Curselock

Chapter 131: Cloak

Glenny’s cloak flapped in a windless stream. Shadows tethered themselves to the dark material of the parasitic item, shifting it to something living. It breathed light and dark, deepening in tandem with its wearer. Spider silk made of darkness rose from the ground shadows, pumping it full of energy and limitless garner.

Glenny opened his eyes, peering out across the forest. A little ways away, he could hear Leland panting like a dog while the Huntress threw weak punches at him. Leland was dodging, but progressively by close and closer means. He was growing tired, and the Huntress didn’t care to pull her punches.

Occasionally Glenny would feel the Huntress’ eyes on him, but he figured she’d be watching. She was, after all, a weirdo.

He took a step, focusing intently on the shadow tethers holding him in place. They came undone with a muted squeal, whipping out and restructuring themselves into the shadowy forest floor. Previously, the cloak provided him with energy it gathered from the moon. Now, at the very least, the cloak pulled energy from shadows.

But that left the question, shadows have energy?

Glenny tried not to think about it as he kept a walking pace. Control, as he knew through his dad, was a tight investment. There was a sweet spot between letting abilities or items unleash their full power and containing them to the point of being moot. He needed a base line, which he was trying to find by forcibly manipulating the cloak’s shadow tethers.

As soon as he focused on a grouping of tentacles, he tripped, falling hard onto his face. He let out a groan, slowly getting to his feet. The power of the cloak was fleeting. It came and went as he breathed, halting and moving without warning or prompting. It reminded Glenny of a boat on the ocean, drifting with the waves.

So, what if he created a wave?

Controlling the weird and extreme was becoming something of a specialty of his. The Sightless King’s power materialized itself as a whisper, something in the back of his mind told him how to control the powers that make up reality. The cloak was no different, and as soon as he touched upon his wave analogy, the cloak reacted differently.

Glenny, back to standing, was abruptly thrown hard left. He caught himself before landing in a brutal set of bushes, but he didn’t miss the sideways glance from the Huntress. He imagined what she must have seen; himself being yanked by an imaginary thread of strength.

He situated himself despite this, a smile on his face. It wasn’t much and he wasn’t even sure if he did it correctly, but the changes in the cloak came in two fold. Glenny knew in the back of his mind, like the power from a Legacy, what the cloak was supposed to do.

Claw against the shadows.

The phrase came to him with a half imagined prospect. He instantly reached out to make another wave, this time correcting the direction. He watched the shadow tendrils leaching from the cloak’s hems when the wave hit, pushing them along to find a new grip.

They launched, pulling Glenny along with them. It was only a few steps, but it was near instant like snuffing out a lantern’s light brought darkness in less than a blink of an eye.

Glenny, this time, imagined things a bit differently. Instead of creating a wave that pushed him in a direction, he created a wave that pulled him to a specific location. The shadows around him darkened as his request was fulfilled with an eager lick.

The shadows, he realized, wanted to move. They were drawn, pulled, by the darker shades. A tree blocking the sun’s direct light? The shadows demanded Glenny take them there.

He almost stumbled at the feeling. Like a dam breaking, foreign plea, wants, and needs barreled through his mind. They spoke in hundreds, thousands even, of voices, all with different pitches and speed. Gurgled mutters and symphonic syllables clashed, riding the wake of noise to bring enough focus to Glenny – their master.

His head spun, and he reacted. Without thought, without reason, Glenny created a wave, pulling himself and the cloak to the darkest shadow around. It wasn’t even in his line of sight, but he still appeared there.

It wasn’t a teleport, but rather a sprint. A dead sprint powered by the essence that created shadows. The forest passed him by at speeds that rivaled even that of the Huntress. Speeds that maybeeven usurped her.

He appeared inside a downed log, crouched like a gopher in its nest. His vision spun as he accepted his fate for the next minute. He was in a log, resting, and that was oddly fine with him.

He let out a stiff laugh that soon devolved into a horrid guttural whimper. His eyes had it the worst; the feeling of being so utterly dry that the few specs of dust trapped under his eyelids felt like sandpaper.

The rest of his body had similar ailments. His toes, bruised under the nail. His teeth, wobbling like he had just been punched. His fingers felt like they were seventy years old. His stomach was encased in iron. His… his… Glenny shifted slightly, staring at his shoulder where the cloak overlapped his shirt.

The darkness that created the shadowy fabric was dark. Far darker than before. Far darker than a normal shadow. The tendrils shimmied around the inside of the log, lapping around the dead bark like a maid with a duster. Slowly, the tendrils gulped in more darkness, pushing the cloak even more beyond.

They were consuming, Glenny realized as he noticed the shadows in the log disappearing. He gave a harsh frown at that, and shifted once again. He found the ending of the log, where some animal had borrowed through. There was a plane of light, stopped at the apex of the trunk’s initial interior shadow.

“Huh…” he was able to mutter.

He stayed like that, laying in a log, for a few minutes or until his cloak finished drinking the shadows. He wasn’t sure what came first, to be honest, only that he was getting tired of the voices inside his head. The cloak’s thousands of voices, which he called “Tendrils,” were in ecstasy about consuming such a deep shadow.

Some, however, were becoming afraid the darkness was eventually going to fade.

“Yeah, yeah, I’ll get you more shadows later. Just stop yelling in my mind,” Glenny said, mainly talking to himself… although, if the Tendrils could hear him, that’d simplify things.

They, of course, didn’t acknowledge Glenny’s request in the slightest.

By the time he stood, breaking apart the rotting husk of a tree, Glenny had more or less pushed away the Tendrils until their voices became just another set floating around his mind. The Sightless King now had friends.

He shuddered.

A sound befitting a dying rhinoceros closed in on Glenny. He spun, finding Leland, Harbinger’s Halo ablaze, slowly running to him. He wasn’t so much as running, but rather teetering forward at a pace that forced him to move his legs otherwise he’d topple over. He kept tapping himself with a purply green finger, healing his gorged lungs and increasing his total steps by that much more.

“G-glenny!” Leland shouted with lungs a quarter full. “A-are – A-are you—”

“Am I okay?” Glenny interpreted. “Yeah, but I think I’m done experimenting for the morning.”

Leland hunched over, his palms on his knees.

“Stand tall, Smart One!” The Huntress boomed from an above branch. “Hands on your head, let the lungs fill!”

Leland cursed, but the Huntress didn’t seem to mind. She turned to Glenny. “Some cloak you’ve got there.”

He nodded a bit mutely. “Looks like it.”

The Huntress narrowed in on him, but she couldn’t get a read. She sighed and said, “Time to get back. The Reflections are starting soon.”

The boys followed her back to the city after she jumped down. Much to Leland’s dismay, she trotted with a speed well above a normal walk. He’d jog every few steps before walking a few and so on.

“So this is torture, huh?” he muttered to himself.

The Huntress acted like she didn’t hear, but a smile came to her face.

By the time they made it back to the royal campus, the sky was high overhead and the smell of delicious food wafted in the air. Spencer, Lucia, Sybil, Aunty P. and Carmon were all out, but a set table told the group that they’d be back relatively soon. Jude and his family already had a seat at the table.

“Oh Leals,” Jude said, playing up a comforting tune, “you look like you just took a dip in a stream.”

Leland grumbled something, his sweat filled shirt sticking to him like glue. He sat without a care, however, having noticed a warming rune etched into the base of the seat at breakfast. Sitting, his muscles instantly relaxed, drifting away into bliss. He capitalized on the arrangement by sipping on a glass of tangerine juice a server brought out.

Glenny, likewise, activated the same rune and sat, but he instead drank a lemon and mint drink that was oddly salty. He thought for a moment before looking at Diana, Jude’s mom.

“Do you have any tips for moving at very high speeds?”

Across the room, slumped in a chair, the Huntress snorted.

Diana blinked a few times. As a high ranking Legacy of the Berserker, she was, by far, the fastest out of the cluster of Inquisitors protecting Sybil. Even compared to Lucia’s lightning steps or Carmon’s enhanced legs, she was the fastest. Well, of course excepting movement via portals – Spencer’s mobility just wasn’t a fair comparison.

“How fast are we talking?” Diana asked with a raised eyebrow.

The Huntress chose to answer. “Nigh a teleport.”

That got Roy’s attention. Being the slowest of the group of Inquisitors, he was always looking for a way to keep up. Enchanted items were his greatest ally but were costly to maintain and even more so to purchase. He, unfortunately, did not have a parasitic item that helped in this endeavor.

Roy chucked. “So you’ve got yourself a speedy cloak?”

Glenny nodded.

“Lucky dog,” Roy said with a smiling huff.

“Are you sure it wasn’t a teleport?” Diana asked. “Because that isn’t in my expertise.”

“My eyes were dry, once I stopped,” Glenny said and Diana nodded like everything suddenly made sense.

“Yeah that sounds like high speeds. I have some tips, yeah, but for payment I want to see you and Jude duel. He was talking up his incarnation blessing and we’re excited to see what he can do.”

Glenny gave a nod. “I’m interested in seeing what I can do now as well…”

“If you don’t mind dueling in the courtyard, then how about this evening?”

Before Glenny could respond, the door opened and Aunty P. strolled in. She looked to each and every one, especially noting the Huntress.

Right behind her, a transparent man entered. The Reflections had begun.