Curselock

Chapter 209: Sewer

“Stop,” Leland commanded, his eyes faintly glowing with magic. “There.” He pointed to the wall.

Isobel blasted it with a bolt from her parasitic weapon.

They continued, the smell of the sewer and the fog causing the trip to go slow. Leland took the lead, the contract with the Moonless Lord active. No halo hung above his head, however, a trick his parents were most pleased with seeing.

Rushwin had given them a hesitant “okay” to explore the sewers for the cult, but Leland wasn’t going to risk some random guard or Inquisitor seeing his halo and ruining all the good faith he and the others had created. So he cast the curse with the invisibility cantrip, the safety of the contract too much to go without.

Still, their pace was slow, even if he was pointing out every cultist sigil they ran across. He thought it was a shame that the contract with the Moonless Lord hadn’t shown many uses outside trap detection, but he digressed. Glenny, on the other hand, twitched whenever he pointed another one out. The more they destroyed the better, in his mind.

In the sewers for more than an hour at this point, the group had come into contact with a few other guard or Inquisitor groups. Each meeting had resulted in a tense standoff until everyone realized they were friendly, the fog doing wonders for paranoia… at least until the other group realized who they had run into.

Luckily for everyone involved, High Inquisitor Rushwin had alerted all teams going into the sewers about the resurfacing of the Inquisitors Silver, Brown, and Carmon Red and their status as allies. That, of course, didn’t stop those who knew them to question their loyalty.

“Is that Roy Brown?” one such Inquisitor leader in the sewer asked. “What’s a traitor like you doing down here?”

Roy handled it with care, opening to, of course, mock the guy. “More than you, Jerry!”

Inquisitor Jerry and the rest of his team stared at Roy and the others for a hot minute before Jerry laughed. “I was surprised to hear about your traitorship. Glad to see it was all a miscommunication!”

The two stepped forward, clamping their arms together. “Oh, gotten stronger then, have you?” Roy snidely said.

Before Jerry could respond, one of his team member’s coughed. “Sir, can we not have a reunion in the middle of enemy territory?”

Quickly Roy and Jerry stiffened and just as quickly both parties moved on, but not before they could set up a night of drinking after everything was over.

As they continued down a new tunnel, Roy muttered, “Why couldn’t meeting Rushwin have been that easy? See Diana,” he poked his wife, “not everyone wishes us dead.”

“I never said everyone does, just the important people.”

“You mean Aunty P.”

Diana rolled her eyes, but the fog obscured it. “Obviously.”

Spencer jumped in, “Let’s finish up here and show that we can still be trusted.”

“Stop,” Leland suddenly announced. “There,” he pointed.

Another sigil destroyed.

Unfortunately for everyone, some encounters in the sewers were dangerous. Occasionally the group would walk upon a small unit of cultists. They wore white or red robes and leaked pure primordial power from the sockets of their eyes. Most jolted into action, empowering spells or readying weapons.

Lucia took care of them with ease.

Lightning blossomed from the tips of her fingers, ripping the sewer in two. Like a broken flower, craggily zigzags of blue light rushed out, sheering into a cultist before jumping to another. All in all, the single spell bounced from one enemy to another until each cultist was nothing but a smoking corpse.

“Uh,” Jude groaned, pinching his nose. “Why does burning flesh smell worse than literal poo?”

Leland saw Diana and Roy facepalm. “You should have smelled the Lord of Soul’s domain,” he said.

“It was bad?”

“Let’s just say that soul damage makes you smell things.”

That comment sparked something in Lucia’s eyes. “You told Rushwin that the Lord of Souls hurt you. Want to talk about it?”

“No, not really,” Leland answered. “I don’t think it was intentional on the Soul Lord’s part. And I don’t think it matters much at this point. Nothing any of you can do, and it's not like I didn’t get reparations for his blunder.”

He pulled down his shirt, showing off his necklace. “That reminds me. I need to fill this thing with souls. Next group of cultists we encounter, let me take them.”

His mother gave him a look.

They continued on, Leland pointing out more and more sigils as they went. The conversation had changed a few times during their escapades in the sewers. From the High Inquisitor and Aunty P to random tidbits of magical information. Despite being in a war zone, they kept the tone light and even jovial at times.

That’s what having six Inquisitors as escorts provided.

Eventually they did come across another group of cultists and Lucia held off from attacking in ambush. Instead Leland stepped forward and cast Circle of Souls before anyone could be the wiser. The curse took instantly, draining the enemies of their lives before any of them could fully realize what was going on – the fog and general darkness of the sewers doing wonders.

In the end, Leland was presented with six fresh lost souls. He took them all, adding them to the Soul Lord’s cloak necklace. Like pouring water into a jug, the souls took to their new container. They swam around in it, flattening and spinning into something akin to the starting stitch of fabric. The necklace gained a bit of weight, the six souls hardly making a dent in what it could hold. Now, however, the chain and loop shone with a tinge of green.

“Guess I’m going to need a lot more souls,” Leland muttered to himself. “Do I even want more souls? I don’t—”

“Just take them,” Isobel said, interrupting his train of thoughts. “Don’t feel bad for harboring the souls of these monsters. They chose the Sightless King’s power. They understood they were becoming something less than human.”

Leland took a deep breath. “Right. I don’t feel bad about killing or using their souls. But I don’t know if I want to go down this road. I’m just thinking of that soul I helped cross over. It was so lost, so innocent. Whatever he did in his life was lost when he turned into a soul.”

Isobel mutely nodded. “I understand what you are getting at. For me, I would use every resource available to make sure I’m strong enough to protect myself and those that matter to me. But if you think the soul necklace-cloak is too much, no one is going to stop you. I suggest you decide after the cult, Harbinger, and Witch are taken care of though.”

Leland could agree to that. “Thanks,” he whispered.

Eventually the group found the source of the fog and the cultist’s main nest in the sewers. Another team of Inquisitors had already taken care of it, however.

When they entered the antechamber, robbed bodies laid sprawled out and dismembered. Blood was pooling in the mortar joints, steel weapons were cast aside, scars had been embedded into the walls and ceilings. The runic device creating the fog had been sundered, and now it spit and churned at a rate those on the scene could use to study the enchantment.

“Late to the party,” Spencer promptly said. “I guess we are done here.”

A portal opened to the side. One by one everyone exited the sewers and now found themselves in a new inn. The old inn obviously didn’t want them staying there after what happened with Rushwin.

“I’ll start the report,” Spencer announced, a pen and paper appearing in his hand from his inventory ring.

“That was anticlimactic,” Jude said, growing with the unease of a lack of battle. “What was the point of the attack if they didn’t even defend their base?”

“To remind the city that they are here,” Diana answered. “Strike terror in the heart of—”

“They wanted to see how we would react,” Glenny interrupted, dark bags having formed under his eyes.

“Son?” Carmon asked, noticing the change in the air. “What’s wrong?”

Glenny flinched like someone had yelled directly into his ear. He groaned, his hands rushing to cradle his head.

“Shut up!” he spit, silencing the already silent room. Everyone was watching the young rogue now, even Spencer had dropped his pen.

“We beat you!” Glenny yelled, blood trickling from his nose. “We’ll do it again!”

Carmon’s arms found themselves on either side of his son’s shoulders, holding him tight. “Glenny—”

A wave of black power eclipsed through Glenny’s chest. It twinkled with hints of white nothingness, like stars in the distance. His eyes turned white, then black, then white again. He grunted, the Void shunning the feeble attempts of dominance.

“You can’t have me,” Glenny whispered. “I won’t let you.”

Power continued to pulse from him, but he breathed easy. The others, though, did not.

“Glenny? Explain please,” Carmon said, now sitting beside his son.

“T-the Sightless King—” The name almost seemed to cause him pain. “He’s coming for me.”