Flick - she lit a candle to illuminate the crime scene in the dark, dank basement. The detective and forensic investigator in the room both shuffled their feet, and one chimed, “Wouldn’t a flashlight be better?” Ignoring the comment, she proceeded around the room, looking for the telltale sign… “That scented candle smells good; what is it?” said the other. “Rendered fat from late-term aborted babies,” she replied. That got them quiet, even though she was simply stating the truth. Suddenly, the candle flame grew large and turned a coppery green, crackling and sputtering, but not a single stray ember disturbed the room. She was staring at a concrete wall.
“Do you have drilling equipment? There’s something behind that wall,” she pointed. “Yeah, but we’d need to head back to the station and get permission. We can’t just -“ the officer was interrupted by the sound of Jo quickly punching the wall at four different points, then tearing it off with her bare hands. Good thing she packed a mixture of Vervain & Monkshood before heading out.
Behind the wall was a subterranean catacomb filled with hundreds of brown, muddy children’s bones, a few fresh and bloody with strips of flesh still hanging off of them.
Back at the police station, Jo was once again engaged in the old song and dance with the police chief. How did she know exactly where to look? Did she have a link to the crime? Where did her powers come from? She had to explain, again, that anyone could learn witchcraft & sorcery. She just happened to be good at it. To herself, she reaffirmed that this was all worth it to stop more innocent children from getting brutally devoured by something ancient and powerful.
When Jo was in elementary school, she was kidnapped by a deranged man who needed the fresh young fingers of a child to commit a dark summoning ritual. Three days she spent tied to a heavy beam in his shed. In between fighting pangs of thirst and hunger, she saw wondrous, magical things she didn’t think were real. It was hard to separate the hallucinations from the actual spells and visions the kidnapper practiced.
The day finally came. He led her weak little frame by the hand over to the goblet where the other ingredients were already mixed and ready - goat’s blood, a previously lost love letter, crushed and powdered pickled bat bones, and all manner of other dark, twisted things. He began cutting her fingers at the base of the hand with a curved, thorn-like dagger. First the left pinky, then the ring finger… Jo barely registered the pain in her weak haze, but she felt the hot blood dripping and her body screaming, crying, and shaking. A foul smoke rose from the goblet, and she saw great dragon wings begin to unfurl.
At that moment, a man burst in, surrounded by a holy blue light. He quickly kicked the goblet and doused it in what she later learned was palm oil blessed by an obscure sect of pagans. He then stabbed the kidnapper in the chest - one, two, three times - with a beautiful silvery knife. His movements were graceful and well-practiced, and it was all over in a matter of seconds. He dropped to his knees and started bandaging her stubs - unfortunately, the ritual had already corrupted the digits beyond healing.
“Were you sent by God, to save me?” she asked meekly. He laughed. “The gods don’t care about you and me, little girl. It’s up to us to carve our own paths.” From then on, she took the lesson to heart, and with a little help from the man, whose name was Sam, along the way, she embarked on her journey to become one of the top magicians and demonologists in the South.
There was a flurry of books scattered all across her office. Jo needed to accurately identify the creature, or creatures, and come up with several solutions. From her experience, the first few plans inevitably went wrong, the next several had misleading information, and usually something unexpected proved to be the final answer. She traced the intricate machinery of her prosthetic fingers while deep in thought; they were forged by artificers from a long-lost civilization, and gave her full freedom of mobility but no feeling… An idea struck her, and she removed the fingers.
The day had come. The police used imaging and lasers to trace the tunnels of the catacombs into a grand hall, but they found no signs of life there. Technology was useful, but only magic could pierce the veil. Jo produced two glassy-eyed, blind rats tied together at the tail from her pocket and set them loose on the ground. At first, the creatures fought and tugged in different directions, but then they settled onto a unanimous path, following the invisible trail with their noses.
Eventually, the enchanted rats led both her and the small police team down a hidden set of crumbling stairs. This opened into a large swampy area overgrown with fetid plant life and obscured by a thick sea green layer of marsh gas. Guttural, piercing animal sounds rang across the expanse of wetlands, but the tones were alien - certainly not any animals currently alive on this earth. As they squelched their boots in the muddy waters, slowly making their way across, a clear laughter arose from the din, evocative and beautiful like bells at a celebration feast. They all stared in awe as a gorgeous woman clad in a clean white dress slowly levitated above the foliage, staring down at the small group below the trees. She opened her arms wide in a welcoming gesture. Then the slaughter began.
Like a great eagle, she swooped down on one of the officers and clawed his head clean off the neck. Her immaculate white dress was now sprayed with blood, but she kept laughing warmly. As Jo yelled at the team to get down, the next victim had already been grabbed, dragged up, and impaled through the head on a high branch. Her eye stalk dangled out of the crushed head and sank to the inky abyss.
Jo cracked open one of her homemade flare mixtures with Henbane, which glowed a bright gold against the murky blue-green surroundings. This gave the creature pause, but she proceeded to murder two more officers after the initial shock wore off. Cursing, Jo threw the flare towards the being and produced a small knife with a shimmering blade and bone handle. This was forged from Damascus steel quenched with innocent blood and a carved bone handle made from one of the victims’ clavicles. She imbued it herself with long-forgotten runes of power from ancient Estonia.
Lunging toward the boghag with knife at the ready, she leaped but found only air; the monster could fly, and she needed a way to temporarily incapacitate it. Searching her satchel, she found a seeking arrow caked with Thunderbird droppings and fletched with Phoenix feathers - this would do nicely. Jo hurled the arrow like a spear, and it found its mark. The creature screamed in pain as it hurtled toward the ground, landing with a splash in the muddy waters.
Thinking quickly, she threw a pouch of angel dust into the air near the creature and draw a quick circle of trapping using a stick into the muck. The boghag tried to escape, but it could not step outside the circle. Knowing the trap wouldn’t hold for long, Jo came upon her caught prey and began violently stabbing the knife all over the boghag - her head, chest, back, and even legs. Putrid brown bog water oozed & seeped from the wounds, but Jo knew it would not be enough. As the creature thrashed in pain, threatening to break free, Joe had to make sure it wouldn’t escape. So, she thrust her left pinky and index finger into its open mouth, and detached them. The preparations she had made laboriously varnishing them in Enochian oils proved to be worthwhile - it was stuck in the circle.
With a flourish, she produced a vial of stomach acid rendered from the head of a three-headed crocodile. The creature’s eyes went wide as the realization dawned on her, and Jo dumped the contents of the vial into the open cuts. She exploded into a mess of bloody, swampy bits, and Jo was knocked back by the force into a tree. She lost consciousness in the morass as the surviving officers shouted orders.
Jo woke up in a hospital bed, clean of all the filth & gunk from her latest adventure, and all fingers intact. Another job…done at least, but not well, though she didn’t feel too bad about losing a few cops. At least the kids would be safe. She got up, grabbed her stuff, and checked out of the hospital, ready to face the next nightmare.