“I’m dying.” The blood pulsed out between the cracks in my fingers. I pressed as hard as I could but there was no stemming the flow. That snake-man had gutted me something nasty.

“Yes.” The Exorcist knelt beside me and pried my hands away from my stomach. “Death is outcome most likely for you and your friend.” He squinted at my gory stab wound and chuckled. “I saw you two fighting snake-men. This dungeon, it is…. How you say? Far over heads of man-boys?”

“Hold on.” Frog piped up to say, “you’re gonna help us get out of here, right?”

The Major remained focused on my injury and ignored Frog altogether.

“He only cares about my demon.” I said, “once it’s out, he’ll leave and let the Naga have us.”

“No way.”

“Oh, yes. Yes way, little monk.” He held his left-hand palm-down over the bloody pock on my abdomen. I noticed that where visible, his entire arm was covered in thick, knotty scars, rippling from fingers-to-elbow, like he’d dipped the whole thing in melted wax. I couldn’t even imagine how someone could suffer scars like that. He kept his gnarly hand hovering in the air just above my wound and he closed his eyes and said, “Major Viktorovich is here to exorcise – not escort. Not responsible for rescuing anyone. But on brighter side, Reisuke Kira will not bleed out from his injuries and the Naga cannot have boys until I remove demon inhabitant and complete quest.”

Suddenly the painful wound on my belly felt freezing cold and then in the next instant the pain was gone and the entire wound went away right along with it. I was no longer bleeding. He had healed me by laying on his gruesome hand and it was as though I’d never been stabbed at all. I was a little grossed out – but grateful, all the same.

Should I ask him to do my shoulder, too? Or is that too much?

“Hey Major, where’re you from?” Frog said, “don’t reckon I’ve heard that accent before.”

“I am of the Obarai.”

“The Obarai?” Frog scoffed. “Ain’t that just a story mommas tell their babies?”

“No.” Vitaly gestured as though he were inviting us to study him more closely. “As you see, Major Vitaly Viktorovich is not mere story. Is real man.”

“Who or what are the Obarai?” I wondered.

“Giants from the South,” Frog explained, his eyes narrowing. “Clannish folk, rumored to be blessed with immortality.”

“Giants? Blessed?” Vitaly laughed, booming and genuinely tickled. He stood and offered me a hand up and said, “your friend has a dark humor.”

As he pulled me up, I took a look around and it was like a build-your-own-Naga shop had opened for business in the altar room. Vitaly hadn’t simply defeated the snake-men; he’d broken them down into their base ingredients. Here: a scaly arm, missing three fingers. There: a head, its forked tongue flopping out. Everywhere: blood and stringy viscera, slowly crawling across the stone floor the way the shadow of the Sun incrementally swallows the Moon during an eclipse. I swooned from the sights and Vitaly caught me before I could fall back to the floor.

How could I have thought for even a second that Frog and I could take them all?

“Easy there, Reisuke, you are weak.” The Exorcist stood me up on my feet. “You have lost much blood, and I do not know magic to make blood to fill you back up. Only time can make blood.”

“So, what now?” Frog did not sound very patient.

“Now we find secret place so Vitaly can exorcise demon in peace.”

“Secret place?” I asked.

“Some place less conspicuous than the altar room where many Naga have just been murdered. By me. Come, follow.”

He paced across the room to where his blade was still impaled in the stone wall and he jerked it free and slid it into a scabbard on his left hip. His whip was coiled and snapped into a holster on his right, and from this angle I could see a small crossbow strapped to his belt beside it – the sort that could be operated with one hand. A bandolier of bolts and blow-darts was slung across his chest like a sash. And while I was lost in thought, examining his inventory of exotic weaponry, this one-man-army was motioning for Frog and I to come along.

“Hurry,” he said, taking a torch down from the wall. “There are seven more snake-men approaching. They will arrive in mere moments.”

“How does he know that?” Frog whispered to me as we walked toward the Exorcist. “You don’t think he can hear them slithering, do you?”

“Frog, I don’t know what I think right now – but if he’s leaving then I know better than to hang around here with just you.”

“Oh, sure. Now you know better.”

Vitaly’s pace was swift but not hurried. We weren’t fleeing so much as we were simply relocating. The truth was, there was nothing here from which he’d ever truly need to flee.

“Wonder where he’s taking us,” I whispered to Frog as we followed. “I mean, he can’t know the layout of this entire dungeon.”

“I taking you to quieter place.” Vitaly had heard us whispering, because, “Major Vitaly Viktorovich can hear the quiet places, same as he can hear seven snake-men in chain and plate armor approaching the altar room.”

“They say it’s demonic power, you know,” Frog whispered, even more quietly. “That’s what gives exorcists their heightened senses and superhuman strength and stuff.”

“That’s just a story,” I shot back.

“But is true story,” Vitaly said. “Apologies, was hearing you two whisper secrets like girls in school. I mean to say: is true story that exorcists harvest demonic power to enhance ourselves. Is perk of exorcizing – we making gains. Now come – and try maybe to be little bit more quiet.” He pinched the air, his fingertips nearly touching, to show us the precise amount of quiet he was talking about.

We traveled down untold corridors. The pace wasn’t frantic, but it was too quick for me to keep track of the twists and turns. Before long, I was completely lost. It would have taken a miracle just to find my way back to the altar room. And after four or five more turns, Vitaly finally stopped. He pushed open the door to a cell not unlike the one I’d been kept in for the past week-and-a-half and he gestured for Frog and I to enter.

“This is safe, quiet place. Will perform exorcism ritual here.”

This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

The time had finally come. I’d been waiting my entire life to have my demon exorcized. But for the past year and more, I’d also been dreading this moment. Ever since I returned to Kwa’tar Village and found it in ruins. Ever since I pieced together what had happened – that Josie’s demon had been of the most powerful variety—Beast Rank—and that it had destroyed everything I knew. Killed everyone I loved.

Tears welled in my eyes.

“Major?” I said.

“Please, call me Vitaly. No need be so formal right now.”

“Okay, uh, Vitaly – there’s something you should know.”

“Be not shy, Reisuke Kira.”

“I think there might be a terrible demon waiting inside me. Maybe a Wrath demon,” I paused, afraid to give voice to the next part for fear I might speak it into existence. “And…. it might even be Beast Rank.”

“Like the demon who inhabited your sister, Josie.” He spoke so matter-of-factly. He had produced a piece of white chalk and began to meticulously draw sacred geometry by torchlight, right there on the grimy cell floor.

“You know? About Josie? About Kwa’tar?”

“Yes.”

“But how?”

“It all anyone talk about. Very unusual for a demon to cultivate all the way to Beast Rank while still in its chrysalis.”

“Chrysalis? Frog wondered.

“Yes, that is proper name for the state of being when a demon inhabits a human. It mean demon is changing forms. When I get the quest to exorcise a demon, we remove them usually when they are still Imp or Fiend ranked. Sometimes Devil. But Beast is very, very rare. You probably not have Beast Ranked demon inside you. And if you do, well, we all die.” He stuck his tongue out the side of his mouth and hung himself with an invisible noose – the universal sign for dead. “Oh well.”

“Well, except you won’t die,” Frog said. “On account of your Obarai immortality and whatnot, right?”

“Yes, this is likely true. Vitaly Viktorovich will not die – sorry for speaking half-truth. Was only trying to make mortal children feel less alone in what may be their final moments.”

“I’m not a child. I’ve had my demon out.”

“Breathe, little monk.” Vitaly finished drawing his rune-filled circle and stood to admire it. He didn’t turn to face Frog. “Breathe in. Breathe out. Just breathe now, instead of talk. No more talky-talk.”

I could feel the heat from Frog’s fuming, but for the moment he did shut up, at least. And I was grateful; the stress and anxiety was already enough for me. I didn’t need them bickering about stupid stuff. Vitaly looked in my eyes and gestured for me to come near. I didn’t really want to, but I found my feet shuffling toward him. A rat squealed in delight someplace close by.

“You may sit or lie down, whichever Reisuke Kira find more comfortable.”

I sat cross-legged in the center of his circle. I knew the slimy floors in this place more-than-well-enough to know I’d be more comfortable if I stayed sitting upright.

“You are ready?”

“As I’ll ever be.”

“Then we shall begin. Please remain as motionless as possible – for your own safety.”

He bowed his head. I felt like I should, too, but I didn’t want to draw my gaze down. I wanted to see everything that was going to happen next. Frog stood against the wall to my right. He’d seen an exorcism before – his own. But I never had. Under normal circumstances, Vitaly and I would be alone for this part. He stood before me and raised his arms straight out at his sides like a man crucified.

“Audite me, procurators inferi….”

Immediately I felt something, like a trillion microscopic fingerlings tickling every follicle on my scalp. Like effervescent steam might geyser out through my earholes. My eyes rolled back in my skull and I think I heard myself moan and then it just stopped.

Vitaly just stopped. And he sighed.

“Son of fifty-nippled goat,” cursed the Major. “We must leave this place.”

“Why?” I asked. “What is it?”

“Fifty nipples?” Frog wondered.

“The work will require space and time which dungeon cannot offer.”

“I don’t understand.” My head hurt worse with each syllable I spoke. “Is something wrong?”

“Yes. This is very worst possible outcome.” He went to work right away kicking the chalk circle into every cobwebby corner of the cell, erasing it from the stone floor except for the spot where I sat. “No more questions for now. No more talk about it. We must go. You don’t have much time.”

“Before what?”

“I said I don’t want to talk about it!”

The ferocity in his voice made me flinch. He snatched the torch from Frog and he stomped out of the cell in a flourish of falling sparks.

“Should we go after—” Frog began to say, but he stopped as the light suddenly disappeared and without any more words I fought to my feet and hustled after Frog who hustled after the Major.

And now he was moving with urgency. Which only made me more afraid. What had just happened?

He saw your demon and it’s just like Josie’s.

That could be it. He might have been able to detect that my demon was too powerful to release in such cramped quarters. He said we needed more space and time than the dungeon could offer – that seemed to indicate that the Major anticipated a difficult, long battle.

But he didn’t seem concerned before. He even mentioned that if a Beast Rank demon came out, me and Frog would die – all casual-like.

My gut was telling me that whatever Vitaly had seen, it was somehow worse than Josie’s demon. The very worst possible outcome, he had called it. What could it mean?

Now we were racing down the corridors. Whatever was going on, Vitaly clearly wanted to get out of the dungeon without any more delay. I should have been relieved to finally be escaping this Naga hellhole, but the uncertainty surrounding my aborted exorcism was too much to handle.

And that’s when I heard the mirror shards in my pocket tinkling as I ran.

Could I… maybe I could get some sort of clue as to what he saw if I just tried to look up my recent logs.

Seemed worth a shot. What could go wrong? I mean this was already, “the very worst possible outcome.” I stuck my hand in my pocket while I ran and I held the pouch of broken glass. I tried to concentrate on calling up the logs covering the recently performed ritual. And then it was just a flash, too fleeting to fully absorb at first:

Vitaly(Exorcist) executes Demonic Power: Grip of Envy.

2.4 cubic units of organic matter absorbed.

The bleeding has stopped. YOUR maximum health has been reduced by 24. (33 of 56 remaining)

The information offered by my logs made me dizzy. For a moment I had to ignore what it said so I could re-focus on chasing after Frog and Vitaly. But even as I ran for my life – I was distracted. What did that log entry mean?

It wasn’t a log from the failed exorcism – it was from before.

When I’d concentrated on viewing logs from the recent ritual, I must not have been specific enough. I hadn’t been shown what I wanted; I’d inadvertently gone back even further, to when Vitaly healed the stab wound in my gut, stopping the bleeding and saving my life. But what had he actually done? I had assumed it was some sort of laying of hands—his nasty, waxy hand—but that wasn’t it at all. He had used demonic power to simply carve the injury out of my body, hadn’t he? He had absorbed two-point-four units of organic matter.

That was my organic matter!

He didn’t heal it – he stole it.

And I started to put two-and-two together. His gnarly, scarred hand – it was changed slightly after he held it over my stomach. The flesh was pinker. And glistening moist. Because that was my flesh, ripped from my abdomen and slathered all over his forearm like a new skin. Enough skin to cost me twenty-four health – permanently.

I stole a glance at his forearm while we continued to hustle out of the Naga dungeon. The thick, raw cords of scar-tissue were all a lie. I had wondered what sort of injury could cause such scarring when it wasn’t an injury at all, at least not one inflicted upon him. It was all just layers of stolen flesh. The realization turned my stomach.

Did save your life, though—

I collided awkwardly with Frog’s backside. Vitaly had suddenly stopped running and I had been too fixated on his gruesome demon magic to notice. My instinct was to cringe from embarrassment but to Frog—a martial artist who seemed to exist in a perpetual state of sparring—getting bumped and jostled was just part of the routine; our collison wasn’t even worth mentioning. But he did say:

“What’s up, Major? You hear something?”

“Many things.”

“Something bad?” I worried.

“Something I cannot yet say.”

“I mean, that sounds bad.” Frog limbered up his neck and shoulders. “Reckon it ain’t good, anyway.”

“Yes, is bad.” The Major cocked his ear to listen even more intensely. “The way out is blocked. The snake-men have collapsed the tunnel. Now we are trapped. Unless, perhaps, boys know another way out?”

Frog shot me a flabbergasted stare which must have mirrored my own.