Curselock

Chapter 88: Too Much

It started with a single crack, a single breath, a single twitch. It rolled through the arena like a lengthy tide, like a cascading wave, like an unstoppable force.

It absorbed the rage of the battlefield like a dry sponge submerged in a tank of water. It breathed, it raged, it sang. It was, and always will be, a part of a Legacy. A singular chaotic Legacy, one built off the backs of those long ago who died in a blaze of glory or fury of unrelenting protection.

Those who knew his call were like minded in many ways, those who knew his name were those he considered his kin. Those that followed him, that learned below him, were his children, his Legacy. They beckoned to his undying rage, to the fire that burnt inside of everyone and everything. Like a fleeting memory or a long dead ghost, those who touched upon his gift changed for the will of battle. For the will of rage.

The crack shifted, along with the person frozen beneath the icy prison.

Leland’s breath was shallow and brutal, like he had run a marathon through swampland while fighting off the local monsters. His mana, lifeforce, and stamina were all scraping the bottom of his reserves. How that was possible, he wasn’t sure, only that his curse had worked. It took everything and then some, but he had cast Curse of Collapse fueled with the emotional power of the Lord of Spirit’s contract.

Seeing Jude, seeing one of his best friends, instantly frozen over turned the key inside of Leland. The sight of the iceberg simply flopping over and the boisterous pride King Everald expunged created a hole. A void. A burning passion to see everything aflame. His hand had moved without thought or safety to his spellbooks, to his lifeline.

The initial cast of Curse of Collapse folded like a napkin being thrown into a brick wall. Nothing happened, only Leland could see just how much it would take. The second cast failed to chip the wall, falling short in such a way that he expected King Everald didn’t even notice the attempt of magic.

The laugh, the King’s horrid laugh that was amplified by the colosseum of ungodly monsters, pulled at Leland’s consciousness. They urged him to give up, to roll over and die. Yet a pair of crimson swords attacking the King’s muscular pristine white fur, drew his attention more than any laugh or taunt.

The swords, their user invisible, cried with every attack. Fury, rage, hatred, each pushed the swords to move far faster than ever before. They carved into the moose-King, each ethereal blow cutting a little deeper than the last.

A patch of white hair was first to fall, followed quickly by a small scrape upon the King’s pale gray skin. The King didn’t even notice, he was too busy gloating to his horde of monsters. He strutted up and down the sandy arena, each step a frolicking mockery against the lowly human he had just frozen.

That he had just killed.

The scrape turned into a thin line of blood.

The might of magic and hope fueled Leland’s next attempt but the brick wall still held strong. The King, however, did take notice. It was a single glance, a moment of snarling annoyance rather than that of fear, that the King looked to the young Warlock. For a moment their eyes met and for a moment Leland saw red.

Jude laid wasted in the background while the monster who put him there smirked with an ego fit for his position. It was then Leland changed the emotion he was trying to convey through his contract with the Lord of Spirits. Prior to this, he had only used nice emotions. Happiness, calming, and the like. But he wanted something more, he needed something dangerous.

If not for himself, then for Jude.

The answer came as the red swords continued to strike with rushed panic and sorrow. There was no hope, not when Jude was freezing to death inside of an ice cocoon. The hope of defeating the King and saving Jude was fleeting and naive. There was only one way to save his friend, and that was with the power of the Lord of Berserkers.

The need for rage came easily to Leland. The searing pain in his frostbitten arm was a good start, the hatred for the monster he battled was better, but the fear of losing a friend did it. It ignited his spell, his contract, with an eruption of violet fire – a fire that burnt a hole right through the brick wall.

Purple was all Leland saw as his heart and mind connected to the King’s. For a moment they were one and the same, for a moment Leland felt the rage created by insolent humans and their disrespect as well as the pride of killing them where they stood. The connection severed and reality returned to Leland.

He pushed, easily creating all of the artificial rage he wanted. The twin crimson blades of chaos expanded and drove in deep, pushing through the King’s skin like a hunk of meat stuck on a spit.

The King cried as Glenny’s weapons bore the back of his leg. He thrashed about before noticing a significant halt to his movements. As if moving through honey, the moose monster’s annoyance turned into something else. It morphed and twisted with Leland’s spell, adopting the rage that floated throughout the battlefield.

The King pushed against the slowness, rage and hatred finding the invisible rage as he retreated. The rage affected Glenny less so than most of Ice Castle’s inhabitants – what little energy his parasitic cloak had left acting as a shield.

Not a fool, Glenny turned and ran. Right to Jude.

Leland’s chest shook with unrelenting pressure as small blue motes began to appear around the arena. They came like curious fish inspecting a diver, slow, hesitant, ever watchful. Spirits, Leland recognized, the patrons of the Lord of Spirits, those who died and were now under her care.

They were friends, just watchers investigating such a use of their Lord’s power. Leland tried to flex his power around the spirits, not wanting them to be involved any more than simply watching. He need not worry, however, the blue motes only came for one purpose, to make sure Leland – a friend to all spirits – was alright.

They probed Leland with gentle nudges, asking through their mysterious ways if he was okay.

Having fallen to his knees, Leland answered back with a mental image of the King as well as the fear that gripped his heart. The spirits accepted the answer with gracious speed, floating their ethereal glowing bodies around and past the King and toward the cracking iceberg that held Jude.

As they passed King Everald, the spirits briefly circled him, enthralling and confusing him in a subtle dance. The magic they produced went unnoticed to the moose monster, and slowed his thought process like the curse that slowed his body. Yet, like the curse, the magic was incomplete and weak. It would only stay active for a minute.

The spirit motes danced around Jude and Glenny who was chipping away at the cracking ice with a pocket knife. Both attempts to save Jude from his prison went unnoticed. Not because the magic the spirits produced was weak, or that removing layers of ice was insignificant, but because Jude didn’t need them.

The ice broke under an unimaginable weight, freeing Jude with an explosion of ice shards. In an instant, Jude was back on his feet, battle axe in hand. He didn’t so much as glance at his friend beside him, nor at the floating blue motes that celebrated with silent cries of joy.

No, Jude only had eyes for the beast that sealed him, that hurt him. Pain turned to strength and rage turned to pain. Both avenues of power brimming with the extreme. Nearly dead and pumped full of artificial rage, Jude took a step.

His body was frozen, his muscles cold. Moving hurt, which only added to his title as Berserker. The sand below his feet parted with a sharp crack and dull shockwave. Sand flew, much like Jude himself, revealing an underlayer of broken stone.

While leaping through the air, Jude drew his hands back with a singular smooth motion. He landed, breaking the stone layer into jagged boulders just below King Everald’s hooves.

The moose screeched in pain as Jude’s battle axe drove into his front leg and out the other side. Blood was thrown like a farmer lays out chicken feed. Ropes of red dyed the frosty snow as Jude pulled his arms out and wide again.

Muscle and bone shredded at the seams, breaking apart by steel and rage. Yet, curiously, Jude’s face showed neither hatred nor rage. In fact, his face was stiff, blank, and unfocused. His eyes were hollow and sappy, like Glenny was after his concussion.

Jude saw nothing, felt nothing, his body set in a state powered only by his relationship with the Lord of Berserkers.

The King tried to counter attack. Waves of cold rushed from his nostrils like ocean swells able to sink merchant ships. Thick constructs of ice formed and grew upon his branching antlers. He even tried to create a new leg of ice. But Jude didn’t care.

Any new pain was only more strength.

Cleave after cleave Jude hacked his axe down. Each strike drew more blood, each stroke removed more flesh and bone. Soon the King’s pristine white was blood red and shaking.

The King was cold, so very cold. A familiar cold, one that wasn’t from magic or ice but rather the call of the void. He felt the dungeon core, his creator sigh in defeat, another iteration gone. The King’s suffering ended, as well as the coldness he felt. His final thoughts were not of sorrow or despair, but the knowing feeling that he would be able to rest for a few months – or however long it took the core to recreate him.

Jude, during all of this, continued to butcher the monster’s corpse.

Minutes passed as Jude continued. Leland and Glenny had reconvened, the former cradling his now black and blue arm.

“This is good, right?” Leland asked, trying not to sound panicked. “He’s not turning on us, this is good, right?”

Glenny only watched with bated breath.

Up in the arena stands, Gelo shed tears. Her snout was dripping sorrow filled clear liquid, and her heart thumped with guilt. She had put Jude and the others up to this. She had told them her Mother would be able to help, that she could guide them through the dungeon. Oh how foolish was she? Uncle Everald was always going to be a hurdle, one that she could pass easily.

Why did she not stop to consider that the boys might lose? That Jude might lose. Her crying matted the fur nearest her eyes as she continued to watch a broken Jude repeatedly strike the corpse of her uncle, yet she forced herself to pay attention. Looking away now would be cowardly.

“Oh?” a voice said beside Gelo. “Humans in the dungeon?” The voice paused for a moment. “Humans that my kin cries over?”

A million emotions played in Gelo’s mind at that moment. But the one that stuck out the most was rather simple.

Hope: Mother had arrived.