Eldritch Exorcist

The creature slowly walked forward but then stopped, looking toward Daniel. The boy looked like he was about to run again, but then the creature's empty gaze slowly fell onto the bones.

It approached the skeleton lying in front of it before bending its crooked spine and slowly extending its clawed hands toward the skull.

I could see that Ophelia was preparing to slot the metal piece to complete the seal, still holding on to Daniel with one hand.

The creature took it with surprising gentleness and brought it closer to its head. The expression on the ghost's face was strange. I could see muscles twitch and spasm beneath the thin, almost see-through skin.

Its hollow mouth and eyes stretched even wider. It was a weird sight. A spirit finally reached a core part of her obsession, but was unable to feed on it. She seemed to know it was important, to want to do something about the bones, but didn't know what. There was no way to devour bones, making them worthless to a ghost.

She brought the skull up to her eyes and stopped. She must have sensed the bottle I had stashed inside, but it was too late.

Pierce.

I fired off an overcharged first-circle spell, not at the ghost, but at the skull. It exploded in her hands, dousing the creature with the water from the bottle inside.

She wailed.

I wasn't sure whether it was due to spiritual or physical pain. It wasn't even an attack, just a scream that seemed to freeze the air around us.

Ophelia slotted the last piece of the barrier.

The ghost turned to me.

Good. The plan worked.

I could see and hear the spiritual body sizzle as an ozone smell filled the air, as if a storm had just passed.

I powered the barrier around the cage.

The thing jumped forward, not using magic but simply trying to claw at me in blind fury. But the concoction did its job. It was slow enough for me to react to its movement, even with a significant difference in our circles.

I stopped the strike with an overcharged Shield spell and fired Decay from the staff right into her. The squirming green ball of magic barely missed.

I fired it a split second too early.

"Fuck!" I swore at wasting an instant spell like that.

A sensation of strangeness passed through me. I was sure I got the timing right.

But it was not the moment to ponder as I dived under another swipe of the claws. She extended her arm to try to rip my face apart.

Shield.

I blocked her arm while it was still high, while grabbing for the dagger at my belt. I could sense something akin to surprise from the ghost as I closed the gap and stabbed her.

Energy flowed into the obsidian blade.

I held the dagger in one hand, the staff in the other.

I was right under my target.

I had the upper hand and a perfect spot to kill her.

Now, just for the Flames of Purgatory, and it would be over.

I pointed my staff.

And cast.

Shield.

A layer of mana materialised right in front of my own throat as the claws of the other hand stopped on it. I managed to change the spell at the last second.

Force.

I fired the next instant spell into my own abdomen and jumped back, letting the magic fling me away. I landed a few meters from the creature, leaving drag marks in the mud, but thankfully, I managed to keep my balance.

Something was wrong. The idea that I could just stand there in the creature's guard and finish it off didn't feel like mine. It was dumb and amateurish.

But Ester was not going to give me any time to breathe and ponder.

She raised a few centimeters off the ground, levitating, using her ghost-given powers. Then barrelled straight at me, screaming. This time, the wail was some sort of mental attack. The wave hit me as I was casting a second-circle spell.

I could hear the screaming in my mind.

It tried to paralyze me, to override the signals telling my body to move, to use against me a part of my mind. A part that simply wasn't there.

I froze with the staff pointed slightly to the side. My eyes were wide, and my guard opened, as Ester approached for the final strike.

She fell for it.

I exploded into movement as I finished the spell.

Deep Rot.

The projectile flew toward the monster. But while hovering in the air, the laws of acceleration meant little to a spiritual body. Ester instantly shifted to the right, turning ninety degrees without altering her posture.

The spell still caught her side, earning me a screech of pain.

I congratulated myself for not wasting my trump card on an attack from afar.

But now was the perfect time to use it.

No, it wasn't. She could just dodge it once again.

I stopped myself.

Again, a strange thought entered my mind.

I ignored it and focused on defense. The thing kept clawing, each swipe accompanied by a sizzling sound as the holy water clung to her spiritual form.

Shield.

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A claw scraped against the mana, as I dived under another swing.

A gurgling sound came from the open mouth as a third hand all of a sudden ripped forth from the throat. I was too close after dodging the previous strike.

It connected.

And as it did, the third hand disappeared in a puff of smoke.

I just ignored the illusion and moved behind the previously cast shield to stop the real attack meant to kill me. The sound of claws dragging against mana reached my ears.

I used the time bought to take some distance from the creature.

It didn't follow.

It just levitated before me, hollow eyes fixed on mine. Pain had dulled her fury as survival instinct halted the blind attacks.

I had a second to breathe.

Dual-casting, I readied two spells and quickly checked my mental defenses. They were untouched, walls around the mind-palace inside me. I could recognize the illusion immediately without much issue. But then what about the previous thoughts? The strange ideas that weren't mine.

No intruder.

No sign of breach.

Nothing.

But I was sure I wouldn't mess up my timing like that.

The ghost moved, and I snapped back into the fight. I felt a strange sensation as she locked her hollow eyes with mine. She barrelled forward, claws raised, mouth opened as a horrid screech sounded in the air, not the furious scream from before but something between a wail and a sob.

The spell crashed into me.

I should cast, but what was the point?

Would it change anything?

My father was dead.

I never knew my mother.

I was the only one from a dying–

I easily shook off the spell. Loneliness and sadness had tried to crush my will, with a fear of abandonment being a big part of the spell.

Pathetic.

The creature was halfway to me when I completed Burning Breath.

Sensing it was only a physical flame, the creature rushed through it, taking an incorporeal form. It didn't hurt her. But it did what it was supposed to. It blocked her vision for a split second.

Now, to hit her with Flames of Purgatory. Get her with a mind-damaging spell. Injure her consciousness and cripple her mind magic.

Time to use the stored spell.

I raised the staff.

And hesitated.

Was that my thought? Was my timing right?

"Fuck," I swore.

Not trusting your mind was unnerving.

I fired Force Control, flinging myself toward the seal where Ophelia and Daniel watched.

I quickly analyzed the fight. The creature could insert a simple thought into my mind, but couldn't read my plans. It would not have fallen for my earlier stab otherwise, but it could alter the timing of my actions when it knew they were coming.

I saw Ester slowly turn in mid-air toward me and attack again. If she could disrupt timing, I needed a strike she wouldn't see coming.

I cast Armor and readied for defense as I began casting shield spells. She arrived, fury reignited, slamming a claw into the sheet of mana.

I split my mind into two, similar to dual-casting. This slowed my casting speed for shields as some strikes barely made it in, stopped only by the armor.

I searched for a clump of magic still present after the seal had leaked a crystal's worth of mana into the environment.

There it was.

The armor lit up after another swipe, as I didn't dodge fast enough.

I extended myself toward the clump of arcane energy. It was attuned to the gloomy surroundings, calm, brooding.

I attuned my own mana to the same sensations.

Like an adult coaxing a child, I approached the magic calmly, despite the furious spirit swinging at me over and over again. My armor flared after a powerful attack broke the shield spell.

I saw Ophelia stand, panic on her face, but she was smart enough not to get into the fight.

I couldn't rush it. I tried to make my mana indistinguishable from the one in the slowly dissipating clump. Once it resonated, I gave a suggestion. I couldn't command it, no. I was a stranger to it, but now at least a familiar one. The spell took longer to begin its sequence as my armor finally broke, and I could feel a claw scrape against my skin.

But magic finally listened.

Authority Over Mana.

Flames of Purgatory was a hybrid attribute spell of fire and mind, so it was out of the question. Instead, I suggested to the ownerless magic to cast Decay.

And it listened as the spell materialised behind the monster.

The spirit almost tore me to shreds as the green ball finally slammed dead center into her back. Death-magic threads burrowed into the spiritual body, trying to unravel it.

The ghost turned to attack the new threat behind her.

Mistake.

I aimed my staff forward.

Flames of Purgatory.

A small purple fire, its pattern reminiscent of screaming faces, appeared at the tip of my weapon and shot forward, slamming into her side as she turned back to me.

It exploded on contact, wails and whispers filling the space around the ghost.

She screeched in pain and fury.

One more attack would destroy her. I began casting Flames of Purgatory once again, now easily dodging her slow, erratic attacks.

She had little strength left.

Another wail came, but it was like a weak gust. It beckoned me to help her, to share in her loneliness. I aimed–

And then it hit me.

Ophelia and Daniel!

A weak gust to me could devastate them. Daniel would jump from the circle, and Ophelia could follow.

I jumped to the side and swung the staff, preparing to cast Force to fling them away from the ghost.

But they were inside the salt seal.

What was I thinking? Any attack from the ghost would be weakened by the salt seal, including the mind-oriented ones.

I saw Ophelia standing over Daniel inside the circle. He was on his belly, groaning, with her over him, holding the baton. She shrugged off the attack easily, as there wasn't even a frown on her face.

I turned back to the ghost.

She was running. She tried to claw at the mirror, but the surface wouldn't give. She understood that she didn't have time and then went to the house immediately, putting all her power into levitation as fast as possible.

I scoffed.

To think that my apprentice would get me riled up enough to give her an opening to run. Had she attacked, I would probably have fought her instinctively, but running actually gave me the time to worry.

I considered giving chase. Her mental magic was weakened, and all it would take would be another attack.

But I stopped where I was. The cage was her object of obsession, the anchor inside.

She wouldn't go far.

I needed a solution for the strange thoughts in my head. It seemed to be a skill of some sort, rather than a spell, or maybe both. Her use of magic was beyond that of an everyday ghost, to the point where she could be considered an anomaly. A ghost made from a genius.

I needed to catch her off guard with an attack she wouldn't see coming.

"Is everything all right?" Ophelia called from the barrier.

"More or less," I said. "She's using a strange skill I'm not sure how to counter."

"W-w-will you g-g-get–" Daniel tried to ask, a bit groggy after apparently getting whacked with the baton.

"I'll get your brother," I reassured him, not moving my eyes from the house.

She was intelligent. While she wasn't exactly a seasoned fighter, her ability to use mental magic was unusual. I didn't see anything explaining it in the books we found.

I managed to preserve quite a bit of mana, but I had nothing in the staff. Not ideal, but not the worst position.

I kept my eyes on the attic window.

What would an intelligent, mind-trickery-using opponent do? She should have self-preservation instincts, so she might prefer running back to her nest and ignoring Daniel entirely.

I couldn't exactly let her rummage around the house too long. There was a mana vein in the attic. I'm not sure how fast she could heal.

"An unexpected attack, an unexpected attack against a smart opponent," I murmured to myself.

Would I get her with another ambient mana spell?

She should be able to sense magic, but how well?

This was the issue with ghosts made from mages. You don't know how much a mage persists after death.

I saw the white face with hollow eyes show in the attic window, looking at us.

Waiting for dawn might be an idea, but that would mean a chase with the ghost during the daytime. And the mansion was big, with enough corridors to get lost inside.

Lost inside.

That gave me an idea.

I smiled and looked at my apprentice.