Chapter Fifty-Four: The Exorcism

There was something subtly unnerving about the Salvadoreen Manor.

It looked almost painfully normal from afar, at least by the standards of a noble house. It was large and had at least four floors from what I could tell, with great limestone walls and a golden roof. An outer wall overseen by winged lion statues surrounded the property, including its garden and hedge maze. A pair of steel gates, sealed by no less than eight witchcrafter-powered locks, prevented access to the property. In short, it was clean, undisturbed, and untouched by time.

Which couldn’t be the case. This manor hadn’t been visited in over a decade and a half. Part of it should have crumbled away from a lack of maintenance by now; the hedge maze should have been overgrown; and dirt should have covered its walls and roof. The place looked too well-maintained.

Of course, there was also the not-so-small matter of the stench of death, rot, and wicked essence permeating from the property. Witchcrafter seals on the walls kept those dark influences safely contained within the Salvadoreen Manor, but I could still sense them with my essence sight.

The Blight here wasn’t as powerful as the one that plagued Snowdrift. The Salvadoreen Manor curse had been contained for years, and Belgoroth’s defeat put an end to his Berserk Flame. Still, I wouldn’t be lying if I said that the sight of this haunted house gleaming under the pale moonlight didn’t fill me with disquiet.

I wasn’t the only one to feel uneasy either. Mersie stared at the entrance, her hands holding her arms. Chronius observed the manor with a hard gaze filled with remorse. The witchcrafters among us checked our supply of pure runestones to ensure that they would be sufficient to drain this swamp of corruption.

Nonetheless, I had little doubt that we would prevail. We had gathered half of the twenty-two Heroes, half of them with combat Classes and the other having great witchcrafting experience. This manor was no City of Wrath.

Besides helping Mersie move on with her past and cleaning up loose ends, I mostly saw this mission as a chance to get all of us used to working as a cohesive unit. I suspected we would confront much greater danger in the Shinkoku Empire, and experience could save lives.

Both Rubenzo and I would cooperate with our Vassal Classes, while Soraseo and Mirokald would escort Luciette. Marika and I were a bit ambivalent about having Beni join a field mission, even with his Alchemist power and early exorcist talent, but he insisted on participating.

His golem protector was newly functional, and he wanted to test it in the field.

“Those statues will attack us the moment we destroy the seal, won’t they?” Rubenzo guessed at my side, his finger pointing at the winged lions overseeing the outer wall. The Rogue came equipped with a rapier and a one-handed crossbow. I guessed he favored a fighting style similar to mine.

“I’m sure the hedge maze will try to entrap us too,” I mused. “It will twist and turn until it encircles us.”

“Naturally. I assume it would be ill-advised to set it on fire?”

“Feel free to cut it short.” I glanced at Mersie, whom I worried for the most. “You don’t mind if we do some gardening, do you? Pick some flowers?”

My joke drew a small chuckle from her, alleviating the tension in the air as I’d hoped. “Help yourselves,” she said. “The hedges haven't been trimmed in years.”

“We’ll be sure to do our gardening duties,” Rubenzo said before bravely putting his arms around both Mersie’s and Chronius’ shoulders, pushing them closer than either of them would like. “I must say, I am very happy to have two such beautiful and charming people as my allied Classes.”

His familiarity and boldness took both of his fellow Heroes aback, much to my amusement.

“The term is Vassal Class, I believe,” Mersie pointed out.

“Do you take me for the Knight, Milady? Vassals imply you’re my subordinates, and I don’t do hierarchies.” Rubenzo smirked ear to ear. “We’re friends. Maybe we’ll become more later, who knows?”

“Not interested,” Chronius said immediately, albeit with some awkwardness.

“You will not steal my heart,” Mersie replied with a mix of disdain and amusement. “And isn’t that old failure of an Archer too crusty for you?”

“Everyone deserves to know my love,” Rubenzo replied without shame. “Even the old and the ugly.”

I pitied those poor Rogue vassals. Nonetheless, his infectious bravado appeared to distract Mersie from dwelling too much on her old home. I suspected that Rubenzo reminded her of myself, too.

The clicking of metal and turning gears caused me to turn at its source. An armored knight nearly twice my size walked up to me, its heavy footfalls shaking the pavement with bone-jarring force. Its massive chest would put an ox to shame and its limbs were thicker than the trunks of small trees. I was very proud of the work Marika and I did on the blackened plate armor. It covered every inch of the body, with a raven-shaped great helm hiding the absence of a face, and a silver copy of the Alchemist’s mark gleamed on its visor.

Beni sat on its shoulders over a cloak of black feathers, his hands clutching the golem’s helmet. His mother followed closely after the duo while clad in armor and wielding her warhammer.

“How are you holding up there, Beni?” I asked him.

Beni responded with a thumbs up.

“I keep worrying he will fall off,” Marika said. “I should have thought of adding a backpack seat.”

“Well, we can enhance it over time,” I replied before reassuring Marika. “If the worst comes to pass, Beni can always retreat inside its chest cavity. Everything will be fine.”

We had designed the golem so that its back could open and allow Beni to crawl inside in case of emergency. It would prevent him from using his touch-based power on anything besides the golem and force him to hide within it, but that was the best design we could come up with so far.

“I hope so.” Marika let out a heavy sigh before checking the golem’s equipment one last time. A greatsword would have been an appropriate weapon for it, but Beni remained traumatized from the time his father nearly murdered him with Belgoroth’s claymore. In the end, we settled on a big spiked mace and a shield. “So far so good.”

She knew she couldn’t keep her son safe forever. This test would let us see if Beni’s protector could take over in her absence.

Our goal behind the golem’s design was to have it serve as a smokescreen for Beni. Most Knots likely received a report about Colmar’s appearance and nature, so having a strange masked knight bearing the Alchemist’s mark would likely fool them into believing he had survived our battle with Belgoroth and received enhancements. The more impressive our golem’s appearance, the more people would focus on it rather than Beni.

“Have you settled on a name yet?” I asked Beni, who answered with a series of hand signs which I quickly translated. “Ravengarde? I like it.”

“It’s appropriate,” Marika replied with a fond smile, right as Luciette and the others joined us. “Are we ready to proceed?”

“We are,” Luciette confirmed. Her robes shimmered with essence and she carried a few paper sheets in her hands. “I have finished mapping out the property and relevant points of interest.”

“Simply by touching the walls around it?” I asked with a whistle. Quite impressive.

“Them and our witnesses,” Luciette replied. Mersie and Chronius both managed to scowl in perfect synchronization. “I can interrogate more than mere objects.”

“Remind me never to make an enemy of you, Luciette,” Eris said. I noticed that my girlfriend was very careful to stay out of the Necromancer’s reach.

I couldn’t blame her. Luciette’s power was terrifyingly effective at quickly gathering information. The likes of Florence and Sebastian wouldn’t have been able to hide for long had she been around.

“You wouldn’t need to worry if you let me read you, my dear Eris,” Luciette replied with a sly smirk before distributing the paper sheets to each team. I quickly read mine to see a detailed layout of the Salvadoreen’s property, with a few crosses marking points spread across the property. While most were located inside the building itself, a few were spread around the garden. “All Blights require linchpins for their curse to take hold over an area. In this case, the spots where the individual murders took place.”

“I can think of a few,” Mersie said while glaring at Chronius, who remained stone-cold silent.

Luciette raised an eyebrow and then brushed the matter off. “Dropping a mass of purified runestones would do the job well enough, but I would suggest a more subtle surgical operation. Place the runestones at the spots I’ve marked and we’ll lift the curse without wasting too many resources.”

“Then we will split into three groups,” I said before outlining the plan one more time. It couldn’t hurt. “The ground floor will be the most dangerous, since that’s where most of the corrupted essence is gathered. The upper floors will be difficult to navigate, while the gardens’ points are spread out.”

“I’ll let the lady of the house make the call for our team,” Rubenzo declared.

“We’ll take care of the entrance,” Mersie said, her eyes venomously glaring at Chronius. “Unless he does not want to face his crimes?”

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Chronius scowled. “I gave my word.”

“The Monk, the Necromancer, and I can take on the upper floors,” Mirokald said. “I can navigate hidden passages easily enough with my power.”

“Then Marika, Beni, and I will take care of the gardens,” I decided. “Eris will serve as the go-between to ensure proper communications. Does anybody have any more questions?”

I received none, and we thus started the operation under the pale moonlight.

I came armed with a new wind-infused rapier and drew it the moment Luciette removed the gate locks keeping the Blight contained. The doors opened wide, and I sensed a cold, invisible pressure fall upon my shoulders the moment we crossed the threshold.

The walls screamed in alarm.

I would have loved to say I was speaking figuratively, but alas, I had no other word for that horror. Ghoulish human faces formed on the manor’s facade and let out ghastly wails into the night. A malevolent vibration spread across the Blight. I could almost taste its malice and eagerness to claim more victims.

Rubenzo’s guess proved correct. The statues immediately attacked us.

The winged lions took flight as we walked into the garden, their stone bodies moving with surprising agility as they jumped off their pedestals in utter silence. A few pounced at us, while others circled the sky above.

They weren’t alone either. The manor’s door opened wide, unleashing a crimson mist that smelled of death and rancid blood. A small horde of walking corpses rushed out to greet us, misshapen mannequins of skinless flesh and empty eye sockets charging forward in bloodstained noble clothes, wielding swords, chandeliers, and firestokes.

Though I doubted anyone could identify them by face, Mersie recognized their clothes well enough to freeze in place, her eyes widening in shock and horror.

“Mersie!” I shouted her name in an attempt to shake her out of her trance. Damn it, I feared something like this would happen. “Fior!"

Chronius didn’t hesitate. He opened hostilities by coldly nailing one of the undead with a knife to the face with such strength that it fell backwards onto the cold earth.

I couldn’t tell whether it was that sight or hearing her true name that snapped Mersie out of her paralysis, but rage swiftly overtook her fear. She charged with a snarl of rage and daggers in hand, making contact with the undead at the time as Soraseo. Her Assassin powers wouldn’t work on soulless pieces of animated meat, yet her steel carved a path all the same.

The garden descended into what I could at best describe as controlled chaos.

Most of us had already fought together before, so our team immediately adopted battle formations. Marika and I covered our group’s left flank, her warhammer smashing a winged lion’s stone face with immense force while my rapier skewered an undead swordsman in a single stroke. Sharp wind surged from my blade and cut through flesh and bones like a knife through butter.

I expected Beni to scream or cower, but the boy’s bravery kept surprising me. Though the sight of these monsters caused his skin to turn pallid, he simply pointed a finger at the nearest one. Ravengarde immediately raised its mace and shattered an undead corpse’s skull in a single stroke. Unlike a full golem that could act on its own, our incomplete Contractual Intelligence required directions for now, which his charge was happy to provide.

I didn’t have to worry too much. My allies did a fine job taking care of themselves.

As usual, Soraseo cut down through anything that dared to stand in her way with casual ease, while Mirokald had an easy time skewering the undeads’ weak points with his spear. I guessed his power let him locate them easily enough.

Luciette also gave me a glimpse of what a truly mighty witchcrafter could do. Homing icicles the size of my arms surged from her snapping fingers to impale corpses. At other times she simply materialized a block of ice around one of the winged lions in mid-flight, causing it to fall down to earth and shatter to pieces in an instant. Eris’ fireballs appeared crude when compared to her fellow mage’s refined sorcery.

However, it was the Rogue’s team that handled themselves the best.

In spite of their clashing personalities, the three’s teamwork was nothing short of spectacular. Mersie cut through undead soldiers after one another, slicing their heads off while Chronius covered her with projectiles. Rubenzo moved with the lethal grace of a Dreadwolf on the hunt. He was a smiling blur, a shadow that shifted between targets almost too fast for my eyes to follow.

How many skills did he steal? I wondered. It had taken me many bargains to become a passable combattant, but Rubenzo could likely take on Soraseo and match her in battle. I’m a bit jealous.

I intellectually knew that the Rogue and its Vassals were fragments of a single Class, but seeing them work together made me realize that they remained strongly connected. They intuitively covered each others’ weaknesses, with Rubenzo being the glue that bound them together, switching back and forth between close combat and suppressive fire. One second he shot down a flying lion diving onto Mersie with a runestone-powered crossbow bolt that shredded its stone wings like paper, and then sliced down a corpse attempting to engage Chronius in close combat.

It hardly took us a few minutes to clear the path, with the stones and corpses breaking down and rotting into dust in the blink of an eye once destroyed. Rubenzo’s and Soraseo’s group walked into the manor together. I hardly caught a glimpse of a floor of meat facing a stairway of bones through the red mist.

I wished them luck.

“Our team has the easiest part,” Marika noted once only our team remained outside. “Was that intentional, Robin?”

“Yes,” I confirmed. I had come to accept that our Classes would never fully match the others in battle prowess, especially after Belgoroth trounced me and Colmar before I could move a muscle. We were better off playing support, whether material or moral. “I would rather avoid putting Beni into the thick of things too soon as well.”

Marika gave me a grateful nod, then examined the hedge maze ahead of us. Its thick thorns could hide many dangers. “I’m not walking inside that trap.”

“We won’t need to,” I said as I opened my bag and grabbed glass bottles filled with thick, greenish gas.

“Is that a flammable weapon?” Marika asked with a frown. “I thought we were excluding resorting to arson?”

“It’s better than fire.” I tossed a bottle to Beni. “Would you make your mother proud and throw the first one?”

I had rarely seen Beni smile in the seasons since I first met him and Marika, but a big wide smirk spread across his face when he raised the bottle.

The projectile shattered against a wall of thorns, unleashing an emerald cloud that swallowed the plants. I heard them screech as the poison covered them, wilting them, consuming them, and rotting them in the blink of an eye.

“Is that acid?” Marika asked in disbelief.

“A weed killer,” I replied as I tossed her a bottle. I thought she would enjoy participating in the show. “Erika, Ben, and I cooked this strain up with some help from Colmar’s notes. It’s harmless for us and lethal to plants.”

Colmar first designed the original formula to exterminate the Nightseeds, but we adapted it to consume any kind of vegetation. Even a Blight’s cursed essence required a vessel to inhabit, however vulnerable it might be. It only took six bottles to reduce the lethal hedge maze to a wasteland of wilted grass and roots.

Much to my delight, I managed to exterminate most of them with my own throws.

“We should definitely commercialize it,” I decided after we explored the ruins to locate the Blight’s linchpins. “We would need to make it less virulent so it doesn’t harm crops, but I see the potential.”

“I knew a few farmers who would have sold half their house for a solution to their weed problems,” Marika mused while she checked on her son. “Are you holding up, Beni?”

Her son nodded happily, his Ravengarde protector and mount carrying him around without complaint. Good. I was happy to see him have fun destroying monsters and exorcizing a spooky mansion.

It didn’t take long for us to locate the linchpins; we just had to look for meat pits in the ground with teeth and a terrible case of bad essence breath. Most of them shared the outline of humanoid forms, which I assumed belonged to the Salvadoreen massacre’s victims. Chastel’s crew had hunted down their fleeing victims across the property like dogs.

I offered a small prayer to the victims, then filled the flesh holes with pure runestones. Beni and Marika took it from there by extracting the corrupted essence and sealing it away. The more they took, the more the area returned to normal: the meat holes closed, the omnipresent stench of blood weakened, and the oppressive pressure I felt on my shoulders faded away.

The place had subtly changed by the time we disabled all the linchpins outside the manor’s walls, with cracks showing up on its walls where faces used to be and dirt covering its roof. The wicked curse that kept it trapped in time for over a decade slowly gave way to the unrelenting march of time.

Eris popped out of nowhere at my side, then swiftly checked the runestones we’d gathered. Their pristine matter had turned pitch black from the evil that they accumulated. “I didn’t know you were in the coal business, Handsome.”

“I wouldn’t use these for fuel,” I replied with a chuckle. “How are things going for the others inside?”

“Swimmingly. It’s refreshing to work with so many professionals. The Blight is already on its way out.” Eris stomped the ground with her staff. “I think she will require your presence though.”

I nodded sharply, then asked Marika and Beni to stand watch outside while Eris and I walked into the manor's main hall.

The red mist had lifted, with the room shedding its cursed veil of pulsating flesh and ghostly suffering to reveal cracked porcelain and dusty old silver. The others gathered there. Mersie and Chronius escorted Luciette to the center of the hall, watching on as she drained the last of the Blight into her runestones. Rubenzo, Mirokald, and Soraseo stood watch atop the stairs, likely to ensure no surviving monster would interrupt them.

“It is done,” Luciette declared once she completed her task. The air I breathed in was filled with old dust, but none of the limitless malice I’d come to expect from a Blight. “The rest will fade away on its own soon enough. Good job, I guess.”

Mersie hardly seemed to feel the same. She stared at the remains of old ribbons and garlands on the floor which the Blight’s curse saved from decomposition across the decades, then focused on a wall that still bore the mark of a throwing knife. I only had to take a look at Chronius’ grim scowl of remorse to figure out what happened there.

“That’s where he died, isn’t it,” I whispered under my breath. “Your father?”

Mersie closed her eyes for a moment, took in a deep breath, and gave me a small, weak nod.

“He can rest now,” I comforted her. “You did good, Fior.”

“I…” Mersie cleared her throat. “I’d hoped for more, Robin. I feel unburdened, but… not happy either.”

“That’s how it is,” Chronius said with a heavy tone. “Closure."

I expected Mersie to snap at him, or insult him, or curse him for contributing to the Blight that befell her home. Such was the depths of her grief that she simply remained silent as she mulled over her past.

Chronius crossed his arms and stared at the knife mark on the wall.

“I’m sorry,” he said suddenly. “If I could go back–”

“I don’t forgive you, and I never will,” Mersie replied immediately, albeit with none of the venom she usually spat in his direction. She was merely stating a cold fact. “But you have fulfilled your obligations to me so far.”

Chronius didn’t say another word. He knew that was the best response he would ever get from her.

Luciette, who had listened to their conversation, finally spoke up again. “I can compel shades to appear, Lady Salvadoreen,” she proposed. “There is enough psychic backslash haunting these walls for me to reconstruct echoes of the departed. If you wish to say goodbye or apologize, then it is within your power.”

Mersie considered it for a few seconds before denying her. “No,” she said, first weakly and then more firmly. “No, that will not be necessary.”

“Are you sure?” I asked her, mostly out of concern.

“They have lingered in my dreams for many years, Robin,” my old lover replied. “I… I think it’s time I let them go. Truly go.”

“I understand.” I respected her choice. Exorcizing the house of her lost childhood served the same purpose that visiting the Deadgate offered to many of us. “What will you do now then?”

“I don’t know,” Mersie replied. “I think I’ll help you deal with Daltia in the Shinkoku Empire. I owe you that after you indulged my selfish requests. Afterwards…” She shook her head, lacking an answer. “I can’t say. Part of me wants to rebuild my house better than before, but another part of me wants to live as Mersie. If that makes sense.”

“It does, at least to me.” I winked at her. “Give it time. Nobody expects you to rethink your whole life on the spot.”

“I think you would be the kind of person to know what you want, Robin,” she replied with a smile that, for once, felt entirely genuine. “Let us go now. I’m exhausted."

And so we left Salvadoreen Manor a better place than when we found it. This tied up the last of our loose ends in the Riverland Federation, at least as far as I was concerned.

We boarded for the Shinkoku Empire tomorrow.