Chapter 138 - The Chamber Of Summoning

I and Ghost followed right after. Right after we saw nothing tried to attack him, that is.

There were no lights in the room. That didn't impede Desmond, but I pulled out my phone and turned on the flashlight. I only had about half of the charge left, but it would last me until tomorrow if I didn't spend all that time reading.

Ghost paused in his steps. With a corner of my eye, I saw the light coming from the storage room dimming, before its double appeared right in Ghost's hand. I squinted a little against it, and realised that it came not from the hand itself, but from a peddle Ghost held in it.

"Nice spell," I murmured. The pebble didn't glow as bright as the lightbulb, but it was somewhat better than my flashlight.

"It's nothing," Ghost grinned.

"If you are finished, help me look for anything interesting, and try not to touch anything," Desmond spoke from a few steps ahead.

With a huff, I followed him in the inspection.

After this, we finally could properly inspect the room. It was huge, too huge to physically belong to Eternalroot's headquarters—as big as a lecture hall, with the ceiling good five meters over my head. It still wasn't big enough to fit a creature as tall as four storeys, but the demon clearly could change its size, since the hallways of the headquarters were much smaller.

There was a circle etched on the floor in the middle of it and filled with some green substance. Tall chandeliers stood all around the place, but when I came up to one, I realised they were electric, and all bulbs were blown up. After some more walking around, I found the benzine generator they took power from. It was still working, and half-full of fuel.

"I thought they said they found… the witch who was the sacrifice for the summoning," I wondered aloud. "The gate, they called her. Or him. Well, I assumed they meant the sacrifice… But she wasn't in here, right?"

"No," Desmond said. "He was outside, as a ghoul."

"A ghoul?" Ghost whirled to stare at Desmond in shock. His face was devoid of a smile now, bland. I think it was as close to horrified as he could get. "How did he become a ghoul?!"

"What IS a ghoul, actually?" I pitched in. "Don't want to look too ignorant, but my poor education is really lacking here."

"Ghouls are a bad dream of any healer. They are what happens when the healer isn't accurate enough in their work to save their patient's life while still preserving it… Though, medical mistakes aren't the only reasons ghouls appear. A ghoul is a corpse, but one filled with life-force until it moves again. A parody of real life." Ghost gradually calmed down as he spoke until he was smiling again. He shook his head. "An awful thing to behold. They become mindless beasts, craving only more of that life so they could keep up their existence."

"This appears to be what the demon makes with dead it meets," Desmond said grimly. "Including my kin."

Uh-oh. So the demon turned vampires into ghouls… I saw now what JJ meant by 'extremely gruesome' way to die. To distract myself, I looked around. "Still, how did the ghoul got out? Wasn't the subspace closed before we opened it?"

"Only from the other side," Ghost explained. "The demon forced this side of the portal open. They are separate, don't you see?"

I didn't, but then, I wasn't looking. When I did, I realised that this was true. What looked like just a door to me was actually two connected ones. Two wormholes, sort of. "Oh."

Our trio kept looking around for a while longer, but there wasn't much to look at that I understand. Desmond filled a few plastic bags with herbs, stones and strange trinkets that were thrown around the magic circle—evidence—but our best find turned out to be a book that laid on an easel next to the head of it.

The book was charred black. So much for the best find.

"I imagine this was the book about the demon." I pouted sourly at it. "Of course it had to burn it. I wonder if it was intentional."

"Possibly, possibly not," Desmond leaned over it, but didn't pick it up from the stand. Instead, he turned towards Ghost. "Can you restore it, healer?"

"Oooh, this one in a really awful state." Ghost rubbed his hands together with an eager grin. "I think it was a long time since I've had a challenge like that. Longer than I've been restoring books in the library. Let's see if there's anything of the knowledge left in it. Diana, my pupil, come and assist me."

"Sure!" This was just what I needed to learn, too. Restoration… Well, I doubted anyone cared for the antique sofas right now, starting with Avarice herself, but, hey. Demons won't be around forever, and you had to start at some point.

I knew the routine. Ghost would point out the aspect he wanted to work with, and I had to remove the impurities he couldn't see. Sometimes I would also need to put them where I felt they were the best, because he himself didn't know what to do with it.

"I will leave you to your work. Call me when you are done, and be quick," Desmond said, walking away. In just a while I heard argument coming out of the storage room… Some things appeared to be eternal. I shook my head and decided to just ignore everything outside the book and Ghost.

"Alright, Diana. As you see, it's mostly burned stuff and a lot of emotional traces, but what we really need are informational aspects. They tend to linger, but they could've spread across the room with ashes and smoke. This is like a puzzle. There will be a lot of small pieces, but they will all call to each other…"