Arc 3: Chapter 16: Into the Low City
A long moment of silence followed my pronouncement. I felt barely aware of anything in that time. I still reeled from the vision, my mind attempting to reconcile the room as it was in the real with the spiritual malice I knew hid beneath.
“A demon?” Ingram looked skeptical, leaning heavily on his cane as he cleared phlegm from his throat. “How can you be certain?”
Emma cast a withering look at the old servant and muttered, “Just look around you.”
I put a hand on her shoulder, feeling more steady, then addressed Lady Faisa. She’d been staring off into the distance, a pensive look on her face. “I’ve been trained in augury and exorcism,” I said. “And I’ve encountered Abyssal malison before. I’m as certain as I can be, though I can’t offer you proof.”
“I believe you,” Faisa said, sighing. “I have made some study of the occult myself, Master Alken. All the signs support your claim, only…”
She shrugged and smiled sadly. “I did not wish to believe it, that my Yessa could meet such a terrible end.”
“It explains her troubled sleep, her mania.” I looked around at the macabre collection in the room. “Why her own art became more…” I didn’t want to say depraved in front of the deceased artist’s former lover. “Unsettling.”
I glanced at the painting of the winged woman with the human heart cupped in her hands. “I can’t be certain,” I lied, “but I’d be willing to bet that more than a few pieces in here are depicting known demons recorded in the Church’s archives. Visions of the Abyss are a common precursor to possession. I’m also seeing signs of infestation and altered aura.”
I hesitated before adding, “Honestly, lady, much of this should be cleansed or locked away. Did you know Yselda was an adept?”
Faisa blinked, giving me my answer. “I did not,” she admitted. “I awakened my own aura in my thirties, after secluding myself in study at a convent for several years. Yselda, however, never showed any awareness of such powers.”
I frowned, chewing on that. It meant the troubled artist had likely stirred her abilities more recently. “You can’t ever really predict when it will happen,” I said. “But it happens most often in particularly passionate craftsmen or soldiers — high emotion, dedication, traumatic events — these are the most consistent ways to awaken the soul.”