Nikola refused to move from where he’d taken his seat, eyeing the ghost with trepidation unmasked. He bit his lip, taking a deep breath. Countless alternatives on what to say coursed through his mind, each inadequate for its own reasons. He could settle on none.
In no small part because he felt no instinctive need to refute such a claim immediately. Not when the disconnect between the drowning he experienced and all that came after. All the oddities he’d noticed and dismissed ever since. Something latching on to him was as good an excuse as any, even if it put him in an even worse position than anything he could have imagined.
“What, pray tell, did you have bound to that well?”
“A thing,” Edmund Adianoeta’s vagueness returned, his expression a nervous one as he paused before saying anything further. Pinprick eyes of bright light examined Nikola as if expecting something else to happen. “It was an entity—not one you should trouble yourself with, for I cut a piece off it us to bind in the first place. But in the end, it underestimated how much of its faculties it might retain. In choosing to take the chance, to abandon the well, it proves me wrong. I trapped something that could be considered alive.”
Nikola found himself growing genuinely curious as to the thought process that must have led this man to make the choices he did—he did not see the world in the ways normal people did, that much was certain. If nothing else, this would be useful to hear if he survived. How this man justified his actions would make for excellent reading material for any who read his next column, assuming he even managed to have one. “That is what you regret? Not the deaths?”
“The dead don’t feel trapped. They don’t feel anything at all,” the ghost explained, shaking his head. “You might suffer somebody else’s loss, but I assure you, the dead themselves suffer not.”
“A callous attitude for one who is dead himself to have,” Nikola noted. He failed to suppress the scowl that prompted in him.
“I took the necessary measures, and this was only possible because of what I already was. Like… as it was, so too are we bound to it, in a sense. Without the fountain’s waters, we would age anew, and fare worse than those for whom death is the end. We need to feed it to remain as we are, for that is the only way we would be granted the boons of the fountain, lest we wish to become its food instead.”
The dots connected in Nikola’s head, and his blood ran cold. There was only one answer that could match all these details. “You made a deal with a demon.”
Edmund let out a laugh, nothing. He did seem quite proud of himself, despite the dark subject. “I did. In human eyes, I suppose my greatest transgression would be that. Not that that I dabbled with the occult in ways some would deem unspeakable, but that I bartered in souls.”
Though Edmund was overdramatizing it somewhat, that was indeed among the worst things a sole practitioner could do. Certain demons could grant their suppliers almost anything, in exchange of precisely that—a steady supply of people to be slain, turned from fleeting mortal spirits into souls that could be kept in Hell forever, to be used as their new masters chose.
Their stores of souls fueled their capacity to grant wishes and requests, creating a vicious cycle where they would always wish for more. The only escape for those sacrificed to them would to eventually be used up as fuel, for those crafted souls would degrade back into mere spirits that would scatter into oblivion.
As most tools for the occult came from demons, they were a necessary evil. Governments and certain societies bargain with them. It was accepted. Indeed, necessary, for the benefits of their specific deals outweighed the cost, and not all demons fed on death and eternal torment.This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it
The problem lay in the context—Edmund was a solitary occultist, and such people were selfish. It was virtually impossible for them to bargain in ways that did not only benefit them.
“So that was what you were. What your family are,” Nikola realized, though it seemed a thing of fiction. “You’re the suppliers of a demon.”
“And mother’s well served as its vessel, until we had… a falling out. Rest assured, that it is gone. But for our sake, so the fountain would not collapse, I sought to take from it what I could, bind its power before it faded. It only cost me my own freedom, and my body’s life, but I knew the risks,” Edmund sighed wistfully. “There is a piece of that power lodged in you, though I know not how it happened. I can only guess it was an intentional escape on its part.”
Nikola chose not to mention the yanking he felt. How the shadowy tendrils had struggled in the end, unable to fully withdraw after they pierced through him—they’d risen to feed on the slaughter, he realized.
And somehow, Maria had repurposed that power to free Edmund from the binding of his own making. It had also freed that piece, strictly speaking, but Nikola knew all too well that it had likely been unintended on both ends.
“They’ll want it back, for your fountain,” he stated. He’d half a mind to plan an escape route, despite the impracticality of it. Ghost or not, this occultist was still a force to be reckoned with. “Tell me, how do you intend to take it back?”
“I shan’t harm you, if that’s what you’re implying,” Edmund appeared offended. “As it stands, it chose to use you as a vessel—something I had never seen, you know. If I had known living people could function as moving vessels… I would have done much. But I digress. They are trying to restore the fountain, and their methods will bring only trouble. I still cannot believe they managed to run it dry in a mere two-hundred years.”
“I suspect it might have something to do with the longevity treatments they offered to the highest bidders,” Nikola saw no issue in informing him of that—if that sowed even the smallest hint of distrust in the ghost towards his family’s motives, that wasn’t Nikola’s problem.
“They— Of course they did.”
The ghost let out a long-suffering sigh, exhaling for nearly a minute straight. It was marvelous, honestly, how he could express himself in such ways without real lungs to draw air in for him.
Nikola thought back to Clarisse. “Did they know not what you’d left in the well?”
“They did, but that residual power butchered all thrown at it. They tried before, to feed it directly in hopes it somehow being more effective. That’s what gave its intentions away for me,” Edmund admitted. “It did not tear you to shreds, meaning it had something else… in mind, if it even has a mind. Do you feel anything from it?”
“Not particularly?” Nikola was also far from inclined to examine every single one of his recent experiences for signs of indirect demonic influence.
“In any case, the task that befalls me will be an uphill battle, and I cannot afford to let them ruin our chances,” the ghost continued. “Trust me when I say, you do not want to remain anything’s vessel. Even if it isn’t a demon in truth, it will no doubt seek to warp you as demons warp the objects that are their vessels.”
Nikola, too, found himself quite uneager to actually keep this hypothetical piece of a demon within himself—it was simply a matter of distrust.
Benjamin sought him for the sake of having someone do work for him, as did most of his workmates. John had neither been involved in his hiring nor intentionally sought him out for the sacrifice. Every figure of authority, every older person he answer to, wanted something from him.
Certainly, Edmund Adianoeta was not being altruistic. The dead man wished for his family’s affairs to continue as they were, for even more people to die to sustain their existence indefinitely.
Nikola simply couldn’t understand what the man could possibly gain from not seeking to take this piece by force, even if harming Nikola as he was now could be counterproductive. He might instead resort to deception.
And what better deception, than trying to convince him they should work together?