An elderly couple entered through a gate on the west side of the building. They were dressed in an old pale gown and a worn leather jacket respectively. The woman was old, ugly and wrinkled by age. The husband walked with heavy steps into the hall leaving footprints of wet mud on the wooden floor. He wiped off some mud on his worn linen pants and gazed past the hooded figure behind the counter. The old man had a sour look on his face.

  The hall was lit by the dim, wavering light of a candle. Pale white walls peeling from age were lined with shelves of books. The air was sweet with the smell of sandalwood, aloe and incense. The scents blended with the smell of blood, ink and unwashed clothes. The man behind the counter clad in a brown monk robe readied himself for an introduction. With a deep breath, he raised his right hand into the air with his index finger pointing up.

  “Believe it or not, the world is filled with strange phenomena-” the man spoke, with a grin on his face, before being rudely interrupted by the old man.

  “We’ve heard the story before,” the old man grunted, “we’ve looked everywhere, but we couldn’t find anyone willing to help us. Our house is haunted. We’d like to hire an exorcist-”

  “Will you help us?” the old woman blurted out, interrupting her husband.

  “Alright, I will help you,” the man with the brown monk robe spoke up behind a counter, shifted in his seat and brought out three contracts, “Now let’s talk about the fees.”

  The man sat, unfazed, and continued, “Now, which one of these packages would you want to pay for?”

  “Packages?!” the old lady asked in shock.

  “We guarantee a spirit reduction rate by 20% with the cheap bronze plan, 50% with the more expensive silver plan and 99% reduction with the most expensive gold plan.”

  “Reduction?!” the old man asked, with big eyes.

  “You see here, we treat evil spirits like… Oh, what’s the word?” the man in the monk robe continued, waving his free hand, stuck in thought.

  “Gas, yeah that’s it,” he said with the smirk of a person discovering what they were looking for, “Gas,” he chose this word carefully.

  “You see, you can’t completely eliminate gas. You can decrease it, but getting rid of it is difficult. If the evil spirit returns, you will get a 20% discount on the next service!” the man in the brown monk robe continued, then stifled a chuckle at this, thinking back on it all.

  It all seemed so small and insignificant now. As he felt the weight of the coin pouch given to him by the old man, a large grin spread on his face. Everything had culminated in this moment.

  “Hm, gold plan,” the man in the robe said as he looked inside the pouch and stuffed the two lesser contracts in their respective boxes under the hardwood counter.

  “Leave it to me, If I am able to exorcize it then maybe your wife’s face can return to normal. Your appointment will be taken care of in two days. Please write down your name and location of your residence on this contract.” The man with the monk robe said as he stuffed the pouch in a pocket, placed a pen on the counter, then turned around and slammed the door in the elderly couple's faces.

  This emphatic exit made the stunned elderly two people wake up. A muffled scream from the husband to protest the latter statement could be heard through the closed hardwood door. The man with the brown monk robe moved in a zigzag pattern past a couple of boxes of herbs that sat on the floor and sat down on a chair in front of another counter inside the building. The counter was stacked with bubbling glass jars and potions, with herbs bound with twigs hanging from the ceiling.

  Christofer turned in the direction of the yelling. The captain and Ike was carrying the stretcher inside.The captain spoke up, talking to the the man who just arrived behind the counter.

  “I see you have trouble outside. We have wounded, can you go get Gerard for us?” his comment echoed loudly.

  The man behind the counter dressed in the monk robe glanced down on the man in the chair, sighed, then nodded, before lifting a hatch and climbing down a ladder. Following the confirmation that Gerard was coming, the captain signaled his men and within moments soldiers with stained surcoats began carrying wounded inside on makeshift stretchers. The building gradually began filling up.

  This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

  A loud ruckus echoed downstairs before the man in the monk robe stuck his head out of the gap in the floor with an annoyed expression.

  “Hey Frank, stop telling everyone that you can see the future and give me a hand down here.”

  "Aah, Shut the hell up, Jack. Nobody tells me what to do.”

  It was silent for a little while. The silence quickly became unbearable and Frank went downstairs to help. Some more ruckus was heard downstairs, scraping sounds against the floor as barrels were pushed aside. Gerard was supported so that he could climb up the ladder, out of the basement.

  “They.. they have this horrible.. pudding here. Butterscotch pudding on Mondays, it’s dreadful,” Gerard complained.

  “It's Thursday,” Jack, the man with the brown monk robe, answered.

  “Oh.. oh that’s fantastic news,” Gerard replied with a satisfied smile.

  “Gerard, wounded,” Frank said as he climbed up from the basement and pointed to the men on the stretchers. Then pointed at Christofer, “Jack, do we have any healing runes left?”

  “Nope, we used those on the nobles last Tuesday.”

  Old man Gerard was now a fourth of the way to Christofer, shambling in an ever encroaching, half dead, kind of way. He was dressed in a green robe, with a firm grip around a cane as he supported himself while walking towards him with a bemused expression.

  “Ah.. Frank!” the old man suddenly stopped, “I.. I need a power source.. w’.. we could use a Fafnir stone - Also, I need a spool of copper wire! And a climbing harness! And-and-and some jug of Alkahest solution. I'b... ib... I think it's in my bag.. Downstairs.. oh and.. Jack! we need some Svefnthorn herb.. And-and-and a bucket of rat blood.”

  “Rat blood?” Christofer raised his head to try and look at the old man in the eye to see if he was serious, but his head was heavy and his arms couldn’t support him, so he reluctantly leaned back and sighed instead. Frank then climbed down the ladder once more.

  “Uh, I got it!” Frank exclaimed from below, moments later, before climbing up and placing the rather large bag to the side of the hatch.

  After climbing up, he moved with it in his arms, while grunting with an annoyed tone, trying to keep the fanny pack up to avoid nudging the sword he temporarily had on his waist. Jack grabbed a herb hanging above and picked up a bucket from under the counter and ran after Frank, while Gerard moved slowly after the other two.

  “Jack, open the door, this thing is heavier than it looks,” Frank said, red in the face after holding up the bag in his arms.

  With a light kick, the door slammed open, revealing the decor of the room. Worn, ragged, old machinery stood in the room as well as a cauldron next to a large oven. Large and small glass tubes wound their way along the ceiling into larger and smaller glass jars that were rounded at the bottom, like typical medieval fantasy flasks. Jack stepped out of the room while Gerard entered with a smile on his face and closed the door.

  An immense amount of bubbling could be heard from the closed room. Jack later opened the door and ran inside after grabbing a thick dark green book from under the counter while Frank hoisted Gerard into the ceiling. A light screech was heard as Gerard turned a copper crank to start the process. The machine roared and threw up dust and smoke, mechanical parts circled, iron cogs a-clatter, and copper tubes shaking.

  “Alright, see that vat there.. Frank, pour the blood in there,” Gerard said as he hung from the ceiling in his harness observing the scene. Shortly after the blood had exited the bucket, it flowed down the vat into a copper pipe below that snaked itself around the walls. Soon, an oily black smoke flowed into another copper tube filled with purple sludge water, starting the effects of some sort of chemical reaction.

  “Am I the only one here who is questioning where, why and how they got a whole bucket of rat blood?” Christofer asked, annoyed, in the background. However, he was ignored. Instead of answering him, Gerard pulled out a pair of goggles from his pocket and put them on, as the chemical reaction started to shine and bathe the area in a reddish orange hue.

  “Frank, pull that lever there. The third one from the right,” Gerard continued, noting that reactions were starting to happen, “Oh! and Jack-” as the lever was pulled, a light screeching sound was heard, before dissipating the glow with a light thud as the lever hit the wall.

  “Yeah, yeah. I got the book,” Jack responded and sat down on a wooden chair and started flipping through the large book, looking for something.

  Three exhausts protruding from the machine sticking out of the wall were steadily coughing up gas into three vacuum chambers. Steam ejected tangentially from nozzles causing copper cogwheels to spin around, all while shaking the entire machine. Gerard’s goggles gleamed in the way they did when he was excited. Or losing his mind. Actually, the goggles always seemed to have that gleam whenever he wore them.

  “Are you okay? Did you take something?” Jack asked, noticing the sudden excitement.

  “Psychedelics? No, not since Tuesday, no,” Gerard responded while he spun to look at the tubes that appeared to have settled down a little bit. He turned another crank located on the tube and then the liquid started flowing down a copper pipe that curved downwards, flowing into another chamber that seemed to refine the substance a little bit further.

  “There was something important…” Gerard said as he stroked his chin with an annoyed grimace on his face, “Oh! the pressure! Jack-”

  A copper pressure gauge was bolted to the top of a copper container on the ground, it’s inner arrow flying back and forth, noting the increasing pressure.

  “On it!” Jack pulled a cord that hung closeby and a copper steam whistle blew with a sharp sound as the pressure gradually decreased.