Chapter Text
If asked, Branzy would describe himself as a problem solver. An out-of-the-box thinker. When he finds himself stuck in any given situation, he can find a way to get himself unstuck, one way or another. Maybe that’s more a testament to how many problems he manages to get himself into , but he’s always been one to focus on the positives.
All this to say, Branzy, the city’s best (and only) exorcist, was stuck. His little side hobby of banishing demons back to their home plane had actually turned out to be a solid career path for him. Once things had really gotten going, he had been making even more money from that than he had from his mechanical repair services and his inventions combined.
At least, that had been the case until a few weeks ago. Apparently, news must have gotten around in whatever gossip columns demons read that the city of Lifesteal just wasn’t the place to haunt anymore. Branzy would have been inclined to take that as a compliment if it didn’t mean his only real source of income had just withered away to practically nothing.
So that’s how Branzy found himself looking through a book of summoning rituals he’d found in the basement of the city’s library like it was a slightly more evil version of a furniture catalog (why the library even had something like this was a mystery to him, but hey, who was he to question it?). Now, was what he was planning on doing morally dubious? ...Yes, but the fact of the matter remained; without a demon to get rid of, nobody needed an exorcist anymore.
After about an hour of dealing with the book’s terrible organization system, he had finally landed on a page that seemed like it might be able to help him out. Branzy re-read the short pros and cons list he had scribbled in the margins, comparing it to the (unsurprisingly) few other options that remained:
Nightstalker
Born of shadow and spite, nightstalkers are mid-scale demons known for their cunning nature. As creatures of determination, they are difficult to kill and stop at nothing to achieve any task they have been set to. Unlike spirits or leviathans, nightstalkers are known to possess intelligent minds and even individual personalities. While their considerable power is naturally bound, making it impossible for them to directly kill any living beings, it can be unbound, though the method by which to do so remains unknown.
Pros:
- Can’t kill people
- Good work ethic (carries out plans)
- Cunning (potential brainstorming partner)
- Mid-scale (can fit in my house)
- Difficult to kill
Cons:
- Dangerous
- Born of spite???
- Difficult to kill
Ultimately, it seemed like the best choice he had. He wanted the demon to cause enough problems around the neighborhood to get him hired again, but he didn’t want anyone to get hurt. At least, not permanently. Besides, the demon having a personality meant there might even be a slim chance Branzy and it could maybe get along? He wasn’t expecting sunshine and rainbows by any means, but he could get by with a ‘begrudging coworkers’ sort of dynamic.
He looked down to the bottom of the page, which detailed instructions for the summoning ritual. It actually seemed…pretty easy. There were quite a few steps to the process, but the tasks themselves were simple. Looking at it, Branzy had invented machines more difficult to assemble than this, and he had done it from scratch!
Without allowing himself the opportunity to start overthinking what he was about to do, Branzy abruptly closed the book. He was a capable exorcist who had dealt with demons many times before. He had taken on cases all around Lifesteal. Heck, demons were even staying away from him nowadays.
Branzy stood up from where he was sitting on the floor of his workshop and began to gather supplies for the ritual, stepping over the piles of messy notes haphazardly scattered around him. He was the best darn exorcist this town had ever seen. He could handle this.
—
Sitting in his basement with sand, several candles, and a demon to summon, Branzy couldn’t help but wonder if he had gone insane. Sure, it was possible that he had been insane, but something about his current situation made him question it all over again. The irony of an exorcist making a desperate deal with the devil was not lost on him.
He began to go through the motions of setting up the ritual that the book described, calming his nerves by pretending he was just putting together some new invention. Light the candle. Spread the sand in a circle. Check the surroundings for any blood that could interfere with the ritual. Focusing on the mechanical pieces helped take his mind off the way his hands were shaking ever so slightly, and before he knew it, he was finished.
He sat back, looking at the design he had drawn on the floor in front of him. It wasn’t as picture-perfect as the book’s example, but he thought he had done a pretty bang-up job. Branzy stood up and, using the book as a guide, read aloud the Latin words that were supposed to summon the demon. He steeled himself, expecting an explosion or evil laughter or…
Nothing. He double-checked the incantation. Maybe he had pronounced something wrong? He tried a few more times, but all that stared back at him was an empty room.
Turning around, Branzy sighed and began cleaning up the mess he’d made. At least he had tried. As an engineer, he knew that it’s not often that the first solution to a problem works anyway. Now, he could just fill out a few job applications online, and then he’d probably still have some free time afterward to keep tweaking that flying alarm clock prototype he’d been working on, and—
“You went through all that trouble to call me here, and you’re not even interested in a chat?”
Branzy froze. The voice came from behind him, sending chills down his spine despite its eerie calmness.
He slowly turned around, squinting into the darkness to make out the…thing that was speaking to him. His mind had to reach to make sense of it; the way it moved made him think of an enormous puppet, only wrong . Its black limbs seemed to be made of shadow, somehow both sharp and fluid, stretching at odd angles and digging into crevices in the floorboards. Its face (if it could be called a face) was pure white, almost mask-like, with two vertical slits for eyes and a grin too wide to ever be worn by a human. Two black horns jutted out from the top of its head, thick at the base but each tapering to a point. The one on the right was cracked.
“Don’t tell me you’re getting cold feet, Branzy.” It spoke without moving its mouth. “If there was a time to be scared, it’s long gone by now.”
“I— I’m not scared. No, I’m just excited to…make a new acquaintance! It’s not every day a demon moves into the neighborhood. You know?”
The demon cocked its head to the side, intrigued, and for one surreal second Branzy thought it looked something like a puppy. No, he was definitely insane.
“Still,” it continued after a moment, “you must have brought me here for a reason. A good one, it seems, if you’re this scared and did it anyway.”
“Of course I have a good reason,” Branzy said with more confidence than he felt. He probably should’ve left it there, but he had a bad habit of sputtering on and on when he was nervous. “I mean, I wouldn’t summon a demon for a bad reason, though maybe it counts as a bad reason since demons are generally bad and all, no offense. I guess it depends on what you mean by a bad reas—”
“So what will it be?” The demon cut Branzy off, impatient. “Fame, endless riches, immortality? You have endless possibilities before you, all of them now within your reach.”
Branzy blinked twice, suddenly feeling like his request was a bit silly. Maybe this entire idea was a bit silly, now that he thought about it. Despite that, he had a plan and he was going to see it through to the end.
“Honestly, I was just thinking you could cause some trouble for me around town? Business has been kind of slow for exorcists around here, and maybe if you throw some books around or haunt some houses, I could get a few more jobs?”
A silence hung in the air. Suddenly, the demon started to make a low, rasping sound. It took Branzy a few seconds to realize that it was laughing at him.
“That can certainly be arranged,” it said as it began to move toward Branzy, its sharp smile stopping only inches away from him. It raised a shadowy arm, curiously inspecting his face. “In all my centuries, I have never been asked for something this…interesting.”
“You know me, ahaha, always interesting.” He laughed nervously, sending up a silent prayer for safety before realizing that that probably wouldn’t do him much good at this point. A single bead of sweat made its way down his nose. When had he started sweating?
“Of course, there’s still the matter of your payment.”
Branzy let out a sigh of relief as the demon backed away, opting instead to exert its general air of menace from a distance. A moment later, its words caught up to him. Payment. Of course there would be payment. Not that he hadn’t expected that, but he really had not thought he would get this far.
“I don’t suppose you take credit, do you?” he joked, trying to ease his own nerves. To his surprise, the demon seemed to find it funny, too. Again, it rasped that low, off-putting laugh. Branzy couldn’t put his finger on how he could tell, but the demon’s smile seemed genuine in a way it wasn’t before.
“I can’t say I do. Though, I do have something else in mind.” It paused, clearly expecting Branzy to ask him what it was. Branzy took a second to wonder at the discovery that demons did, in fact, have a sense of dramatic tension before taking the bait.
“Which would be…?”
“I have my own…project I’d like to complete while I’m here, and I can’t exactly do all of it myself. So, to pay your debt to me, I simply ask that when I tell you to do something, you do it. That sounds fair, doesn’t it?”
Branzy considered the proposition. “That sounds a bit more like indentured servitude from where I’m standing.” The worst-case scenario would be if he was asked to kill someone, but he could always just exorcize the demon if it came to that. Probably. Besides, Branzy was basically asking the demon to be his indentured servant, so it seemed reasonable that this would even things out.
Still, he wasn’t going to sign his free will away without asking questions first. He wasn’t an amateur.
“If I’m going to agree to this, there’s something I want to know first. What exactly is this project of yours? Because if it’s ending the world or something, I’m not going to help you with it.”
It shook its head. “No, no, nothing that diabolical. What do you take me for?” Branzy might have given an answer had he not been stupefied at the fact that the eldritch horror was now actively joking with him . “I can’t give you any more details, unfortunately, but I can promise you I am not trying to end the world.”
Branzy ran the terms and conditions through his head one final time. Favors in exchange for favors. Nobody starts the apocalypse. Hopefully getting paid. He was still uneasy, but he supposed this was the best he was going to get, considering who he was talking to.
“In that case…” Branzy took a deep breath. “You have yourself a deal.” He reached out to shake the demon's hand. As his skin connected with the cold, shadowy claws extended toward him, he heard a faint hissing coming from the point of contact as black smoke began to rise from their palms. He pulled away as it dissipated, and they fell into an awkward silence. Leave it to Branzy to have a casual awkward moment with a monster from a hell-plane.
“So, do you have a name? Or…”
“My real name is too difficult for human voices to pronounce, but you can call me Clownpierce.”
Branzy was on the verge of asking what kind of ridiculous name that was but thought better of it and held his tongue. “Can I just call you Clown? Clownpierce is still pretty weir— difficult.”
“Sure. Call me whatever you want. Friends have nicknames, right?” the demon, no, Clown smirked. Again, Branzy didn’t know how he knew Clown was smirking; the wide grin hadn’t changed. He just knew somehow. Speaking of its— his appearance…
“Also, if you’re going to be sticking around here, I don’t know if it’s the best idea to go around looking like…that.” Branzy gestured vaguely at Clown’s more terrifying features, which happened to make up the majority. “I mean, what will the neighbors think?”
Clown seemed to think it over for a second before nodding. Dark smoke began to swirl around him, crackling as it enveloped his lanky figure. After a few moments, it dissipated to reveal a normal, human-looking man with black hair, ghost-pale skin, and a three-piece suit. A single small, gold earring hung in his left ear.
“Better?”
“...Perfect!” It still wasn’t the most inconspicuous look in the world, but Branzy decided it was better than giving everyone on the street nightmares for the foreseeable future.
Now that all of Branzy’s immediate concerns were settled, part of their conversation suddenly struck him as odd. “Earlier, when I asked about your name, did you say that we were friends?”
“This soon? Branzy, we’re roommates at best,” Clown said lightly, passing Branzy and beginning to climb the stairs leading out of the basement. Branzy chuckled a little at that one.
He followed Clown upstairs, taking in for the first time that his plan had actually succeeded. He had done it! And only for the low, low price of indentured servitude! Honestly, it had been a better offer than he was expecting from a demon.
As for Clown, Branzy was still terrified of him, but at least he seemed…friendly, in his own sharp, unexpected way. Branzy wasn’t naive enough to trust him, but maybe they really could get along.
“And since we’re roommates now, my first order for you is to make us both lunch. I haven’t had any good food in ages.” Clown punctuated his statement with a wave of his hand. Branzy swallowed, hoping that the demon liked instant noodles enough that he wouldn’t be incinerated on the spot.
For the first time of what would come to be many, Branzy wondered if he was in over his head.