Chương 70: 65. Rats

"Huh?"

"Come," I said and turned around, heading into the attic with a quick stop to get one of the drawings Liam made while possessed. Once up there, I approached the small circular window and held the drawing up next to it. Ophelia's eyebrows shot up. It was an exact match to the circular window, with two crossed boards in the middle to support the glass, forming a dun cross shape in the process.

"If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail, huh?" I chuckled. I got too focused on the magic sigils to notice a simple pattern.

"I'll bet you that her brother was buried somewhere visible through that window. That's how its shape got burned into the ghost's obsession, like a sigil." Ophelia looked at the window with a bit of sadness in her eyes and then turned to me.

"Are you sure? That's a lot of guesswork." I nodded.

"Sure? No. But it explains the holes in the story and the sun cross. There is an easy way of confirming it. If we find a child's body on that piece of land, then we are correct." Ophelia groaned, looking at the visible land.

"Looking for a buried body in a swath of land that big will take days, if not weeks. That is, if the bones are even still there. There's a good chance they decomposed." That was another problem.

"Yes. But this land is basically a floodplain. If the environment is close enough to a bog, they should be preserved. That and one more thing."

"What thing?"

"It was her biological child. We can hope that she had at least enough decency to bury him in a proper coffin." Ophelia nodded slowly.

"Let's hope… How long do you think we have before she goes from satisfying her obsession to devouring the soul?"

"No idea. I've never actually fought an obsession before, not on my own at least. The one my father showed me never got to devour anything. We should set tonight as a deadline. If we don't find any bones, we should just go through with the ritual somewhere on that stretch of land and hope we were correct enough."

"So, should I get some shovels?"

"No," I said, shaking my head, and then turned to her and smiled.

"I have another idea." We went back downstairs.

"Do you have any rats?" I asked Daniel, who was only now getting up.

"Dead preferred, but I'll take living ones as well."

"Eh?" He was trying to shake off his sleepiness.

"It's a large house in the countryside, so you should have some rodents. Do you have mouse traps with dead mice in them or some place with rats, like a basement?"

"I guess. Grandma uses some rat poison. And we heard some in the basement. Why?"

"Show me where they are." We were taken behind the house, where some trash bags lay.

"Are you gonna, like, sacrifice them to appease the spirit?" Daniel asked. I turned to him.

"No. Go get some breakfast. I'll handle it from here."

"But how are dead rats gonna help my brother?" Daniel insisted.

"The same way salt blocks the spirit. Just leave it to me. I told you I'm not taking any payment unless your brother returns." Daniel looked like he wanted to argue some more, but finally relented. I went to get the trash bags with the dead rats in them, but Ophelia's voice cut in.

"So how are dead rats gonna help with the ghost?" she asked, just as curious as Daniel. I briefly considered sending her to get some breakfast as well, but finally relented.

"We're gonna need some helpers for looking underground," I said.

"Soooo, have you heard about necromancy?" After getting a few dead rats and mice from the bags and catching a few more in the basement, I gathered their bodies and went into the house, as drawing would be easier on a flat surface. We had ten bodies in total.

"Okay. You have an attunement for death magic, so you should watch closely what I do," I told Ophelia. She nodded and pulled out her notebook, which I was more and more sure was a magical item, considering she always had it with her.

"Rituals are different from spells. We haven't talked about symbolism in magic casting yet, but the main difference is that you can substitute your knowledge for symbols, which also allows for multiple people to take part in a ritual," I explained as I started to draw a magic circle on the ground.

"What I'm about to cast is actually a normal spell, but I'll cast it as a ritual to make it easier and not draw on my own mana in case the ghost shows up." After drawing the circle, I placed the rat corpses inside it.

"Now, can you guess why I am only placing nine rats inside the circle and not all ten?" I asked. Ophelia looked closely at the whole thing.

"Because of how the circle is constructed?"

"No," I shook my head.

"Because of the mana required?"

"Good guess, but also no." Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings. Ophelia watched closely, trying to see some pattern. I was thankful she was a medical student and didn't squirm at the sight of the dead rats.

"Is there something wrong with the tenth corpse?" she ventured.

"It's just the same as the others." She walked around the circle for some time.

"All right, I don't know. Is it like a symbol of some sort?" she threw out the last theory.

"Yes!" I said. She looked at me, confused.

"Numbers are as much of a symbol as anything else, although much weaker than, for example, a skull, but the number nine symbolises the end of a cycle, which is tied to death and rebirth. So casting a ritual for nine corpses is actually easier and stronger than for ten or eight." She noted that.

"But don't bother too much with numerology. All you will have to know are the basics. Anything more complicated, and you call a specialist. It's a study that is mostly done by social casters. Empaths are particularly good at it." Ophelia kept noting as she raised her eyebrows at "empaths." Once done with the circle, I started casting. It took way longer than a normal spell, but the mana flowed from the crystal, and the burden of casting was considerably lessened. Necromancy was a strange branch of death magic.

It had very close ties to souls and was overall hard to master, but I had an advantage. It was one of the branches of magic on which I relied the most on my contract and the knowledge granted to me through it. Asking the Abyss for understanding of living through the eyes of the dead got me bedridden for a few days, but my artificial souls were second to none, if I say so myself. Well, maybe some of the Egyptian priests could match me. I weaved a simple construct.

It was attachments for motor controls similar to the spell I used in Brazil to puppeteer the gang member. I added more. I needed the corpses' sense of sight and feeling to be functional and a basic understanding of what I was about to ask. Once the construct to control the corpses was done, I started on the most important part. Focusing on the mysteries of death, I started to imagine resurrection. I inscribed the feeling of a hollow life serving a master. After that was completed, I finished the ritual.

Create Lesser Zombie.

"Ew," Ophelia commented as the rats started to twitch. I gave them a simple command, pointing at the area behind the house.

"Look for bones or pieces of a coffin under the earth." The rats started moving, using tunnels already created by moles and other rats to scurry around. After that, we got breakfast and talked with Daniel and Emma, trying to get more information, looking for any details we might have missed. We also went through the attic once again, but not much more interesting could be found. There were some old occult books, but it was clear they were later works, not based on anything real.

We talked briefly about the books and what Ophelia had learned. The other two people were talking with each other. Emma seemed to try to lift Daniel's spirits, although with mixed results. A few hours were spent waiting. Daniel became more and more nervous. From simply talking with Emma, he started to look toward me and Ophelia more and more, sometimes asking, "What now?" or "What are we doing?" It was clear the stress was getting to him.

"So what now?" he asked for at least the fifth time.

"Now we wait for more information," Ophelia answered. She was doing way better than I was with the more emotional part. Ophelia continued explaining to Daniel that it would take some time to get everything prepared.

"What the fuck is that!" we heard a scream from Emma. I bolted up, but then immediately realised the source of the commotion. There in the corridor was an undead rat, with one eye out of its socket, scurrying toward me, twitching in the process. Emma screamed once again and jumped back, almost tripping over the carpet.

"Calm down," I said.

"That's just my little helper." For some reason, this didn't seem to do much for Emma's mood, as she was still running away from the creature in full panic mode. As the thing finally sensed me, it made a U-turn and started to walk out into the garden, and I followed.

"What is that?" Daniel asked Ophelia, who had become his oracle by now.

"That's… um… that is a rat…"

"B-but is it a ghost or… what is that?" he repeated the question.

"Well, it's like a helper, like a zombie. You know what, it's just part of the preparations. Please try not to pay it any mind and trust that he knows–" I stopped listening to the conversation behind me. As I already knew, it would go in circles. I followed the animal outside until it finally stopped at a spot.

"Go get shovels. We will look here," I instructed. After some digging, we did find bones. Cow bones. Sadly, not on the first try. It was three tries later when we finally stumbled onto something useful. As I delicately dug into the ground, an old, rusted hinge showed itself on the shovel. Once, that could have belonged to a coffin. After that, we carefully moved the dirt until we finally found a small human skull.

"You think it's her brother?" asked Ophelia. I looked closer at it. It was small, very small.

"I'm not 100 percent sure, but it looks like it belonged to a child, so unless they buried more children in an unmarked grave, that should be it." Ophelia winced a bit. She looked at the bones in the shallow hole with a mixture of sadness and disgust.

"So young," she whispered. I didn't know what to do about her mood, so I simply did nothing and continued digging. After one more hour, we had an almost complete skeleton. It was tough because the bones crumpled easily, but we managed to pull out most of them.

"Well, that will hopefully get Ester's attention."

"So what do we do now?"

"We don't do anything. I will prepare for the fight. This is where your part ends, Ophelia. You will sit with Daniel inside a seal and make sure he doesn't chicken out."

"What if he says no?"

"Then let's hope the ghost goes for a tied-up offering." Ophelia looked at me, a bit stunned.

"Don't you feel at least a bit bad for him?" she asked slowly.

"I wish him well, and I don't think he deserves what happened to him, although playing around with Ouija boards was an overall stupid idea. But that's all. Do you feel for him?"

"Yes."

"Does that change his situation?"

"Well, no, but–""Then it's useless. It just makes you feel worse," I said, shrugging.

"Well, yes, but that's just how we work. I mean…" Ophelia paused, looking for words. She tried to say something, but finally relented, changing the topic.

"So what's the plan?"

"We put the skeleton together. More or less, at least. If she spent her time obsessing over the place, she should recognise where it was dug up. We go through the ritual with the Ouija board. Once we get her attention with the grave and the skeleton, we have Daniel lean on the whole sibling-relationship angle and say that he would like to join his brother in befriending her. She should react to it and come out to attach herself to him and start the possession process."

"So you want him to get possessed?" Ophelia asked, eyebrows raised. I rolled my eyes.

"No. Just because I don't care for him that much doesn't mean I would kill him when it can be avoided. I'll draw a seal around the cage and you and Daniel. Once the ghost exits it, I activate both seals, locking her out of her nest."

"Don't you need an exorcist to lock a spirit's anchor?" Ophelia asked. She did pay attention to the book.

"Exorcism creates a permanent seal. It's more like disconnecting the anchor, and once performed, it can't be unsealed by the ghost itself. What I'm about to do is a simple barrier around the cage. It's like locking up a haunted house. The ghost can just destroy the lock. So she will be able to smash the seal by brute force, but I won't give her the time. It's just meant to make sure she doesn't make a quick run into her nest."

"And then you go into it and get Liam?"

"Yes."

"Is it dangerous?"

"Well... hopefully, she fed off any other souls that might have been stored there, so it will be a nice, relaxing trip."

"What if it won't be?"

"We'll see," I said with a smile.