The Seeker | Volume 2

The full moon shone in the air, casting thin streaks of light through the open window. I looked into my reflection in the apartment bathroom mirror as I held the divination ingredients in my satchel.

I only had 2 things I needed to get done tonight: Divine the current whereabouts of Anthony Debois, and get the Order 9 Apocalypse characteristics from Crodio.

I took out all the ingredients from my satchel, the blood, the feather, the paper, and the candles. I lit all the candles, shedding the blood, and dropped the feather.

I held the sun charm in my hand and closed my eyes. "Anthony Debois whereabouts…" I repeated it 3 times in my head. After I felt my surroundings change I opened my eyes and my environment was the usual void black state.

Instead of flashing images and scenes, there was a wooden table. On the table sat 2 items: a knife and another photo. I approached the photo and picked up the knife. 

The tip of the black was coated in a thick layer of fresh, warm blood. My eyes then darted towards the photo on the table. The picture was oddly clear and in black and white. When I got a closer look I saw the same image I observed before the Sleepless symbol led me to De-Taylel.

It was Ian Vinigrad's corpse, rotting somewhere dark and cold; most likely a sewer. I was immediately confused. My previous conversation with Anthony didn't trigger spirit calling. Since he was almost at the level of a Demi-god and refused to advance, he most likely has the ability to conceal feelings, emotions, or possible weaknesses from any outsider.

The dark black table also had small traces of blood on it, making me suspect even more about the images I was seeing. From what I had previously heard Mr. Debois had requested Ian's services in finding the cards previously but Ian mysteriously died. This made him ask me instead.

But why was there blood? Why is there a knife? I continued to study the knife carefully. Since this was a spiritual plane of existence I couldn't bring anything up here down to the physical plane.

This meant I couldn't test the blood on the knife to see who it was, but I already suspected it was Ian's. But what could this have to do with Mr. Debois' current whereabouts? I didn't attempt to divine what he did, but rather his current status and location.

If this divination is showing me a knife and a photo of Ian's remains, perhaps these weren't clues about just actions, but rather both things. He was most likely at the place where Ian Vinigrad was murdered! I immediately sighed, I didn't know where Ian's body was, but all I knew was that it was a dark area. 

I had previously thought of divining its location, but the mental strain of even one divination should be enough to make one exhausted. And since I've already done about three divinations today I felt like I was on the brink of collapsing. I retracted my spirituality and descended back into the physical plane. 

I looked towards the round clock in the corner and saw that it was almost 2 AM. When I entered my divination scene it was about 1:20 in the morning. The amount of time I was in there only felt like 10 minutes, could that mean that the divination realm has an increased sense of time? I didn't have time to collect all those facts; I had to locate Anthony Debois and figure out his true motives.

I changed out of my nightclothes and left the apartment complex quietly. Most of the stores in the streets were closed besides a few restaurants that were open all 24 hours of the day, and were often used to accommodate homeless people. Since the area above me wasn't all that cloudy, the moon was able to illuminate most of my path. 

The divination scene I recalled showed a dark corner with Ian's decayed corpse. And since almost the entirety of the kingdom was shrouded in a thick veil of darkness that made my search a lot harder. My steps were quiet against the gravel streets of the kingdom. I was unaware if Seraphis Kingdom has their own sewage disposal system, but upon my very infrequent dwellings into crime novels and movies I figured the best place to hide a body was the dark and damp sewer!

After walking for another 20 minutes I finally spotted a hatch. I slowly and carefully approached it, my fingers wrapping around its edges. I pulled upwards, causing the hatch to open and the dark and foreboding scene of the sewer drain below to appear. Inside the hole I could hear the quiet sounds of water running; most likely an indication of waste disposal. I climbed down the short ladder, landing on the hard stone floor with no effort. My surroundings were cold, dark and damp; and the humidity in the air enhanced the smell of feces, urine and garbage, making my nose shrivel up in disgust. 

"Is anyone there?" I called out, my voice audible above the sound of the running water. I got no reply, the endless cold and darkness screamed back at me silently. I sighed again as I began to walk down the cold, dark section of the sewer beside the running water. Suddenly, a horrible smell filled my nose as the sewer slowly became darker.

I had an instinctive reaction to pull out the sun-charm to illuminate my way; but I figured disrupting any possible animals or other threats wasn't worth my visibility. The smell got denser and more potent as I continued to walk, and the combined stenches of feces, urine and garbage didn't help anything either. 

In the dim light that managed to creep in from the overhead sewage drain I saw something in the corner of the sewage room as I continued to walk, and in that very corner the smell was enough to make tears run down my face. Another figure was in the darkness, they had a rather plump and stubby outline, and their head was moving near the shadowed future as if talking to it slowly.

I finally pulled out the sun-charm regardless of the effects and shone it in the direction of the figures. I heard a loud shriek, which made me reach for my handgun and fire a warning shot upwards into the ceiling. Spirit calling was telling me to run, but I didn't move a muscle; scared that I would provoke it. 

When my eyes adjusted to the light I saw Ian's corpse, and beside it was Anthony Debois. His black eyes were abnormally crazy, and a faint trickle of blood ran down his mouth, leaking onto his clothes. Around the edges of his mouth was human flesh, and when I looked towards Ian's corpse I saw that a large portion of him had been removed, as if taken chunks out of.

"You…" I could barely speak, too terrified by what I was seeing. Anthony suddenly lunged towards me, his now sharpened fingernails attempting to claw at my face and body. I narrowly dodged this attack, before picking the plump man in the back, sending him into the sewage water that carried him downstream quickly.

He clawed violently, attempting to resist the current. But there was a sudden drop, and I heard the sound of a spinning fan against meat, the grotesque sound of cutting flesh and his now dying screams. After about 2 minutes of silence I finally regained my thoughts and approached Ian's decomposing body. 

This corpse was too deteriorated for me to divine into the expanded throne room, so it was now a true mystery about what happened to both Mr. Debois and Ian Vinigrad. Mr. Debois's activity at that moment was animalistic as if he just lost control. They both had a search for the cards…maybe Mr. Debois wasn't aiming to help just his wife, but himself. What if he lost control trying to save his loved one?

That thought made my heart ache. But now he was dead, and Ian Vinigrad was dead too. But what was Mr. Debois doing with Ian in general? It couldn't have been that he randomly lost control in the middle of the night and had enough rational thinking skills to find a sewer drain, open it and find the corpse and eat it.

Suddenly, I noticed something crawl out of Ian's hollow skull eye: a small black scorpion. The scorpion crawled into Ian's dead mouth, and he began slowly twitching. Ian's corpse suddenly stood up as if being reanimated, his fingers, hands, legs, arms, and head all moving as if being controlled by a puppet.

The lower half of his body began to change, and it turned into the scorpion's lower half. I immediately knew it was De-Taylel inside of him, but how can "he" influence the real world outside of his statue-like state? Maybe" he" wasn't the statue? Crodio did say that angels can't affect the real world but merely observe it, perhaps "he" is the scorpion, or a portion of "him" is.

The body grew flesh, eyes, intestines, and everything that made "his" heart beat. "He" suddenly turned to look at me with an indiscernible expression. "He" was silent for a few moments before speaking up. "Being aware of his death now renders me able to take over his body, I thank you."

I was immediately confused, and I spoke in that same confusion. "Why couldn't you have permanently possessed that boy? Why choose a decomposing corpse?" De-Taylel smiled in Ian's body. "It's because an Order 1 ability of the Destruction Routeway renders the user able to pry into memories of those that "they" posses."

"Ian Vinigrad was a member of the Sleepless Foundation, and he found out about the cards by looking into a history book one day. But of course, he knew how powerful I was even if I was dead and sealed into the statue. So I personally believe he intentionally used Concealment to hide his thoughts from me. But after his death I was able to read him like a book, and now that I'm in his body I can only look further into his memories."

"You wanted the Order 9 Apocalypse characteristics, now you want the cards? You do know what Sylvie Mulligan's looking for them right now?" I asked, crossing my arms. The scorpion-like angel smirked. "I'm now fully aware of her. But she's looking for the Vitality characteristic card, one that I also need if I am to achieve my goal, to fully resurrect myself into the real world."