Curselock

Chapter 163: Rain

In the few minutes Leland had with Sybil before Isobel returned, his mind wandered. He hadn’t meant to talk about it, but his true feelings about the direness of their situation had flowed. The combination of being dead tired after sprinting through the woods mixed with the stress of the two month limit crashing down had left him far more open than usual.

Luckily, Isobel was scouting and missed his worry. And doubly lucky, Sybil was understanding and kind.

It was sitting next to Sybil, both tired as could be, that Leland truly looked back on his life so far as an adventurer. Whether it was his growth in strength or his interactions with the powerful, something had changed deep within. It was the small things, like how he felt when he and the others fought against the Sightless King or how he mentally prepared for the threat of poachers.

It was his confidence, he knew. Looking back on those battles, he questioned how he was ever so confident.

Sure, he was confident in his abilities now, the last week of constant battles proved as much. But how had he ever been so confident to make decisions? Jude and Glenny looked to him for a path forward, they looked to him for ideas and a way out of whatever over-the-top situation they found themselves in.

And he had provided them… with the grace of a spoiled child.

There were a few close calls but all in all, Leland’s choices had worked. Now, however, he wasn’t so sure. Even after Sybil’s declaration of trust.

He was going through the motions, following the Lord of Pathway’s blessing into an Archon-created storm. How was going into a storm supposed to get Sybil home before the two month deadline? The question rose from deep within his gut over the last week, bubbling especially in the moments before he fell asleep.

A dark notion, however, kept him awake.

It made him sick, the idea that the pathway wasn’t pointing him to the storm as a means of getting Sybil home, but rather a way for him to get home.

He saw two possibilities. First, the storm was a means of teleportation. Second, well… it was a means to an end. It nagged at him, that the storm wasn’t an ancient runic teleporter in disguise or something, but a training ground for someone on the verge of insanity.

A training ground for him when Sybil changed. A place where he could fight to his heart’s content, a place where his anger and guilt could be shed until he became the very beasts that fought in the dark clouds.

Two months until Sybil changed, well, seven weeks at this point, and the pathway still pointed him toward the storm. And yet, he followed, bringing the group closer every day and trusting that the magic would never lead them astray.

Well, trusting that he himself would never lead them astray.

The pathway was only as good as the shepherd looking to the future, and it was that that scared Leland. Could the path he wished to walk, the path of getting Sybil home, have changed over the last week?

He’d had these thoughts more than once lately. He wasn’t strong enough to guide, he wasn’t strong enough to lead. That Sybil was doomed and self-preservation was the only option—

No, no, no. Leland took a deep breath. Sybil was right. His worries were unfounded and he couldn’t break down now. Imposter syndrome, he recognized with enough introspection to quell the waves battling in his stomach. Sybil trusted him, and sitting beside her was warm enough to melt the frost inhibiting optimistic thoughts.

Sybil will be fine, she won’t change or die or whatever, and we’ll all make it back home before something bad happens, Leland chanted in his mind, over and over again.

Isobel chose that moment to return. She landed before the others, having leaped across the jagged rocks with the curtness of a knuckle brawler. An expression of annoyance marked her face, but not at Leland or Sybil. No, in fact, she hardly looked at the two kids, knowing she’d be unable to contain a smug comment about how they were sitting.

Instead, she focused on the roadblock ahead. “An Archon is sitting ahead.”

Leland scrambled to his feet, mainly because of Isobel’s sudden appearance and not so much the threat of another Archon. Still, that didn’t stop him from standing on his toes trying to grow enough to see over the jagged rocks.

“Where?” he asked.

Isobel gestured at the rocks. “I’ve only seen glimpses of it. It keeps hiding in the cracks.”

“Hiding?” Sybil asked, standing.

“I’ve seen enough prey hide to know when something is actively trying to escape.”

A shiver went down Leland’s spine. “That’s good, right? If it’s trying to hide from you, then we can walk by—”

“I never said it was hiding from me,” Isobel quickly interrupted, gauging their reaction.

They looked at her with blank expressions. “Oh. Another Archon maybe?” Sybil asked.

Isobel hid her defeat. Truthfully she didn’t know what the Archon was doing, but stating that it was hiding reinforced the point she was trying to make; that what came next on their journey was more perilous than the relative safety of the woods.

“I don’t know,” she finally said. “But we can’t rule out other humans.”

“Did you see any signs of others?” Leland asked.

Isobel nodded slowly. “Old boot tracks, yes.”

“What does that mean for us?”

“We could walk around the rocks, but that takes us far away from the storm.”

Leland sighed and followed her line of sight. There was a way around, but it headed back into the ocean. They’d have to swim to progress. In the other direction was a mound. From where he stood, Leland couldn’t tell what the mound was, but when he looked at it, he heard a slight buzzing. A nest? A hive? He wasn’t sure, but the ocean route seemed far better if they chose to go around the rocks.

“So do we go around?”

“Up to you, kid.”

And there it was. Another “trust in Leland” moment. Isobel and Sybil both looked at him, he was, after all, the one with the pathway blessing.

His eyes found Sybil’s. They were calm, warm, even stoic. They spoke to him, past the exhaustion and ignoring the situation, whispering trust. In that moment they were back to being kids, back to being mischievous in the castle or playing in the fountain. Friends. Happiness. Love.

“We go over the rocks,” Leland finally said. “That’s how the pathway showed.”

“Alright then,” Isobel said, striding forward. She didn’t check to make sure the others followed, the crunch of the mulch enough to know.

They moved in stubborn silence, never stopping once started. Once up the first jagged structure, the ground beneath shifted and changed with the gravel. One moment the surface was strong and stationary, the next it cascaded into a landslide of stony teeth. So, the two kids followed closely behind the Huntress, making each of her steps their own.

As they moved, the air filled with echoes of fallen pebbles. They couldn’t see where the rocks were moving, but their weight was enough to upset the balance somewhere. Whether it was on the rocks they stood or a dozen feet below, they didn’t know. Only that the landscape sounded like a cavern on the verge of collapse.

Isobel moved with her eyes first, scanning the next step while also looking to the horizon. At some point the treacherous pathway led down, enclosing her sight line with only raised rock. She summarized it in terms of an ambush, one in the neck of a valley. Luckily for her, nothing chose to attack from the advantage.

That wasn’t to say monsters didn’t attempt to kill and eat the group. Much on the contrary, in fact. Most were rock-monsters of some sort, prime targets for Leland’s training in Isobel’s eyes. But she didn’t let the boy fight. Not with her instincts telling her to get out of the rocks as quickly as possible. So, in the end, she killed the attacks with a flick of the wrist and a thrown projectile.

It was four hours into the rocky wasteland when the structures began to change. While they weren’t that deep into the thick of it, the jagged pillars transformed into sheer sharpened spikes. Evenly and deliberately placed, these spikes reminded Leland of a certain sheep farm out in the mountains. They were postings, fences to keep the predators away or the prey in.

He didn’t let his thoughts be known, knowing that Isobel probably thought the same.

It was then that Isobel stopped, her eyes sticking to a certain section of stone like a lowly adventurer reading a quest board. Leland and Sybil caught up a moment later, finding a plaque of sorts.

Chiseled in a language unfamiliar to them all, the sign displayed three quick words. Gray-black stone made the lettering hard to decipher, but a familiar crusty splattering was more than enough to get the message across. While they couldn’t read it, they had all come to recognize the sight of dried blood.

Before they could question it, however, the sky erupted and the ground exploded.