[centre][h2]Morgana Faith[/h2][/centre]

The crime scene, for it could not be mistaken for anything else, was a grizzly sight.

Morgana had seen blood rituals before, she had seen satanic rites and diabolism and other ‘dark’ magics; some researchers would not go as far as to study such topics but she had, to understand them and to be able to ward against them and because, frankly, there were things to be learned even in the darkest of places. This was not that, despite what a cursory glance might tell you. This was something else.

Rituals and rites, even the distasteful kind, had a method to them, a pattern and an order. This was a man’s descent into madness writ across a room in his own blood.

The witch paced into the room once Madeleine invited her to do so; she declined the gloves, raising her hands and waggling his leather clad fingers at the demon in way of excuse. She would leave no fingerprints here and the rituals she had bound to her gloves would be useful to her investigation here. Turning her attention to the walls first she scanned the runes and symbols and words written there, but found little of interest. There were runes from at least four different languages she could recognise, from Nordic and Icelandic to Celtic and something she suspected was altogether older; she had never learned the Nordic runes beyond those still used in modern craft, but the ones she could recognise she knew held power in some circumstances. The Celtic she was more familiar with, but that only made it more obvious that there was nothing of worth to be found; just someone writing magic words on the wall and hoping for some effect. They may as well have been writing ‘abracadabra’ for all it would achieve; though ironically that word had been a true incantation at one point. The symbols were similar, being a mixture of occultist and religious iconography including Icelandic magic staves, sun crosses and the seal of Solomon.

From the way those symbols were discoloured and faded to a dirty brown she could tell that those were the oldest. Others were a little brighter, a little newer, a little more red compared to the rest and those ones trended more towards the satanic in nature; pentacles and sigils of Baphomet, alchemical symbols for brimstone and sulphur and even a Black Sun. It suggested a trend. A progression.

Lastly were the words. Sentences, rambling and incoherent in a mixture of English and German; pleas for help and talk of voices or a loss of memory, where she could understand what was being said at all. Where runes and symbols had achieved no effect it seemed he had simply begun to beg instead.

That led her to the candles and the circle.

[color=c4df9b]“Amateurish.”[/color] A blunt assessment but an accurate one. Whoever had drawn this had not been a practitioner, not someone who knew what they were doing; it was the fumbling of someone first dipping their toes into the water, a simply pentacle inside a circle with lit candles. Like a teenager playing around with an Ouija board or something of the like; it was impossible that it would do anything if the person had no magic to draw on and highly unlikely even if they did. A glance at the shelf and its scant offering of books suggested as much; books on occultism and Satanism bought from common retailers.

There was a story here. Morgana was no investigator but she could see the shape of it. The man who lived here had been bewitched, his mind ensnared by magic as a ritual tattoo was forcibly applied to his body that made sure the effect would last. But perhaps its control had not been perfect, or perhaps it was only meant to allow the caster to snatch back control at a moment’s notice. Either way Mr Friedrich Raimund had been slipping in and out of his bewitchment and feeling like he was losing his mind the whole while. Perhaps he had understood that magic was to blame or perhaps he had simply been desperate, but he had turned to magic of his own to try and retake control of his life. Except he wasn’t a practitioner. He didn’t have the knowledge, the means or the power to fight it.

Most likely he was a man who had never even considered using magic before, until a witch broken into his apartment and broke into his mind and made him do her bidding. He tried runes, he tried occult symbols, he tried anything he could find. When that didn’t work he took more drastic measures, turning to darker avenues as so many men had before him. In seemed in his desperation it seemed Mr Raimund had turned to a higher power for answers.

Or a lower one, as the case may be.

Diabolism had always been a favourite in this country. She blamed Faust.

The satanic ritual drawn on the floor was… a call of sorts; it would be generous to call it a summoning circle but those would be more targeted, while this was just a shout into the dark in the hopes that something would answer. Anything. Normally a diabolist would pair it with a binding ritual, to ensnare whatever came through and bind it in a pact to the practitioner; the circle itself was small, so whatever came through would be small as well, limiting the chances of the diabolist simply being slain by whatever demon came through. A handy way to bind a few imps or lesser demons to your service.

Morgana raised a hand to her face and formed a circle with her fingers, a ritual of her own activating on the back of her glove that allowed her to view the residual magic in the air. Surprisingly enough there was something to see, a few lingering traces of power in the air over the satanic circle.

[i]Something[/i] had come through.

It shouldn’t have worked, not when drawn by a person with no magical aptitude. And yet it did, because the circle too had been drawn in Friedrich’s own blood, freely offered, and that was enough. There was a reason blood was so often used as a reagent in rituals after all, not just in what most people would term ‘blood rituals’ but in other places too; it was one of the oldest forms of magic, right there alongside asking the spirits for assistance and usually the two went hand in hand. Because it had power. Because it had meaning. Because it was symbolic in more ways than one. It was your lifeblood, yes, and that was not insignificant especially for one with magic flowing through their veins, but more than that it represented a [i]payment[/i]. To shed blood showed a certain dedication from the practitioner, either as an offering or as a sacrifice; blood freely given or taken by force. Either one carried a weight to it that was hard to ignore. There had even been decade’s worth of debate on whether the offering or the sacrifice was more potent, or if blood was even needed at all or if some other cost would suffice. She’d written a paper on it.

Whatever the answer, this much spilled blood was likely to have been enough to get something’s attention. Looking around the room at the smashed furniture and the grooves on the wall, she suspected that something may have come through as well.

[color=c4df9b]“I think I’ve seen enough. There’s nothing noteworthy here; just some amateur diabolism and the ravings of a man going insane.”[/color] Morgana made to leave, or at least to go and stand by or just outside the door while the others did their work. The smell of iron in the room was starting to get to her. As she walked past Madeleine she averted her eyes from the demon and also from the parts of the room where the oldest drawings were located; where the blood had aged into a dark brown that was almost black. It was there that Madeleine had spotted the English witchcraft and pointed it out to Morgana, likely from Friedrich’s first dabbling with magic as he copied the patterns of his tattoo onto the wall. The line work was sloppy and was often upside down or backwards, as if drawn by someone copying from a mirror image. It was as disjointed and meaningless as the rest of the writing in the room; even more so, since it was only parts of a greater work separated from the rest.

It was gibberish. Indecipherable had Morgana not already seen the completed work.

But in the middle of it all was a familiar family crest.