Chapter 32 — Letter from an Owl

“That’s it?” Chris asked. “You blew out the lights, sat there for five minutes and all you can tell me is it’s a supernatural creature hunting someone? What does it look like? Where is it? How do we stop it.”

I was too tired to be angry. My mana reserves had dipped precipitously with the extra energy I’d forced into the working and to clear and close my third eye. “Yes, that’s all I could get. It’s more of a jumble of feelings and intermixed thoughts and events tided to this place, I had to piece together. I experienced its mind, its essence.” Along with a hostile being, you asshole, because you made me do this the hard way. I thought, but I wasn’t going to convolute the waters even more by telling them that. “It’s not like I can mindread it or directly see the past. I can only sense what this creature was feeling.” I sighed and experienced and involuntary shudder, “And what she felt. Were lucky I could even do that.” I could have told them more, but they didn’t need a crash course in wizardry. “It’s hard to vocalize what I learned through doing what I did, but it’s definitively a fae creature. Likely of the Dark Queen. Most horrors are.” I saw Lana looked frightened, “And ‘that’s it’ is more than you had before.” My anger rose, “What I just did was akin to undergoing shock therapy while trying to remember a funny joke and coming out the other side just fine, delivering the punchline without missing a beat. Show some respect.”

“All I see is a vague story that it’s not a human, hunches, and a bunch of broken electronics we now have to explain in our report—And a suspect I still need to interview,” Chris said, growing frustrated himself.

I clenched my fists, the feelings of rage I’d been inundated with wanting to fill me again, feeding on my own anger.

“Maybe you should go,” Lana proposed, seeing that we were both unwilling to compromise. “I can catch you up, later—tonight.”

“—Did you do this, at any of the other scenes, by yourself?” Gregory asked before I could respond to Lana.

“No,” I said. “I used a proper circle which kept my mind safe. I painstakingly crafted spells and used magic over the course of hours rather than shoving my brain and soul into the darkest place it’s ever been, for a scrap of knowledge no one is thankful for!” I realized I’d ended in a shout, my body tense and heart racing as adrenaline pumped through me. They didn’t know I’d risked insanity to gain a few answers for them.

I wanted to leave and needed to take something for my headache which was getting worse. Most mundane people who talked about using their third eye couldn’t or didn’t have the power to see much so the feedback and risk they experienced were not as intense. They were blessed by that weakness. Using it could be immensely helpful… and in fairness, I should have included it more into my training, but the aftereffects really sucked.

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In a quieter voice, I answered Lana, “I think your idea is a winner. I’m going to go home, rest, and think this through.”

“What about our interview?” Chris asked, annoyance clear.

I wanted to yell at the man. He had already gotten an interview. Yes, I had promised another to see the crime scene but his total disregard for what I had done was frustrating. I mean, he wasn’t wrong, from his perspective nothing had changed.

For me it had.

This was my fight. I needed to stop this creature; these men wouldn’t be able to. It was too powerful, and others would die if they tried.

I also knew one other detail I’d discovered which I wasn’t about to tell any of the others.

It was hunting for me.

The last feeling of that perception when I’d been scrambling to close my third eye safely had given me the last clue I needed. It was also the only thing that made sense in hindsight. Why change tactics and attack someone inside a building? A building I happened to have just left? Knowing it had been so close to its prey had driven the creature into a rage. We were lucky it hadn’t murdered every person staying at the inn.

What was truly frightening was how it had found me. It was following senses that drove it towards me, that meant it probably had a tie to the daemon of my dreams. Perhaps that was the despised creature that was compelling it to hunt for me. I had no idea how the daemon had invaded my dreams, but I had the hunch that this creature had had an entire night to hunt me while the daemon kept me occupied. And it had been successful.

I shivered despite myself. I’d awoken and left just in time. If it had found me while I was trapped I the nightmare… I didn’t even want to contemplate that.

My aura and third eye had shown me enough, I was certain this creature wasn’t the daemon. It was serving something else and royally pissed off about it. Daemons couldn’t simply walk the mortal world. They required someone to summon them, offer a sacrifice, and create a pact or payment. Even with that they would only have a limited time they could be in our world and a fraction of their power. I didn’t know much about it, as I’d never had the need, desire, or stupidity to summon a creature like that. Daemons were not meant for this realm. Daemon summoning’s were outright banned by the Tribunal, in the same laws that outlawed necromancy and dark magic.

I needed to study up on what a daemon possession would look like and keep an eye out for it in the future if I managed to beat whatever this creature was.

There were grey areas, like summoning an arbitrator creature like an imp from the hellish realms. They could commune with a daemon and be a liaison to a wizard, acting as an intermediary for deals or information exchanges. But if you could summon a daemon in secrecy and maintain your control of it no one would be the wiser, at least the first dozen times or so. Eventually it would show in the magic of the individuals mana core and the Tribunal did track that.

Clair had been very pointed in her education about never summoning one for any purpose as they always ruined the life of the one who summoned them eventually. But the Tribunal wasn’t omniscient, an evil practitioner wouldn’t get a letter from an owl summoning them to court due to breaking a law of magic.

“Later,” I responded to Chris about the interview, seeing his impatience rise as I thought inwardly through my next few plans. I passed the others to leave, they gave no objections to it. Lana could find me when she had the time.