The Art of Sorcery... It's beyond anything I've ever tried before, but Damien was right about its usefulness. Just the set up for it is time and resource intensive - and on such short notice, getting everything needed was some kind of hell. I even had to make use of a substitute in a few cases. However, as an extension of my own will and belief, the Goetia wasn't affected, at least that I could tell. I spent hours reading through the book before coming to a decision about which spirit (or demon, whichever phrasing you prefer - the copy I worked with said spirit) to call upon. In the end, I settled on Sabnock, one of Damien's recommendation:
"(43.) SABNOCK.—The Forty-third Spirit, as King Solomon commanded them into the Vessel of Brass, is called Sabnock, or Savnok. He is a Marquis, Mighty, Great and Strong, appearing in the Form of an Armed Soldier with a Lion’s Head, riding on a pale-coloured horse. His office is to build high Towers, Castles and Cities, and to furnish them with Armour, etc. Also he can afflict Men for many days with Wounds and with Sores rotten and full of Worms. He giveth Good Familiars at the request of the Exorcist. He commandeth 50 Legions of Spirits; and his Seal is this, etc."
As I began the actual ritual of invocation - making sure Ronnie, Sara and any other potential distractions were in some other room and having made the room as dark as possible - I could immediately feel a change in the air around me, as if a charge had entered it. As the ritual went on, the charge of energy grew in intensity slowly until it finally leveled out at a pressure that subtly itched at my nerves. Though that may have just been my nervousness in the experience - more than once through the process I almost lost my handle on the ritual. A sudden spike in the pressure of the energy gave me a shock, and I felt as though it was almost a physical thing - but only almost. Then a half-heard voice, almost an illusory sound, forced my eyes shut - and when I opened them again there he... it... was: Sabnock, called before me, powerful. True to the Goetia, he sat upon a pale horse, armed as a Roman legionnaire with a simple cape lined with a purple seam - and his head was at once awesome and frightening. After I moved past the shock of his arrival, I explained to him what I desired. Then commanded he do it. After a motion that I took for a sign of assent, he vanished from my sight and the energy in the room relaxed - though I could feel a subtle change in the nature of the hum of energy that remained; as if it now had direction, focus, instead of merely presence. I must have made some pronounced reaction to his presence, because Kal asked after what had made me jump as I apparently did. I almost went off on him for missing what had just happened - but then I caught the genuine confusion in his eyes and I realized that he must not have seen Sabnock.
Even now, hours later, I can still feel his energy everywhere in the apartment. Kal, who can feel it too, explored its boundaries and found that the feeling extends about a football field's distance away in any direction from our apartment, with the fringes less saturated than the main room of our place - the epicenter, the site of the ritual. I don't know if Ronnie can feel it and Sara... I doubt she feels much of anything at all... It's odd - though I can feel a foreign nature to the energy, at the same time I can also feel something of myself in it. I feel as though, if I so chose, I could change the focus of Sabnock, of myself, and accomplish something far different, far greater in spectacle... But there is no time for that.
Kal and I have neither seen Slender Man nor felt his presence since the ritual. The energy no longer rubs my nerves raw. I think we are safe here now. Though I don't know for how long.
