Curselock

Chapter 213: Fate

The shadows around families and households deepened and darkened. The surrounding fog silently hid many secrets, most of which were hideous terrors hellbent on the destruction of the city. Out here, far from the castle and the many protectors killing cultists and battling the dark, were the true masterminds.

One particular mastermind was a woman who controlled fate to a certain degree, allowing herself ample opportunity to move between different portions of reality. While most might try to kill her on sight, or at least run away, it wasn’t the branded “W” on her forehead that people first saw when they encountered her. It was the dread in the air around her, because if you encountered her, it was fate.

And fate was a killer.

She sat alone in a small room, the door weighed shut with the corner of the bed frame. Her legs criss crossed against themselves, her hands resting quietly in the gap they created. Her spine was straight, too straight, and her neck leaned back as she stared at the wooden ceiling… or, at least, that’s how she appeared from a cursory glance.

Hair like a scraggly bush, eyes like an apple sliced into a thousand paper-thin lines, the woman, Charlotte, didn’t stare at the ceiling. Rather she read fate.

So many lines, so many threads. Most the size of string, some the size of trees. She saw the current outcome of the battle for Ivory Reach, the strand lit up and slowly growing in size and strength. Idly she twitched her hand, magic running boundless in a different part of the city. The same thread then shrunk, mixing well with the other fateful outcomes.

She hummed a tune to herself, scanning everything and anything. The fate of a dying woman. The fate of a young boy. The fate of one of the cannon fodder cultists. The fate of Ashford. The fate of herself.

The humming stopped. A frown formed.

The thread of herself ended abruptly. She made a noise, her hand going out yet again. Magic came and went, bypassing the portal mage with ease. Her spell took hold, and fate shifted. No longer did her strand end, in fact, it rode well into the future.

She smirked to herself. It truly was fate she and Ashford met up. After running for so long, she had almost forgotten what it meant to be a home. And while she knew living with Ashford was hardly a home, she also didn’t care! He was like a big brother to her and that was perfectly fine.

After the horrors she had lived through, after all of the lives she’d taken. After her crimes entered the limelight, like always, she fought her way free. For freedom was all she ever wanted. A victim she was, and after all, everyone dies. So who truly cared about the people she killed? She didn’t, and that was enough.

A low guttural chuckle sounded as she watched the thread of a particularly strong guardsman snap.

“Dead!” she sang, her face long with a teeth-full smile. “Die, die, die! Everyone can die! Home I come! Home I make—”

Her own strand of fate broke again. That simply won’t do. Magic came and went, shuddering against the space the portalmage had claim over. She frowned, pushing harder. Her spell took, and things began to change.

And yet, her thread didn’t reappear. It didn’t fix, it didn’t rebound back to life. Her fate remained ended.

Her fingers rolled with worry. Then, she disappeared, leaving the bed propped up against the room’s door.

The next safehouse came into view a moment later, the threads of fate disappearing from her sight and returning her irises to a blonde, almost, pale green. She looked around, finding the same bland wooden room as before, and yet completely different. A new inn, a new room. And somehow, stale and uninteresting. She almost wanted to paint the walls red with blood. That would draw some life into this tacky home.

But now, she was working. Fun was for later.

Her vision turned back to the threads, her eyes back to the sliced apples. The tune came back to her lips, the song restarti—

Her thread was still ended. Still dead. Magic came to her call, filling the room with magical potential. She huffed, looking, searching, for something to attack. She had to change fate, she had to protect herself.

The city came into vision, the fate of any and everyone creating topographic and structure. Who’s fate would end, or grow, at the same time hers died? There were three. She killed each of them, teleporting them into the depths of the cultist’s stronghold. Whatever monster they housed devoured them instantly.

Charlotte checked. Her thread still ended.

At this point her head leaked sweat and her heart pounded, and yet somehow, her smile was better than ever. She was being hunted. It had been a while since that had happened.

The question now became: who?

First and most obvious was her arch nemesis, the portal mage. She had interfered with him before, and he was strong enough, not to mention had plenty of reason, to come for her. She did teleport his child away, after all. Though she wasn’t sure how he and the other two hadn’t ended up in her lair…

But that question was for later, for she had to find an answer to this mighty big conundrum. She supposed it could be the portal mage, but he was actively fighting on multiple fronts. Surely he’d have slipped while gunning for her, his attention split far too much to work beyond her sight.

There was a file somewhere Ashford had given her about the other Inquisitors and spatial defenders the city had to offer. She had leafed through it a month ago when the planning for this attack first was being finalized, but she hardly thought to memorize it all.

There were like, five different names and descriptions reports. And that was just too much for her to remember. She was a run and gun type of girl, you know?

She burst out laughing, that thought tickling that special spot in her mind. She was a runner and gunner. She’d survived this long doing so, after all.

The threads came back to her. Her’s still ended, but now it was extended just a bit through time. That was good, that meant she was on the right track. Her sight returned to normal and she realized she wasn’t just being hunted.

She was also hunting.

“Cat and mouse, little hunter. Cat and mouse…”

Magic came and went, changing things to just see what stuck. Instead of a new safehouse, she appeared walking on the other side of the city through a garden. Briefly she stopped to smell the pretty flowers, taking one and hooking it through her coat, before teleporting again.

Fate had changed, this time for the worse. Dead faster.

“Gah, tenacious,” she muttered, giggling a bit. “I’m coming for you, whoever you are!”

The room she stood in vanished from her sight and now she stood among the dead. Bodies laid around her, blood seeping into her shoes. Around, a wave of flinches radiated outward as the guard searching for survivors and tending to their dead reacted to the sudden human appearance.

“Identify yours—”

Charlotte rolled her eyes, appearing somewhere else and already reading fate. Still dead…

Now she sat on a park bench, the bones of the dead Lord’s jaw just a few streets over, and thought. Two teleports had each shortened her expected life significantly, while the first lengthened it.

“They’re learning,” she hooted, the fog around her the only one listening. “I see…”

Now, instead of teleporting, she’d walk. Taking to the streets, calmly and swiftly, she moved. Threads consumed her sight, the topography of fate guiding her way. In one way she was blind, in another she saw everything, even the future.

A fork in the road had her interpreting the strands. She took the left option before things shifted drastically. She back tracked and took the right. Much calmer.

As she went, silent feelers of magic were dropped behind her. Traps, if one could call them that, designed by a mastermind Witch for the sole purpose of creating chaos. Simple, right? So, so simple…

“Annnnd one hundred!” she announced to no one but the fog. “Good luck at getting through my minefield, Mr Hunter!”

It was but a single step that fate changed, and for the first time since realizing the game, Charlotte frowned.

“Ninety nine… who could possibly destroy my fate—”

The who was very apparent now. Leland Silver. The boy who had previously broken her magic. The boy who Ashford dangled before their third partner like a baited hook.

She began to giggle, cackling wildly.

“He’s coming for me!?” she maniacally screeched into the fog. “Let him come! I’ll show you how to deal with a boy!”

While the fog didn’t respond, she knew the Sightless King was listening and scheming.

It just so happened that others were listening as well, and these special few needed a Witch’s soul.