Curselock

Chapter 162: Warm

“What are you doing! Sprint!” Isobel narrowed her eyes. “I said sprint! You call that a sprint!?”

Sybil put her head down and ran. She knew the Huntress was not speaking to her but that hardly mattered. She was slowing and the yelling reminded her of the goal. Her goal.

Idly Sybil recognized Leland a few dozen paces away speeding through the woods and increasing the gap between them before abruptly reversing directions and sprinting back. She was passed three times before she reached the reverse mark, and four more times on the way back. By the time she had finished one lap, he was already on his third.

And he wasn’t even using magic.

Well, sort of. Leland had the contract with the Lord of Endurance activated and was repeatedly healing himself with the Lord of Nature’s contract. Magic yes, but not the kind that allowed him to increase his speed like Erupting Steps. No, he was running like any common nonphysical rank two Legacy. His legs and feet were unaugmented and his Legacy provided him with intelligence and magic sense rather than increased muscle mass and agility.

He had just grown, trained, to the speed at which he ran.

Did he think about how he was leaving Sybil in the dust? No, but Sybil sure did. She was Legacy-less. Unbound to a Lord despite being host to one. But that mattered little more than the fact she was a princess that, not too long ago, was locked away in her room. She did not, was not, allowed to exercise any more than walking from her favorite courtyard to the dinner hall then to her room.

Did she care that she was being lapped by Leland? Yes, but not in the sense of feeling inferior or jealous. She was a princess, not an adventurer. No matter how hard she tried, she would not out-pace Leland any time soon. Not with his head start fighting monsters and traveling cross country.

So why did she run? Because she could.

At first she told herself she ran to pull herself out of the rift, to make herself “useful,” not to be dead weight in the case of trouble. She saw training as a means to not feel like a burden, to become something more than a princess.

Oh how naive she had been.

Seeing Leland go from fight to fight, battling down monsters without so much as a second thought, she started to realize her mistake. What drove him Sybil couldn’t say, only that between the Archon and the note his Lord passed to him, something had changed.

He fought harder. He pushed more. He strategized and limited himself. Anything to gain an advantage over what threats could be ahead – what threats could be within the storm.

But for how much Leland wished to protect her, Sybil realized he was far from being the protector he wanted to be. But Leland was not dumb, he knew his limitations far better than anyone. So why did he try so hard? Why did he sprint every morning until he threw up only to battle to the death with a monster not twenty minutes later?

Sybil thought about the question after seeing Leland, even while eating dinner, practicing. Invisible casting and some memory cantrip. Every meal, every rest, Leland would work on the pair of Legacy-less magic. It consumed him, the magic, to the point the Huntress had to yell at him to sleep.

But lying there awake, with her belly full of food, Sybil found an answer to her question. It came in the form of a muted grunt from the Huntress and a whoosh of stirred up leaves and wind.

Sybil sat up, finding the Huntress still sitting and staring out into the woods. The Archon Valley was never truly dark, so she could see what the Huntress was looking at. A monster, a variant of a wooden tree-man thing.

Sybil had been told the name of the creature the first time the group encountered one, but she was never one to remember such things. She only knew that it was scary, that its strike could sunder even the eldest trees around, let alone shatter the bones of whatever fought it.

Leland had killed each and every one they encountered without ever getting near it, simply allowing his ethereal crows to distract it while he removed its soul. The process took several minutes, but the effect was as true as the monsters’ dead corpses.

But looking out past the Huntress, Sybil found the source of the whoosh. A rock. A pebble. The Huntress had thrown a rock, from a seated position, a hundred paces away, striking the tree-man monster square in the chest, killing it instantly.

And just like that Sybil realized why Leland was working so hard. Because he didn’t want to be the burden. He didn’t want to be the weak one between he and the Huntress. Because he knew if a battle started, one that truly put her in danger, that the Huntress would focus on protecting her and not him.

Sybil kept her realization to herself. Bringing it up to the group wouldn’t matter mainly because they both already knew. There was nothing she could do to change it, not with Leland and the Huntress being as stubborn as they were.

So, did Sybil feel inferior when Leland lapped her? No. Did she care, however? Yes. Yes she did. So why did she run? Because she could. Because maybe one day she would be Leland. Maybe one day she would be the Huntress. Maybe one day she would be in a similar situation and have to protect someone weaker than her.

Was that day tomorrow? No. Was it next year? No. Did she know when that might happen? No.

But she knew that one day it would, and that she should prepare now rather than feel the consequences later. And that eased her. She trusted Leland and the Huntr – Isobel – to protect her and get her home. Two months before she changed? Eh, honestly Sybil figured she had already changed. At least her perspective on life, not the whole issue with the Boneforged Monarch.

“Rest,” Isobel said to Leland after he completed his final lap.

He was hunched over, hands on his knees and spitting wads of bile-tinged snot. His back heaved with his breaths, tracing the contours of his spine through his shirt. He had lost weight, they all had really, but Leland by far more than the others. It was his nonstop magic usage. Lifeforce, as he told the others, was his primary magical resource, and while it regenerated over time, that didn’t stop it from taking a toll on his body.

“I’ll scout ahead,” Isobel then said once Sybil finished her lap. “Don’t wander off.”

Sybil felt the comment was primarily directed at her since Leland was trying not to puke any more than he already had. Still, that didn’t discourage her. Why would it?

After Leland had yelled at Isobel, she had somewhat shied away from speaking to the Princess. Which actually got under Sybil’s skin. Could the woman really not speak to her without being degrading or rude? Apparently so, at least for a few days. Slowly Isobel had warmed up, speaking to both Leland and Sybil more as adults rather than dull mutts.

Looking out where Isobel had sprinted off,, Sybil honestly didn’t like what she was seeing. Gone were the woods and the many, many Archon experiments they held, and in came jagged stone works. Rocks the size of merchant ships jutted from the gravel substrate, warding off any large caravans, carts, or, in the group’s case, people.

The path ahead was one footfall away from a dangerous landing, which was only compounded by the sickly shards of stone acting like spike traps. But, in the distance, was the eternal storm Leland kept mentioning.

“So we have to go through there?” Sybil asked Leland, both huffing like work horses.

Leland looked out, nausea still attacking his gut and lungs. “Looks like,” he was able to mutter between breaths.

Minutes passed as Isobel scouted, minutes to recovery. Leland and Sybil eventually found that sitting on the ground was nicer than standing, so they sat. When they did, Leland had some words to say.

“I’m sorry this is taking so long.” He sounded defeated, like he had already lost a race that had yet to start.

Sybil looked at him, identifying the haunt in his eyes as guilt. She had seen the emotion before, in his parents no less. Spencer and Lucia often looked at her with guilt. Guilt when a “friend” turned out to be a greedy gold-digger. Guilt when she stared at the city below her castle window and they thought she didn’t notice them standing behind her. Guilt when she came back scarred.

She hated guilt. And it hated her. She was a princess, since when did the title and bloodline require guilt? She had money, fame, and a certain degree of power. Why was it that people looked at her like a puppy with a broken paw?

“What—”

The word slipped out before she had time to think, echoing her disgust. Brash and piercing, the single word cut through the eerily quiet woods and into Leland. He flinched, his guilt quickly changing to confusion.

“I just mean, like, I’m sorry I failed to gain a teleportation contract.”

After successfully making a deal with the Lord of Pathways, Leland had tried several more times with several different Lords to make a long-distance teleportation contract. None had succeeded at all, and in one particular case, crashed and burned. The Lord of Ley Lines and the Lord of Curses were apparently not friends.

Still, Leland had more Lords to petition. The Lord of the Void was his next big attempt.

“No,” Sybil said through gritted teeth. She couldn’t back out of the conversation at this point, not without coming across as spiteful. “I meant, well, I don’t understand why you are apologizing.”

“Because it’s my fault we are even in this mess, as much as I’d like to not admit it.” Leland had put his elbows on his knees and leaned forward. He stared at the dirt like a man standing before the executioner. “Two months,” he whispered.

“Two months is plenty,” Sybil said. “I trust you to figure out how to get back home in that time.”

“Its already been a week,” Leland then said. “A week and my best guess on how to do that is to walk into a storm?”

“Where is this coming from, Leland? You are usually much more level headed than, well, this.” She gestured at him.

“I-I’m just worried.”

“Well don’t be! I have absolute faith in you.”

He didn’t laugh, per say, but did grunt with a smile on his lips. But as the seconds ticked by, it was clear to Sybil that his smile was somber and tired.

“Hey,” Sybil said, leaning hard to the right, bumping her shoulder into his. “I trust you. Just like Glenny and Jude would if they were here.”

She then leaned back, staring up at the sky. It was starless, no doubt another Archon Experiment. “Glenny would say something a bit profound to cheer you up. Something like,” she put on an imitation voice, “‘we have been friends since I could remember. Have you ever not pulled through when we needed it most?’”

Leland looked at her.

She continued talking, “Jude… well, he’d say something loud, like threatening to punch you if you didn’t stop sulking. And if that didn’t work, he’d play you a tune on his harmonica.”

Leland snorted, a real smile crossing his lips this time. “I hate that thing.”

They fell silent at that, their shoulders touching just enough to remind each other that they were in this mess together. And that warmed them both far more than any running could.