Mister Oliver Roche became a part of history. Neither a body remained, nor a ghost with it. His study is come upon as a scene from a carnival gone wrong, where the bits and pieces of viscera still clinging to his shelves coagulated together as watermelon smashed to bits and left in the sun. His blood darkened into a stain where flecks of red garnished his possessions, clothing lumped moist together in a strangely neat pile. Yet, no bone fragments were left behind, all internal organs were not among the remains. It seemed only clothing, fat, and tissue were left and done in a way that seemed deliberate.

The maid is the first to arrive upon this scene, and uses their telegraph to contact the authorities. A one, Detective Davit Safaryan, arrives by horse and carriage with his partner, Senior Detective Gary Louis. Not many in the Precinct could take Detective Safaryan very seriously, he is younger than the other detectives but had graduated at the top of his class. He had not many years to experience scenes like these, but he did have quite the mind in perceiving terrible events. This? Detective Safaryan had to take himself back away from the clutter of other investigators to truly understand.

“Well?” Safaryan’s partner, Louis, approached Safaryan with a hardened expression on his stubbly round face. Arms folding with himself positioning to look at the scene and Safaryan still quietly analyzing.

“It is on purpose,” Safaryan began with a low voice that made Louis look at him confused.

“What ya’ mean?” Louis grunts, motioning a hand at the area, “Looks like someone got their block knocked off with one too many beatin’s, to me.” Making his own deduction with less patience than Safaryan. Louis had seen much, much more than his fresh faced partner.

Safaryan gives a slow shake of his head, “This looks like a single perpetrator went out of their way to leave this kind of mess.” Safaryan pivots to the desk behind them, covered in a lot of spilled ink.

“There is a residue of magic coming off the desk.”

“What kind?” Louis begins a slow pace around the furnishing, letting Safaryan have his way.

Safaryan nears and removes one of his gloves, reaching a hand outward to hover over the ink. It is not a welcoming feeling, a deep bone aching chill erodes up into his entire arm, and something old grips at him causing his hand to suddenly recoil, “Extremely powerful,” The aura alone quickened Safaryan’s heart, feeling himself wanting to leave immediately, “Ancient.”

“Fey?” Louis had known quite a few in his day, they had that arrogant, nose up-turned privilege of magic. They were worse than the Zealots sometimes from the Spiritual Block, Fey were higher class and held wealth Louis would never know. Honestly? He could wholeheartedly say he hated the Fey.

“No, this magic is an abandonment of light all together.” Safaryan tries to express the sheer lack of any good in the magic, but Louis grins and knocks on a clean corner of the desk, “Them UnSeelie, then?” Again pointing the guilt towards the Fey, but the UnSeelie faction had their Courts far away from this Kingdom.

“Again, no. This feels more like the work of a Demon.” Safaryan concludes, and Louis groans with a hand rubbing at the back of his thick neck.

“Fuckin’ Demons. We will have to get Father Thiago in here to assess the scene. He might be able to do some holy prayers to bring the Demon here and we can properly read them their rights.”

As Louis talks, Safaryan cannot look away from that ink. Something felt terribly wrong. He wanted to convince Louis to scrap this whole thing and call it a Supiocide, where a supernatural being kills a human, with an ongoing investigation to put on the backburner and never look at it again. The feel of the magic alone made all of Safaryan’s self preserving alarms ring loudly. Unfortunately, that is not an option when it came to Justice, Law would prevail in the end, and Safaryan decided he needed to toughen himself up. This would not be the only scene he ever came across with dark magic. Certainly not the last.

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Another long carriage ride back to the city, returning to the precinct where they discuss their findings to the Chief. Orders were made, a telegraph sent to the Church of Saint Ferlieth, and then a strange silence followed. Detective Safaryan had been expecting at least a message returned, or to be asked to come with the Priest to visit the mansion and give his own testimony of their findings. Nothing came, and when Safaryan asked Louis about a follow up, his partner just shrugs him off and explains it as, ‘The Church will handle it when they get to it.’

A week passed, all the while Safaryan spent nights awake, reading over the other investigators' findings at the scene. No other updated records were being added, had this been the dead-end he wanted to come from such powerful magic? However, this weighted silence, it did not last very much longer. It would have been too good to be true, had everything slipped between the cracks to disappear. Safaryan and Louis are eventually summoned to the Chief’s office, finding the man behind the desk, their leader, looking quite unsettled.

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“I need you two to head back to the Roche estate. The Church messaged us, they say that Father Thiago and his fellow priests have not returned contact or even attempted to reach out to them.” The Chief leans forward in his desk, stabbing a thick finger against the aged wood, “Get in, see what you can find, leave immediately. Take backup with you. I got a bad feeling about this, Gentleman.”

Missing Priests are not a joke in this city. They are renowned for their beliefs and magics, assisting in exorcisms and helping the Law find answers when things become too thickly intertwined with the supernatural. Either everything is fine and the Priests had just missed the telegraphs, or something did go very badly. The Kingdom would be in an uproar if this were the case, a majority of the populace depended highly on the Churches blessings. Davit had his own opinion of the Church since his earlier years starting his education in the Justice system. You tended to see things that the normal population would normally not witness. Some of those things left their mark deeply carved into the fabric of your being.

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They arrived back at Roche estate, seeing the carriages for the Priests still here with the horses roaming free as if someone had taken the time to release them. Safaryan and Louis had backup of five other officers, reaching the door of the estate to find it swinging open freely in the humid gusts of wind. Blades are drawn, revolvers unholstered, the group quietly moving through what felt like a shell of a former mansion. Louis is the first to call out, “Anyone home?” A grin on his face as Louis seemed to be eager for a fight. Safaryan is less keen on getting his hands bloodied, he liked peace over war.

Downstairs is entirely untouched. Outside of a few stray dogs eating cold food, there did not seem to be anyone even here. That is, until they began to travel up to the second floor where Roche’s study resides. The higher they climbed, a smell would begin to strike them. Sickeningly sweet, death. The wallpaper had melted along the walls, warped into a greenish black paste that one of the men unfortunately touched, nearly retching with the smell that came with it. All candles were burnt out, windows were shattered, the floors feeling damp and making a deep squelching sound beneath their leather soles.

At the door of the study, Louis lets out a long whistle, moving aside for Safaryan to see. Everything had been destroyed, bodies mangled and contorted along the floor where they had fallen. A single individual still lived, laid out with their back against a wall, and they breathed wet, gurgling lungful's of air that exhaled reeking with that same disgusting smell. Hastily they approach him, reaching to touch him but Louis grabs Safaryan before he can. Louis nods to him, “His skin’s fallin’ off him like a baked pheasant.”

Kneeling down, Safaryan attempts to at least raise the veil from the Priest's face, shaking slightly as the cloth is lifted and all the men wince at the sight. Emaciated, he looked like the undead. Sunken eyes and withered lips, the Priest coughs bringing up a tar like substance to speckle his once pristine white robes.

“Can you talk?” Safaryan gently asks, then waits with Louis behind him snorting, “Be fuckin’ lucky enough he can breathe.”

“M..istake.” The priest manages to gurgle out from a constricted windpipe. “Father.. Thiago..” As much as he struggled to talk, the priest just did not have the answers.

“Can anyone mind-meld?” Safaryan looks at the other officers. The men nervously glance to one another before a female officer comes near to crouch before the Priest, “I am not comfortable violating a priest's privacy.” She admits to Detective Safaryan. “We have no other choice, he is going to die and we are going to head back empty handed.” Safaryan reasons with her, convincing her to enter the Priest's memories.

Closing her eyes, she focuses on the Priest's mind. The other officers try to search the room for survivors, not even quite sure how to get the bodies back without them falling apart. A calm silence is pierced by the woman letting out a scream, yanking her hand back with a look of terror, “Father Thiago, oh Gods!” Dropping on her backside she begins to pray, “What happened?” Safaryan hastily tries to get her to focus, grabbing her shoulder to give her a bit of a shake.

“Father Thiago, he.. They created a symbol of ‘Hold’ to capture whatever that thing is. Father Thiago, I cannot believe this, but he wanted to bring the creature back to the Church for something.” Her sobbing words had all the men quiet, looking on at the center of the room where that symbol would have been made, it needed an open space. In that space now is a gaping hole, wood torn asunder, leaving only the foundation for the ceiling of the room below them.

“Where is, Father Thiago?” Louis questions the detective, the woman gives a shake of her head, “Gone. Dead. The creature just..” Her hands raise and make ripping motions in the air, “Tore him apart, and ate him.”

Why would Father Thiago want to capture a monster? More and more this began to fill Safaryan with unanswered questions. He looks to the priest before him, still breathing but likely to not make it back to the city before dying. And also, why did the creature leave him alive and not anyone else?

“Why did the Demon leave you?” Safaryan, talking more to himself.

“He’s a warning.” The woman stares at the Priest, “If we keep sending Priests, that monster is just going to keep killing them.” Making an educated guess of the matter. Louis can be heard nearing them, standing over Safaryan to consider the whole situation, “This is too big for us. We need to head back to Chief, per his orders. We’ll take what we can of the bodies.” It is the most rational decision to make in this circumstance. Safaryan’s gut had been right, that the magic, this whole thing is far beyond their means of work.

“We’ll let the Church know too. I aint sure they will help, but… Gotta let the professionals do what they do.” Professionals that worked with the supernatural, Heaven, Hell. Safaryan does not argue or press. He rises and begins to help the others wrap up the bodies in bed sheets and stack them into the Priests carriage. The one still partially alive is loaded into one of their own carriages, and chauffeured with only one other officer on board to keep him comfortable.

As they depart, Safaryan looks back through the window of the carriage to the mansion. It looked like a corpse more than ever, emptied of life, rotting from the inside out. May the Gods have mercy on them, and not let that thing, whatever this is, come for them too.