Martyn heard the scream worried and panicked thinking to himself and rushed there worried shocked shaking and then looked focused rushing to the girls side without a second thought and looked concerned and focused all healing magic he could on the girl. "I'm not letting more people die here..." He muttered quietly to himself. "... Not anyone." He says quietly focused looking away from the girl fearfully he may have healing magic but hates looking at people hurt.
I watched as Martyn joined the scene and began to heal the poor tortured woman, I looked over at Mikkish. "This is another warning Mikkish, this is what's going to happen to one of us if you keep that book, the culprit waited for you before allowing this scene to be seen." I said, I was right, it was same as the last time, this was out in the middle of public, someone would have just had to take a look out the window to see such a gruesome scene, there were many that would have passed by this scene, yet they didn't see a single thing, the assailant waited for Mikkish to come out before he dispelled whatever magic he was using to conceal the scene... he must have also put the thought into Mikkish's head to look down the alley with the dead body as well. I knelt down by the woman and began to focus on her, my hand right above her, glowing with pink energy, pink ribbons of energy flowing from my hand and landing on the woman, trying to seal her wounds and keep her alive, combining my own efforts with Martyn. "Ma'am please just hold on." I said, she might be able to tell us who her assailant was, we could tell the authorities, they could deal with him, and no one else would get harmed.
Joe and Martyn were too late, though. The woman's face was hardly recognizable, third degree burns covered her torso, and her forearms were mostly ash. It was quite grotesque. "Shit." Mikkish said, at the sight of the woman. Despite his strange familiarity with death, the woman had a haunting scream. But the corpse was not the only unsettling thing at the scene. These letter were difficult to miss. Written, once again, in blood. "Thou Shalt Not Suffer A Witch To Live" Were painted in blood on the double doors to one of the hallways. "Hey." Mikkish said to Joe "You see that?" Mikkish paused "I don't think this is being done over some damn book. It looks more like...someone wants to wipe out all mages."
Jinx stood pushing past the boys to stare at an empty space,"DONT GO YET. THE ONLY CHANCE OF GETTING VENGENCE IS NOW. TALK TO ME. TELL ME. DON'T LET WHOEVER DID THIS GET AWAY WITH IT. I SEE YOU. I'M SORRY FOR NOT SAVING YOU IN TIME." Jinx clenched her burnt hands blood dripping on the ground as she listened to something. She swore looking desperate as she spoke again,"Why won't they let you? No please give her a minute." She screamed taking a step back as a black skeletal imprint appeared on her arm. She wavered, fear etching her features as she listened to something else. She blanked for a few minutes then turned back to the group,"I..tried..she was so angry. They wouldn't let her speak to me." She sunk down feeling heavy,"He hates necros. Fuck that hurt. My mom warned me not to talk back to him." She touched her arm, as blood began to rise from the black and flow down her arm. "Whoever did this is powerful. It's hard to enchant souls to remain quiet."
I looked down at the charred woman below me, my vision was getting blurred with tears, bile was rising to my throat. "I failed... she died... I could have done something... b-but I was too weak... please forgive me." I thought, quietly clutching my locket, I felt so guilty... I didn't know how to process this... I got up and wiped away a few tears, I looked at Jinx worried as she pulled away and began to yell at what I assumed to be the spirit of the woman that had just passed on. I was right, the person that did this was very powerful. I looked over at Mikkish and then the message and did my best to regain my composure. "...But it doesn't explain why your the one that keeps finding these bodies, even though they were in very public areas where anyone could pass by and see, yet you were the one that had done it, and the first one was down an alley, I don't think that you just looked down an alley at random and saw it, I think that he used some sort of magic to attract your attention to it. Also, think back to the first murder, 'If your eyes cause you to sin, pluck them out', that suggests that whatever people were seeing, or in your case, reading." I said crossing my arms, I couldn't help but keep dragging my gaze back to the body. I resisted the urge to look back at the body and instead put all of my attention on Mikkish. "Plus if it were to hunt down mages, think about it Mikkish, why only these people, isolated incidents in which only a single person was harmed? Why not target a larger group of people? He certainly has enough power to get ghosts to stay quiet about their murderer, so attacking a large group of mages, especially those that are still new or relatively weak with their powers, and that himself would make him a mage, making him want to kill himself. Plus this message... it seems out of place as well, it's all the way over there, why not have it closer to the body? I think that either he, or someone else put it there in order to skew the meaning for anyone that might have been listening into our conversations or had thought we had involved the authorities." I said, giving Mikkish a quick accusatory glare at mentioning someone else putting the message there, I knew that Mikkish could be somewhere in the blink of an eye, and with everyone's attention drawn to the body, he could have used something to write the message on the board, maybe even using his own blood. He got worked up whenever this strange book was mentioned, he seemed really protective over it, I couldn't help but think that he could mess with a crime scene just to protect it further, by making us stop thinking of it as a warning and rather an act of violence dealt out by a genocidal maniac. "...Though I cannot deny the possibility that these murders are being used for a type of ritual, I don't know what kind of ritual, however it must be something on a rather large scale if they're brutally murdering mages in order to make it happen, it would be prudent to try to look for information regarding rituals that involve murders such as this and what they're for, the main point of each murder appears to be the gouging of the eyes." I said, I looked over at the body. "Someone should go alert the authorities." I said.
Jinx stood quietly and stepped in front of Mikkish, "Hey. Hey. This isn't his fault. Even if he isn't willing to give up that book, it doesn't mean anyone has the god damn right to do this shit to students. I think he does have some relation to why this is happening but he doesn't know about it." She felt sick, her body attempting to give out on her as she stared at the male, "I don't want you to fight between each other. Ugh...She said nothing about a book or who did it, but what she did say was that Magic isn't for the good anymore. I don't know what that means, but it doesn't pose well for any soul, living or dead." She paused, moving towards the corpse and leaning down to place her palm on the dead girl's burnt and crusted chest. She turned to look at them. "Don't think that I do this out of disrespect." She ripped the shirt off of her stomach, to expose half a large pink shaped rune, that was burned into her flesh, the other half was ripped away with the burnt shirt. She didn't flinch as she turned to look at the boys, "Someone definitely marked her. This is a Somalian rune, used to implant people with memory loss. This must have been strong if it imprinted on a soul. Usually these only imprint on the living flesh, or the brain." She winced looking down at her arms, "Umm..if it's not that much trouble can someone heal my arms. They are mighty sore and I think I'm losing to much blood. The worlds um...moving."
I looked at Jinx. "Right, sorry, please just sit and rest." I said, I walked to her and focused on the healing energies that I could tap into, pink ribbons flowed from my hands and wrapped around her arms, beginning to soothe the pain and slowly seal the wounds shut, I was still relatively new at it, so at best I could cause them to stop bleeding, however the slightest provocation could cause them to begin bleeding once more, it was better than nothing until she could get herself to a healer.
She looked down at her hands and the ribbons coating them and smiled at him warmly, "Thankyou. They were beginning to ache. I need more practice with necromancy. I shouldn't have taken on the pain, but it's hard to differentiate from people to corpses. The souls begin to panic when the body suffers, I take away some pain to get them to relax, even if it wasn't really hurting them."
Martyn looked scared and walked away shaking himself sitting away from the incident scared he didn't want to see someone die infront of him like that and maybe someone hunting mages it made him feel even worse. "...d-d-damn it... w-why c-couldn't I ha-have been normal... i-i wouldn't have to deal with a person ki-killing mages."
David sniffed at the air as he looked down at the charred body, unlike the others David's face was not one off horror nor worry as he prodded at the charred corpse with his finger. Was she dead? Dead people were always sad. He finally frowned. “Poor lady.” "Foolish bitch should of been more skilled with her magic, then maybe she wouldn't be cooked like she is now. Fine work though bwahahha ....my credit goes to the murderer." Junior hummed to David. "Well everybody sure looks sad." David mentally spoke back. "Well no use in letting a virgin go to waste break off a piece of her and chow down." "Ewwww I don't wanna eat a burnt up human." "You'll gain her strength." "Like Highlander!? David exclaimed. "Yes David like Highlander.....hehehehe." So David did as he was instructed as the others mourned, cursed and gathered around the scene David broke off two of the dead girl's fingers and began chewing on them. "Chickeny." He mumbled "HAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHHA!"
I heard something crack and rip behind me, I turned around and saw David ripping off the poor girl's fingers and... eating them...! I turned to Jinx. "Excuse me for a minute!" I said quickly, I rushed to a nearby trashcan and just unloaded my lunch into it, it was one thing to see these horrid events, but to see the girl cannibalized as well...! That was just too much, I kept retching over the trashcan for a good five minutes, until every last ounce of my stomach contents were in the trashcan, and even then I kept trying to throw up what wasn't there. I finally regained my composure after a few minutes, I stood up straight and wiped my mouth with the back of my hand, I tried to keep my mind off of the taste and smell. I turned to David and tried to resist trying to see if I could manage to actually vomit up my innards... "Stop that this instant David, you're desecrating a corpse, eating another human being, and disturbing a crime scene!" I said, the first two were inexcusable, the third would land him in jail and it could very well get in the way of the investigation, giving the murderer a better chance of getting away with his sins.
Jinx stood up instantly, as she watched this and walked forward towards David. She ripped her hand back and slapped him clear in the face, "YOU SICK DECREPIT, SON OF A BITCH! HOW DARE YOU DIGEST THE PHYSICAL FORM OF ANOTHER YOU EVIL LITTLE SHIT!" She glared at him with bright blue eyes, "If there is one thing I cannot stand in this realm it is disrespect for the dead. Touch her again, and I will make those fingers you just ate claw out of your stomach from the inside out." She pushed him away from the corpse, as angry tears ran down her face. She wanted to viciously hurt him for touching this poor helpless girl but she stopped herself, her body going rigid with tension.
Martyn covered his ears trying to ignore the shouting shaking and looked worried. "S-shut up..." He muttered under his breath. "y-you're all a-as b-b-ba-bad as each other." He added scared not even looking at them using his magic to create a barrier around him more out of fear. "W-we are all going to die... we're going to die die die..." He shook worried trying to block out the person eating the body and the people shouting at the man he didn't want to be a part of this he never did at all and was hugging himself in massive fear. "that person is going to get us..."
I stay off to the side as the whole scene unfolds. Utterly baffled at the sight seeing the girl all burnt and charred. I put my hand to my mouth and shuddered. The smell of the burnt flesh was what got to me. I look over towards the message and hear the conversation. I think to myself a moment realizing that this was a second attack. I jump a bit hearing the cracking of bones looking back towards the body. "Oh man that's sick...." I turn away towards Martyn and sigh heavily. "Martyn....Hey Martyn, dude calm down!" I walk over to the edge of the barrier to look at him. "Martyn noone is going to get us just take deep breaths and turn around alright?"
Martyn looked up at Rue shaking quietly doing his best to avoid all the other sounds crying scared. "... b-but... he or sh...she is going to attack mages r-right? I bet he'll/ she'll pick o-off the w-weak-ker ones first... which means me..." He says quietly holding the shield up still he tried taking deep breaths but slowly turned into hyperventilating again. "... w-what if t-that bone eating man did it secretly... he he want's to chargrill and eat us!"
"Weakest?....Weakest.....weakest." I looks around to the different people around and then back to Martyn. "How are you weak?" I begin tapping on the shield. "Seems like this thing will keep you nice and protected if anything happens. Maybe even keep away the killer while you run for the hills. You can be strong easily. Just not in uh.....offense? Yeah just not in offense." I say with a smiles and step back. "Now gonna come out of your little bubble? Nobody is gonna do anything right now not with a big audience."
Martyn turned around looking at Rue sad quietly starting to slow down quietly watching her tap on the shield. "I-i know I can protect myself... b-but if she/he breaks it... i'm screwed..." He sighed sad and looked up at her. "... R-rue... I can't fight someone off if something goes wrong..." he stammered quietly and looked shy away. "...I don't have a weapon... or any offensive magic..."
David’s mouth opened and pieces of fingers slowly fell out and on to the ground. His large eyes began to fill up with water as he rubbed the cheek on which he was stuck."Owy." He sniffled. "Junior said I was allowed to eat it and said it would help me or something like that." David frowned as he faced Joe and Jinx. "I'm really sorry I didn't know it was a bad thing." He said as he continued rubbing his cheek. "He said it was okay."
I gagged a little at the sight of him dropping the finger pieces out of his mouth. "...Whoever this Junior person is, he's a bad person, you shouldn't listen to him if he tells you to do such horrid things, I mean eating someone is wrong and it won't help you at all, besides landing you in a jail cell or a padded room." I said crossing my arms, I thought that this Junior might've been an imaginary friend... though I don't think that David's mind was this dark and twisted... it might be a demon... I mean magic was real, that means that stuff that one thought was imaginary or didn't have any real influence in the real world might be real as well, so a demon wasn't a far fetched theory, now the only question I could think of was 'Is David possessed, or is it something else that keeps the demon close to him?'
Mikkish was offended by David's cannibalism too, but hardly surprised at all. Of course, he wasn't exactly disturbed either, so he looked almost completely calm. His only true concern was David's obvious mental condition paired with his imaginary friend, Junior. The last thing they needed right now was this retarded kid doing strange...gruesome things, and blaming fake people. "Alright...." Mikkish said, attempting to gain control of the situation "Alright. First off." Mikkish said, walking over to Martyn "Get up and balls up. Guys, we're not really going to just give into this killers demands, are we? Jinx was right: he has no right to kill these people, just to get some dumb book. We're fuckin mages for shits sake. We can take him...whoever he is." Mikkish said, looking over at David "Also, this Junior guy isn't real. You can't just run around eating people and blaming it on your imaginary best friend."
I looked at Mikkish exasperated. "You haven't heard a single thing that I've said, have you? The killer is obviously a very powerful mage, someone with a lot of experience and knowledge, compared to him, we're just infants crawling around in the darkness with just about fifty thousand hazards that would kill us with a single wrong move, and if it is 'some dumb book', then just give it up, it's not worth this Mikkish, it isn't worth these lives that are being taken." I said. I walked up to him. "And another thing, I don't think that this Junior is imaginary, I just can't think that David's mind is that dark and twisted, he's just too innocent, I don't think that something like eating someone would enter his mind. I think it might be a demon, I mean if magic is real, it's possible that mythical creatures are real as well or they have more influence in this world than we originally thought, it explains the sudden mood swings, the strange things that he spouts at random, but... I'm thinking that it might not be a direct possession." I said in a hushed tone of voice, casting a worried glance over at David. I looked back at Mikkish. "If it were a direct possession he would have just gone crazy already and tried to rip us all apart, I think that there's two possibilities, one, he is possessed and somehow he's keeping the demon at bay, or two, the demon is bound by something else and cannot completely uproot his consciousness and take over his body." I said in a hushed tone, I needed to share my thoughts with someone, and with Mikkish just acting like one of those people from a horror flick that just refuses to use logic, or change their perspective at this point, I needed to try to bring him back to the reality, that if he just continued acting this way or going on assumptions with ignorance of the magical world and arrogance of his own abilities people were going to die. If he kept the book, people were going to die, if he continued to believe that this Junior was just a dark and twisted figment of David's psyche, then it's likely he'd get it angry and get himself or others injured or killed one day.
Jinx felt horrible as David looked as if he started to cry and she rubbed her eyes whilst groaning, "Ugh. I'm sorry David. That was harsh, and I reacted to aggressively. I apologize for my behavior. Just don't eat corpses, it is NEVER okay. I don't care who Junior is but ignore repress him. He is obviously causing problems for you." She gave a meek smile then listened to everyone quietly. She sighed turning back to the group and placing her hands on her hips, "Joe, this is going to sound hypocritical after everything I have been saying all day but I don't want Mikkish to give up his book. He obviously is using it for the right reasons." She turns to look at him with weary eyes, "I hope. Yet there is a reason they want it. If we are comparing these deaths with the people who are getting entangled with Mikkish, then they obviously are bad news and they could damn well use that book for purposes more vicious then this. If that book means giving this guy more power then he is going to have to rip the beating heart out of my chest before I give it to him." She moved to stand beside Mikkish, her features darkening as her Russian accent turned more deadly, "I agree with him, we should try our chances to bring the motherfucker down. That son of a bitch deserves to pay, and I need new body parts for my corpses."
"I agree with him, we should try our chances to bring the motherfucker down. That son of a bitch deserves to pay, and I need new body parts for my corpses." Mikkish smirked "Woah. Remind me not to piss you off." He said in response to the part about body parts and corpses. It sounded like something out of a movie or violent video game. "Joe, she is right. If some 'powerful mage' is fine killing random ass people, and is after my book, why would we give it to him when it could make him stronger? Think about that. How do we know he won't just kill us anyway? That's not the only thing though. I don't like being threatened. If this fucker thinks he can get anything out of me by killing people that have nothing to do with me, he has another thing coming." Mikkish said, as students and teachers began crowding around the scene. Two teachers ran up to the body. One attempted healing magic. The other tried necromancy. Both failed. "We need to figure out more about the actual killings though. He obviously targets students. Or mages around 18 to 20. We shouldn't talk about it here though. Lets go to the dorms." Mikkish gestured for everyone to follow him and began walking.
I sighed. "We've only been here for a few days, we've barely even used magic, and if we give the guy the book, there might be a way to track him, I mean we have magic, there must be stuff like tracking spells or something, we give it to him, we follow the trace, and then we can have the proper authorities, people with much more magical experience than us, deal with it, I don't think anyone here is getting, we can't take him on with our current experience, it would be more likely that we'd get ourselves killed before anything else..." I said. "But of course there is always an alternative... we destroy the book, no one has it and we wouldn't have to worry about it anymore, if it's this important that it's killing people, it might be for the best that no one has that knowledge, we could do it a public place, where he would be likely to see it, he'd also try to stop us, thus also catching him... it'd be the quickest and safest way to the truth that would eliminate all possible future ramifications, if we keep this book, then it's likely that more and more people would come for it and put us all in more danger, if we destroyed the book in secret then the guy would continue killing people, thinking that Mikkish is just holding out on him." I said crossing my arms. "But again, this is just conjecture, it's entirely possible that the killer is killing people for some other purpose, a type of ritual that would kill a lot of people, I mean the killings seem kind of ritualistic... I mean they both had something in common, the eyes, how they were gouged out. It kind of points toward the possibility of a ritual, if we focus on one truth alone and ignore all other evidence then we could just prolong this maniac's killing spree or allow whatever he has planned be unleashed." I said. "And one last thing, Mikkish, how do you know that he's targeting people between the ages of eighteen and twenty? I mean we don't know who these people are and their bodies were badly damaged, for all we know that woman could have been thirty, and that man could have been twenty five. I don't think that we should focus on the victims for now, there's only been two, so it might just be random people he's killing off, I do think we should look into them, however we shouldn't yet make them the priority of the investigation. I think we should focus on determining whether this might be part of a ritual, or if this is just a message that he's continuing to send out to you, the best idea would be heading to the library and looking into rituals such as these... hopefully books like those wouldn't be restricted knowledge... but if they were... it could potentially narrow down the list of suspects if it were a student or teacher that was committing these atrocities." I said.
Jinx gave a light smile at Mikkish's comment then turned to listen to Joe, "Well apart from the eyes there is another thing that is quite obvious. Both of the victims were Mages. As for age, the female was 18 the male was 19. They were students and suffered minimal body scars prior to the accident. The flesh is easy to read and leaves an imprint memory when someone dies." "Joe, If he is strong enough to repress a soul he is definitely strong enough to destroy a tracking spell. I don't trust our enemy, and the point of the matter is, even without the book he is killing innocent students. You think he is going to stop when the book is destroyed or if we give it to him. Whoever this person is, I can only imagine they have a more insidious agenda and I am not going to sit by and wait for the grown ups to handle this situation. We are mages, and if I can't use my power to help out my fellow people, then I am no stronger then an insect. I will not sit back while injustice is done, not when I can do something about it." "As well as with the victims, I do think more study is relevant, but we need to talk about this first and create a plan." She looked around at the group and moved aside from the body to step outside of the crowd, "Let's go to the dorms, and speak privately. Whoever did this could be listening to us right at this moment, and I don't want him to know what is happening or who is involved. I also promise that later tonight, I will visit the local graveyard and find out what the locals say about the island. Understanding geography and the history of this place might shed some light on previous deaths and misfortunes."
