Curselock

Chapter 44: Moonless

Leland found himself suddenly standing in a black void. Speckles of stars drifted past him at impossible speeds, each burning brighter than the last. At some point he had to close his eyes, the light having grown to be too much.

Despite the odd scenery, Leland was pleasantly surprised. Lying in bed asking random combinations of Lords and the moon to form a contract was something he nor Jude wanted to do. Lord of the Moonless, his initial guess, happened to be correct, thus making his evening quite short.

Just only hoped that this meeting was fruitful.

The light flooding past his eyelids eventually dimmed and he took a hesitant glance around. Again, he was pleasantly surprised. The domain of the Moonless Lord was a simple infinite grass field below an endless night sky.

Simple yet elegant, Leland mused to himself.

Unlike the Lord of Spirits’ domain, there was no path forward. So, he simply waited. Without invitation, Leland felt like a trespasser in these lands and he figured it best not to anger the host.

His waiting abruptly ended when a presence stirred in the sky. A pressure bore down on Leland’s shoulders, forcing him to his knees and pressing his head into the lush green. There was no pain, he noted, something the Lord of Magic and Lord of Curses had explained to him so long ago. In the domains of the immortal, he, a mortal, was untouchable.

Still, showing respect and offering a gift had been recommended, something he did not do.

“Who are you? And why do I smell the death of a Moon on you?”

With his head still bowed, Leland forced his jaw to move despite the pressure. “My name is Leland Silver, Legacy of Curses. And because I have slain one of your Legacies, if I identified their tattoo correctly, of course.”

The sky vibrated, like an earthquake sundering a mountain. Things shifted above Leland, his vision firmly planted on the ground. The pressure eventually eased, allowing him to search the sky for the Lord of this domain. He found no one, but the constellations had changed.

From sporadic dots of light, a depiction of a clouded night above a bland field. An arc of stars winked in and out of view, just like the tattoo of the cultist.

“That is the tattoo we encountered, yes,” Leland said.

The voice appeared almost instantly. “And you have killed them? Which one of them? Which one of my Moons have perished?”

The pressure reappeared, pushing into Leland like gravity had increased several fold. He fought against it, standing straight despite the rough strain within his spine.

“Yes,” Leland forced out, his jaw failing to work properly. “She attacked us unprovoked. Led a group of noncombatant civilians into a home invasion and ultimately got them killed as well.”

“It does not matter, you have killed one of mine and come to my home. A punishment befitting of your ignorance is called for. From which country do you hail? I shall send a tidal wave.”

With a growl, Leland shouted, “She was corrupted! By the Sightless King! She acted on his orders, killing innocents!”

He didn’t quite know how true that statement actually was. The Sightless King didn’t seem like the one to give orders but that was just arguing semantics at that point. The woman was a part of the cult, and one way or another she served her ‘Lords’ will.

Leland continued speaking into the void of silence. “She was a part of a cult, one with the devotion of a fake Lord. She forwent your grace and turned traitor. She was no Moon of yours.”

The pressure on his shoulders relented somewhat. The Moonless Lord still spoke, however. “You know nothing, Child of the Calamity. You expect me to believe your mortal words? Your kind lies, constantly.”

Leland frowned at the words. How was he supposed to prove—

“There is another. A second Moon of yours within this cult,” he said. “I do not know her name, hardly a description, actually. But she is branded with your mark yet uses the power of the Sightless King.”

The constellations changed back to their original orientation. “Where?”

“Shoutwell, a port city—”

“Enough. Be quiet.”

With a sudden surge of gravity pulling him down, Leland fell onto his butt. The pressure relented a moment later, allowing him to stargaze.

“This is concerning,” the Lord of the Moonless said before his tone turned somber. “One of my Moons has turned into an abomination. How could this have happened? Explain it to me.”

Leland grimaced, his patience turning sour. “Perhaps a bit of background on yourself and your Legac—”

“No.”

“I don’t know what you want from me then. I do not know this woman. I do not know the woman I killed. I met both of them when they invaded my employer’s home. We did not have a conversation, we did not speak other than in taunts. They attacked us. That is it. That is all I know.”

A cold wind rushed through the grassy field. “But you know of this cult? These Sightless.”

“More than the average person, yes. But not much. They are a cult. Usually they find new members by feeding on those who are lost or damaged.”

“I see. Mortals are weak.”

Leland internally rolled his eyes. “Look,” he said, forcing himself to stand. “I did not come here to be intimidated or made fun of. I came to ask your help in fighting against this cult. Two members are already connected to you..”

Suddenly a crescent moon appeared in the night sky. It faded into realty slowly, like a stubborn child defiantly making an appearance.

“What do you want, Curse Lord?”

Leland frowned at the title but saw his chance. “Information mainly. Make a contract with me—"

“I cannot. Information is forbidden.”

He hesitated. “By you or my magic?”

“It matters not. I may tell you information. But no contracts.”

“Alright… My friends and I had never seen your mark before, then suddenly there are two of them. We need to know why and why they choose to leave you for a false king?”

The moon in the sky faded and returned, like it was breathing. “No,” the Lord of the Moonless said. “Ask a different question.”

“What?! Why is my que—”

“Pride, the greatest of mortal emotions. It seems I still have yet to shed all of my lowly chains.”

Leland blinked at the statement and quickly racked his brain for a new question. “Why would someone leave their Lord for a monster?”

“Fear, greed, money. Mortal means.”

Shaking his eyes, Leland changed tactics. “What does your Legacy do? Is it combative?”

“I am the Moonless, not the Moonfall. We do not fight, we harmonize. We make art. We transfix the most beautiful starry nights on the most renowned canvas.”

Something clicked in Leland’s mind. “Greed then. They wanted power. They don’t necessarily want to resurrect the Sightless King, but they want his power – the power they couldn’t have during their Dream Ceremonies… But in the end none of that matters. They are killing innocents. Their Legacies have no meaning at this point. How does… What does… No, no, it doesn’t—”

“Ask your question, mortal.”

Smiling, Leland ignored the Lord for a moment. Learning the history of a cult was great and all, but that wasn’t the main objective. He needed something to fight them off, something to retrieve Glenny with. He needed an army, he needed to be stronger.

“In return for me killing you Moon that was led astray, you sign a contract with me. I need to find the cult’s base. I need to find where they plan to resurrect their ‘Lord.’”

The pulsating moon thought over the request. “Fine. It shall be done.”

The eyeless woman in white stood before the statue of her Lord. She felt with the power he bestowed onto her, seeing the world for what it truly was. Everything was wrong, everything was misplaced. She was not the blind one, everyone else was. The world was.

She had grown into this power, this life, through struggle and strife. Recent events were nothing but her Lord testing her resolve. Her sister’s death was meaningless in the grand scheme of the Sightless’ plans. Their goals were much more than her life, or those she once called loved ones.

She was weak, there was nothing more to it. Her sister had died because she was like the others. Spineless. They floated around the edge of true belief, never accepting the Sightless King into themselves. They used his power, they exercised petty revenge on those who wronged them. Bosses, neighbors, guards, judges.

“Cowards,” she spit, holding her hands out. It was time.

The weak had proven themselves to be one thing, however. Fodder. She smiled at the thought, her Lord was as cunning as he was powerful. Why give his full power to any random peasant that bowed before his statue when he could give them a fraction of the amount and still receive the same outcome?

“Genius,” she sang. “Absolutely genius.”

When her Lord first told her to start a rebirth in Shoutwell, she couldn’t see the outcome. Trust the process, a phrase she and her sister repeated to each other when they were shaping the heavens. Back then it hardly felt real, back then the process never made sense.

But now? Now with nearly two hundred eyes sitting around her, each waiting to be taken, she finally understood the saying. True art was the final outcome, who cared what the painting looked like before that. It only took her harvesting the eyes of civilian and cultist alike to realize that.

She laughed to herself. Too bad art was the least of her Lord’s worries.