was short work to enter the woman's soul and have my older and more weary soul, compared to her recycled one, cause minor scenery changes. The burning forest within her soul now contains a temporary representation of a run down ancient castle converted into a library in the center of the burnt forest. This is my soul personified as a location… my fondest place in either world… and so when I took a step out of it. I sent the mother fucker trying to burn it down flying.
"You're not permitted to even look at my wife's last gift, you ugly bastard. So what makes you think you can burn it?!"
A lithe but solidly built demon with flaming joints and fingers growled at me. My fist on fire due to it blocking at the last second, but I didn't care. I was now beyond pissed and the demon knew this from how it flinched. Walking towards it calmly I put out my flaming fist, Bane Sword materializing within my hand. The demon hurled a column of fire at me and the replica of my home behind me. Gently and lazily raising my sword I made a cut then another cut. Frost trailing after each cut, my breath exhaling as snow flakes.
The fire was gone before it even reached me, yet I was already before the demon. It shrieked briefly before my sword went through its head, free hand going through its chest. From the forest behind it numerous copies emerged with the actual one, a towering demon, carrying my patient not far behind. The woman I'm meant to help is being crucified onto a metal X with chains and spikes binding her to it. Half of her Human soul was already like the demon holding her crucifixion by the chains on it. Taking a deep breath then exhaling I spoke one word, and that one word brought my home to life.
Staring at the demon it grew a smile, flaming eyes squinting in amusement and delight. Pointing my sword at the demon as more smaller ones started clawing their way out of flaming rifts that erupt from the ground. I'm currently limited in this situation. I can't start shooting up the soul around us, so I did the next best thing as my home was here. Holding my sword diagonally before my nose, the cold steel blade touched it drawing blood lightly, I intoned a spell meant for this kind of situation. As soon as I started the aria, my castle started to shake. Runes, etchings, formula's, and anything remotely related to magic lighting up along the outside, inside being the brightest with the sound of shelves shaking beginning to be heard.
"I am the keeper, the timeless librarian
Within my halls records sleep and gather
Unsung, Sung… Immortalized
Those within these records remain
Never to be forgotten for I remember"
The demon growled with bloodlust, flames rolling off its skin and into the surroundings. Its smaller copies rush me like a tidal wave as more are created. Moving a foot backwards my sword gently swayed from in front my face, pages of ice following after it. Without an ounce of strength behind it, my blade touched the rushing demons. Their bodies freezing solid, completely turned into ice before shattering as more rushed forward.
"Heroes and Villains rest within these halls
Unsung Heroes who died with a smile, forgotten
Sung Heroes who died regret, becoming fables
Immortalized Heroes who inspired, stuck in gilded cages"
Even as my body, my soul, gained a growing number of cuts, I never put any strength behind my blade. Frozen pages flowing behind each stroke through the air with it. Demons becoming ice sculptures to be shattered. Flames licking at my soul, ice forming along my soul.
"Unsung Villains, people without a choice and obscured
Sung Villains, people with a purpose and misunderstood
Immortalized Villains, people swallowed by corruption and forever alone
Those are the ones I keep in my memories
The ones who shall never be forgotten within these halls
Chronicle: Testimony"
The books within my home could be heard snapping open all at once that it shook this spiritual realm to its very core. The woman and demon screaming in pain from the sudden opening of every book all at once. From the castle mere memories of Banishers and Witches long dead stepped out, an Irish man leading them with a black woman at his side holding his hand. The Bane Rifle I gave Kohta resting over his shoulders, the woman I barely knew drawing her sword.
However, the memories of her ghost and stories of her from Red gave me an idea on her, so the spell my wife helped me create recreated her as well. Pointing my sword towards my patient and the demons, I rushed forward as demons poured from the woods. Bullets whizzed past my head, spells snaked around me, swords with war cries crashed against the demons.
"Begone with you foul creature that dares haunt and feed off of the living!"
Hearing the echo of my wife's voice I felt… tired… A lance that was if someone had cut it from the night sky, a starry lance that herald misery, flew past my head. It erased the weaker demons in its path like a comet, wisps of the void trailing after it as the lance unraveled. Ducking under flaming claws going for my face, I swung my sword and bisected the demon. A bullet ripping through its skull right after I had ducked, the bullet hitting the chest of another demon behind it. The actual demonic target made its move, swinging its breeding bed of a host soul at us. Yet it didn't expect two towering Russians with tower shields and sledge hammers to halt its attack.
Boris and Sulvik Putin, twin Banishers that specialized in hunting Scourges and breaking them in melee. Two ends of the metallic X slamming into their shields, wind blowing their bloody blonde hair around from the impact. The two barely budged, their muscles bulging and rippling while they strained to push the improvised weapon back. The demon growled with frustration, its lapsed awareness costing it greatly in a single instance.
Sliding out from behind a charred and flaking tree, a descendant of Round Table Knight Tristan, made herself known. A Swedish woman dressed as an assassin struck quickly and quietly with unnerving precision. She buried twin daggers into the back of the demon's knees, bringing it to heel as it began to fall from losing its knees. But the attacks kept coming, insulting the demon with two shots from a Flintlock into its back. Causing it to jolt a bit mid fall. Eventually she grabbed its face and slammed it into the ground. Solana was special for a Banisher… As she was also a witch of space.
Upon its head hitting the ground the demon disappeared, it began free falling from over sixty thousand feet in the air with a scream. Its torment wasn't quite done, three identical women stretched their hands towards the airborne demon and spoke in unison.
"""Bindings of Anubis."""
Chains made of black bones with golden markings shot out of the ground at the demon. Before violently bringing it hurling back down as I and a few others got its host freed of her bindings. The remaining Witches and Banishers set up the Union Ritual after studying the woman's soul. The demon being contained with the woman's soul being laid beside it.
The Union Ritual we were using was a hybrid ritual of the Banisher's Harkon Ritual and a Witches Soul Swap Ritual. The ritual would call the souls forth into a more natural flux state, instead of static and singular flux state, then begin fusing them. All while swapping one consciousness into being dominant, and the other overridden into being instincts and unique mannerisms essentially. It was one of the more forbidden and obscure rituals of Banishers. Which is fair given it is generally tied to darker dealings in reviving the dead by overriding a still living soul.
It was effectively murder at a primal level involving the soul for an individual. But me and Red used it a few times to also save lives as victims who would have their souls torn from their living bodies. Hades proved extremely insightful in how to reattach a soul to a still living but slowly dying body. The God of the Underworld also REALLY HATES Bleach… he found the soul society to be a stain on existence. But he still provided rather interesting comments during Show Nights when we watched the entirety of Bleach.
Sorta why I was able to stuff discarded souls back into their still living bodies. As they didn't actually die and still had a small shard of the soul connecting to the displaced. Just when Red learned of this… he drank himself under while wailing. He blamed himself for not getting to his girlfriend's body quick enough after her displacement into a soul….
//\\ 1674 New York City, New York, 11:58pm \\//
"Red…"
"Shwt it, Daaaakota…. I'm fine…"
"Red, you're on your thirty-fifth drink, you're slurring, the bar is wet with your snot and tears, and you refuse to look at me. You're instead staring into that beer as if it holds the mystery of life within it instead of looking at me."
The Irish Banisher says nothing, just nurses on his drink with lifeless eyes after our latest job together. As soon as it was done he headed straight here and started drinking his depression away.
"Red, you know you doing this is just stupidity and worthless self blame… neither of us knew about the ritual till last month or that there was a chance to do that… aren't you happy at least to have saved that pompous prick and his daughter from suffering your situation in New Eden?"
"I am… I just… I just could've done better… we could've hurried… maybe then… you could've stuffed…"
"Red, don't live in the what ifs, that way lies madness and depression. Accept the now and do better, Red. If you insist on being a dipshit, then what do you say to visiting that brat and her prick father tomorrow?"
"Zzrtz.."
Looking towards the barkeep I just tossed him Red's money, the aging barkeep taking only the needed amount. Placing the rest of the money back into Red's now empty hand after taking his still half full mug. The drunk man clutching into the bag of money as if he was afraid of letting go. Shaking my head I grabbed Red and slung him over a shoulder after putting his money back onto his belt. The next day came, and it was met with me and Red walking the streets of New York. Red nursing on a water skin to help his hangover, as I silently walked alongside him.
"Dakota… sorry for my drunken self-blame and trying to blame you…."
"It's fine, barely an inconvenience plus you're right, maybe stuffing your girlfriend's body into my bag would've saved her. But that was the least important thing at the time, after all the ghost of a condemned lesbian turned Nightmare was growing in strength by the second. While you two were indisposed of, after ignoring my warning mind you, I was left to fend off hordes of the dead and a Nightmare from killing the townspeople. So doing something nice for either of you wasn't my priority, it was surviving instead."
"Would you stop bringing that up? We said we were sorry for doing something like that!"
"Never. Because if I remember right and I quote you specifically Red. "We'll be fine kid, we're experts at this after all." Then, specifically you Red, you went and pissed the dead woman off. Which got your girlfriend's soul ripped from her body and you thrown through a window into the ocean. So no, I don't think I'll ever drop it."
The Irish man had the decency to look sheepish. Scratching his beard awkwardly at my brief recount of how the Eden situation escalated so badly. In ONE SINGLE NIGHT after they arrived, the two royally fucked up and they paid the price for it. After a while though we arrived at our destination. I let Red go have his moment, while I walked into an alleyway and pulled my sword. Inscribing the Harkon Ritual into a brick wall before infusing spiritual energy into it.
The ghost of a certain female Banisher appeared shortly afterwards. Yet her soul was changing so I didn't spare her any kindness. I just pointed my blade directly at her.
"Why are you still here as one fragment of a greater whole? Do you even know what you're becoming?"
"I'm here because of Red, he still hasn't let me go entirely, his depressed talk last night being proof. As for what I'm becoming, it's obvious I was already as strong if not stronger than the Nightmare. So it would be safe to assume I'm… growing… becoming a new whole… and becoming something worse than a nightmare."
"Last words?"
"Hahaha… really just like when I first met you in that alleyway in New Eden. Just like when I saw you effortlessly kill that huntress in the alleyway. You ripped her head and entire spine out of her body. All while condemning her soul. When I learned later on why, it led me to both commend but also condemn your murder."
"Geeee thanks, your commending condemnation is something I totally fucking needed."
"Don't get snarky with me brat."
"Considering you're the dumbass that let Red go piss off the ghost I said not to piss off. I'll insult you all I want and you'll just have to suck it up because you died for your fuck up."
"You're worse with grudges than my sister… But you're right. Just like when you killed certain towns folk to start breaking the Nightmare's resentment. Because in this scenario you need to purge me, I'm getting dangerous to the living. I'm affecting Red and everyone around him, but you, slowly. So just give Red this letter… and thank you for being you. Murderous psycho-nymph..."
Taking a note that she all but made appear in an outstretched hand, stuffing into one of many pockets. I swung my blade with my rings lighting up. The woman I barely knew and refused to remember by name for reasons, was then decapitated with her soul fully ascending now. Motes of blue light carrying the final fragment into the sky and aether. Turning around I walked out of the alleyway after collecting the essence that remained.
[Preemptively deal with a Dreadnaught +60,000 SP]
So that's a step up from Nightmare? I hope something never becomes that or worse. Because this world is already doomed with zombies, it doesn't need powerful ghosts like that causing trouble.
\\// Present //\\
Shaking my head from drifting down memory lane, I wrapped up my business here. Back in the physical world the woman now looked exotic with amber tattoos across her body. Her bandages do little to hide their sudden appearance. Before she could say or do anything I socked her in the face, her head snapping to the side as she lost consciousness.
"Just take a good rest, though you'll feel that when you wake up."
Shaking my hand as steam wafts off it, I left the small home and headed elsewhere. Flipping off the hermit that spied on me the entire time as I left the area.