing she was not in her room back home.

Instead, she was lying on a bed in a wooden house. The interior was extremely sparse, with only a nightstand, a chair, and the hard bed she was lying on.

But that meant this was not a dream. The altar, the visions, the magic, and t...

Interlude 4 - Something's in the attic

“Drink, drink, drink!” chanted the small audience as Daniel shotgunned another beer. “Yeeeeeah,” they finished as the last drop of drink made its way from the beer can and into his mouth.

“Woooo, yes!” shouted Daniel, throwing the beer can onto the floor. “My turn to spin,” he said as he reached for the bottle sitting in the middle of the room.

“Wait,” said Emma, shaking an empty wine bottle. “I think we're out of booze.”

A couple of swearwords could ...

40. The blessing

The messenger slowly levitated down from the sky. He descended with otherworldly, inexplicable grace. It was like watching a tornado slowly extend itself from the clouds, a sense of nature’s deadliness ever-present in the air.

The being finally stopped a few centimeters above the ground, never touching it fully. It then raised its clawed hand, lifting two fingers up in a gesture of welcome.

After that, the aura lessened a bit. People kept their heads lowered, but some breaths co...

39. The descent

The ritual took place where the feast had been held. It was completely redecorated for the ceremony. On both sides, there were audience seats for the common folk to witness the event. They resembled a cross between Colosseum stands and church benches, with special supports for kneeling. The structure was built entirely of dark wood, adorned with beautiful decorations.

The entire village sat there. The lower and closer one sat to the ritual site, the more important they were in the commu...

38. Ophelia's choice

We made our way towards the barn, where a small group of people was gathered. The group included the chief and the oracle as well as a few warriors and priests.

I stood to the side with Astrid as we waited. We spent another couple of minutes talking about symbolism related to gods as I taught her some of the techniques used by exorcists. Although it was more about plugging holes in her knowledge than actual teaching, as she had a solid basis, as apparently the oracle herself had oversee...

37. Stjarnmosa

We both stood in front of the altar, looking at the statue of the creature.

“The altars in the forest, the ones that outline the barrier around your holy land, do they represent the messenger as well?” I asked.

“Yes, they should be connected to the messenger as well. He is quite close to Taipo, so the same altar serves both.” She furrowed her eyebrows. “I think I know what you’re getting at.”

I looked at her with raised eyebrows, curious about her theory.

36. The centerpiece

They all gazed at her with the same look in their eyes. It was clear she was no longer part of the group, not one of them. Inside their heads, they were the victims, and she was the executioner.

“What do you mean, sacrifice?” asked Tom, stunned.

She used the small break in the conversation to free herself from the man's grasp. He didn’t fight her this time. Tom just stared with wide eyes.

“They will have a ritual tomorrow, and they want one of you to be the sacrifice...