The doors behind me opened with a slam and another seven robed figures rushed in, all brandishing weapons. I opened my mouth to say something to them, but no sooner had he seen me the one at the front fire a musket at me!

I flinched, making a ball with my body, sure that I was all but dead! But the cries that followed the barking gun weren’t mine.

“What are you doing?! Let me go!” my attacker screamed.

I turned to see one of the twitching cultists had jumped the musketeer and was now biting down his arm like a rabid beast! Another one of the newcomers knelt to separate the struggling men, but hesitated when three more cultists started crawling or hobbling their way in deceptively fast, jerky motions.

The down guard’s screams grew in peach; that brief moment’s hesitation enough for his feral attacker to bite off a chunk of flesh, spraying blood everywhere.

“W-what is wrong with them…!?” a guard cried, as two more cultists hurled themselves at him between growls and spasms.

*Snap!*

A loud sound near by brought me back to my own reality; Richia’s arm, now grey, elongated and claw-like, broke free to slash in my general direction. Reflexively I jumped forward to avoid it, tripping on my strappings but also snaping them under my full body weight.

I fell mouth first into the stone floor. I looked around groggily and froze when I saw the rabid cultist dragging himself towards me, blood and saliva dripping under his hood.

He was fast! When I rolled away from his awkward dash he crashed into the stone table with enough force to chip some material off its corner.

I stood while my attacker writhed on the floor, in a fruitless attempt to flip over. Why did he struggle so much to flip himself over you ask? Oh, no big deal, he was just missing the lower half of his body, that’s all.

I gape and gag, following the trail of blood, feces and entrails to where another deranged cultist chew on one of his missing legs.

“Holy shi…!” I clasped my own mouth before finishing the expletive.

Too late. The mad cultist tilted his head in my general direction, threw the leg to the side and charged in, knuckles to the ground, like some sort of gorilla. He stopped mid-way, grabbed the struggling man by the exposed bones of his ribcage then bite off his head and part of his digestive truck, as if he was chowing down on a freaking shrimp!

I lifted a trembling hand toward a warm spot on my cheek. When my finger came out red with the gory droplets of the decapitated corpse, I lost it. I yell and back pedaled until I hit a wall.

The man made monster heard. Now he did look directly my way. He rose to his full height, mutilated head still dangling from his jaws. My heart stopped. This time he would jump me! This time it would be my head…!

*Squash!*

Richia’s clawed hand exploded out the mad man’s chest, and he wailed in agony. I didn’t stand to see the rest; I ran for the opposite side of the room as fast as my legs carried me. Mid sprint I closed my eyes. Tears, bile and sobs trying to escape me.

I’ve never cared for violence! Never liked people getting hurt! Now, in less than a minute I had seen more bloodshed that most people have seen in a life time! It was too much! I just wanted to throw up, to shut down, drop somewhere and cry away all this horror and brutality! But I needed to fight down that urge or I’ll end up like food for those monsters!

Right when I was about to lose that battle, my father’s words came to me.

‘Breathe,’ his voice was stern as always, but there was a kindness to it. An old memory then. ‘Find your center. Spirit-crafting is all about impressing your will upon the world. You must focus it, focus your entire self to the task at hand. Keep your heart’s voice clear. Let it call into the world. It will listen…’

I breathe deeply, opening my eyes. ‘Focus to the task at hand,’ I must escape so, ‘Let the world respond to my needs,’ how can I use my surroundings to make that happen?

Well, what about the exit…?

“No! No! You can’t abandon us! They’ve been possessed! They’ll kill us all!”

I paled. Apparently, some guards had the right idea; while I panicked about like a headless chicken, some of them left, deserting their comrades and bolting the door on their way out.

I heard a shuffling to my left; I ducked under the swiping arm of a feral cultist, tripping him with my feet as I went. They were unnaturally strong, fast and immune to pain, but they moved so awkwardly. Were they truly possessed by evil spirits like in the stories?! What in hell have been those dark tendrils…?!

‘None of that! Focus on the task at hand! I must keep my distance! Clumsy or not, I’ll be dead if they manage to pile on me!’

My eyes whiten in surprise as a squatting cultist jumped at me from across the room with the speed of a soaring arrow. I would have died then and there, if he had aim right:

As it was, his head smashed against the ceiling, neck snaping, bone chips and grey matter painting the stone bricks. With a slurp his limp body fell to the ground where two of his pals started fighting over it like carrion beasts…

You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

Huh… Horrifying as they were, maybe these champs would eventually take care of each other? Perhaps sooner rather than later if the armed guys over there help things along.

I winced. Nope, the armed guys over there weren’t doing so hot either. They’ve managed to fell two of the possessed cultists, but only three of them remain alive. Granted, it was hard to count them accurately with all of them wearing the same red robes, but looking for the screams of agony was a good rule of thumb.

The first of the remaining guards was busy playing tug of war with a biting cultist for his exposed intestines. The second was franticly stabbing the back of another indolent cultist who in turn calmly occupied himself by chewing off the third remaining guard’s face.

Ugh…! Shouldn’t have specked much from the poor fellows. They have been outnumbered and taken by surprise, while their weapons, their only advantage, hadn’t deterred these foes with no sense of self-preservation. But this was bad… At this rate I would be trapped alone with a bunch of deranged monsters!

The guy I tripped before, staggered back up and came for me once more. I side stepped, letting him fall to where the other two possessed fought over the headless corpse. That quickly devolved into a bloody free for all, fortunately with me out of the equation.

I grimaced; the only way I saw to make it out alive was to continue to playing these guys against each other. But it was like dancing with lions, if I made a single mistake, I would end up like another red smeared in this disgusting stones!

I needed an edge desperately, but when I reached for my spirit-craft, I winced in pain.

It was no good. I had over exerted myself in thwarting that ritual. I probably had gotten a new concussion for all my troubles; If I tried so much as a single sky-glass I would probably lose consciousness. It was a miracle that I was standing at all.

“Talk about jumping out of frying pans…”

A blood frizzing banshee’s cry stopped in place all motion. On the room’s verry center stood the tiny figure of a girl impaling a grown man with her bare hands. She tore him open, ripping in twine his upper torso, ribs parting like petals in a grotesque flower.

Richia, or whatever had taken over her body, was finally free. She bathed in viscera, her skin greyed as a corpse’s, her snarling mouth all to wide, her claws flexing, her pupilless dark orbs scanning the room for pray.

She pounced, landing on the struggling forms of the three nearby cultists, stumping one’s head into paste and skewering another one’s kidney with her claws.

‘I always knew she was a mean bitch but this is ridiculous!’ I thought as I ran from her the farthest I could.

For some reason, the possessed chin-face appeared to be much more coordinated that her cultist’s brethren:

She wasn’t graceful by any means, but she was dexterous enough to leap with supernatural strength without bashing her head, and that alone made her very dangerous… No, it was even worse! If my eyes weren’t deceiving me, the crazy girl was even faster and stronger than the rest!

Suddenly my chances of survival seemed to dip dramatically. Was she stronger because she’d been closer to the ritual’s epicenter? What in the ever-loving hell were those mad men trying to accomplish to begin with?! What? Would they have me and chin-face all possessed and feral so that we could kill them on the spot?!

No, it didn’t add up! If they wanted that, they would have at least chained us instead of using flimsy leather straps, alongside some other safeguards… Wait, that was it!

It was a longshot but maybe, just maybe, they did have some safeguards on the ritual! Don’t get me wrong, I was grabbing at straws here, but wouldn’t make sense to have a contingency plan when dealing with something this dangerous? Perhaps some way to vanquish the evil spirits to where they came from?

Truthfully, I had no clue if that was even possible. If these were spirits, I’d never seen there like before. Yet as I saw Chin-face go to town on those three possessed cultists, throwing into the air a guy twice her size as if he were a ragdoll, I decided it wouldn't hurt to take a look.

I fled for the side opposite the door, for it was less crowded and had some sort of stone altar that may serv me for cover.

As I ran, I tried to make sense of the ritual. The creepy blood pentagram was full of intricate runes that were alien to me, but the whole configuration looked almost familiar; It was something like a chaining ritual… a linking ritual? Perhaps a syphon array? Whatever it was, I had the feeling I’ve seen it before, many times before…

Then I saw what was over the altar and everything clicked.

“No freaking way…” I gasped. This couldn’t be it… could it?

Another bought of agonizing screams exploded behind me. Apparently lil Richia had finished her first plate and was going for seconds. I almost empty my stomach when I saw what was at the menu; the poor fellow had his tong lolling where his jaw had been a moment ago.

I turned away, duking under the altar, taking what I found with me. I bit on my lip, using the pain to focus. If I was right about what I found, there yet might be a way out for me.

I winced as another man screamed.

Sadly for the guards, I couldn’t save them, not that I would loose much sleep over that – what with them kidnapping me and then trying to kill me. No, for my plan to have a chance to work, I needed to wait until only one of the possessed remained. At this rate, that was probably going to be Chin-face…

Something inside me squeezed. If my plan worked, what would happened to her? Would the evil spirit leave her body? Would she die in the process…? Dammit, there was a pretty big chance it didn’t work at all and I ended up on the menu with all those poor champs…!

No! No time for that! Focus! How much time had been since I interrupted the ritual? Seven minutes? Maybe ten? It felt like an eternity.

I glanced around from the altar’s side. Good, the candles were all lit and ruffly in their original positions. The things may look creepy but were surprisingly reliable. The pentagram should have more than enough residual energy for what I needed. The underlying structure and left-over power from the cultists might help me ease the load on the spirit-craft front, though even with all that working in my favor, it’ll be a coin toss to if I faint or not...

Oh well, screwed up as I was, there was no use in worrying over that. I could only hide, prepare, and pray no mad cannibal stumbled upon me before I was ready. Just gotta sit tigth in the room full of corpses until the chick turned murder machine finishes off everyone else. No biggie.

I clasped my trembling hands, wincing at the horrifying way she munched, crunched and slurped, someone’s flesh oh so pliable between those terrible teeth.

Her victim screamed, a jet of blood spraying the wall and its foul iconography.

All the while I just cowered there like a little child; spying between my finger tips at the human-like silhouettes casted in red candlelight. Like in a horrid shadow theater, I watched her tore open a man´s ribcage to gorge on his still beating heart.

It felt like an eternity, but when all the screams finally died down blessed silence fell upon the room… except for a constant patting and splatting.

Richia crawled awkwardly over the blood and viscera. Whatever was puppeteering her flesh wasn’t verry good at it.

I wrestled in vain with my racing pulse. So loud my heart pounded, I feared she would follow it to my hiding place… I shouldn’t have worried; It almost stopped on its own when a set of pale clawed fingers closed on the table’s edge. A tuft of black hair followed, and then two swirling orbs of darkness peered at me from upside down.

“School life sucks!” with this ferocious battle cry I lifted the focus stone, initiating the spirit contract.