Curselock

Chapter 61: Knock

Not even five minutes after falling asleep, a knock sounded from Leland’s door. His eyes shot open and for a moment he felt terror. The Sightless King was here, the cultists—

Reality came back to him, along with a dark room lit only by a single dim mana crystal. Leland let out a long deep breath, one overflowing with drowsy stress. Everything is fine, everything is fine, he told himself, focusing on the knock. Begrudgingly, he looked to the door only for another knock to sound off – but not from the wooden door.

The knock was higher in tone while also being significantly more hollow. Leland grunted, sliding his feet off his warm bed and looking to a chilled glass window. Slight hints of frost could be seen around the window’s frame, a scene that was lacking elsewhere in the small town. Soon snow would fall, but the ground was still warm, the sky lacking moisture, and the atmosphere still swollen.

Another knock whipped away Leland’s hesitance and he hopped to his feet and ventured toward the sound. Without slipping on a jacket, he pushed open the window only to be assaulted with a cold arm. He shivered, an involuntary reaction not to the chilled outside, but rather the person now face to face with him.

“Huntress,” Leland said, his words as frozen as the air that tickled his skin.

Royal Inquisitor Isobel looked at one of her marks with unease and frankly, discontent. It was a mask, as Leland and the other boys had come to know, one that teetered on the edge of reality more often than not. Was her current long stare real? Or was it another ploy to make her audience uncertain and off guard?

“Smart one.”

Again, Leland hesitated at the sight of his friend’s kidnapper. He understood quite well why she had taken Glenny, yet failed to grasp the sheer lack of empathy for himself or Jude. Was it really that difficult to inform two boys that their friend was going to be out of commission for a few days?

Glenny’s kidnapping had left a sour taste in Leland’s mouth, one quickly overshadowed by his glorious return. But as the days went on and the Sightless King’s invasion slowly became a footnote, realization came back to him. Until now, however, Leland had tried to ignore the source of his fleeting anxiety, until now. Until the Huntress showed up.

“It's been two weeks,” Leland said, stepping away from the window and allowing the Royal Inquisitor into his room. “Thought you finally decided to leave us alone.”

Isobel gave him a sarcastic roll of the eyes. “And miss out on all your daring new adventures!” she screeched in a muted hurrah. Her posture then fell and she continued. “As much as I like watching you three take on quests far below your skill, something has been bothering me lately.”

“Oh gee,” Leland returned with the same enthusiasm the Huntress feigned. “However could I, a rank one mage, help the great Huntress of the Queen’s Inquisitors? Surely my knowledge and expert opinions will make changes across our lands and—”

Cutting off Leland with nothing more than a raised hand, Isobel let out a sigh. “Charming. This is why I hate children.” She rolled her hand across her temples. “But you had one thing right in that sorry excuse for a monologue. You are rank one.”

Leland nodded slowly at that, already seeing where the conversation was turning. The Huntress’ next word all but confirmed it.

“Why?” she asked.

Hesitating, Leland passed the impossibly long moment by hiding his face from the piercing gaze of the woman before him. His skin turned red with heated embarrassment. How was he supposed to answer that? The situation was—

“I don’t like waiting.”

With a snarl, Leland said, “You don’t like anything.”

The Huntress conceded the statement. “Agreed, but I need to know.”

“And why do you need to know? Seems like it's none of your business.”

Forcing herself not to reach out and strangle the brat before her, Isobel said, “Because I have already invested into your success. I need to know if you are defective sooner than later, that way I can cut my losses and move on with the quiet one and the loud one.”

Glenny and Jude, Leland said in his mind, the two names falling flat against Isobel’s statement. Cut her losses, meaning him. Rage came bubbling up, along with the stark feeling of loyalty. But like all bubbles, they pop. He deflated with an audible hum, knowing deep within his soul that if he wasn’t able to rank up soon, he might as well leave their trio. It was unfair to hold them back.

“A sixth primary spell unlocked to me. It's just not at rank ten yet.”

The Huntress bore her eyes into the young man before her. His failure to face her told her more than enough. He was lying, or at the very least, not telling the full truth. Decades of Inquisitor service came into play here, and she instantly knew how to receive more information. It was simple, really. The young ones always implicate themselves after a bout of silence.

Leland panicked internally at the Huntress’ lack of response. He stole a few glances, each time finding her horrid glare shining back at him like a spotlight on a dark stage. He was in her sight, he knew. She was just trying to make him uneasy, he knew. She was not responding on purpose, he knew.

Despite knowing all of this, for some reason, Leland found his mouth moving. “I haven’t been able to use the spell once… It's unlocked, I can feel it, yet I don’t even know what it does.”

A ripple of relief passed across the Huntress’ eyes. She quickly set herself back to stone, however, not wanting the boy to see her glee. “A barred ability, then. It happens.”

“Really?” Leland asked, hope fluttering to his neck. He twisted, finding the Huntress’ bland face.

“No.”

Leland recoiled like he had just been slapped.

Noting her answer may have been less than endearing, Isobel quickly added. “At least not with mages. For some warrior type Legacies, maybe. But those are usually put in place by their Lord as means to slow the Legacy down. Think an ability that requires a certain strength to wield properly and a host that lacks any arms.”

Leland frowned at the explanation. “But I have arms,” he muttered to himself.

“Indeed you do, which only means that your barred spell is different. It may require knowledge in runes or glyphs that you do not have. I suppose that is possible, albeit I’ve never heard of such a thing.”

“What do I do then?”

The Huntress took a deep breath. “Practice.”

“Practice what? I have no idea what I need to practice.”

“You do not have a hint of an idea about what the spell is? Nothing at all?”

A purple thick-paged grimoire appeared in Leland’s hands. The tome flipped open to the last page on its own, hovering just before its master’s chest a proper distance from his eyes. He then tugged at the last page, trying to flip it open.

“It’s like it is glued shut.”

Staring intently at the book, yet failing to understand any written word along the pages, Isobel forced her mind to pay attention. While sharing information about one’s Legacy was often done between friends, reading to another, or allowing others to read from, one’s Legacy was strictly prohibited. The Lords that governed the world simply wouldn’t have it any other way.

So, Isobel failed to grasp any new information about Leland’s Legacy. It was still a mystery, one that drew her intrigue and started her sheepish following of the young trio so long ago.

Still, she could see Leland pulling at the pages, unable to lift them. “I see. Search internally then.”

Leland’s face split into a frown. “Do what now?”

“Search internally. That book of yours, everyone’s Legacy tattoo for that matter, is only a tool for ease of use. The information within that book is already inside your mind. You’ve just got to search for it.”

That made… sense to Leland, oddly. There was plenty of information about his curses within the pages of his grimoire. But there had to be more elsewhere. Safety features, instinctual instructions. Simply knowing how to cast his curses was imbued in his mind, tucked away in a corner that he failed to really think about.

So, Leland tried. He sat on his warm bed, and searched his mind for information. General specs of knowledge came to him about his other curses. How Fracture worked with or without snapping his fingers. How Crow Massacre could summon the crows mid attack if he wanted… There was so much to parse through, much more than he had any reason to.

Each set of information came with a blaring identifier. He simply ignored the knowledge he was already familiar with and searched for anything out of place. Finding it with relative ease, Leland’s hopes instantly spiked before falling like a crashing market.

“It’s a jumbled mess of…”

Leland trailed off as he sifted through what he was looking at. There was too much noise, too much interference. His mind was filled with static and riddled with fog. He simply couldn’t understand what he was recalling. All except for one thing.

He could recognize screaming.

Idly, while searching in his own mind, Leland never stopped pulling at the last page of his grimoire. Neither he nor the Huntress noticed when one pull shifted the page more than normal.