Curselock

Chapter 192: Curses

Drifting in from a haze, Leland stepped into the shabby shack with a grin on his face. It was time to eat cake, chocolate, his favorite. His friends were there, his parents too. He grinned at each of them, happy as a clam to—

A crow landed on the back of the chair he was about to sit on. Obsidian black with deepened shadows where feathers ran and ended, the bird was the size of a large dog, far larger than any crow he had ever seen. But that wasn’t what made Leland pause. No, that was its piercing violet eyes.

Two orbs of purple fire and haunted sight stared at him, each bulbous and reflective. He watched himself watch the crow in its eyes, his thinning body looking far worse for wear. When was the last time he had a proper meal? One from a restaurant or—

The crow cawed.

“Caw to yourself, bird,” Leland muttered.

The bird looked at him like he was stupid. He didn’t much appreciate that look. It reminded him of when he first met Isobel, sitting before her answering questions he didn’t want asked. He stood up to her back then, and he would do so again now.

“Go on, get,” he said, shooing it away.

It pecked him. And then cawed for good measure.

But then, it spoke, its voice cold and ancient, “This seat is taken.”

Leland blinked a few times. Of course! That seat wasn’t his, he moved right over to the other empty seat. He sat down and his eyes fell on the cake. Knife in hand, he moved to cut a slice.

The crow stopped him. “A bit premature, huh? We are still waiting for someone.”

Leland’s brows crossed. “Are we? Who is missing?”

He looked around. His parents, Jude and Glenny, their parents, Sybil, even Floe and Gelo were here. Who was missing? The question echoed in his mind.

“Grandmother,” the crow said just in time for the door to the shabby shack to swing open.

Leland turned, finding the doorway glowing with iridescent violet flames. A silhouette of a hunchbacked old woman cast the flames apart, her each step rocking the shack like she weighed as much as a leviathan. Her eyes glowed like the crow’s, but they also whispered and sang. Sorrow, age, heartbreak. The song was horrid, it was eternity coming to an end. A dying tune for a life spent fighting.

“Ah, of course. Grandmother, how did I forrrrrrrrrrrr—”

Leland kept the syllable going, although his mind came to a halt. He blinked, silencing himself. He blinked again, the walls of the shabby shack falling away. He blinked a third time, his family and friends leaving him. One last blink forced the table, cake, and even the crow away.

He was alone with grandmother, the Calamity herself.

“Ah,” Leland scoffed. “I’m dreaming.”

The Lord of Curses smiled softly. “And it is time to wake up.”

He recoiled. “You come to me in a dream only to tell me to wake up? Can’t you offer some advice or answer some questions? Here, I’ll start. I’m your Champion!? What’s up with that? Couldn’t find anyone better?”

Her smile didn’t fall, but the meaning behind it changed to something far more somber. “No. Because there is no one else who even comes close.”

Leland went to respond, but he woke up instead.

A voice called to him. “You okay there, Leland? That was a pretty nasty hit—”

The voice cut itself off, a brief wave of warmth appearing. Then another voice appeared.

“Spencer! You were supposed to be watching him!”

Leland recognized that voice instantly. How could he ever forget his mom’s angry screeching? He had been a mischievous child just like anyone else back in the day. The yelling was like a brand in his mind, he cringed slightly at it.

Then the memories started to come back. It had been two weeks since leaving the dungeon and Gelo and Floe. They were halfway across the world at some sandy barrens that his father had called “the most prime location for training ever conceived!” Leland could do without the sand, personally, but he also knew his father was right.

The place was a gold mine for interesting monsters to fight, all of which actually posed a challenge to him, Jude, and Glenny.

Vision slowly came back to him but he kept his eyes firmly shut. The sun was unrelenting in Mirage Fields, but oddly enough not because of the heat and blazing light. It was that everything was doubled. Literally, doubled.

Every grain of sand was unique only to its other. Every random animal or desert rock, a second lay nearby or was skittering around like a twin. What little foliage there was made the oasis look like small forests hidden within dunes of sand.

This didn’t stop at just the locals of the Mirage Fields; it included everyone who entered their perimeter. When the boys had first entered, each one jumped when an exact copy manifested beside themselves. Then they each realized just how novel the oddity was, making faces at them or inspecting their recent muscle gains in Jude’s case.

Then… it got annoying, fast. Each boy had doubled, which meant their usual antics had doubled. It was strange seeing Leland Two decide to take a break and slow the group down. It was irritating when Jude Two decided to run ahead into a dust devil because he “wanted to feel the wind!” And Glenny almost killed his doppelganger when he said something flatly rude to Isobel.

What made everything worse was that the parents and Isobel were immune to the desert’s power. Jude’s dad declared the area “too weak to make a perfect copy of himself.” Which was actually true. The desert had a hidden power source that only the locals knew of, using mirages like a pseudo defense mechanism.

As it turned out, the duplicates would try to kill the original if the original ever decided to harm the desert itself.

So, laying in the sand with his eyes closed, Leland didn’t want to see himself mock himself… gah he hated this place.

“I was!” Spencer yelled back to Lucia. “I thought Leland would dodge in time! That boulder wasn’t even going that fast!”

Leland muttered something, which stopped his mom from responding.

“What was that?” his dad asked, leaning in.

Feeling the warmth radiating off his dad’s face, Leland, with a growl, said, “I didn’t dodge because there were six boulders! How was I supposed to dodge the boulders when those sand mephits all threw them at the same time!”

His dad leaned back. “Uh, there were plenty of ways.”

A third voice joined the fray, this one sounding hauntingly familiar. “Exactly right, dad! Other me could have easily dodged. We have multiple flight contracts, a movement contract, and even a shield contract.” Leland Two made a humming noise. “But truthfully we should have just positioned better to begin with. We knew there were three, scratch that, six mephits. Of course there would be six boulders as well. We are in the Mirage Fields, after all.”

The family was silent for a moment, the real Leland groaned. “Is that what I actually sound like?”

His dad laughed and his mom grumbled something. She said, “No. The mirages try to be annoying, I swear.”

“Oh, that’s good at least.”

Leland Two then stumbled back, his hand on his heart. “Mother! That hurts! How could you say that to your son!”

Real Leland sat up, opening his eyes because he just had to watch this. His mom had increasingly become more and more restless with Leland Two’s excessive declarations about him being her son. The first few times had been cute, then awkward, then irritating, then downright gross. When Leland Two started to mention private family things, Lucia had struck him down with a lightning bolt, killing him.

The mirage, of course, reappeared like nothing had happened because the real Leland was alive and well.

This time was no different. Lucia’s head went stiff and she thrust her pointer finger at the illusion with the speed of a viper. A spray of white-hot electricity released from her finger like a sling releasing a bundle of rocks. The electricity shredded through Leland Two’s sleeveless tunic, flayed his chest open, and burnt holes into his ribs and internal organs.

Leland Two stumbled around the sand, each step invisible adding a set of steel weights around his ankles. Blood pooled at his mouth as he tried to cry out to his attacker, but no sound came out. He crashed to his knees, then gave a hellish look around, threw his hands up into the air, and then fell over dead.

Lucia sighed. “Mirage Leland is one of the dramatic types.”

“It would seem so,” Spencer said, not even batting an eye at the corpse of his son.

Leland didn’t either. He did not like the idea of his mom killing his clone the first time, nor the second really. But once the mirage ate his dinner while he went off to pee, he felt all was fair in this place.

A heavy hand landed on his shoulder, a new Leland Two’s. “Well. I think Mother has some anger issues, don’t you think?.”

Real Leland flinched, shuffling away from his mirage. “Don’t touch me.”

Leland Two feigned being hurt. “Now, now. We’ve got to work together—”

“Dad,” Leland interrupted, looking at his father. “At what approximant power level do I need to be for the desert to be unable to create one of these for me?”

Spencer frowned and scratched the back of his head. “Uh…” He didn’t know but of course he couldn’t exactly come out and say that. It was a fatherly thing. “You have to be powerful enough to be able to dodge a boulder.”

Leland made a weird sound. “It was six!”

Spencer then made a mock baby-crying sound.

Laughing at that, Leland got back to his feet. “Where’d those mephits go?”

A portal opened up beside him and as he stepped through, he hoped Jude and Glenny’s training was going better than his.

“Oh boy! Off to finish what we started!” Leland Two announced, skipping through the portal before Spencer could close it.