Curselock

Chapter 82: Adapt

It took an entire hour of nonstop spell casting to drain the worm’s soul. After the first fifteen minutes, Leland thought himself to be doing something wrong, but information pouring in from his Legacy told him otherwise. In the end, enough green mist poured out into the circle of purple fire to kill the great beast.

Usually when a soul was taken, the spell would fade and a soul of the Damned would present the newly acquired soul to Leland. This, however, did not happen. The green mist simply rushed toward Leland and entered his own soul, like when he devoured lost souls. It was not stored for later, it was not captured for future use. It was just consumed. Automatically.

It took a solid minute of gawking, going over the information swirling in his head, and looking to the single soul of the Damned beside him, to come to a conclusion. Monster souls were not the same as human souls, and lacked the same utility. Or, because the worm was technically a dungeon monster, its soul was not storage-able.

Either way, Leland had no soul to test Soul Fire with, not if he didn’t want to use up his only ammunition.

“Guess that’s that,” Leland eventually said, turning back to the small camp he had set up earlier with Gelo.

Jude was back to sitting, his aching body, specifically his leg, rolling with a dull dead pain. He nursed a hot cup of melted snow, the near boiling water easing his frosty belly, while a bear cub panted idly in his lap. He petted her with one hand, the slow repetitive movement acting like grease to his rusty muscles.

Glenny was still asleep but he had shifted, moving closer to the smoldering fire with pure instinct. Importantly, Leland’s ring of regeneration was set back on the rogue’s finger, boosting the speed at which his concussion healed.

Leland sat as well, saying, “I wish that ring helped the more rough wounds. Cuts and scrapes? That thing’s great. Broken bones or concussions, apparently, not so much.”

Jude gave a small nod. “We need to find him better armor or a defensive artifact or something.”

“Glenny probably wouldn’t accept something like that from us. Not with him being the one wearing the cloak.” Then in an imitation of Glenny’s voice, Leland continued, “’Nah, you guys take it. I got the last one,’ he’ll tell us.”

Taking another burning sip, Jude thought for a moment and eventually came up with a plan. “We’ve just got to make him think he’s doing us a favor by taking the item. He’ll take it right away at that point.”

Agreeing with that, Leland crushed some ice into a metal cup of his own and set it on the fire. As he did so, he looked to the horizon, finding nothing but a clear line where the white snow clashed against the blue of the sky.

“We’ve got to find something for him first,” he said before turning to Gelo. “What happens if we just keep walking?”

The cub rolled slightly to her back, thus coercing Jude’s hand to her belly. “You loop,” she said. “The far gets close while the close gets far, over and over again.”

“Ah…”

Filling the silence, Jude spoke up, “What was with that worm, by the way? It was a boss?”

Gelo let out a low whimper. “Yes… usually the boss worm only spawns when enough of the normal worms are killed. All of the remaining worms gather together and join.”

“But we didn’t kill any of them?” Leland asked.

“Mother thinks they are pests, so instead of allowing hundreds to roam, she only allows one. If she kills the boss, more will spawn later.”

Both boys looked at the cub, their faces causing the cub to pant more.

“I forgot, alright?” Gelo said, shrinking into Jude. “It's been years since I was last in the snow fields, and I’ve never actually been attacked by a worm before. Not by myself, at least. Mother always made enough noise to call them to us…”

Leland let out a sigh, knowing how parents could be sometimes. He’d be lying if he said his highly powerful mage parents didn’t do odd things. Like washing the dishes with low-strength Water Bolts, or instant-drying the laundry by summoning a pool of lava. Still, his annoyance was pushing its upper limits. Jude and Glenny, not to mention himself, were in danger because of faulty information from the cub.

“Anything else we should know about the dungeon?” he asked, trying to keep his voice level.

Gelo didn’t seem to notice. “The next boss is a push over. It tries to freeze everything, but it's just not strong enough.”

Even Jude gave the cub an incredulous stare. “What?” she asked.

Leland shook his head, rubbing his temples. “Let’s table the next boss for a minute. You said once the worm boss dies, the small worms will spawn again later. How long exactly?”

The group wasn’t exactly being subtle with where they were resting. Near the Ice Castle and close to the dead worm boss pretty much gave away their location as pretty much everywhere else was a barren snow-wasteland. If more worms were soon to be alive, they were going to need to move sooner than later.

“Oh, a few months,” Gelo answered.

“A few months… right…”

“A few months?” Jude asked. “Then why does your mother get annoyed by killing the boss? A once a month task doesn’t seem to be too troubling, not if she could do that,” he gestured to the multitude of spires of towering ice.

Gelo considered this. Human time was… different than what she and her mother were used to. Her answer, while making sense to her, didn’t help alleviate her initial pondering. “Mother likes to sleep a lot.”

“Sleep for over a month?”

“Err, yes?”

“Is that a question?”

Gelo flopped back onto her feet and stepped away from her human-couch. She eyed Leland. “No.”

“It’s not a question?”

Now Gelo was at a loss. Humans were many things in her eyes, adding good arguers to the list didn’t so much as change things. “Mother sleeps a lot, and for a long time. You see her strength. She has to sleep to keep that up.” she finally explained, nodding toward the ice pillars.

Leland gave her a shrug and turned his attention to said pillars. While taking the soul of the worm, he had had plenty of time to inspect the odd icy formations. One thing he had only recently noticed was the small dark core inside each of the pillars.

“Those are worms, right?” he asked.

Jude’s eyes widened slightly at the question and he squinted to see any extra details. He was too far.

Gelo didn’t skip a beat, however. “Yes. While mother was killing the core, it spawned many worm-bosses in defense. They were all defeated, and turned into art.”

“Art.”

“Art,” the cub agreed.

While Leland didn’t see the draw, he didn’t feel the need to enact the Moonless contract to get a godly perspective. Something being art wasn’t really in his wheelhouse to worry about right now. For the moment, at least until Glenny woke up, he was interested in what else was waiting for them in the dungeon. He asked Gelo many questions, learning about monsters, bosses, terrain, anything that would be of interest, really.

Nothing else would be a surprise, he decided.

While they talked, Glenny stirred in his dreams. His mind was slow to heal, but his dreams didn’t seem to be broken. Or at least he didn’t think so. In reality, his dreams were fragmented blemishes of his truth and goals. They were vivid and unusual, but to him everything was right as rain.

He saw his Legacy more than once, the Lord of Chameleons, making a personal appearance. It took the form of a massive lizard, a chameleon in form and power. It blended in with the surroundings, mimicking the shards of thought and feeling. Always watching, always adapting.

The dreams, what little there was of them, also took the form of agonizing red. The Sightless King, while beaten and conquered, still was present. A dormant cell sitting in hibernation like an immortal bug trapped in amber. Could it lick its wounds and attempt to take control? No. Not at all. Not while the Lord of Chameleons reigned.

Even through a rank two Legacy, the Chameleon’s power was enough to hold the Sightless King’s artificial power. The King would never break out. It would never regain its senses. It would never escape the prison Glenny trapped it in, even if the real King died.

The prison was also a part of Glenny’s dream. It was the landscape, the host, the backdrop to the Chameleon and its infinite power. Infinite cells readied to be filled. Infinite room to house more conquered powers. Infinite chances to adapt, to become something more.

Glenny’s dreams were fragmented, but not to him. Not anymore. He saw through the brokenness of his mind, of his brain, and connected his thoughts and ideas.

His brain, while still healing and damaged, no longer affected Glenny negatively. In fact, concussions, possibly even brain damage, wouldn’t affect him in any other way than dying outright.

Not after he adapted to the change.