Eldritch Exorcist

Right, I was here to do a job. Almost forgot. So, after celebrating the solution to the mystery, I went to the 'punishment room' and picked up some handcuffs in case the guy woke up. I then walked back to the jail part of the basement.

Finally, without bullets flying around, I could get a better look at the scene. The room was in the shape of a long rectangle, stretching to the left from the armored doors.

In front of me were remnants of a table that used to have three guys sitting at it, now also in pieces, much like the table itself.

To my left were the cages—around seven cells with iron bars and metal beds with old mattresses on them. The whole setup reminded one of an old prison, like the ones you could see in movies. The whole room now smelled of blood, a thick scent of iron attacking my nose, making it almost unbearable to breathe.

Was I missing any emotion? It was time for a quick check. I was quite pleased with the job so far. As for the family rules, they actually recognized that there were crimes that were simply foul and disgusting. There was a difference between stealing from someone rich to feed yourself and stealing from someone already poor just for your own satisfaction. My father said that those types of crimes could be sensed on instinct, usually committed by pathetic people for their own pleasure or sense of power over others. And that the only good use for humans like that is that they provide dance floors once their graves are built, while sending them to those graves should be a pleasure.

In my book, helping keep kidnapped women in cages and subjecting them to what followed was on that list. As such, I gave myself a firm pat on the back for being the paragon of goodness that I was as I stepped over the pile of corpses.

I walked closer to the cells and addressed the people in them.

"Is there someone here called Anna?"

Silence.

Well, I wasn't exactly surprised. My oratory skills, sadly, weren't on the level of my magic, so I doubt I could calm them down, especially with the mask on my face. Taking a look around the cells, I think I noticed my target. She shivered a bit as I locked my eyes on her for a second.

"P-please can you release us? I will do any-"

"Yes, I very much intend on doing so, don't worry, I'm not a psychopath, I'm actually the good guy here."

I looked around.

"I'm actually not the worst guy here," I corrected myself, "But I would like to confirm my target is present, so Anna?"

A woman lifted her hand.

"Great, now before I release everyone, I would like you to bear with me for a second. I intend to burn this place down, and I would like your help with that. Consider it pay for releasing you. You do me this one favor, and we are square. So, before you leave, I would like you to gather all the flammable materials from the rooms and take them to the corridor."

I got nods in return.

The basement was quite deep, so the fire wouldn't spread quickly. I decided to light it close to the stairs to the first floor, as the ceiling was made of concrete. With the panic this would cause and a massive amount of smoke coming from the basement, hopefully, everyone would wake up and run out.

I had no intention of killing some innocent women in the fire. Hopefully, this would do the trick.

Now, I found the waist that once belonged to the guy with the keys and opened the locks. For a second, I thought that they would just bolt out of there, but thankfully, after getting out of the awful-smelling room and back to the corridor, they calmed down a bit and started to gather the materials.

"So did my father send you?" Asked the one I believed was Anna.

"Yes, we will talk once we get out. Now go get the materials."

She nodded her head and went to the room as I went around looking for high percent alcohol to use as the accelerant, easily finding it standing near the shredded poker table.

Next, I had to deal with my future sacrifice, sleeping soundly in one of the rooms. I went in and smiled, seeing that the man was still unconscious. This made it easier.

Now, the plan was to put a sleepwalking spell on him and puppeteer the man. That was not exactly easy, as any mind, even untrained, would resist on instinct, and I did not have much time for ritual casting, so I had to brute force it.

Worst case scenario, I would injure his brain, maybe give him some phobias for the very short remainder of his life, but as long as the soul was still attached, I was okay with it. First, to soften the target a bit, I started on the hand gestures of the Bestow Nightmare curse. This time, the cast was tougher, as the anchor for a curse like that had to be the mind. I used a tattoo of a brain with an eye in the middle for it.

I could feel a connection with the psyche. The guy's mental landscape was thankfully not complicated. I had to make my way to the part responsible for dreams. I knew my way around a mind, and after brute-forcing my way through the natural defenses, rewarded by a headache, I got where I wanted to be, leaving the curse's anchor like dropping a cancer cell in someone's body.

Next was the easy part. I weaved the curse, using the tattoo of the eye on my left hand, but this time, instead of adding flames, I slowly covered it with a finger with a lid tattooed on it, making it look like it was closing during my casting. Finally, I attached part of it to the man's fears for it to draw upon them rather than showing any premade scenario. As the spell activated, he started to groan, probably seeing some nasty visions.

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I left him like that for the next 10 minutes, letting it soften him. The pile of materials in the wooded corridor grew to a sizable amount, with the women working as hard as possible. It was almost time to move, so I made my way back to the room with my sacrifice. I kneeled down next to him and extended my mental energy towards his mind.

The effect of the curse was better than expected. The guy must have had some sort of unresolved trauma that the curse drew upon because his mind was in disarray. The natural defenses were down, and everything was panicking, scrambling to wake up, but the curse blocked the mechanism for waking up, locking him in a nightmare.

Now, to change it for mental manipulation. I took control of the curse and moved it a bit. It originally blocked any way for the mind to escape the visions, but now I gave it a way out. I opened the passage for deep sleep, allowing it to escape into the comfortable nothingness. And like a small fish running from a shark into a small cavern, his consciousness dived into the calm world of dreamless slumber. His mind went quiet. After being tortured by the visions, it should not have any notions of coming to the waking world anytime soon. Now, with a psyche not controlled by the consciousness, I started on the spell.

A couple of hand gestures and a quick chant later, many thin mana strands attached to the parts of the mind responsible for motor control. I moved his body. This usually would bring consciousness right back up, but as I thought, it was healing in the comfort of deep sleep. I started to puppeteer the man clumsily.

As he walked out of the room, behind me, one of the women screamed with terror as she sat on the floor, tears rolling from her eyes. Another picked up a piece of furniture, ready to jump him and go down fighting.

"Please calm down! He is not a threat, he is… sleepwalking for now."

"S-so he will wake up? what do we do then?" said the one reading for the attack, hatred visible in her eyes. The guy must have been a piece of shit for a reputation like that.

"Look, I understand you hate him and that you want him dead. And I can let you kill him if you desire."

That calmed them down.

"But I offer you an alternative. If you let me take him with me, he will spend the rest of his very short life in a state between sleep and nightmare until he is sacrificed to an ancient god."

They looked at me like a crazy person, but then slowly calmed down, probably assuming that whatever the fate he might suffer with someone like a madman in a mask was not a good one.

I approached the woman who was readying for a swing just a second ago. She wound it up again as I came closer, but I just extended my hand with a phone in it. She looked with raised eyebrows between the device and me.

"This phone belongs to one of the people in the trafficking ring," I told her and quickly explained how to get the info. She looked determined enough to get back at whoever did it to her. A burning desire for revenge colored her aura to the point where she felt like a walking flame. I could respect that. Why not give her the chance? Hopefully, she would cause a stir in the media, drawing the mafia's attention elsewhere in the process.

"Okay, great, I thank everyone for their help. Now, if you could run out, screaming, causing as much of a panic as possible, that would be great. Also, if you report to the police, ensure that you are seen and your arrival is documented. Oh, also, don't ask for Sarah, she is, um, busy."

At that, the women started to run as I threw a lighter onto the pile of materials now covered in alcohol. The whole thing burst into flames.

Taking Anna's hand, I also went up, dragging the confused woman behind me. As we made it out with plumes of smoke following, I noticed the previously sleeping guard now confusedly standing there, trying to catch the girls as they ran past him.

Huh, I could add to the panic here. I picked up the magnum and approached him.

He was preoccupied with one of the women he had caught by the hand. This made it easy to point-blank shoot him in the head, the gunshot waking up the entire establishment as rooms on the second floor opened and women of all ages in nightclothes came out. Seeing the smoke and a man with half a head missing, the commotion transformed into full-on panic on all floors.

Great.

"Follow me, and don't mind the guy, he's not a threat," I said and dragged Anna towards the doors and into one of the back alleys. I did not know the city's layout, but all I needed to do was meander a bit to ensure we got away from the scene.

After fifteen minutes of taking random turns in the general direction of my hotel, I stopped behind a building and looked around.

It was quiet there with people still sleeping. Fire sirens could be heard in the distance. I looked around, catching the eyes of my charge for a second, confusion, fear, and relief mixed in them.

Now focusing on my mask, I commanded it to let go, and the branches started to recede from my face, slowly snaking back into my mouth to wrap themselves back around the root on my tongue, the whole process accompanied by a horrified look from Anna.

Once the mask was gone, I undid the belt and finally removed my battle robe. letting my normal clothes show. My change from dark war-wizard into a tourist was complete. I turned to her, she was scrunching her face, scanning me from head to toes.

"What?"

"Um, I don't know. I didn't think you were human underneath."

"What? What did you think you would see?" I asked, confused.

"Well, when the branches started to recede, I thought there would be like red flesh underneath. You know, like–like a demon."

"Why would you think I was a demon... You know what, don't answer that. I'm very much human. You can call me Sam." I extended my hand.

"Anna."

"Nice to meet you. Anyway, we need to get off the streets, get you a change of clothes, and hunker down for the day. We will make a trip back to the USA at night."

"Will we get a plane?"

"Yes, but not a commercial one, if your captor has connections in border security they can detain us and then make us go missing, not to mention I don't think you have your passport. And neither does this guy," I said, pointing at the man.

"He will come with us?" She exclaimed, then immediately closed her mouth and looked around as if mafia members were about to pop out.

"Oh yes, I'm a man of my word. The part about sacrifice was true. I'm just not sure to which god, though."

She furrowed her eyebrows in confusion. "A-anyway, if news that I'm free reaches my father they can't just make us disappear."

"Oh, and what will your father do then? If they tell him that it was just a similar girl, and it was a false alarm? Is he going to invade Brazil?"

"Right."

"I will smuggle us across the border, hopefully without any problem, if the paid-off border security is still paid off."

The trip back to the hotel was uneventful. We bought some clothes for Anna at one of the clothing stands on a tourist-oriented street, with the owner ripping us off, as I didn't have time to bargain. After making our way back, Anna went to bed immediately, the excitement, fear, and all the other emotions of the night making themselves known once she got a second to breathe, knocking her out like strong sleeping pills.

As for me, I sat down in meditation, planning our border crossing. The guards received monthly payments for not looking at a cargo of particularly painted planes. All I needed to do was get a pilot of one of those to fly us, and we should be good.

And then I would finally count my spoils and confirm my theory about the previous curse. Much to do, not enough time.