I thought it was a good sign that Heinrich was so enthusiastic about the magic system, and I think with this enthusiasm, he would be a fast learner. So I said to him, whilst he looked at me like a child who you just explained what Christmas is, "Well, to be honest, since you are not an official part of the D.A.F.U, you are not permitted to do the ritual for a Schutzgeist. I'm sorry, kid."
I saw at his face that I had just shattered all his hopes and dreams, and his cheerful expression slowly turned to a sorrowful face. He was nearly crying. "Wait, wait, nothing to be sad about," I quickly followed up. "You may not be an official part of the DAFU, but I am, and if you promise you won't tell anybody, I can give you, let's say, a little heads up."
He wiped his teary eyes and said, "Oh, sir, I would be glad, and I promise I won't tell a soul."
I smirked and turned my back on him, and whilst looking out my broken garden door, I said, "Well, I can't give you an artifact, to be honest, but I have three incantations that you can use if you want. Firstly, I have something of the Italian branch."
I went into the kitchen and pulled from behind my cupboard three old and dusty tomes. "Well, here we go. Firstly, the 'Il Leggenda di Cesare'. With this, your Schutzgeist would be Caesar. He is a strong commander. You could control the emotions and morals of others in battle or just let them feel less pain. I don't like him, and also, you need to speak Italian to use him effectively.
"The second is a fictional Schutzgeist. Have you ever read 'The Broken Jug'?" For a moment, he thought. It looked like he was reaching for an old memory in the back of his mind, as he all of a sudden said fast, "Yes, of course. It's a rather old book from Heinrich von Kleist, right, about a village in the Netherlands and a corrupt judge named Adam?"
I was happy that he knew the book because this would make the next part a lot easier, and I said, "Yes, exactly. And with his power, you can judge others, but it's no fair trial. You have the strings in your hand, but it has a drawback. The greed of Adam is most likely to influence the magician."
He immediately interrupted me, "Then I don't want him. I really want to help you, sir, and with this Schutzgeist, I would most likely be a vulnerability for you."
I sat down and leaned forwards so that I could look Heinrich directly in his eyes and spoke, "Well, then the last one, but there's a problem. I don't know what language it is. We found this one at a cult specialist in frost magic at the outskirt of Cologne. Maybe you know it."
I laid the old and cold-to-the-touch tome before him on the broken table. He corrected his glasses and leaned over it and slowly formed words with his mouth without saying them out loud. I was amazed and said, "Don't tell me you can actually read this?"
He looked up towards me, still with his broken glasses, and said, while his hair fell in his face, "Well, I actually can. It's Icelandic, and it says the story of Gryla."
He corrected his messy hair and wiped the strain from his face. I fell back in my chair. I was baffled and then explained, "If I were you, I would pick this incantation. Gryla is a really powerful witch from Iceland. With the right artifact, you can become even more powerful than me. I would take it. But why the hell can you read Icelandic?"
All of a sudden, he looked ashamed. "Well, my mother is actually an Icelandic immigrant, and my father came from Germany. The two met, and the result was me. And I don't like talking about it because of the political situation of the moment. I don't want anybody to find out that I don't have a German family background."
"Oh, yes," I thought to myself. The political situation in Germany has been pretty bad. Some Austrian idiot has created a far-right party called the NSDAP. I noticed that their power has grown strongly over the last few years. At first, I was unsure about them, but then they started being extremely anti-Semitic, which I don't approve of. They remind me of the idiots that started the Great War, and because of this, I don't like them.
I awoke from my thoughts and slapped my hand on my knees. "Well, since this is now done, let's go to sleep. Tomorrow, we have to visit the Votan GmbH. You can sleep beside me. I have an extra mattress for guests..."
"You did it, didn't you?" Heinrich continued to look at the tome, but he spoke those words with a blaming tone.
I looked at him with a confused expression and reassuringly said, "What do you mean? I did it? What did I do?"
He didn't move, but there was a sound. I wasn't sure what it was. It sounded like a giggle, and the more I listened, the more I got my hand on what that sound was. It was a laugh, a laugh of a maniac, and it got louder. Then, all of a sudden, he looked at me, and the blood in my veins turned to ice. He was disfigured. Half of his face was missing. It looked like it was blown away. You could see the muscle, flesh, and bones. His left eye was missing. The edges to the "intact" part of his face were burned. I knew this look. I saw it in the trenches as soldiers were blown away by mortar fire.
"You pushed him. You knew there was a mine. Well, like they say, two birds with one stone. It was your fault. You wanted him to die so you could get the praise."
The false Heinrich said those words with malice towards me. I knew it couldn't be real, but I was still afraid. I wasn't sure if it told the truth.
The false Heinrich stood up, and he walked in a janky way, as if his bones were broken, and with his raspy voice, he said, "Do it. Read the book. Say those wretched words."
I didn't know what it meant. I was afraid, so I ran. It noticed it and jumped at me. I dodged him by ducking. He flew over me and smashed against the floor wall. I ran forward to my bedroom and opened the door, just as it seemed to get ready for another attack. The jump must have broken more bones, since the right leg was now bent in more unnatural ways, and he crawled now towards me, but he was still fast, and he seemed to have a lot of strength, since he jumped once again, but I was already through the door and closed it. I could hear a loud thud, which must have been the creature that slammed against the door.
For a moment, I was relieved, and then I turned around and noticed that I wasn't in my bedroom. I was in a dark room. I couldn't see anything except a small light, which was further down the room. I didn't know what to do, so I slowly walked towards the light, and the closer I got, the more I saw that I was in a dirty stair. It was a wooden ladder, which was plunged into mud. I knew them, but I wasn't sure from where.
I climbed the dirty ladder up, and the moment I was outside, a loud bang erupted beside me. My ears rang, and I lost my sense of direction. Then I looked up and saw a rainy sky, and the light was awful for my eyes. I was still dazzled as I noticed that it was a trench I was standing in, and the bang was mortar fire. I was back in the war.
But then, a large group of soldiers ran past me and shoved me to the ground. They were nightmarish aspirations of humans, fusions of war machinery and human flesh. Gas masks fused to faces, guns instead of hands, missing body parts, and broken bones, and the blood everywhere was blood slowly dripping from the trenches, and the mortar fire wouldn't stop.
The wicked soldiers slowly gathered around me, as one of them took off his mask. I was and slowly backing off through the mud towards one wall of the trench. The one that took off his mask had long black hair, and his face was a twisted visage. It was my brother, Ludwig. His jaw was half-hanging off, but he still talked in a gurgling way, "You killed me. Read the book to repent."
His blue eyes pierced through me. On my lap lay an old leather-bound book with no title. I didn't know from where it came, but I wanted to escape from this place, so I opened it and said the words out loud, "Outside, I walk on the stary night, twisted and deformed. I call thy right, loving, dancing, laughing, the sinner's delight. Will be wished upon by the lord's might. Dancing in a theatre of the mind, no mortals can comprehend. They shall be smite. We all hail Giallos' might."
After I said those words, everything became dark.