Chapter 15: Divination after Divination

  Mr. Magician looked at the murdered victim’s personal belongings. Thinking about divination while seeing clothes reminded him of his first day, the day he became a mystic.

  “If divination won’t work, how am I supposed to help?”

  Ms. Silver thought for a moment before snapping her fingers. The temperature in the room dropped slightly and Mr. Magician understood what she had done. Just like when they were on the carriage, she made the room soundproof.

  “Mr. Magician, listen closely. Divination with the aid of the spirit world or the demon world isn’t about quickly finding a location or answers. We as mystics use divination as a way to find clues that leads us to the answer.

  Divination isn’t omniscient, but that doesn't mean that the clues gotten from divination are false. Do you know about the party trick involving three cups and one small object?

  The object could be a stone or something valuable. There is one person performing the trick and then there is one person that will guess under which cup the object is in.

  The one performing the trick will move the cups at high speed. Then after moving the cups the one performing the trick will line the cups up, allowing the guesser to guess where the object is.

  Let’s say that the guesser only has enough spirituality to perform divination twice. There are multiple methods to perform divination, one method isn’t more correct than the other.

  If we call what we get through divination answers, then we will confuse divination with omniscience. One example is that the guesser uses his divination to figure out that two out of the cups doesn’t have anything in them.

  Does that mean that the third cup has the object?”

  Just as Mr. Magician was about to answer, the pendent around his neck started to glow softly with an ethereal light, something only a saint would notice. Ms. Silver didn’t mind it.

  “No…”

  Mr. Magician was confused for a minute but then remembered the entities within him. The eyes that watched him in silence… Why did I just answer, No? Does it have something to do with that gaze?

  He quickly decided to forget what he had just remembered as he felt horrified and focused on Ms. Silver’s words.

  “Correct. The object could be moved into the trickster’s sleeve. Be careful of how you word things while performing divination. This is why I personally prefer to call divination results as clues.

  The clues aren’t answers, the one performing the divination will have to figure out the answer through the clues that they get through divination.”

  Ms. Silver picked up the ripped shirt belonging to the dead victim and handed it to Mr. Magician.

  “Use this for the divination. However, be careful. Some beings, including mystics are capable of attacking you when they are being observed through divination.

  Stop the divination when you have gotten what you need. No more, only less. If you feel threatened, end the divination.”

  Mr. Magician felt scared but somehow excited. He steeled his resolve before answering.

  “Understood!”

  The blood on the shirt had dried. Mr. Magician was at first afraid of looking at the blood because of fear that his desires would make him lick it.

  Fortunately, except from there being more saliva in his mouth than usual, he had no reaction to the blood.

  After thinking of a plan, Mr. Magician took out his ceremonial dagger and sealed the room with a spiritual barrier. This caused Ms. Silver to nod in approval.

  After letting out a sigh of relief, Magician returned his ceremonial dagger to its sheath on his back underneath his suit jacket.

  After sitting down on a chair, Mr. Magician took a pen and a piece of paper and was about to write down his divination statement but stopped himself.

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  Mr. Magician thought of ways to ease his dream divination, but after weighing the benefits with the disadvantages he decided to refrain from writing his divination statement down.

  He nodded at Ms. Silver and then calmed himself and prepared to perform the divination. With an ethereal voice, Mr. Magician recited his divination statement.

  “The death of the last wearer of this shirt.”

  “The death of the last wearer of this shirt.”

  “The death of the last wearer of this shirt!”

  After closing his eyes, Mr. Magician fell into a deep sleep. Darkness enveloped Mr. Magician and he was forced to open his eyes.

  He saw a man in a white ceramic mask with a teardrop under his left eye standing in front of him. He had a white suit reminiscent of a suit a noble would wear.

  Fear enveloped Mr. Magician as he saw a smile appear on the man in front of him. The white mask only covered the upper part of the man’s face.

  A chilling sensation ran down Mr. Magician’s spine as the man in white mask opened his mouth.

  “Greetings! You, my dear, will have the great honour of becoming my prey. I will count down from 10, you may run if you wish.”

  Unable to move because of fear, Mr. Magician stood still while in shock. The man in front of him started counting down.

  A short moment later the man reached zero, and suddenly Mr. Magician could feel a piercing pain in his stomach.

  “How wonderful! Your blood is a pretty colour!”

  Mr. Magician fell to his knees and then felt how foreign objects started to pierce his body. He let out a desperate scream and then saw his own body as his head was cut off from his neck.

  Mr. Magician watched as the man in a white suit started to devour his arm. From this view of his own body, Mr. Magician noticed something off… That isn’t my body! That shirt belongs to the victim!

  After regaining his composure, Mr. Magician entered a state of lucidity that didn’t belong to a man that had just gotten his head cut off. He willed for himself to appear as an ethereal body instead of as the victim.

  An ethereal body appeared next to the body of the victim. It was

  Mr. Magician in his dark suit and short purple cape.

  After regaining his bearings, he looked at the man in a white suit that was now covered in blood on his arms and upper body.

  Mr. Magician started to infuse spirituality into his body as to easier convey what he sees to Ms. Silver in the real world.

  “I see a man in a white suit eating the victim. He has a white ceramic mask with a tear under his left eye. Only the upper part of his face is covered by the mask. I am guessing he wants easy access to his victims.”

  There was no way for Ms. Silver to convey her voice to Mr. Magician while he is performing dream divination.

  After looking for information he could have missed, Mr. Magician was about to leave the dream but stopped as his intuition told him something.

  “What if I use him in this dream to find him in the real world?”

  He spoke his thoughts out loud. Thoughts suddenly emerged in Mr. Magician’s mind as he pondered over a question out loud.

  “What would happen if I tried to use another dream divination? Would the divination fail because I am using a divination as a medium for another divination? Or would the divination work but barely produce anything remotely useful…”

  Another thought popped into Mr. Magician’s mind as he was pondering on what would happen if he used a divination as a medium for another medium.

  “Why am I able to see this dream from a third person point of view? Ms. Snow never mentioned how a successful dream divination would be like… Is this the remnant memory of the shirt? Is that possible?”

  After thinking about the multiple topics that popped up in his mind, Mr. Magician decided to not delay his next move any longer. He focused on an object hanging around his neck and it showed itself in a rather splendid manner in the dream.

  The object in question was the monocle pendant he had gotten from the house haunted by spirits on his first assignment. His understanding of mysticism coupled with the intuition that he received from the spirit characteristics within his body told him that the spirit characteristic within the monocle is an Anti-Divination characteristic.

  “To contact an unknown entity is rather unsafe. But if the entity itself is already rather amicable to the mystic, it becomes much safer.”

  Mr. Magician held up the monocle pendant and asked a question with a kind voice.

  “Are you willing to aid me?”

  The monocle pendant started to glimmer. It started to swing back and forth both in the dream and in the real world.

  “Thanks, let’s start.”

  Mr. Magician told his plan to Ms. Silver and planned to start immediately. He thought of the divination statement and had no choice but leave its success in the hands of fate.

  He started by reciting his divination statement thrice while holding the pendant in his nondominant left hand and his right hand at the dream projection of the murderer in a white suit.

  “Dweller of the crystal eye.

  You who is carried by a young magician in purple.

  Reveal the location of the masked man in white that killed a man in the east district. He who had a tear beneath his left eye.”

  “Dweller of the crystal eye.

  You who is carried by a young magician in purple.

  Reveal the location of the masked man in white that killed a man in the east district. He who had a tear beneath his left eye.”

  “Dweller of the crystal eye.

  You who is carried by a young magician in purple.

  Reveal the location of the masked man in white that killed a man in the east district. He who had a tear beneath his left eye!”

  …

  The reminiscent man, left alone in the empty vacuum of space looked at a planet green and blue in colour.

  “It’s similar.”

  The man looked back on the memory he had just thought of… I thought that I understood the power of divination back then. Now, I know that I only scratched the surface.