I stretched my back walking to one of the shelves and took a bottle filled with holy water, the original, of course, not the bullshit they use in churches these days. But normal holy water was not enough. Now would be the hard part. After a bit of searching in the mess of my family's belongings, I finally located the right coffer.
I put my finger on the rune-lock and whispered the correct phrase to open the thing. Inside were a couple of white bones that looked like they could fetch some money as haunted house decorations. If any specialist looked at any of them, they would probably say that it was the wing bone of some huge bird, if not for the weird hole in the middle that looked suspiciously like an eye socket.
Now for the hard part. Taking a special carving knife, I pushed some of my magic into the blade, and previously hidden runes lit up like Christmas lights. Straining my muscles, I spent the next hour trying to scrape enough powder from the bone, feeling my magic flow out of me with every pass over the hard material.
How anyone could have killed the bone's owner was beyond me.
After getting enough powder, I put the bone back in its place and mixed the fruit of my work with the holy water. Not many spirits should be able to live through coming into contact with that.
With that, my basic preparations were done.
The last part was surprisingly tiring. I wanted to rest a bit before returning home, but the feeling of emptiness quickly made itself known. It was like a pressure difference that desperately wants to be corrected, but, for some reason, can't. A feeling of something missing from you that you want back but can't locate. The nasty outcome of using magic in a world lacking any natural mana.
With a heavy sigh, I opened one of the most protected chests in the room. It was filled to around half with blue crystal, segregated by size into compartments inside the coffer. Some of the crystals were the size of a pebble, others a bit larger than my fist. They were all strangely regular, like they were cut by a professional, even though all were natural.
I took out one of the pebble-sized ones. Now with a source of mana I instinctively drew the energy into myself, slowly feeling the sucking sensation go away.
That feeling of emptiness was the cause of so many mental illnesses nowadays. Untrained people with potential for magic use their mana in a fit of rage or sorrow just to spend the rest of their lives thinking they're missing something–that they can't be happy.
Thank the abyss, I had the crystals.
***
With everything prepared, I went back to the apartment to rest.
The next morning, after finally winning the battle with sleep, I woke up with the exorcism on my mind so much that I almost forgot it was a working day, and I still had to go to uni.
The exorcist gig was nice, but I needed a job in the future. With any hauntings and mana sources becoming more scarce every year, a normal job was a nice thing to have. A safe thing.
I studied two courses, archaeology, as there was always a chance of coming up on some ruin dating back to the age of myth, and the second one online, physics. My father decided that one, to have something logical, something that describes the world in specific terms, to anchor the mind when delving into things that can't be truly understood or perceived.
The archaeology course was a bit boring for me. Most of the events we studied were Vatican cover-ups or history told to mortals so they would stop asking questions. Also, I didn't have many friends to talk to in order to pass the time, considering that the eerie feeling I gave out was still present even with my eyes covered. Most warlocks that dealt with demons were unnerving, and I had a deal with something much darker than a demon, so people usually stayed clear of me.
I was not one for human companionship, but sometimes, it would be nice to talk about anything to pass the time.
Sadly, not all of them ignored me.
"Ayyyyy the exorcist. Fought any ghosts recently?" The college jock straight from the pages of any school drama and the bane of my existence. Ever since someone's grandmother became my client and showed the exorcism photos on her phone to one of my group mates, he just wouldn't fuck off.
If not for the fact that it would be spending a finite resource that was magic, I would probably have put a curse on him long ago.
"The spirit of your mother, yesterday in my bedroom."
I wish I could just fight the ghost already.