Curselock

Chapter 108: Soul Fire

The ground shaking mimicked the shaking in Leland’s heart. He felt his blood go cold, his breath hitch, and his throat run dry. Melody’s bloodied eyes pierced him like an arrow shot from the heavens. One of the Lord of Nature’s champions knew about him. Knew about his abilities, knew about his Lord, knew his secrets.

He had tried to keep his Lord hidden. There were some that knew, his friends, but now some stranger was in the loop? His heart fluttered with irritation. What was the point in trying to keep secrets if the Lords above could squash them in an instant?

Melody coughed, blood splattering like shrapnel from a cannon. Leland ignored the fresh stain on his clothes.

He looked ahead, the lighthouse was crumbled and broken, nothing more than a pile of dark stone and plants. He scoffed, realizing his part in what came next. Jude was right, this was not worth a simple healing spell. It was, in fact, not worth anything. Not when it came to secrets and danger, not when it came with being used as a pawn.

This quest was supposed to be a simple protection quest. Now? Now it was the starting shot in an endless war against the vulgar Lords and their Harbingers.

Leland scoffed again, this time with a subdued introspection. He needed to be more careful, he needed to vet the Lords he was making contracts with. He was not to be used again. He was not to be blind sided by something far, far above him. Especially if Jude and Glenny were involved.

The shaking continued as the strength left Melody.

This was why the Lord of Nature tasked him to protect his ward. The after effects of harnessing Lordly magic. Melody was dying, her mortal body unable to withstand the endless sea of power that coursed through her veins, bones, skin, and mind.

Something also stirred below them, something far grander than the nest of scorpions they fought through. Was it the Light Architect’s Harbinger? Unlikely. The lighthouse Melody destroyed was a remote construct, one long left behind to spew its eternal corruption like a common weed. That left only one possibility in Leland’s eyes: a monster. A large corrupted one at that.

Could Leland and the boys protect the champion and escape the tunnels? The question rang through his head like a cracked bell. The sound echoed endlessly, never receiving a proper response because of one simple notion.

Soul Fire.

Knowing next to nothing about the curse, Leland supposed it could prove invaluable. He supposed it could live up to the title of Calamity. He grit his teeth, supposing it could do anything. Because, frankly, he had no idea what the curse did.

A small laugh escaped his lips despite his friends’ increasingly frantic words and actions. Jude had run to the leaf-boat, pulling it across the now forested land toward the yellow water. The earthquake was getting worse, inhibiting his action much like Glenny trying to interfere with a petrified Leland.

Glenny shook his shoulders, a gesture that outweighed the shaking already rippling through Leland and Melody. Their eyes connected along with a rush of yelling.

Leland couldn’t tell what his friend was saying, the howling wind long causing the group to go deaf. Then Glenny started signing. It was an old way of communicating between the friend group. Back when treehouses and wooden sticks-swords were prevalent enough to their boyish minds. They had created some simple hand signs to speak to one another in case they couldn’t speak to each other.

Previously, this was only truly used to communicate with Jude through his bedroom window. The young berserker had a knack for doing or saying whatever came to mind, often resulting in being set to bed early without dinner. Which, at the time, really sucked as the prime time to play swords and shields was dusk. So they often spent the cool nights gesturing to Jude whatever crude sign they had come up with recently.

The sign Glenny waved in front of the shocked Leland was that of the phrase “cry later.”

The sheer absurdity pulled Leland from his inner thoughts of secrets and Lords, instead forcing him to react with a sneering eyeroll. That sign was a result of Jude’s weak young tear ducts. In their early teens, he was always a crybaby and often the cause of more than a few heated arguments. The sign was finally given the status of taboo once their parents got involved.

Seeing it today, however, brought back the feeling of being centered. In that moment, Leland wasn’t some godly pawn shipped off to some monster nest in the middle of nowhere. He wasn’t an adventurer way in over his head. He wasn’t even a Legacy of a mysterious Lord he wasn’t sure he could trust.

No, in that moment Leland saw himself as a kid. He remembered the bedtime stories of heroic knights and grandiose mages. He remembered finding the coolest-looking stick to use as a legendary mythical sword, one that vanquished all evil and would never fall into the hands of the cunning enemy.

He remembered his parent’s first Inquisitor mission after a few years of maternity leave. He remembered them walking out of the house after long, tight, tear-ridden hugs. He remembered being left alone, beside his two friends of course. He remembered the town’s whispered gaunt rumors – that his parents were most likely going to die on their quest. That they were sadistic parents, ones that felt no notion of guilt for orphaning their child.

At the time Leland kept his chin held high, a gesture he mimicked even today. Back then, he lived off exaggerated stories of good and evil. He would beg his dad to continue his retellings long into the night. He would strive to learn what early magic his parents would teach him, despite not actually being able to cast anything.

His town’s gossip was wrong. His parents weren’t sadistic disreputable people. No, they were miles ahead of such lowly talk. They were exactly what he strived to be. Courageous, brave, heroic, loving, loyal, fair.

Fearless.

The future would hold many hidden threats. The future would bring more heartache and pain than ever in the past. But that was the life of an adventurer – someone who he thought his parents wouldn’t look down upon.

He wanted that; to look his parents in the eye and to hear them say “good job.”

He grasped at the information treading deep within his mind. Soul Fire was not a normal spell or curse. It required something, something that Leland held reservations about. The fuel was a soul, a human soul.

An ethereal body rose from the plant-ridden ground. It clawed its way to one knee, keeping its head bowed like a prisoner about to be executed. It held out its arm, offering salvation in the form of a lost soul.

The single soul of the Damned didn’t flinch when Leland took the lost soul from its grasp, only quietly retracting its arm. It shuddered in the freeing weight being lifted from its shoulders. An eternal punishment, a penance only to be confirmed by a single master.

“Thank you,” Leland whispered, his words cutting through the howling wind.

The soul of the Damned raised its head, meeting its master’s gaze. Both its and Leland’s eyes were burning with the same violet flame of transcendent virtue. Its time had come, the endless void called its name. It was time to be put at peace, to be reincarnated, to live a better life.

Leland watched his summon fade away, a strange sense of thanks overcoming his weakened knees. Between holding Melody, the shaking that only seemed to be getting worse, and holding the very essence of what he once considered a deadly enemy, Leland stumbled a bit.

Glenny was instantly there to catch him. The rogue urged him along, pushing him away from the overgrown island center and toward the shoreline of yellow liquid. They entered the leaf-boat where Jude ushered them forward before pushing off.

They floated along the thick yellow river for only a few moments before the source of the earthquake showed itself. It unveiled itself by slowly standing, its massive hulking frame shifting gallows of liquid and tons of dirt and stone. It stretched its six ethereal legs, growing to heights untold by normal beasts.

Its movements created waves, sending the grow away with haste despite Melody being unconscious.

Leland, acutely aware that he still held a lost soul, watched the creature fully form. Atop its flat head, a plume of trees, shrubs, and grass laid out of place and out of style. Where nature flowed from where the Lord of Nature assisted in the destruction of the lighthouse, the rest of the creature was jutted and broken.

Crystals, all yellow and brimming with horrid corruption, gathered and formed, shifting like a magnet’s pull in a blacksmith’s forge. They fully merged long before Leland realized what exactly he was looking at. In simple terms, a scorpion. But one on the cusp of something more.

It screeched at the leaf-boat, its call fighting for dominance against Melody’s unyielding wind. One force kept the boat in place, the other an attempt to scare off the attackers.

Leland didn’t think long about which was supposedly the good Lord’s.

Jude and Glenny yelled muted words back and forth, the general consensus being panic. The worm boss was one thing, King Everald was another. Even with Jude’s enhanced Incarnation abilities, they knew the endeavor was pointless. There was no room to maneuver, no room to dodge or fight. Not if they wanted to wade through the corruption, that was.

So their eyes fell to Leland. They hadn’t heard Melody’s last words to him before she succumbed to exhaustion, but they knew something was teetering in his mind. Why else would the Legacy of Curses be holding a soul, if not for an attack? They didn’t think a small boost to his magical potency would be all that helpful.

Leland didn’t think so either.

As the monster’s yellow crystals bulged with light, Leland’s attention fell within. The monster charged, but Leland trudged through the information left to him through his Legacy.

Screams. They were all he could hear, they were all he could understand. The information for Soul Fire came into his mind’s eye like a hurricane of death. He shuddered under the pressure, feeling the heat of countless souls being ripped apart and left for nothing. There was no resurrection, there was no rebirth.

There was only fire. And the Calamity that followed.

“Harbingers’ wrath boomed,

Calamity’s fire relied,

souls consumed, forever cried,

battles fought, hope survived.”

The soul ignited at Leland’s words. It whipped with tendrils of weathering pain, it devoured all it could reach. Its ferocity glowed with sinister fervor, casting the cave into the light of a ravaged tempest. Deep purple and dark shadow laced between the fire’s wicked range, an inferno held in the hand of its master.

A Warlock.

Leland threw the curse, watching a trail of bent reality shift behind it like the wake of a dark phoenix’s triumph. Yet, there was no rebirth or penance. Only the chilling scream of the soul aflame and its master’s silent guilt.

At least, until his eyes fluttered closed and his body went limp. Then there was only a white familiar void.