Hospitals could lead to such strange encounters, especially the mental kind. It was hard to tell sometimes who was just feeble-minded and who was an actual prophet driven mad by visions beyond mortal ken - not to mention the occasional fugitive hiding under the pretense of insanity. Nonetheless, it was the Drezin Institute for the mentally unsound where Reginald and Artorius headed the following evening.
A visitation had been arranged with several patients. The magister was even competent enough that they did not need to even compel any of the staff upon arrival, things had been prepared in advance. It still took them a few minutes to set up the magical machinery they would use for a ‘procedure’. Reginald recognized that the device would interact with the soul, though that was about it; his magical knowledge lay in different directions. The little he knew was fragmented from drunk scholars.
Vigor was not exactly in excess in the institute, Reginald noted. Few people here would make for a half-decent meal even if it came down to it. Which was a real possibility given how much magic powered the construction they would use on the mostly soulless victims with one foot already in the grave. Artorius did not strike Reginald as the kind to go out of their way to avoid casualties.
Eventually, the first one came through, bound to a wheel chair with gray unresponsive eyes while the worried nurse pushed him forward. “We will take it from here,” Reginald reassuringly squeezed her wrist as he wore a kind smile. Practice made perfect in that regard.
“N...no problem,” the nurse stammered with a light blush. Usually that took a lot more though Reginald assumed that spending days among these broken things did no wonders for her self-confidence. “See, Stevenson, these good men will try to make you better,” she leaned down to the patient who remained unsurprisingly unresponsive. They wanted to have a look at him for a reason after all. The nurse did not linger and either did not notice the ominous looking device or, much more likely, it was lightly glamoured. Sometimes the issue with supernatural senses was that you could not perceive what a layman would; lesser illusions tended to slip right by him because of how easily he saw through them. “How much screaming do you expect?"
“One or two shrieks a piece, I suppose,” the Magister looked at Reginald. They had begun installing the device over much of the man’s body. He remained completely unmoving. “No need to worry about that. This room is sufficiently soundproof.”
“I guess you expect me to glamour the staff if one perishes?” Reginald thought out loud.
“Now, I do much appreciate your competence,” Artorius complimented, clearly expecting such a prospect. “If you would be so kind, everything is ready.
“Keep your arrogance in check, Magister,” Reginald scoffed. “I have more cumulative experience than your generation combined; my competence should be assumed. Let’s begin.”
Like that, they got started. The procedure was complex yet also simple in what it was trying to accomplish. It would take the shredded remains of an ego which was left in the souleater’s victims and attempt to cumulate them into something close to the last coherent memory before such an attack occured. It was no precise things though and making any sense of it would require additional equipment or a specialist mind reader with particularly strong resistance to magic inflicted madness.
In this case… Well, vampires were known to have a knack for toying with mortal minds. Delving into them was just a stone’s throw away and unlike the matter of the soul, Reginald had expertise. The victim’s body spasmed as magic coursed through him. There was so little to work with after all; just overlooked leftovers hidden in the crooks of the body and remnants in the scrambled brain. But slowly, something began to emerge at the surface of that half dead mind. Reginald waited for the moment it coalesced.
Next, he found himself sitting in a bedroom. His nose held the stench of semi-expensive perfume while his feet dragged on the fake velvet carpets. He seemed to be alone for the moment though the heightened heartbeat spoke of anticipation. The memory was a strange juxtaposition of static and ongoing. Reginald could not move but could move his view by a scarce few degrees. Some things were sharper, some blurrier. It was not hard to spot the mirror among the other gold-dusted knickknacks. In it there was only the outline of a black shape, next a half-body reflection on the victim.
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“Good omen to start on this I would say,” Reginald grinned back in his own body. “This one died in a whorehouse. The Thornless Rose, a pseudo high-class brothel for people who cannot afford anything actually expensive. Only saw a black dot in the mirror. ”
“Outstanding,” Artorius nodded, noting it down on a clipboard, then moved over to a table to make a notation on a map of the city. Unfortunately, he did not try to crack a joke at Reginald’s knowledge of local courtesanship centres. Shame, he had a good comeback prepared. “Let’s move on to the next subject. This one is still breathing.”
For basically lying to the staff, the nurses were surprisingly enthusiastic to help them along; switching out for a new patient of similar situation. Maybe it was because the procedure made the patients appear more lucid… for a while. The gathered thoughts would fade away again. But in the moment it was admittedly convenient.
Six more patients came and went in much the same way as the first. Two of them were a bust, too braindead to glimpse anything. On the seventh one though, Reginald finally glimpsed something more than an estimated location. This victim in particular had been a woman, a hedge witch in fact; perhaps that had allowed for more or it was a mere coincidence. Whether certified or not was hard to tell, though she was certainly brewing something. In the eternal moment of a memory, the cauldron water had gone still without stirring, taking up the whole view. And in it, three vermillion red eyes looked straight into Reginald’s, stretching from a back circle right above the witch’s own face; almost like the creature inside could still see him.
That was not nearly enough to phase him. “I got something interesting,” Reginald announced. “It has three piercing red eyes. This one was a witch. My guess is she was brewing at home,” and the Magister nodded along. He took an extra second to shuffle through the files on his clipboard before noting down the location on the map. Reginald could not recognize every home but the bureaucracy had for once not failed someone; records of known former residences of the subjects were in the magister's hands.
“A fascinating fact, though seemingly not too relevant,” the magister nodded as he filled everything down.
Really fascinating given that demons universally had eyes in the shades of yellow; an inheritance of the Ravener-Brimstone from whose death they had emerged. And few magical creatures could shake the mark of the divine carrion from which they had come; Reginald knew that very well. Echoes of the Hungerer’s demise at the hands of Sun-Resplendent haunted his species to this day.
Vampires still died in moments under the Sun’s gaze, long after its own eternal slumber.
Another patient was brought in and then two dozen more. Time was passing quickly and nights were not that long this season. When dawn was close enough Reginald would have to depart and the magister could hardly continue without him. A couple more patients remained unexamined, and frankly, the number of victims was surprisingly high, however, enough conclusions were already drawn.
The attacks happened, without exception, in the night. Most inside buildings though some in the streets as well. Artorius had shared the dates of attacks he had obtained, some dating as long as 2 months ago. That was too short of a time period. What percentage of the victims was alive enough to be brought to the institute and how many of those were even admitted... It had to be feasting daily, perhaps more. That was another unusual thing for a demon: Demons of all kinds needed sustenance to survive, however, they rarely even ate more than they needed. Unlike vampires, they gained no power from overindulging.
“I think there might be a pattern,” Reginald, stared at the map with a frown. “Give me a pencil and your list,” he said and once he had those he began to connect the lines in order. A shape emerged, that of an intertwined mandala. He had to erase a few lines when he realised that there had been a missing step in the middle. It became simpler later when he realised the undeniable pattern was symmetrical. Much resist the moment he realised he knew the exact pattern. And that made it borderline simple to estimate where the next victim would be. The thing was a city wide ritual formation, written in death and action rather than chalk. And it was nearing completion.
“One can assume that it had feasted tonight as well as since the last victim we had examined,” Reginald concluded, making dots at the places where it would need to hunt for completion. There were exactly ten left if he assumed the missing spots were already done with. And what a curious spell this would be, though Reginald would absolutely not actually admit to recognizing it. It made him wonder how a demon of all things would know it.
“No objection on my part,” the magister nodded. “Once we wrap up here I will investigate the missing spots. At next dusk we will know exactly where to go. Far faster than I would have expected. Now, then, we must dispose of these,” Artorius pointe at the two actual corpses, not that they were really any worse off than before. In the end, the Magister forged the records and Reginald made sure none of the staff were any wiser to it. It was, frankly, hardly any effort.