Eldritch Exorcist

The creature was dressed in something between a butler’s uniform and a mage’s robe. The jacket was elongated, reaching the knees, and clearly bore enchantments. Its head was stuck in constant movement from side to side like a broken animation, its face becoming a constant blur—the same as the first omen we encountered.

I tensed, not sure what to expect. The creature stood by the door, unmoving, with its arms behind its back, bowing slightly as if… greeting me.

I looked at it and slowly made my way past. My confusion was growing. The singularity should only remember the details related to the tragedy. People not taking part in it should be simple ideas at most, like creatures hiding in houses, doing nothing but observing outsiders. Recognition of family members and greeting them seemed strange to be included.

I finally took my eyes off the creature and looked around. In front of me, I saw the main hall with two decorated staircases carved from dark brown wood. The knots and imperfections in it were bright red, as if it were bleeding. The walls were made of smooth, cut stone and decorated with white marble carvings and paintings.

They were rather… unusual. All were clearly occult, but at the same time, the house was made for visitors, so the things on display were inoffensive—at least by my family’s standards. The carvings were of mythical creatures, strange in form but at least geometrically correct, unlike the more “religious” statues in my family’s possession.

The paintings blended artistic and occult themes. My favorite one was a landscape depicting a sunset over an ocean—beautiful and peaceful—if not for a massive black obelisk rising from the water in the distance and the shadow beneath the surface. In each picture, there was always a detail, always something giving them a more sinister double meaning.

The most interesting part, however, was the lighting. The ceiling and a few special columns were clearly designed to support a vine climbing them. The plant grew out of the stone and up onto the beams over my head. It climbed by twisting itself around the supporting structures in spiral patterns. And every few twists, it produced something like a fruit, reminiscent of a glassy orange, except it glowed with yellowish light.

Aside from the obvious, there was also a clear mathematical principle at work in the place. I could feel the angles and proportions scratching at my mind, telling me they were special in a way only an arcane architect must have understood.

I looked around. There were four doors—two ahead, two to the sides—and the stairs. I decided to check the second level first, then move down, as the basement would most likely hold the most interesting things.

The upper floor quickly proved disappointing. So did the first floor. This part of the mansion was the servant rooms, private bedrooms, guest rooms, and meeting spaces. They were all decorated in the same occult style as the hall. The aura of the place was magical and strange, yet bearable to anyone not part of the family. Finally, I located a set of stairs going down.

Without hesitation and with growing excitement, I walked into the basement. The stairs were short, but the moment I made it down, I realized I was most likely going in the right direction, as I once again saw servants with blurred faces, pointing down the long corridor.

Taking a deep breath, I walked on.

The place lacked any decorations. It was just dark stone walls lit up by the vine, and that was it. After a few meters, the corridor split into three directions—continuing forward to a massive closed door, and to the left and right.

The door forward was made of greenish stone, looking wet, as if it had just been pulled out of the water. It also gave off a glow. It was carved with strange patterns locked in a constant struggle against the geometry of the world. I shook myself out of trying to read the patterns and instead decided to look at the corridors on the sides first.

Taking the right, I arrived at the prison section. It wasn’t large, but there were a few holding cells. They were enchanted to hold powerful people or creatures, but all of them were empty, and the place was completely silent.

With nothing there, I made my way to the left.

The corridor had a few smaller rooms to the sides, which seemed to be storage, judging by the many shelves, as well as a few special, enchanted containers designed to hold dangerous ingredients and artifacts. All of them were empty aside from the last room at the end of that corridor.

It was the main laboratory my family used for any local experiments and studies. It wasn’t big, but the sheer fact that it was from the time of myth made it fascinating. The space was filled with tables, shelves, and a number of installations whose purpose eluded me. The research stations had runic circles carved into massive stone tables, which made me dizzy by the sheer level of magic on display. A few shelves still held a couple of books, and some glassy vats still held parts of strange creatures.

But the most fascinating part was in the middle.

One of the servant creatures stood there in the center of the room next to the biggest table. The aberration was completely silent and unmoving, frozen like a statue, its hand outstretched to the side, pointing at three chests.

They looked clearly prepared, as if waiting for me. How and why were beyond me. I approached them and slowly picked up the biggest chest in the middle, my eyes locked onto the servant.

Nothing happened.

I stored it in the pouch on my belt, still not getting any reaction.

I tried doing the same with the second one. It was smaller, and I managed to secure it to my belt so as not to fill the pouch beyond its capacity.

The last one, I realized, was actually a book in a carved box.

“Liber Ivonis I,” the title read.

I vaguely recognized it—part of a much bigger collection of tomes, mostly dedicated to the Goat herself, if I wasn’t mistaken. The book also made its way into my pouch, alongside other tomes still present.

It took me a while to clean out what was left here. Had I had more storage space with me, I would have taken anything not bolted to the floor, but sadly, I was at the end of my capacity. I walked out, weighed down and happy.

However, the fact that it all looked to be unguarded and clearly prepared was also starting to weigh on my mind. Why would they be expecting someone here two thousand years ago when the tragedy supposedly struck unexpectedly?

My face scrunched up at the torrent of thoughts, but for now, I pushed them aside. I needed to be at the top of my game for what might sit in the room behind the carved door. Before going in, I sat down to meditate. Using the rest of the food from the singularity, I got my spirit into working order, making sure I was in the best shape I could be despite the exhaustion.

My meditation wasn’t made any easier by the presence of a certain dog-ghost who started constantly whining, barking, and growling at me in excitement, like we were about to go for a walk instead of through a mysterious door filled with blasphemous carvings.

Once ready, I approached the massive door and slowly pushed it open. The first thing that greeted me was the sight of many creatures with blurred faces. They stood around a massive altar in a circle, as I caught them in the middle of a ritual.

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The moment I opened the door, everyone’s faces stopped their unceasing movements. Some had skin growing over their entire heads like the omen, others had actual faces I recognized from family paintings.

“Yooou’re here,” they spoke in unison, and before I could react or do anything, they disappeared—just ceased to exist like a dream, leaving me in the empty room.

“Well, great,” I grunted, looking around the space around me, not sure whether to enter or run at that point.

It was the ritual chamber. Every inch of the green, wet walls was covered in carvings and runes. Weirdly enough, all of them were primitive, with jagged edges as if scratched into the stone rather than carved. They worked like an optical illusion, making the room slowly spin. Although it was hard to tell whether the runes were spinning or I was simply having vertigo from what stood in the center. The altar before me was powerful enough that I could barely stand its presence. It was as if every cell in my body wanted to change its position, not satisfied with what I looked like now.

It took me a while to get myself under control before I could think straight once again. The altar was made from eight black monoliths surrounding a statue in the center. The monoliths were covered in layered, carved runes, mixed with more decorative depictions of faces—faces of all kinds of creatures frozen in motion, as if they were trying to break through the stone and escape the carvings.

But the statue in the middle was completely different in style. While the monoliths were cut with precision, each carving mathematically correct, each edge impossibly sharp, following some strange, ever-changing principle, the statue was the opposite—primitive and rough.

It depicted a black goat with four full udders, as if she were about to feed her children. Its shape was unpolished, barely readable, and as I came a bit closer, I noticed countless scratches and… teeth marks. As if someone—or rather countless people—had been made to create it using only their bodies, scratching at the stone until it was shaped like a massive black goat.

The floor beneath the udders was concave, and a few drops of milky-white liquid remained on it.

It didn’t take much to realize what it was.

“The Mother’s Milk,” I whispered.

I had been hoping it would be packaged or sealed for me to take with me. Not exactly this. There was most likely a way to scoop it or guide it into a container, but I didn’t know much about working with the liquid. I only knew it gave new flesh to any matter of being, flesh as the Black Goat of the Woods would see fit. But how to control it, or if it was even controllable? I had no clue.

Technically, coming into contact with it in the presence of the Goat with a Thousand Young should be enough.

‘Should I do it here?’

It wasn’t the best idea, but I didn’t have an altar of Shub-Niggurath back home, and I wasn’t moving this one any time soon.

‘What to do?’

I looked around for inspiration, but instead I found two black eyes.

Sally—or rather, her manifestation in my mind—was looking at me, sitting by one of the obelisks. There was longing in her eyes. I wasn’t sure if I read that from her expression or from our connection, but she had made the decision.

I looked at the altar again.

Getting what was essentially a part of my soul submerged in Mother’s Milk was dangerous. Doing that while still inside a singularity bordered on insanity.

“Woof,” came a bark.

“All right, let’s do it,” I said out loud despite the listener being connected to my mind.

“Nullus affectus in insaniam spiral. Nulla cupido in obsessionem crescat. Nullus metus in phobiam vertatur.” I murmured the mantra, then stepped into the circle of the monoliths and closer to the carved goat in the middle.

I felt it—presence, but not in my mind. In my flesh.

Part of my body was longing for another owner. Some of my muscles spasmed, producing strange, twitchy movements.

Gritting my teeth, I moved closer to the altar and finally knelt by its head, with the concavity in the floor in front of me.

I could swear the stone was observing me, and even though I didn’t start any ritual, voices started to chant behind my back in a low hum.

I froze.

This wasn’t supposed to happen. I wasn’t in a state of prayer. I didn’t activate the altar.

But there was no time to ponder as the pressure on my flesh increased. It was crawling over my body, moving underneath my skin with sickening gentleness—like the warm caress of a mother.

I concentrated and pushed the familiar soul out of my body, trying to summon my familiar without its body. The soul appeared in the real world. It was a construct in need of a physical body, and I could feel it slowly straining and beginning to deteriorate once outside my body.

I hurried to move it into the pool of white liquid as the presence in my flesh moved upward toward my head.

Something started to change.

The milk boiled and began turning black, like tar. Massive bubbles began popping and collapsing as foam spread.

The chanting and the hum around me grew stronger as I fought the presence, trying to push it out.

I could feel Sally slowly become tangible, as well as my connection to her. I could feel her strength. I could feel her longing as most of her mind now gained form to support it, waking up from the strange slumber.

But the transformation wasn’t complete. The presence reached my head, and I could feel it try to shift something, to stretch itself toward my eyes.

The music and chants picked up once again, and now I too joined it, despite myself, as my mouth moved on its own. I sang while fighting to keep myself sane. I could feel things begin shifting in my head. Pain assaulted me as more and more tendrils of the presence slipped into my body.

I couldn’t take much more.

The tar-like liquid expanded under the belly of the goat.

It flowed and moved—twisting like ribbons of perfect darkness wrapping themselves around an invisible form in the middle.

Something snapped inside me, a sickening crunch accompanying it.

I needed out.

As I was about to try and crawl out of the circle of monoliths, the sensations stopped at once with a loud, reverberating thump.

Everything went dormant.

The chanting and the presence disappeared as if cut by a knife.

I raised my head and immediately met a pair of eyes.

A creature stood crouched down underneath the statue. Right now, it was shaped like a large dog, a massive, pitch-black German shepherd with yellow eyes, but through our connection, I could feel it was wearing the shape like a fake skin. This wasn’t it. It wasn’t supposed to look like that, and I knew I could command it to change, to show its real shape.

But before I could, our combined tiredness assaulted me.

Oddly enough, my already strained mind didn’t take the brunt of the impact, but my body felt like I’d been running for days, to the very edge of exhaustion, and was ready to collapse.

The creature also needed a nap. It slowly approached me, then dematerialized, turning into a pool of tar that flowed into me—my body, and then my soul. So the fusion was complete—the soul of a physical creature reflected in this strange flesh, neither astral nor physical.

I tried standing up, only to collapse, my strained muscles not answering. Swearing, I crawled away from that altar and then finally beyond the carved door, only resting once the strange pressure wasn’t on me anymore.

I checked my body. Aside from the exhaustion, I immediately noticed one thing. As I opened my irises, I could feel that each iris underneath had its own muscles now. I couldn’t move it yet. The moment I tried, it felt like lifting a weight far too heavy, but I was now aware of them. It was as if the presence from the altar was trying to hasten the mutation of my flesh into whatever strange bloodline was flowing through my veins.

Taking a bit more time to rest and adding another thing to my ever-growing research list, I finally got up and stumbled my way to the stairs and then back into the main hall, where the exit was.

The moment I reached the door, I froze.

I could feel someone’s eyes on my back.

It wasn’t a figure of speech. I could actually feel them, the gaze possessing a physical weight to it.

The very instant I turned, I saw him.

The servants were standing by the hall staircase, and at the top, a creature stood with a presence so powerful I could barely believe it was possible. It had the shape of a man, with the upper part of its head simply made of black tentacles that reached all the way to the ceiling and beyond, long enough to wrap around the world.

The moment my eyes fell on it, it and the servants disappeared like the aberrations of the ritual room.

I remained bolted to the spot for a few good minutes before any thought could enter my mind.

That had to be a member of my family, but whether from the branch that worked here, or someone else from that time… I wasn't sure.

Sighing, I slowly make my way out of the mansion, my movements stiff and mechanical.

As I dragged myself out of the place, I could see Clementus waiting for me near the entrance, though weirdly enough, with his back turned to it. He was bundled up but alive, and for the first time, I felt relieved to see the pope.

Now to get out of here.