A minute had passed since Will had begun tracing the gate, already he could feel the seal on the painting starting to break as he traced symbols on the wall and muttered powerful words. With a burst of light, the glowing lines and shapes on the wall connected together and began growing and merging on their own accord. Will stepped back as the doorway completed itself, revealing the location on the other side, as if nothing stood between them. This gate would only last a second, prompting him to raise a dome of barriers around the exit before stepping through the glowing archway. With a sound like a bubble popping, the door disappeared behind him.

The first thing he noticed was a soft red glow cutting through the darkness, and thick smoke hanging in the air. Looking around, he saw that he was in a moderately sized apartment. The two windows were boarded up, with the painting lying in the corner, burning in a pile along with a shapeless sack of… something. About nine individuals stood around the edge of the room, all staring inwards, entirely motionless.

[i]‘…Nothing about this place is a good sign.’[/i]

“Uhh, just checking, you guys are all possessed, right? And I’m guessing someone faked the signature of the seal breaking to draw me in… Well, I guess I’m flattered.” Will nodded sadly, noting the limp way they stood, the neat, rune surrounded wounds in the centre of their foreheads, and the various blunt implements and knives they all carried. His barriers still stood in a dome around him, but uneasiness threatened to turn to panic despite them.

“No ringleader gonna reply then? At least provide someone for me to call the villain, rather than a load of meatpuppets to maybe kill me, so you get away whether or not I die.”
In unison, the possessed bodies let out a guttural snarl, their faces turning towards him as they twisted into grins and grimaces. Unconsciously, Will redoubled the barriers, starting to take in shallower, more ragged breaths.

‘There has to be something more. If they know anything about me, how did they think this kind of attack would succeed?’ Thought Will, as he brought up nine smaller curved barriers, pinning the puppets to the walls. He began to calm back down, confident that the restrained enemies would be incapable of breaking through.

Laughter cut off his train of thought, coming from behind him. Will wheeled round to face the source. A puppet had an open palm pressed against the shield holding it back. Like a child pushing through a bubble or a thrown stone parting water, it pushed and stepped through. Will froze as, in unison, the other eight stepped through their barriers as well. Fear clawed at him. With a series of comforting ‘fwoom’ noises, diamond-shaped shards popped into the air around him. Two puppets immediately opposite him charged, brandishing a tire iron and a butchers knife respectively, cutting through the reddish haze. Wasting no time, Will moved towards them, shooting the projectiles at shoulders and kneecaps of the oncoming foes. He ducked under the closer of the two as it began to crumple to the floor from the sudden destruction of its left knee. Pivoting and backing up, Will found himself with his back towards the wall, the seven remaining puppets standing in a semicircle around him. One of the puppets he had attacked was slowly clambering to its feet, one leg healthy and the other sporting a horrific wound above the knee. Its right arm had been severed at the shoulder, and was now brandished as a club. The second injured puppet couldn’t stand, and was instead trying to drag itself around to face the semi-circle and Will.

Will lifted his hands up from his sides, the motion assisting in conjuring up another three dozen shards. He looked more closely at the puppets, secretly hoping they would be beyond saving, as not having to hold back would give him a chance of surviving. He kept pulling ragged breathes, as he noted the grey tint in the skin of the puppets, the depth of the wounds on their foreheads, the discolorations in their faces. Whoever had prepared these bodies for possession had been overzealous, and let them die. It wasn’t a problem for the spirit in control of them, but for Will, it would be potentially life-saving.

Before they made their attack, Will moved first, this time summoning up shards and firing them as fast as possible, perforating the torsos and heads of the puppets, bringing shards that had passed through their targets back to attack again. They moved towards him, but they fell as they ran, weapons clattering to the floor and gore splattering against the walls and ceiling. A searing pain below Will’s ribcage made him reel back in terror, looking down to see the grinning face of a puppet looking up. It had grabbed him around the legs and dug a sharpened tent peg into his body, even as Will’s shards finished destroying its body.

He cast his gaze around the room, biting back a rush of nausea at the scene. His lower body felt numb, and he could taste blood- with a sickening feeling he considered that the weapon might have pierced a lung. He slumped down against the wall, before reaching under his shirt to grab the improvised weapon embedded beneath his ribs. He knew he could heal it, but not with the peg left in the wound. Will bunched up a part of his coat sleeve, and bit down on the fabric, bracing himself. With a sharp yank, followed by a drawn out pulling, he removed the weapon, placing his hand over the wound. The pain lessened rapidly as his power began to work, stitching together lung, muscle, nerves and fat.

About a minute passed after Will had finished healing himself, before he felt ready to stand up and investigate. When he did, the strangeness of the room stood out to him; all the copper wiring had been pulled out of the walls- as shown by the lines left from it being pulled out-, stripped of rubber and melted in a pile in a different corner to the painting, with the rubber shavings contributing to the fire. No sources of light were present and no furniture either, and a quick push told him that the door was secured from the other side. Checking the puppets told him that they had all be stripped of their possessions, having nothing but clothes and their weapons. They seemed to be a mix of criminals- or at least as far as Will could tell, he wasn’t exactly an expert on gang tattoos- and homeless people. Judging by them all having signs of having a possession ritual performed upon them, none of them were an original host, one of those taken when the hate spirits bound in the painting broke out.
With his other options exhausted, Will turned towards the burnt remains of the painting, now giving off only a very weak glow along with the rest of the fire. Looking more closely, he saw that as well as the sack, the rubber and the painting, assorted phones, in one case a ring and other possessions were in the pile, along with coal and fragments of wood. 

[i]‘Possessions of the people here, the puppets? Hate spirits aren’t exactly rational and lucid, there are better ways to remove evidence than a small fire in an apartment. I think we’re putting off seeing what is in the sack though.’[/i]

Reluctantly, and with a strong sense of foreboding, Will grabbed an edge of the sack not in the fire, and pulled it into the centre of the room. He noticed a zipper down the centre, and, after setting up a barrier around him, pulled it down. 

Another puppet, this one with closed eyes, and arms crossed over its chest, holding a… 

“A detonator.”	

The puppets eyes flashed open, as Will dropped down into a crouch, pilling on layers of shielding and pouring strength into it, cocooning himself. An instant later, a bomb at the feet of the puppet did as bombs do. Light shone through his closed eyelids, as the apartment was demolished, along with the surrounding rooms, flinging Will through a wall and into the air above the street. His shields absorbed most of the damage, as he broke masonry- albeit cheap masonry- and once again as he landed on the sidewalk opposite the apartment complex.

Fear and pain flared up in the surroundings, relayed back to him via his ability to detect emotions. The lack of anything from the apartment complex indicated that the building was abandoned, but on the street he could see people who’d be struck by falling debris or out of control cars. Clambering to his feet, Will strengthened his healing aura, before rushing over to the wounded, in the space of thirty seconds visiting all who needed immediate help. Conscious that being brought in by the police as being linked to a bomb would be very very bad, Will traced a gate on a shop wall, covering his face with reflective shielding. Sirens could be heard in the distance as he finished and stepped through, back home.