"How many victims are we talking about?" Asked Conrad as the group walked to their destination.

  "There were like nine missing posters on the store's bulletin." Answered Kurt. His gaze lowered. "Plus the cashier. But I'm pretty sure there are quite a bit more."

  "Well," said Mila, her expression a lot less cheerful than usual. "there aren't gonna be more. We are making sure of that."

  Kurt smiled. "Yeah, that's right. By the way, the familiar that guided me here is in the house, so we should stick together until we find it. Its wounded, but that won't matter much if it goes for a sneak attack."

  Conrad chuckled. "Quite the detail you were forgetting, man. Something else we should know?"

  "Yes." Answered Kurt. "There's some kind of... energy field around the house."

  "Energy field?" Asked Mila. "Like a force field?"

  "No. It was more like an... anti-magic field. The flow of aether inside it is muted. Weaker. Sorcery is going to be a lot harder within it, and there could be traps in it. I don't want to be getting into someone's lair on my lonesome, especially if sorcery is off the table."

  "A ward." said Conrad. "It's something decently skilled sorcerer's can put around fixed locations. It strengthens their own sorcery and weakens their foe's."

  "Only sorcery?" Asked Kurt. "So your Aura and Mila's spirit control should be safe, then."

  "And your Od control." Added Mila.

  "All of that should work just fine." Confirmed Conrad.

  Kurt sighed. "That's one thing less to worry about." He stopped walking, and looked to the side. "Here we are."

  The decrepit building stood in front of them, flanked by the forest. Only a dirt road connected it with the rest of the world. The group approached, and Kurt felt that 'drop' in his aether once again. The house's lights were all turned off.

  "Okay, how do we do this?" Asked Conrad. The group was standing at the front door, which was predictably closed. "If whoever lives at this place comes back and sees their front door forced open, we'll lose the element of surprise. Should we break through one of the side windows?"

  "No." Retorted Kurt. "They're more likely to be rigged with traps, so we should leave it as a last resort. Let me try something."

  Kurt crouched in front of the door, and, after manifesting his wand, pressed it against the lock as if it were a key. A light blue glow emanated from both the wand and within the lock, from which clicking noises began to emanate.

  Dynamancy was, by itself, a pretty weak and inneficient spell, with a spiritual structure that could only be called brittle. This was its cross as a physical spell that used no medium to manifest itself. On top of that was the effect of the ward, which seemed to eat at the already weak spell.

  And despite all this, it was Kurt's best option, simply for how precise it was. Fire or Wind evocations would only help him at blowing the door up.

  Trying to unlock the door felt a lot like trying to solve a greased up rubick cube atop a moving train. His focus slipped, the energy of the spell jumped or dispersed without notice, and the lock resisted all attemps to unlock it with such success that Kurt started to believe it was enchanted.

  The click that came from it, and the subsequent sound of creaking wood as the door opened, came to him as manna from heaven.

  His eyes darted at his AP bar. "Holy mother of mercy. That took a tenth of my aether!"

  "That's a ward for you." said Conrad, patting Kurt's shoulder.

  "How come you know so much about sorcery?" Kurt asked.

  The author's narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

  Conrad ignored him, and walked inside. With a sigh, Kurt followed, Mila walking by his side.

  The interior of the house was damp, and so dark Kurt had to cycle Od through his eyes to see something. A cloying smell impregnated the walls and floor. Conrad was still standing at the entrance, waiting for them to come in.

  "Should we turn the lights on?" Asked Mila. "Since that thing is still somewhere in the house..."

  "Won't be necessary." Answered Kurt while pulling three flashlights from his inventory, and handed one at Conrad and Mila. "I've put all my supplies in my inventory."

  "...Neat." said Conrad while switching his flashlight on. "Let's go kill that thing."

  They moved in formation, covering for each other's blind spots, and Kurt and Conrad kept their swords unsheathed. They walked past the entrance, and into the kitchen. Nothing there. They repeated this process through the living room, the bathroom, and the bedroom. By the end, the only place left unchecked was a a room that was blocked by a thick wooden door with a lock the size of Kurt's hand.

  They still hadn't found the familiar, and though it seemed unlikely that it could have entered the room before them, given that it was still locked and its door intact, they knew better than to use such a mundane logic. The thing was most likely a construct of some kind, a creature whose body was made not out of flesh, but out of an alchemically brewed substance whose elasticity could make passing through such a tight space possible.

  "Wanna try that lockpicking trick on this one?" Conrad asked.

  Kurt walked in fron of the door. "Since the guy won't be able to see this one from outside the house..." He flared Od across his leg, and kicked the door down with a 300-esque kick. "No, I don't"

  The room was a small office. A solid wood desk occupied the space across the door, and a small bookshelf stood agains the room's left wall. Kurt saw a small journal laid on the desk.

  An inhuman snarl came from above. The three of them raised their flashlights in unison.

  And the familiar was strapped to the floor like a xenomorph. Its dark blue blood fell in small rivulet's to the floor. It turned its head at the group, and lunged at them with all of its arms outstretched, hungry for new prey.

  Needless to say, it chose poorly.

  Blue Aura coated Conrad's arm, and his sword slashed at the creature so fast that even Kurt saw it as a blur. The slash separated the creature's head from its body, and both fell in two rapidly deteriorating piles at the wooden floor.

  "Welp, that's that." said Mila. She turned her head towards the desk and bookshelf. "Let's invade this guy's privacy."

  And invade privacy they did. Conrad and Mila began shuffling through the books in the shelf, while Kurt went for the journal at the desk. It was a small book, with a cover of rough, grey leather. He shuffled through the pages, most of which were blank. The ones that actually had stuff written on them were filled with terms that Kurt was quite familiar with.

  Lifeforce.

  Fae.

  Aura of Red.

  Kurt's eyes bulged. He stopped his shuffling, and began reading.

  The process of sealing The Aura of Red took no less than a year: The vessel had to be meticulously prepared through a modified, sped up, version of the Sokushinbutsu ritual. Once the vessel had been prepared, and the power of the aura started 'shinning' through it, it became imperative to move. The amount of places where a ritual capable of manipulating the raw, unfiltered power of the aura are very scarce indeed, and reaching them with the giant beacon that's the aura on our backs...

  This warlock. The one who was behind all those dissapearances. The one in whose house they were right now, was part of the coven that had sealed The Aura of Red.

  Just... what were the odds? They had stopped at this town because of the train's schedule, Kurt had only gotten out the train because their supplies had just happened to run out, and the warlock's familiar had decided to act precisely in the store Kurt had just visited.

  And now it turned out that it was all conected to the coven they were pursuing. This couldn't all be coincidental, could it? Perhaps...

  The front door opened, the sound of its hinges creaking flooding the house. The sound of stepping, light and uneven as if the new arrival was limping, soon followed. And it was approaching the office. The three of them tensed, but remained perfectly silent. Kurt pressed his ear to the wall that separated the office from the hall, and cycled Od through it, boosting his hearing to the extreme.

  The steps reached the hall, and stopped suddenly. It was quite clear why: The house's owner had seen the ruined entrance to their office, and the still dissolving corpse of their familiar, which laid in the threshold.

  The stranger's march started anew. Their steps were now slower, lighter, and more measured. Kurt's magic sense, dulled as it was due to the ward, caught a sharp increase in energy coming from the other side of the wall. He gestured at Conrad and Mila to wait, to stay still. Kurt would be dealing with this by himself.

  The steps, slow and measured and oddly uneven as they were, still carried the unknown warlock through the hall and towards them. Aether pooled thick and sharp around their form, and Kurt knew than even one spell from them would be more than enough to kill any of them. It didn't matter. He wouldn't let it matter.

  The steps finally reached the point of the hall Kurt's ear was facing.

  Now.

  Od flared across his form, bright and strong, and he tackled towards the wall. Or rather, he tackled through the wall. A cloud of dust and drywall blinded him, but he kept his charge. He felt his shoulder hit a second obstacle, one considerably lighter and softer than the wall, and he felt that obstacle being sent flying towards the adjacent wall, and crash against it with a high-pitched scream.

  The aura of aether dissipated now that no conscious will was keeping it together.

  Conrad's voice came from behind. "Holy shit." He began laughing. "Good job, man!"

  "Thanks." He answered between coughs. He swatted a Od-empowered arm around, trying to dispel the blinding and noxious cloud.

  His gaze lowered towards the warlock's unconscious form. 'They', or rather she, was a lithe, short woman with blonde hair. She looked to be in her twenties, and her factions were sharp and angular. To her side laid a wooden staff not unlike the one that member's of the Solomonic Order carried, though her's lacked any particular markings. His eyes were drawn to her foot, singular: Her right leg ended in a stump right below the knee. She must have been using her staff as a crouch.

  Warlock of the Red Horn Cult

  Anya Lawson

  LV: 18

  "What do we do with her?" Asked Mila. "It's not like we can just call the cops."

  Neither Kurt nor Conrad said anything. Kurt pulled a length of rope from his inventory, one of the supplies he had stored in it during the last two days.

  "First, we interrogate her." he said. "We'll figure out what we do with her later."