A Casual Massacre

Ted was bleeding, but it looked like just a graze. It wasn't that bad.

Now, he and Eknie had the task of making sure no one squealed about their actions. After all, there had been enough cold-blooded murders, and right as Ted thought about his options, Eknie executed two more men who had been pointing their guns in the wrong directions.

Bribing and threatening people was not as easy as books made it sound like. The thing about those ways of dealing with problems was that eventually, the cost would always get too high and it became more effective to just end the lives of the witnesses.

Ted stood by his words. It was late now. Most of the customer base had already disappeared during the time it had taken Ted to summon the wrong entity. There were enough bullets for everyone. If he would, for some reason, run out, he could always take a glass bottle into a head. A simple trick, yet an incredibly effective one – a bottle, a brain and enough force made morticians very happy and very occupied.

"Now, those of you who cooperate will be spared," he said to make his task a bit easier. He had three seven-shooters on his person at all given times. Casually known as pistols even though they had more advanced technology than actual pistols, they were as expensive as they were useful, but Ted had never been stingy with his money when it came to firearms. He had permits for two of them. He did not want to waste his bullets, though. Shooting people was, unfortunately, loud and often messy.

He winked to Eknie, discreetly, just to let her know he was lying.

A woman in a revealing blue dress crawled towards the door. She was too drunk for her own good, too drunk to react rationally to a credible threat.

People with such low impulse control around booze should not have been let to live at all, that was what Ted thought about it.

He ended her life with a single shot through her vital organs.

"Oh, anyone else who has problems following simple directions?" he asked. "Anyone want to try to bash my head in? Want to know who is quicker? Anyone else has a problem with simple spells, well, let's hear the objections. I would like to know."

No one dared to say a thing.

It was a piece of cake, really. Everyone in the saloon was lining up for slaughter. While Ted's rational mind knew that he was making a big mistake, the rage he felt over being chained to the god of sun enabled him to numb what little conscience he had left.

These bastards had used all the cards they had been given. Ted was the last ace.

He could have been the last to continue the traditions of occult for all he knew. If that had not been enough to make him want to choose his own life instead of these bystanders, then the sheer will to continue, to go on and live was strong enough to trump any doubts.

He shot three men and one woman.

It would be easy to frame the dead madman as responsible for every murder except his own, especially as he could always claim he and Eknie had never even been in the entire building.

He had no hard feelings towards the lunatic, he just thought it was handy that the dead fellow could be useful. At least Ted had been able to release his anger.

After the massacre was complete, Ted took care to wipe any possible traces of his own fingerprints from the guns and placed two of the pistols strategically near the hands of the dead man.

Eknie arranged some bodies so that it looked like they had all been shot by the lunatic.

Ted cackled. "People are so fragile, Eknie, are they not? Especially drunkards. I am not even that good of a shot."

"You're good enough. Opportunism pays off," Eknie said and cleaned the ruffles of her still impeccable dress.

They made their exit through a door that was not known to any regular customers. Keen-eyed and always up for a challenge, the occultist and the assassin lady were always up to date when it came to secret exits and escape plans.

"Do you know of any who have successfully completed a sacrifice like the one we will attempt?" Ted asked Eknie as they were strolling towards the Tobias family manor.

"Well, there is one, in that book I told you to read." Eknie frowned.

She was walking briskly to keep up with Ted, but this was visibly making her uncomfortable. She was dressed all nicely, and nice dresses constricted the movements of the wearer's legs.

Ted knew she did not mind that. Eknie loved challenges.

"You did not read past the three pages that talked about the history of sigils…which is understandable…"

She was getting out of breath, and Ted was loving it, loving seeing her struggle to stay coherent. She knew what he was like, and she was still leeching on his energy every single day. That had to make up for her scarily strong attachment to him.

"Understandable…but I went through all that dusty stuff and found the markings of the sigilmaster. Of course, they were transcribed and it might…huh…might well be that they are not as accurate as one would hope. In any case…the story tells of a pact…pact of a hundred occultists that just…vanished. You know how some people seem to stop existing all of a sudden?"

Ted admitted that while quite a few bodies washed up on the shores of the Filth River, there were those who did not get washed up on a shore anywhere, at all. Some people who disappeared into thin air stayed that way, no leads, no letters to their loved ones, nothing.

At least one percent of the sacrifice that Ted was about to make would be attainable. It had been done before.

Ted fully intended to keep his own soul attached to his body.