Dance of the Gods

Veronica and Alex both walked towards the main entrance. The house was big, it could've supported a large family, which meant that it could support multiple large families in the Dirt District.

This raised a question, why haven't anybody lived inside?

One would think that in this part of the city people wouldn't care much about a structure's integrity, but there seemed to be something off with this building.

It looked properly abandoned and if even homeless people rather lived on the streets than inside this house, that meant there was something really wrong here.

She was about to reach out and knock, but Alex quickly caught her hand.

"What are you doing? Are you insane?" Said Alex and she quickly realized how dumb of a mistake she was about to commit.

"Sorry." She said with embarrassment, but Alex wasn't done yet.

"Don't touch anything and don't be too loud! We don't know if the owner is currently home, which means we have to be really careful!... As I said yesterday, if we get into trouble you don't fight or try to help! You will run!... Are we clear?"

He sounded extremely serious, understandably so. Slowly Veronica made a small, firm nod and with that they tried to open the door.

It was locked, but it was also very rickety. Veronica gave it one firm push and the lock broke into pieces.

Alex went inside first, but Veronica kept close behind. The floorboards creaked under their feet and for a moment she thought they might break.

The room they stepped inside was large and empty. The air was full of small dust particles, which got illuminated by the setting Sun's last rays. The walls and roof had multiple large holes that made it possible to look outside.

The room was plain, without furniture. They only spent about a minute looking around, before deciding to leave through the only other door.

It lead to a small corridor with three doors and a staircase that lead upstairs. The corridor was even more dusty than the previous room, but strangely enough the floor seemed quite clean, like someone mopped it up every few days.

There was still no sign of anyone living here though. Veronica tried to find any clue of a murderer using this house as a headquarters, but there was simply nothing.

Alex slowly walked to one of the doors on the right, before opening it, he pulled out his revolver, which reminded Veronica about her own lack of weaponry.

He opened the door and moved inside. Veronica followed him a few moments later. This room wasn't as empty, it had a few furniture that were covered by a very dusty white cloth.

This room was the worst yet, Veronica nearly started to cough just by how stuffy the air was. Her eyes went to the floor and watched the footprints Alex had left.

The floorboards weren't cleaned up in here and only their footprints could be seen, which meant whoever cleaned the previous two rooms, didn't bother with this one.

Alex had noticed this as well and soon they opened the next door, which lead into a similar room. The last one was the same, but it was instead a bedroom.

With nothing else to do they approached the stairs and began their ascent. Every step echoed through the house. The staircase was clean too, same as the short upstairs corridor.

It was similar to the ground floor, with the only difference being the four doors leading to each room.

They went through each and every one, but all of them were empty and unclean. Veronica and Alex stood in the upstairs corridor confused.

They were sure that someone was moving through here regularly and that this was the house that Veronica had seen in her divination, but why were there no evidence or anything related to the person?

After going through each room again they just stood there confused.

Veronica was about to suggest something, when she caught something in the corner of her eyes. Curiously she walked towards the tiny red droplet on the ground.

Alex who was deep in thought noticed this and walked towards her.

"What is it?" He asked as Veronica knelt down and touched the small red liquid.

It was thicker than water and after smelling it she knew exactly what it was...

"It's blood... But where did it come from?"

They stood here for the better part of ten minutes, but still she hadn't notice it at all. While she was still looking at the tiny droplet in her hand, suddenly a second one appeared. IT had fallen from above.

Both Veronica and Alex looked up and at that moment a third one fell straight on Veronica's cheek. Her hand instantly snapped towards it and smudged it everywhere.

While Veronica was desperately grabbing a handkerchief and trying to clean her face, Alex moved towards a specific point he had spied. On the ceiling there was a rectangular part which seemed different from the rest.

There was a hole which could probably be used to open a way into the attic, the only issue was that the ceiling was nearly three meter in height.

"Veronica, a little help here?" Said Alex while motioning to the cutout. She stepped up next to him and stared at the ceiling.

"Give me a boost and I can reach it!" She said and Alex done so wasting no time.

He held out his hand, giving Veronica a place to step on. She was quite light and Alex raised her with ease.

It was definitely a bizarre sight. She in her high-heeled shoe standing on Alex's hand, while keeping perfect balance with ease.

Her hand went inside the handhold and she began pulling. Slowly Alex began lowering her and above them a ladder came down leading to the attic.

Suddenly both of them began coughing violently. Before opening it, the room just smelled old, dusty and stuffy, but now Veronica actually vomited to the floor.

This was definitely the worst thing she had ever smelt. Whatever was in the attic, it was rotting and judging by the previous blood, it was also very much dead.

Veronica seriously started to question her mind, no sane person would go up into a space like that, but this was exactly what they had to do.

Alex definitely looked better than her, only a bit green and a little disturbed. He grabbed onto the ladder and began his ascent. Veronica just bent down and vomited again, before deciding to follow.

By the time she began going up, Alex was already standing straight inside the large attic.

"I think you should stay down there... Fuck, this is so much worse than I thought..." Before she could listen to his advice, her head popped through the opening the smell was much worse up there, but she held in the nausea that came over her.

The room was a bit dark, but her eyes easily saw the source of the smell. There was about half a dozen bodies hanged onto the roof. They were naked and headless, most were man, but there was definitely at least one woman as well.

Luckily Veronica was already standing inside the attic, so she could puke all over the floor again.

Her body was trembling and her eyes couldn't leave the corpses. Most of them had maggots crawling in their wounds, and there were a lot of injuries on each. All the blood was collected in a large metal tray below them.

Seeing this raised the question in Veronica, where did the blood fallen from since it couldn't have come from the bodies.

Her eyes moved to the place where the blood should've fallen from and she saw... something...

There was some kind of large circular drawing on the ground, but Veronica had no idea what it depicted. Alex was looking at the same thing, but unlike her he seemed to know exactly what it was.

With a pale face he turned to Veronica and spoke in an urgent tone.

"Quickly! Did your divination show anything about the killer? Something that could help us determine its path?" Only now did Veronica realize that she had omitted to talk about this very important fact.

"Yes... I forgot to mention it before, but I saw a pair of pure black eyes and demonic laughter. Also at some point I felt uncontrollable fear..." She didn't even finish speaking before Alex began moving quickly.

He pulled out his revolver and emptied the chamber into his hand. After putting those bullets away he pulled out six different kinds of bullets. Veronica recognized four of them, two Death Bullets and two bullets with white pentagrams, called Heavenly Bullets. The last two had different colored casings too, one being blue and the other green.

Veronica was curious about them, but there seemed to be no time to ask questions. Alex loaded the gun, than looked Veronica straight into the eye.

"Next time... if there's going to be a next time, don't forget to tell important information!" Said Alex angrily and a bit afraid.

"But I don't understand? What are we facing? What is this circle, with those strange markings?" Asked Veronica, her voice trembled a bit she had no idea why.

Alex pointed his gun at the large circle with his revolver and said, "That right there is the drawing that one path uses for something called Murder Rituals! It's a ritual used to become stronger by killing!"

Veronica looked at the blood circle with terror, she felt really fearful all of the sudden, which confused her a bit. She was feeling way too much fear, it was very unlike her.

"What path uses it?" She asked. Alex just turned towards a dark corner of the attic and raised his revolver.

She followed his gaze and then she saw it. In the darkness a large form hid. It had red skin, large pointy teeth that grew out of its maw, eyes that seemed like the void itself and two small bone horns.

Its height was large, about two and a half meter. On its hand there was five fingers with nails that seemed like small knives. When it took a step the ground trembled a bit.

In the next moment she heard Alex's answer to her previous question...

"Order 7 Demon of the Villain path!"

Then all hell broke lose...