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Chapter 11: The Curse V
🕑 Added 2024-08-07 02:18:02 +0000 UTCChapter 11: The Curse
V
Something was wrong. I could feel it; an itch at the back of my mind which couldn’t be scratched. Howard, seeming rather faint, poured water from a jug on the bedside table. The water sloshed into the glass and the world seemed to slow as the pieces fell into place.
Twenty years ago a man, claiming to be a Wizard, came to Dommoc. Why? Why a wizard of all things? It was easy enough to disprove his claim, the first spell not working should have told everyone. No doubt there was gossip about him, why would the church allow someone like that to “fix” their bell - there was no reason to trust him.
The answer was in the curse. It may be weak but it ever so slightly modified the mind of the target. The earlier analogy I had made was apt - looking at the spell with my enhanced Curse Detection,
Congratulations:
Curse Detection has reached Lv.5
I was able to see the floating mass of purple tendrils that danced its possessive dance about the dead man. And to a lesser extent about Howard. The core of the living curse was hard to see, being both small and hidden by the hatred of its caster. Now that I was looking for it however, it was impossible to miss; the little gem at the things centre was white - the colour of mental mana.
Whoever this person was they were able to fool the townsfolk into thinking they were a regular Wizard, at least for a time. Or at least that’s what I suspected. If it were the case, and no one knew, slipping his jail cell would be easy: just convince the guard he wants to let you out then make them forget.
How were they caught in the first place? Assuming I am correct, they must have a limit to their power; maybe how far they can change someone’s mind, perhaps time is a factor, or maybe they are limited to a certain number of people and he was arrested by too many at once?
Data. I needed more data. I pulled at my hair trying to think. I heard the sound of the class touch Howards lip and my blood ran twice as cold. The Phillips were not being killed by a curse. Howard’s uncle was dead. There was no visible sign of injury.
“Wait!” I shouted, lunging forward. I would have been too late, his eyebrows rose as I launched myself at him, vaulting the bedside table. Just as the liquid was about to touch the tender flesh which resides within the mouth, the glass disappeared from his grasp.
I didn’t see what happened. I heard glass breaking somewhere off to the side. In midair and unable to stall my momentum I barreled through Howard and the chair he was sitting in. We were left, a tangle of limbs, on the floor.
The excitement had returned some of the colour to Howards cheeks. He was working himself up for some form of tirade as we disentangled ourselves when he caught sight of something behind me. Whatever it was seemed to calm his anger towards me so I turned to look. An arrow had sprouted from the floor.
Thinking this an attack Howard ducked and tried to pull me down as well. It must have made quite the scene for the guard who entered - shattered glass everywhere, water soaking into the carpet, two croached boys staring at an arrow and a shattered window.
“Attack!” he yelled, gaining the attention of everyone in earshot. He then proceeded to place himself between the window and the perceived target whilst trying to get Howard and I out of the room.
During this whole fiasco I had remained calm. I stood when I first saw the arrow and turned to follow its path through the shattered window. In a distant tree, though of a level with the house, I saw the silhouette of a lithe figure waving her stump at me before she slipped away down the trunk and out of sight. By the time anyone else was looking, she was gone.
I wanted to relay all I thought I knew to my new friend but the situation didn’t allow for it. He was whisked away by a tide of officers and guards, they tried to separate us but when Howard insisted I had saved his life they reluctantly took me with them to a fortified room, with no windows. It appeared he had gotten the wrong idea of things.
We were locked in with the two most experienced and trusted of the Phillips’ guards while the rest of the armed men searched the estate and secured the area.
The two muscled men stood in silence by the door, ready to act at a moment's notice. Their presence negated any chance of conversation. I withdrew from my velvet pouch some valerian, which Footman had sourced for me. It was the backup incase, for whatever reason, the first ingredient failed. I would have preferred a certain magical herb but it either didn’t grow here or Footman hadn’t heard of it.
I digress, I took the Valerian and burned it to ash with the Flame spell. Howard cocked his head at me, confused, but the veterans didn’t so much as flinch. They didn’t even exchange looks when I began chanting, in what must have been to them, a strange language. Having seen some of my spells before, Howards puzzlement only grew. He shouted some expletives as I blew the powder in the direction of the guards, from six feet away. The older of the two did crack a slight smile at that. The image must have looked rather strange, one boy blowing ash at them from 6 feet away while the other flapped his arms about - trying to get the first to stop.
When the two men slumped to the ground, uncontentious, Howard turned to me and asked - with a mixture of annoyance and exasperation, “Why the bloody hell did you do that?”
Congratulations:
You have learned the Lesser Sleep spell
I smirked slightly at the effectiveness of a simple bit of mana enhanced herbology before answering. “I need you to trust me. I can’t tell you why I did that, not just now; do you trust me?” I questioned, seriously. It took Howard a moment to think it over and I was grateful he wasn’t rash.
“Yes, yes I think I do.” he finally replied.
“Okay, good. Then I need you to stand right here and don’t move. What I’m about to do may be a bit… Uncomfortable…” I trailed off. I grasped him by the shoulders to hold him still. “Can you do that?” I asked. He gulped but nodded.
I channelled what mana this vessel could conduct into my right palm. Using my attributeless core I changed the mana’s type; creating a white ball of mental mana. This body hadn’t had the proper training and it strained to hold the mana in one place without a spell shape to guide it. The mana turbulence in my pathways was so great that a living being would have passed out by now - thankfully I didn’t have the same physiology (unless it was convenient for the plot).
Taking the squirming ball I forced it towards Howards head. To him it might have seemed I struggled with an invisible snake, though to his credit he didn’t shy away. The mana touched his forehead and at first nothing happened. The next second he was writhing on the ground in agony. I grimaced but continued the process, moving my hand and the mana down his face, around his chest and up and down each limb. Whenever it was brought over an area that section would spasm violently until I moved on.
When I was finally complete Howard was bright red and sweating horribly but otherwise fine.
“I take it back,” he spat out between breaths.
“Take what back?” I asked, equally out of breath. This body had not been ready for such an ordeal so I slumped down on the floor next to Howard to recuperate.
“Trusting you - I don’t.” he said seriously. There was a moment of silence before we both burst out laughing, the building emotion just being too much. After the hysterics had passed, Howard asked simply; “Why.” as he rubbed life back into his sore muscles.
“Second law of magic - like repels like,” I answered, pulling myself up on the wall of the armoured room.
“What’s the first?” Howard asked, not latching onto the part I might have expected.
“Doesn't matter, it doesn’t even apply here.” I grumbled as I helped him back to his shaking feet.
“Fine then,” he relented, “what do you mean by ‘like repels like’?” he asked.
“I was checking to see if there was any mental mana hiding in your nervous system, it can be insidious and difficult to spot so I had to check everywhere,” I informed. Howard, who was splashing water from the emergency supply barrel over his head, stepped back as his eyes bulged.
“You can use mental mana as well?” he asked in shock. “Isn’t that an advanced form of wind mana, that would make you…”
“I used an artefact,” I lied, trying to hide my slip. The exhaustion had really got me out of sorts. I didn’t want him to think I was some once in a millennia triwizard, even though this body was already a pure magi - a once in 10,000 year rarity. I had often wondered how unlikely it was for me to find a vessel of this sort at all, let alone so soon after returning to the land of the living. I was drawn from my speculation by Howards voice.
“Why would there be mental mana hiding in my body?!” he asked when the thought hit him.
I then relayed to him my theory of the case. He was shocked to hear the curse was not at all what he had thought it to be. Howard was also grateful to learn the tiny curse he had been afflicted with had been expelled from him with my treatment. I asked if he knew of any mental mages. He did recall learning in their histories of a family closely allied to his own which helped conquer this region hundreds of years ago. However few of them were mages and of those who were even fewer were mental mages, though it was higher than the pitifully low average. He dismissed them however as they had fallen from nobility more than a hundred years ago and had a succession of gambling fools in charge of their house. According to him they were likely little more than farmers now.
I told him how I suspected Miss Vita was looking out for him and how I believed the water he was about to drink was poisoned. He was enraged to hear that this adversary might have been controlling his own people to kill his uncle, he had to restrain him from running off then and there - with no direction. I relayed to him my plan and once he had calmed down he was all on board. Before the end of this next night the person who had tormented this innocent family for so long would pay!
