A ghost out of his grave.
It was time.
Vic had spent so much time preparing for this that beginning the ritual felt like a weight lifting. It was either relief or the steady creep of exhaustion slipping in after a month or more of being shrugged away, and if it was the latter then Vic knew it was about to get much worse. He didn’t have the time to feel tired, especially not now.
Now was showtime.
He’d used his ritual athame to draw warding glyphs along all the walls of his home. It was fully charged by virtue of his spending so much time with it, so the energy it directed emerged as vibrant peels of light across the paint of his walls that faded into smoked and precise scorch marks. Once he was sure his living room was ritually sealed from any outside supernatural interference, Vic shoved his couch and table back to create a clear area of the floor.
The sigils he drew there were just as careful: spirals upon spirals, runes upon runes, all creating a weave of occult ley lines interspersed with drips of resin. They radiated from a central position on the floor and interwove a hellish pentagram. You couldn’t get much more typical than this, though Vic’s work was the real thing and not someone’s approximation. Fuck, it’d take hours to clean this up after. He didn’t want to think about it. (Maybe Vic wouldn’t have to worry about it. Aah. Funny...)
The magic circle on the floor had specific spots where Vic put specific things; chalices, incense, a lock of hair, a wrapped tooth, woven bands of marigolds, etc. The ley lines that connected each element evoked an intent that only devils could read.
It took a while. When he had everything in place and the candles and incense were all set and burning, Vic picked up Mephistopheles (who had been watching all of this with huge eyes from the top of his cat tower,) kissed his whiskered cheeks and deposited the cat in his (Vic’s) new bedroom (which had previously been his work room. It was still his work room. He just slept on the lounge now.)
“Sorry, buddy.”
Vic set him inside and closed the door. The devil was accosted by immediate wailed meows of protest. A single black paw shoved itself beneath the door and swiped pathetically as though it belonged to a prisoner. As much as Mephistopheles could turn into smoke and breeze free from his cage if he wanted, Vic knew Meph would listen to him and stay where he was. Vic couldn’t risk anything upsetting the spell and—well, he didn’t want anything to happen to his cat if something went wrong.
“You go to Pepper if this all goes tits up, yeah?” This was a gentle, whispered sentiment uttered when Vic squatted and tucked a finger into the outstretched paw. Meph’s claws curled to grasp his fingertip and the devil smiled. After several seconds he pulled away and (with a deep, extended exhale) returned to the living room.
The atmosphere had changed. The candles and incense had kicked up their output, becoming thick and heavy as they mixed to create a faint fog that began to drift across the floor. The runic ley lines he’d put down flickered with each step he took when Vic approached.
Time. It was time to give someone more time.
He stood in the middle of the circle with his feet paced apart and concentrated. A rapid heat began to form in the room. The seared scorch marks littering the wood began to glow; he murmured a number of phrases in Infernal, which drifted from his mouth and layered over themselves in whispers until they, too, seemed to fill the space.
The lines flickered. Conjured flame began to climb from them. Between his hands Vic drew and clutched an ornate black mirror. Its glassy surface was reflectionless and its gothic-style frame unmarked except for what looked like fresh carvings. Vic murmured again and drew his focus in… in, further, farther…
Show me. Smoke uncurled from his hands and kissed the mirror’s surface. The dark glass grew hot. Hotter.
Vic had expected to have more trouble with his scrying mirror. He’d thought he’d have to work much harder to find and pull what he was looking for, or worse, had worried he might find it in rough shape that would require more time than he might have to make this work with the absence of a body.
But what he sought was perfect. Its shape was clear. It was also close, much closer than it had reason to be, flickering, responsive and trailing attachment even through the veil that separated life and death (and dimensions, and other such vast, slip-through spaces—and so Vic had a guess, even if it was only a guess, as to a reason why this might be.)
Yes. Soul. It was a beautiful one by the estimation of devils. Vic rarely got to spend such time with raw souls that wasn’t fraught or violent. He’d enjoyed this work. It was something new.
Runes flared across the crystalline surface. The unseen slip of paper with a name on it that Vic had tucked between glass and backing erupted with brilliant green fire that had the entire mirror flaring to life. The markings on his arms echoed the sudden eruption and inked like embers melting across his skin.
A wind picked up. Vic’s eyes shifted from steel to ruby as he tensed, and through the mirror, he reached.
Now.
He reached through runes of calling, runes of recognition, sigils of binding. In his mind, deep within himself through all the fire that raged as his devil-given power roared in this suspension of being, through the unfelt hollow where some part of him lay hidden still, he reached.
The glassy surface shifted and echoed a ghostly image that became sharper. It was a face--one both unknown and familiar. And through the mirror, into a kind of purgatorial in-between that its surface reflected, Vic grasped a name… and touched a soul.
Release.
The mirror shattered. It split down the middle by the runic marks that had been imprinted into its surface and became nothing (farewell, Vic thought.) Its demise was much like a gate blowing open and into a shower of shards that reflected the phantom light of bright green eyes. And, as it did, the soul Vic had summoned surged into himself.
This absorption wasn’t met with resistance. Lightning-strike sparks smoked up the ley line threads of the tattoos on his hands, arms and body as the soul filled him. Power ruptured at his feet; beneath him, something whispered into life by the raging winds and Infernal scrawls and ritual components melded together, swelled and took shape. Limbs. Face.
The soul phased into him in the blink of a second, and Vic was—
—was feeling. Fingers stretched within his own; he could feel the phantom touch of them like a memory, could feel the ghost of another’s breath in his lungs, the ache of a laugh, a sensation of…
… something so light and airy that he almost swore his wings could catch it and it’d be perfect. Then, something else familiar:
Euphoria.
Sense and memory overlapped. Vic held fast.
