Everything about the path felt wrong. The darkness had a sticky weight that grabbed onto every part of me. The moment I set foot in the dock, it was like wading through mud. I had to fight for every step towards the warehouse. My flashlight couldn’t pierce through more than five feet and even that required all my focus. The Third Eye was better, but not by much.

  “Wol, you’re still there?”

  “I am,” His voice sounded far.

  “Come back, stay near me. Don’t go too far,” I said.

  I walked a few more feet and saw Wol paused mid step. His ear twitched in acknowledgement of my presence and the feline familiar matched his pace with mine.

  “Hwari?”

  ‘Yes, Caller?’

  “Can you sense it?”

  ‘The darkness suffocates my senses. I cannot see,” She said, ‘If you wish, I could go ahead and–’

  “No,” I said immediately, “You too. Stick close to me.”

  Not a moment after I finished talking, we all heard a sound that made us freeze.

  A series of clicks that made me think of pincer-shaped claws hitting each other in rapid succession. The sound cut through the fog and bounced off of non-existent walls, surrounding us. The clicks repeated themselves again, coming from deeper within, and faded away –but not before it ended with a satisfied hiss. What followed the hiss was the stench of rotting meat. I physically recoiled from it, trying to stifle my gags. A putrid fetid odor that made my brain start screaming that there was something terrible ahead.

  I ended up throwing up.

  Whatever came out of my mouth splashed into the water and I stepped back, startled.

  The darkness had cut off all sight, and only my triangular beam of light was visible. But I’d been so focused on moving forward that I’d forgotten that we were surrounded by water on either side.

  If I had taken even a single step closer…

  I shook my head. I didn’t want to think about that. Not now.

  “Wol, are you able to tell me if I get too close to the edge?” I whispered.

  “...No. Not in this darkness. I can only see a little further than you can.”

  “Hwari?”

  ‘I can, but I will need to be apart from you, Caller,”

  “I just need to know if I’m walking too close to the edge. Can you do that without straying?”

  ‘Yes,’ Then she went silent.

  Hwari’s body was already made of shadow, so she was nigh invisible even without submerging into the darkness as she always did. But when I closed my eyes and concentrated on my Third Eye, I could sense her nearby.

  We continued.

  I walked by dragging my feet along the ground, like I was checking for traps or afraid that I might bump into something. It made for slow progress, but it was one way to manage my fear which was growing by the minute.

  More clicking sounds followed by a hiss, and another wave of nausea. Then something new; a peculiar scraping sound, like nails scratching the wall… followed by the odor of waste. The daemon had just emptied his guts and was marking the walls with it.

  Every step I took, every click, every hiss, every wave of rotten meat and shit, was another blow to my rapidly crumbling mental state. My mind struck a precarious balance between the eldritch madness induced headache making my head numb, versus the pure terror paralysis that would have me drop everything and run for the hills.

  ‘Caller, we’re here inside the building,’ Hwari said inside my head, ‘The daemon is at the far side and–’

  I didn’t bother listening.

  I exploded into motion.

  This whole time, we’d been acting on the daemon’s terms. From him playing with the lamplights, to having us walk through the dock in darkness, purposefully sending fear-inducing psychic attacks through noise and odors, everything was some kind of sick meticulous mastermind plan to weaken me and have me dance to his tune.

  Well, I’d danced to the tune of others for long enough.

  The world became a shade of gray as I knelt and slammed the flashlight down onto the floor, sending a beam of light flaring up into the ceiling. With my other hand, I reached in my jacket pocket and brought out the brush still wet with white paint and immediately drew a circle around it.

  A triangle inside a circle, a combination of occult ritual practice and Euclid’s fifth postulate.

  “Daemon!” My voice stabbed through the darkness, more hurried than confident, just loud rather than authoritative. “My name is Jain Shin Hallow! I’ve come for your name! I’ve come for your wrongdoings! I’ve come for your seal!”

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  I moved again, reaching in my bag and grabbing the can of paint. I opened it. Even as I did, something was moving. Footsteps, stomping in my direction. A faint screaming could be heard, further than I thought, but closer than I needed it to be.

  Dipping the brush, I immediately drew another circle outside the first. I stepped into it. “Daemon! Answer me!”

  The scream came from right next to my ear and I fell out of shock.

  “Jain!”

  I felt something small and furry bury itself into the side of my body, twisting the trajectory of my fall so that I was still in the circle.

  My mind barely registered it, still reeling from the fucking scream of a thousand different voices that had echoed –not echoed, exploded– like a thunderclap that just went on and on and on. A horrible grating sound that went against everything I knew, something I’d never heard before. The screams of a thousand men and women twisted into some flesh-rending creature that only knew how to imitate but not create.

  I had to get to the next part of my plan, but I couldn’t remember what it was.

  Hwari splashed into the circle, her tail fin ripped to shreds.

  ‘Teeth, fangs, mouth, it devours and swallows and lays waste, marks the walls with it,’ She said in a hurry, ‘Then it eats its waste, then devours, and swallows and–’

  “Hunger, gluttony,” Wol leaped to his feet, holding his left paw tenderly, “It’s a daemon of hunger and waste.”

  I had no idea what that meant but the conversation between the two bought me enough time to bring up the next part of my plan.

  I grabbed the paint brush again. “Oh Daemon foul! Reveal thy monstrous shape!”

  The chant went through cleanly and I could feel the iambic pentameter stressing feed my Circle stronger than a regular chant could have.

  I began to hear things being knocked over. A creature lumbered back and forth with speed that was just not possible, throwing shadows of drum barrels and cement blocks, bags of sand which exploded midair and threatened to impinge on my circle.

  While the daemon was busy, I reached outside of the second circle with the paint brush to draw the third circle.

  Something grabbed my arm and pulled.

  I screamed in response and immediately dug my heels into the ground. Maybe it was the circle, maybe it’s the supernatural strengths that moms get when their babies are about to be hit by a car, or maybe my arm was too skinny to grab onto too tightly. The daemon roared in rage, his clawed hands slipping off my hand and taking a chunk of my sleeve with it.

  My shirt was smoking. More specifically, the tapes I’d put on myself were smoking. The ones on my pants too.

  I bent over, to get more paint on the brush.

  It was gone. Maybe I’d kicked it, but the important part was that it was gone.

  And paint had splattered all over a portion of my innermost circle. With it, the triangular beam of light was dimmer; the darkness was crowding in and trying to swallow it.

  I acted without thinking, grabbing the brush and dipping it in the leftover pool and quickly drew an outside circle, instantly reciting the chant I’d worked so hard on in the car ride over. “Thou reeking swine! Declare your wretched name!”

  “Jain! It’s–”

  The circle came to life with the second iambic pentameter, hummed to power then strained as the daemon slammed himself into it. The ground shook and I fell to my knees, gasping for breath.

  “Jain, don’t look!”

  ‘Close your eyes, Caller!’

  The daemon pressed his face against the wall of my circle and I quickly looked away.

  Teeth –no, tusks– stuck out at jagged angles and curled aggressively back into its own face. It had no eyes, just mouths where they were supposed to be. Before I looked away, it had put its hands against the wall and more mouths opened up on the palms, licking at my circle while they started to smoke.

  That was it. Not how tall it was, and what its features were. Just tusks and mouths over its body, yet that picture alone would live in my Third Eye forever and I nearly started crying right there out of joyous horror at taking another step deeper into the truth of my world.

  Then its presence was gone, sprinting towards the other end.

  “Jain, it’s trying to leave,” Wol hissed.

  The darkness was heavy again, but I heard the lumbering footsteps of the beast.

  I took the paint brush, and finished another circle on the outside. Bigger, better without oblongness to it. My Third Eye was sharper, working in tandem with the rest of my senses to lend them a supernatural edge. “Return, O Daemon! Tell me now thy name!”

  There was a pained groan that bounced off the walls. Once more, the darkness cleared somewhat and the light from my flashlight became less shapeless fluorescent and more angular.

  “Wol, that was my third chant using Iambic Pentameter,” I panted, somehow drained even though I hadn’t moved a step out of the circle. I couldn’t tell just how tired I was anymore. The hunger, the fatigue that had built up over the last two days; adrenaline wasn’t enough to keep it down. “The third circle, I need to draw it but I can’t power it using the Iambic Pentameter chant or it’ll throw the whole thing off.

  “I don’t think you need to,” Wol said, “You have other means, Practitioner.”

  I met his eyes and understood what he meant.

  I bent down and grabbed the paint brush, then started to draw.

  Triangles, lines, dots, all meeting together in the middle in an intricate-looking design though I hadn’t put any thought into. I instinctively knew that the circle was a mess from a diabolism or demonology perspective, but it was full of Euclidic workings that was supposed to bind it to our reality using the truth of this world.

  I smelled smoke and that made me freeze.

  Over the last two days, I've encountered a lot of fires. I knew what it smelled like. It was baked in my clothes, soaked into my skin, and imprinted into my instincts that fire hurt. I knew without looking that there were scars on the back of my legs and my back which I’d been ignoring that I was noticing just now. But that wasn’t what had stopped me.

  This fire smelled different.

  It smelled… like… like…

  It smelled of madness.