Curselock

Chapter 110: Loyal

The Huntress sprinted faster than ever. Unbound by feeble mundane legs, her Legacy coursing through her muscles and bones, allowing her to skip off the branches and leaves of tree after tree. She ignored the loose snow-covered rocky landscape in favor of added safety , the slick ground only proving to be just another hazard. Of course, if she focused, she could have easily ran along the gravel. But she needed her senses elsewhere.

She scanned the open air, the canopy, and the underbrush. Her high-rank Legacy abilities made her the predator, made her the hunter. She had a target in mind, she only needed a whiff.

The set of tracks she had been following were muddied at this point, a massive herd of sheep imprinting over all her proper evidence. She was in the right area, she knew. It was now only a matter of—

Isobel stopped dead.

She froze, her hand robotically gripping a tree trunk as her legs rebounded from the sudden lack of movement.

“What—"

The word slipped out in a whisper, her total shock ending all semblance of subterfuge and stealth. If someone was around, someone with the means of listening, her location was compromised. But honestly, as she shuddered in disbelief, she wondered if anyone around had the presence of mind to focus on anything other than the feeling in the distance.

It was sickening. Like the day after eating bad meat or a meeting with Inquisitor high command after a failed mission. The Huntress’ stomach churned with scalding power, her body radiating with ethereal heat and magical might. Her skin crawled as she homed in on the source. She ran.

Past the village of sheep, up the mountain, and to a mound of dirt. She saw the corpses of a half-dozen scorpion laying around. Most were bashed apart, but some were pierced with a thin blade. She inspected the monsters, the air heavy with invisible silt.

She forced herself to breathe, the unbelievable pain resonating from deep underground. She paused at the top of the mound, one foot already crossing the threshold into the depths of the nest.

Is that…?

She had felt this power, or something oddly close to it, before. Where? When? It was recent. Shoutwell? The Sightless King? No… earlier. The first time she entered the underbelly. Back when she was following Leland, Jude, and Glenny as a simple hunch.

Leland.

The power blazed out of the nest’s entrance and for a hesitant moment, the Huntress considered things. Her mind, enhanced by her Legacy ability, branched through hundreds if not thousands of ideas in a fraction of a second.

Slowly, she moved back and hid among the trees.

As she waited, her thoughts turned back to before the Inquisitors. Back to when her family was alive, to when her children still walked the mortal plane. A smile lifted her face as she remembered her town’s yearly bonfire. It was a celebration, an honoring to the Lord of Nature and Lord of the Harvest for a prosperous season to come.

She remembered holding her youngest, watching the embers smolder in the wee sunlight the morning after.

What a time.

The feeling coming from the nest changed at some point. Gone was the rabid sorrow and guilt, now only warmth and prosperity remained. She, again, had felt something similar in the past – the far past. What was it? She wracked her brain, remembering the bonfire of her home. The two feelings were similar, identical even.

She couldn’t place it until four figures emerged from the nest’s entrance.

Jude, Glenny, and an unconscious Leland were easily identifiable, but there was another unconscious in their midst. Auburn hair, dark skin, the ever telling natural and organic clothing. Obviously a Legacy of one of the many natur—

Nature!

Isobel’s mind tolled, a ringing in her ears silenced her initial thoughts. She forced herself to look at the new evidence impartially. Leland was unconscious. So was this supposed Legacy of Nature. Did the two fight? Was she a puppet?

That thought almost made the Huntress leap from her hiding spot. But she held off. Like she decided before, if Leland was able to discern the Toy Maker’s Harbinger with no prompting, then—

The woman woke up.

Isobel watched her speak to Jude and Glenny. They spoke politely to one another, although the woman cut off the boys whenever they tried to talk about what happened in the nest.

Suspicious, the Huntress thought.

Then a stampede of sheep entered the clearing.

What?

Again in disbelief, Isobel paused her train of thought. She watched the sheep meander over, gather around the group, and promptly ignore the humans. The boys asked the woman about the strange encounter, but the Legacy of Nature gave some half-baked explanation. She then muttered an incantation and turned into a patch of grass.

Isobel, once again, couldn’t believe her eyes. It only got worse when Jude pulled out a harmonica and started playing, causing the sheep to gather around him like a bard singing about folktales.

I was worried about these brats? the Huntress asked herself, slipping further into the darkness to look for the puppet master.

He woke with an easy breath. Leland sighed, feeling the cold wet of snow on the back of his neck and a nightly chill in the air. He sat up, finding a familiar mountain scene. Across the way was the scorpion mound and nest, the remnants of crystalline bodies laying around where they died, and the haunting feeling of returning remorse.

He had obliterated a soul, forever killing it. Leland sucked in a groan, instead slightly shaking his head. He would have time to think about his actions, the future, and what things would eventually mean. Especially with the revelations the Lord of Curses left him. But that was for later, right now he needed to find his friends—

He paused, his train of through being cut short by a sea of fluffy sheep.

It was sleeting slightly, the advent weather adding another layer to the sheep horde. The fresh white gave the dirty sheep a look of dandruff, their wool speckled with the snow. But they obviously didn’t care, instead they were focused on a moving sound.

It took Leland a second to recognize the harmony, but once he did, a smile found his lips. He couldn’t see him, the sheep blocking all lines of sight in that direction, but Leland knew Jude’s harmonic song anywhere. He listened, content with the joyous tune. It was, after all, a victory celebration.

They had survived, escaped the nest, and completed their quest.

Leland took the moment to look through his grimoire. He confirmed the Lord of Nature’s contract for Touch of Regeneration and Soul Fire were both still present. While he was glad about the former, his thoughts hit a screaming halt at the latter. What was he to do? The question rang in his mind, at least until a presence sat beside him.

Glenny had moved silently through the mass of sheep, finding his friend deep in thought. He cleared his throat and spoke, “That was some day, huh?”

Leland nodded but his subdued posture let on more than any confirmation.

Glenny read the motion like the concerned friend he was. “Soul Fire, right? Some spell.”

“Curse,” Leland responded with a bite of spite. “The Lord of Magic would make sure there would never be a spell like it.”

“That bad, huh?”

“Yes.”

“To Jude and me the curse looked like a simple Fireball. Other than it being purple I mean.” Glenny paused at that. Slowly the memory unraveled. “Obviously it wasn’t. Not with what happened after the spel—curse, I mean, connected.”

Leland turned his head and attention away from the music at that. “What do you mean? I think I passed out before that happened.”

“It was weird. Beside the feeling of facing a horrid Lord-touched monster, there was something far more sinister in the air. It was like when you first cast Circle of Souls back in the undercity of Shoutwell, but worse.”

Glenny sighed. “I guess I should start at the beginning. After you threw the fire and passed out, the leaf-boat thing was at the mercy of the wind and scorpion monster’s wake. Luckily Melody woke up not too long after. She acted like nothing was wrong, mutely steering us through the tunnels and away from the corrupted liquid – even though behind us, the monster withered.”

“’Withered?’” Leland asked.

Nodding solemnly, Glenny continued, “Your purple flames didn’t create heat nor boiled the scorpion’s insides. The cure… I don’t know how to describe it. It was like the fire was burning it ethereally not physically, even after it tried to put out the fire by rolling around in the liquid. I didn’t know a monster could scream like that.” He shuddered.

Leland scratched the back of his neck and recounted some Legacy knowledge he now knew. “Soul Fire attacks the soul, not the physical being.”

Glenny’s eyes widened. “Sounds powerful. If a single curse was able to kill such a monster, then I don’t doubt there anything we can’t—”

“No.”

“’No?’”

“I’m not using Soul Fire again,” Leland mumbled, throwing his head into his hands.

He could feel Glenny staring at him. He was inclined to ignore him, but the guilt was getting to him. He needed to tell someone. He needed someone to say everything was okay, that he did nothing wrong. Someone other than his Lord.

So he did. Leland let his internal drowning flood of thoughts out. He told Glenny about how the curse’s fuel source was souls that he tore from enemies. That the curse literally ignited the soul, burning it until it literally died – Glenny went stark still at that. He told him how the Lord of Curses spoke to him not minutes ago, and how she told the story of the First Lords – he received an watching glare from his hand tattoo as he recounted, but he didn’t care enough to stop.

He needed to get it out.

In the end, the boys sat in silence, the only sound being the occasional blet of a sheep and Jude’s harmonica. The lack of conversation got to Leland, however, and he hastily pushed to a new conversation.

“What’s with the sheep? Isn’t the farm-village a few hours hike away?”

Glenny stared blankly ahead but said, “They just sort of arrived. Melody mentioned that they were probably drawn to the power of your curse, but she didn’t know. Jude took it upon himself to make proper friends.”

“Where is Melody?”

“See that patch of grass?” Glenny pointed to a human-shaped odd patch of grass. Long green strands broke through the snowy floor and a group of sheep that was foregoing the music in exchange for a second dinner. “She laid down after confirming you weren’t going to die, and… turned into grass?”

“Probably a teleportation spell.” Leland waved off. “That was nice of her to check if I was okay…”

Glenny snorted. “Nice of her? Yeah right. She knew what we were going to be facing off against, and still chose to lead us like she was blind.”

“Don’t blame her. I have no doubt that her Lord told her to keep us in the dark.”

Glenny lurched at that. “Getting real close to blasphemy saying that.”

It was Leland’s turn to snort. “I doubt it. If how the Lord of Curses implied how the heavens worked, we just did the Lord of Nature an enormous favor… one that we are not ever going to be able to cash in. I did accept a quest, after all. I think I got majorly ripped off.”

Glenny, not wanting to keep this line of conversation going, said, “I see. Well, are you fine to walk?”

Leland nodded, standing with his friend and heading over to Jude. The berserker yelped in surprise when Glenny tapped his shoulder.

“You can't sneak up on a man playing the harmonica like that!” Jude screeched before his eyes fell on Leland. “Oh hey Leals, some curse you got there.”

“And some friends you got here,” Leland said back, a smile on his lips. “What do you say we take them back to the farm-village.”

Jude thought about that. “Do you think they would follow my playing? Otherwise we might be out here for a while.”

Leland’s smile evened out as he thought about the question. “I hope so…”

A few hours later, the boys entered the cleared property of the farm-village with a few hundred massive sheep behind them – much to the utter relief of the shepherds. Oddly enough, during the entire walk back, Leland hadn’t thought about Soul Fire or the forever destroyed soul.

Once the action ended, however, the guilt and remorse came back.

The man stayed at the edge of the village-farm, hidden in plain sight. Humiliating as it was, mimicking the appearance of a sheep at a sheep farm had its advantages. The mannerisms were oddly easy to copy, there was no pattern of normalcy, there was nothing he had to be doing, as a sheep that was. As a Harbinger, he had plenty.

The boys had arrived, were treated like heroes and given a warm barn to sleep in. There would be a feast in the morning, then they were supposed to head off. “A quest complete,” the dull one had said. There was no reason for them to stay out here any longer.

But the man questioned that. He had been hiding around the scorpion nest for hours, waiting for them to exit. It was supposed to be a chicken shoot, an easy ambush. But that was before the haunting aura blasted out of the nest.

He recognized it was what it was. The Light Architects power being consumed.

Fire was the obvious cause, but what kind of fire could do such a thing? So the man held off, retreating back to the village-farm once he realized he was encroaching on another Harbinger’s territory. There was no need to get into a petty war right now. He had his targets, even if they confused him.