First Mission (6) : Compulsion.

Not even five minutes had passed when everyone in Ethan's group heard the *clicking* of footsteps of about two people climbing the stairs.

Their heads soon became visible and Loki recognised one of them.

"Dominic?" Loki asked surprised.

"Oh!? Loki!? You're here too!!! Ha! What a coincidence!" Dominic said with a smile as he walked towards Loki and shook his hand.

"You know him, Dominic?" The woman beside him asked with a polite smile.

"Yes, mam! I do! This is the little brat that I had to take care of my entire first year." Dominic said while ruffling Loki's hair.

The lady seemed a little surprised as she said, "The one that warned you at the Quidditch World Cup?"

"Yes, mam! That's him." Dominic said with a proud smile.

"It's good that we all recognise each other, but I hope we can get a move on solving this case." Ethan interrupted the reunion by slightly *tapping* his cane on the marble floor.

The woman's gaze immediately turned serious and she nodded at everyone and introduced herself, "I'm Laura Drake. Special Mysteries Commander. Can you give me a brief rundown?"

Ethan could've explained everything but since Loki had become a new bridge between the two groups he allowed him to explain everything instead.

"The man inside the room covered by the wall of spirituality, Mr. Prick, is currently suspected to have started a ritual that is suspended. He's also suspected to be a spy who was sending around information about the Department and Magical Law Enforcement."

"And for some reason, related or unrelated to this ritual the astral bodies of the villagers who worked in the mansion have vanished. The villagers' bodies also have a few scratches on the backs of their necks."

"Is that all?" Laura asked with her eyebrows raised.

"Yes, mam." Loki nodded after having finished his explanation.

"Have any of you gone into the room?" Laura asked politely while searching her bottomless bag for something.

"No mam. None of us have, but the Aurors might've." Loki said but thinking of something else he immediately said, "Also the dog probably did."

"The dog?" Dominic asked confused.

"That one." Loki said pointing at the dog that had just come out from a room behind everyone with a squeaky toy in its mouth.

Dominic looked at the dog and became a little puzzled but did not say much directly, "It looks fine in my spirit vision."

"Maybe our culprit only wants human souls and doesn't care for animals?" Laura theorised but Loki was feeling tense.

'How do I tell them that the dog is corrupted?'

'Will accidentally attacking it and causing it to lose control work?'

'But how do I randomly attack a dog?'

'Steal it's ability to breathe?"

Before Loki could say anything else, Laura pulled out an item from her purse. It was a straw doll, one that Loki felt would be used to curse someone by pricking pins into it.

Laura quickly pulled out a few straws from the doll and tied them around a small thumbnail-sized stone she also pulled out of her bag.

Under Loki's spirit vision, the doll looked alive. It had a body of heart and mind, an astral body, an ether body and a physical one. It had everything that a normal human did. It felt fully alive, but it lay there in Laura's hands like it was dead.

"That's Mystical Item number 3-241 the doll of death.", Dominic explained seeing Loki's interest in the doll. "It will kill itself every opportunity it gets. Makes it quite helpful for figuring out how dangerous other mystical items are."

Laura placed the straw doll on the floor and once she was ready, walked up to the wall of spirituality and tossed the stone with straw around it into it.

*Click* *Clack* *Rolll*

The stone bounced into the room and everyone patiently waited for something to happen to the straw doll.

But even before anyone could blink, the doll let out a shrill scream.

*RRRRRRRRRRREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE*

The doll floated into the air and began to spin around as if it were possessed.

Using his spirit vision, Loki clearly saw the corruption engulfing the doll's body. He watched as the doll's astral body started to tear. It was as if someone was using delicate hands to firmly grip the doll's head to pull it apart and kill it.

The doll started to shiver and tremble while straws began to fall out of its body as if someone was repeatedly stabbing it.

Even in all this flurry of damage the doll was taking Loki found it scary how ecstatic the doll was becoming as it was dragged closer and closer to death.

Suddenly, Loki's instincts blared and he felt something start to corrupt him.

But before anything too drastic could happen, Laura swiped her hand casually.

There was a soft ripple that spread out of her position before it came in contact with the straw doll and encapsulated it entirely.

A warmth crept up into everyone around her as the straw doll that was now separated did its best to try and break the barrier that was covering it. The fight slowly grew in intensity, but the invisible walls that had clung onto the straw doll tore it away from whatever was holding onto the doll.

It was slow but everyone watched as the doll that was screaming in pain slowly started to quieten until all that was left behind was the straw doll sitting on the floor as if nothing had happened to it.

Everyone felt goosebumps rise on their skin and moved a little away from the doll but Laura, Ethan, Loki and Dominic remained where they were earlier.

Laura calmly looked at Ethan and spoke softly, "Good job not allowing anyone to enter the room after you arrived."

Ethan just nodded and said nothing.

One could see just how pained he felt since he had tears in his eyes for some reason but no one spoke a word about it.

Instead, Ethan looked at Loki and said, "Call all the aurors to this floor. We need to purify them."

Loki nodded and without even as much as a peep walked to the stairs along with Dominic who was coming with him in case Loki alone wasn't enough.

"Who's she?" Loki asked Dominic when they reached the lower floor.

"Laura Drake. She's the Special Mysteries Commander. She's a sequence 3 of the Arbiter pathway." Dominic said with reverence.

"I see." Loki nodded, easily believing him since what he'd witnessed just now was an ability of Sequence 6 Judge. And given how it worked against the corruption of a literal outer god or something connected to it, it felt only right that she was suspected to be a saint.

"What's gonna happen now?" Loki asked.

"We're gonna purify all the Aurors and only step into the room after that's done. You might have to leave though, since you're only sequence 8."

"I understand." Loki nodded, he didn't want to spend any more time around a place where an outer god might be doing something.

But there was this little incentive he felt at the back of his mind that was gnawing at him, pushing him to uncover the secrets of this case.

'It's my first case after all…'

'Wouldn't look good if I left it unsolve- wait. This is an outer god I'm thinking about!? Why do I want to even solve this!?'

Loki pushed his thoughts to the back of his mind for now and looked at Dominic with a puzzled face to cover up his fear.

"But why didn't the aurors die though?" Loki asked Dominic. "And even the villagers, what happened to them? Why's their astral body missing?"

From the frown on his face, it appeared as if even Dominic was thinking about it but couldn't find something meaningful. "Maybe we'll find a clue after we purify the Aurors?"

"I hope so." Loki nodded.

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