Curselock

Chapter 166: Sky Dwarves

Two days later the group made it to the eye.

Amid the tumbling maelstrom of darkness overhead, forces clashed against gargantuan creatures. Streaks, elemental in nature, rose without worry and fell without recourse. Each colorful and deadly, unparalleled but bountiful. A war, yes, but a war of unbridled reality warping hatred. Eternal hatred. Eternal chaos.

An eternal storm. An unnatural storm.

Dark clouds created trenches and holes, places of refuge for those wishing to regain their breath or hide. What were they fighting? Leland and the others didn’t know, only that the shadows of their spells and attacks breathed the hints of magic far beyond them.

That was when they came upon the storm’s eye. The rains had stopped and a safe haven had begun.

A long and grueling pathway led them there, one filled with torrential floods and more than a few arguments. But as the group stood there, all three of them staring at the heavens, past feelings fell away and the rain suddenly wasn’t even a second hand thought.

The eye of the storm didn’t lead to blue skies or a patch of night sky. The circular cut out in the clouds rose like an invisible mushroom’s stem holding up an umbrella-like cap. It rose higher than the sky, warping reality into an upside-down mountain. But, where the base would be, a world opened, and the vast white Void sprawled.

A beam of celestial lightning ripped through the center of the stem, rushing up into the void before ballooning out into the nothingness. A spell construct of some kind, one that tugged at the fabric of space with tentacles of white power. It held the Void open.

“That’s it,” Leland yelled over the howling winds. “That has to be where the pathway was leading us!”

Isobel glared at the white sky. She swallowed deeply, but didn’t say anything and instead dropped her shoulders and trudged forward toward the beam.

Sybil likewise didn’t say anything, but the slack in her jaw and the hesitance in her step was speech enough.

Leland held out his hand to her, she gladly took it and they walked on together.

The rocky wasteland had devolved, returning the naturalness of the Valley. From jagged rocks to hilly pathways, the flooded ground mimicked a marsh but the sheer winds mimicked an ocean gale. Mud stuck to each of their boots, weighing them down to a near crawl. But they moved, and with entertainment above to keep their interest.

Over the last two days, the group had encountered more and more dead bodies on the journey toward the center. Most were unrecognizable piles of gore, but the few whose armor were intact explained quite a lot.

There were three factions. The Sightless King and his brood, a warrior-priest enclave of some sort, then a group who all wore different identifying clothing but the same teal ring. The Harbinger that crash landed beside the group the first day they made it to the rains belonged to the priest group.

The issue was, Leland and Isobel had no idea who the priests and the teal rings were. Legacy tattoos did not fade when Legacies died unless the presiding Lord renounced their follower’s claim. Witches were the prime example of this, but certain factions or groups sometimes lost their tattoos as well.

In this case, each priest body the group came upon did not have tattoos. The Sightless Cult and the teal rings did, their bodies housing the marks of different Lords. Leland recognized the Lord of Magic’s tattoo easily enough while Isobel identified a Lord of Poison, Lord of Feathers, and a few others.

By the time the group stepped over a hill and the beam puncturing through the storm’s eye came into focus, they stopped checking bodies. There were too many at this point, the mud consuming them like flies to glue.

It was at that moment Leland felt something change in his grimoire.

Cursed contract of the Lord of Erupting Skies:

Use: Gain access to the spell Erupting Steps. Only usable once per hour.

Erupting Steps : Your steps burst with erupting might, propelling you with the speed of the mightiest storm.

Return: Completed.

The contract with the Lord of Erupting Skies had completed, he had found the source of what created the eternal storm.

“Isobel!” he shouted, tome in hand. “Contract complete!”

She looked at him strangely, slow realization overcoming her. She turned, frowning at the beam. “What does that—”

Her words were cut off by a tide of sapphire. The dark clouds were sundered, vanishing under the guise of a blue so bright the edges of Leland’s vision went white despite his eyes being closed. Before the flash subsided, the ground began to cry. Shaking with enough force to uproot trees, a clap of thunder made all stand still.

A ringing in his ears, Leland could only gasp for breath. He felt dull, dumb even, like he had forgotten how to breathe, how to think. All he knew and understood was lightning so blue it could rival the most beautiful seas and a sound so loud he wished his head would explode.

A shadow blocked some of the blue and white, and Leland vaguely recognized someone was touching him. A hand, he knew, but he was too focused on the chilling silence it brought. He fell to his knees, or maybe he was already on his knees, regardless, he sat in the mud, his head spinning.

“Sorry lad, I was a half-second too late,” the person said, their words eclipsing the blinding silence like a hymn after a prayer.

Leland opened his eyes, finding someone he did not recognize. He was short, muscular, dense. His arms were thick with hair and bulk, armor-less yet Leland was sure his skin was tougher than any armor he had ever worn. Head shined with wax to the point his darkened skin could be mistaken for obsidian, yet a bushy beard grew tangled and unkept.

The man spoke with an accent unknown to Leland, but a great big grin told him the man was far from an enemy. Oddly enough, he found that the man’s tooth ring more reassuring than the smile. He wasn’t sure why, but Leland just knew that anyone with a golden ring looped through a tooth was an alright guy…

Or maybe he thought that because his mind was still reeling.

Leland traced the man’s arm that was clasped upon his shoulder. A tattoo depicting a lightning storm crested the back of his hand, all black ink, but moving with subtle grace.

The Champion of Erupting Skies.

A wheeze caught Leland’s attention. He quickly turned, all semblance of mental fatigue washing away. Sybil, also on her knees, sputtered and coughed, a woman in similar size and build as the man touching Leland tending to her wounds. Isobel likewise had a newcomer watching over her, but the Huntress had already removed the man’s attempts of help. Instead she glared at the sky.

Leland followed her eyes, finding the eternal storm completely gone. Now, the sky was a naked hole into the Void, one with a war still thriving around it.

Without the clouds, everything was out in the open, however. Wicked monsters fought people who also fought other people. Some held red magic constructs, others threw spells of golden inheritance, all the while the monsters did their thing.

“Lad, I hear you’ve got yourself a teleportation problem,” the Champion boomed. “Can’t say I’ve had that problem before, but to each their own.”

Leland flinched, the sudden draw back to reality crushing his hesitance. “Can you help?”

“Nay. Got me some baddies to kill,” he pointed up toward the sky.

“Who are they?”

“Sky Dwarves’ worst nightmare, people who can fly!”

The other two newcomers groaned. The one helping Sybil got her to her feet while the one with Isobel had smartly stepped back.

It was then Leland actually connected the dots about who these people were. Sky Dwarves, the Champion had said as much, but now he actually saw that. Short, stout, hairy, and bearded. The only thing they were missing was— The Champion’s skin began to glow blue, tattoos radiating along his skin in runic patterns.

Never mind, they’ve got the tattoos as well, Leland thought.

The woman dwarf stepped beside Leland. “Up there is the Graverend Army, the Valley’sprotectors, or jailers if you would prefer. Then you’ve got the Sightless Cult. And lastly, the Clergy of Golden Lambs, an offshoot of the main church of the Vile Lord, Aurelian Giant.”

Leland frowned, not recognizing the Vile Lord. “And the monsters?” he asked.

“Ah, those be a few of the Graverenders, mostly. Legacy of the Shapeshifter is a common Legacy on this continent.”

Isobel spoke before Leland could. “What do they want?”

It was the Champion who answered. “That,” he said, pointing toward the beam of energy cutting through the sky and opening the Void.

“And what is that?”

“It’s a great big spell that is ripping up the sky, are you daft girl?”

Isobel blinked a few times, anger never touching her mind as disbelief took front and center. She was losing her touch, no one spoke to her like that before Leland and the other kids came into the picture. But… then again, she didn’t care that much to start an argument, so she simply hmphed loudly.

Leland sighed. “What’s making the spell? I can’t imagine a single person doing that.”

“Aye, you’d be right,” the Champion said. “That there be an Archon in the middle of transporting itself back ‘home.’”

He made sure to gesture with his hands around the word “home.”

“And where exactly is this ‘home?’” Leland asked.

“Don’t know, nor do I care!”

The female dwarf shook her head slowly. “No one knows. Every Archon that has attempted to leave has been killed or fought off by the Graverenders.”

“This happens often?”

“No, but enough that a few groups have moved to claim the spell for their own.” She gestured to the sky.

“You seem to know a lot about this situation,” Leland said. “Why did your Lord ask me to investigate, in that case? Why were we sent into the danger?”

“Lad, you’ve got a teleporting problem, remember,” the Champion said. “Up there is your ticket home.”

Everyone followed his eyes up into the sky into the hole in reality.