Denise’s voice sounded tightly controlled. “At first it was short, so I thought nothing of the fact that I couldn’t see him breathing, but they’ve been getting longer and longer as well as more common for the past couple of weeks. It’s been obvious for days now that it’s all part of the same thing. It’s obviously a magical effect of some kind; he’s rigid and touching him - well, let me show you.”
Denise poked Jacob’s cheek. His cheek didn’t move; it didn’t even compress a little. “I didn’t know what to do. When he said his sister knew Serenity and could get us tickets to go see him, I thought maybe I could ask for help.” She smiled weakly. “Even if he did think Serenity was only an actor.”
“He probably shouldn’t hear this conversation, even if it’s just whatever we say from when he wakes up to when we notice.” Talking behind Jacob’s back wasn’t nice, yet discussing it in front of him when he couldn’t hear it seemed worse.
Denise shook her head. “He won’t remember anything if it’s about this. He doesn’t even hear me when I ask him about it. I doubt he’ll even know you’re here; he’d only just woken up, so he’s probably lost everything since last night. I doubt you can move him anyway, he’s frozen in place.”
Serenity looked over Jacob. He was certain that he could move the man, even in the awkward position he was in; that was the advantage of attributes. It wouldn’t be easy, but it would be possible. “If it’s necessary, I can, but it sounds like it isn’t?”
“Yeah,” Rissa backed up Denise. “Although the fact that we’re talking about it might make it take longer for him to come out of it.”
Serenity sighed and stood up. “That’s a good enough reason to move him, then. His bed?”
----------------------------------------
“He’s been pushed into this by something he can’t make sense of. Only this time I don’t know what he heard. I didn’t hear anything.” Rissa pulled Serenity back onto the couch as he came back into the room. She was clearly explaining the situation to Denise, but Serenity was sure he hadn’t missed too much; it hadn’t taken that long to move Jacob.
“Back up and try again. You keep saying things that almost make sense but it’s like I have half the pieces. What does hearing something he doesn’t understand have to do with anything?” Denise sounded totally lost. Serenity wasn’t far ahead of her.
Rissa took a deep breath. She seemed a lot calmer without her frozen brother in front of her; that made moving him worth it, even though it was more difficult than Serenity had expected. “From the beginning. Where to start.” She looked at Serenity then back at Denise. “I’m going to assume you don’t know anything about my family. Other than that we exist anyway.”
Denise nodded. “Jacob’s mentioned you a few times, but he barely admits his parents exist.”
Rissa looked down. “That’s because - no, that’s not the place to start. The beginning. I guess that’s our history. Father’s side of the family is Talented,” Serenity could almost hear the capitalization, “but it’s Mother’s side that’s important now. The family lore talks about all sorts of things; I’m pretty sure they can’t all be true. What I know is that the first daughter is always a Seer; my mother is and I am as well. It’s - it sounds like a better Gift than it is. Mostly it’s a way to watch tragedies you can’t change.”
“You could try,” Denise interrupted. “If it’s something big, then you could save lives.”
Rissa shook her head. “We know better than that. It’s not that we don’t want to; remember the story of Cassandra. It doesn’t work. At least, not directly. That’s not important, though; what’s important is the rest of it. Daughters other than the first usually have a talent for magic, but won’t have the gift of prophecy.” Rissa sounded bitter as she said the word “gift”.
“Sons are always given up for adoption or abandoned. Always. Mother intended to do that with Jacob, but Father wouldn’t let her. He didn’t believe that a son raised by his mother’s family would go insane or simply die.” Rissa gestured towards the bedroom with her chin. “Not until that started happening.”
Rissa looked over both of the others before continuing. “It took us a while to figure it out, because it wasn’t common; we sent him to all sorts of specialists, both mundane and magical. We were repeatedly told there was nothing wrong with him. Even the curse specialist couldn’t find a curse on him. He was five when it started, but he was eight by the time I came up with a solution. It was magic. Any time we talked about magic or spells or seeing the future, he’d freeze up. The solution was to pretend we were talking about a book or a show or something - anything that would mean he didn’t have to acknowledge it was real. Something must have broken that pretense, only I didn’t hear anything. None of us said anything about magic. Why did he freeze?”
There was a long pause as they all tried to remember anything that might have triggered the problem. Serenity couldn’t think of anything.
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“It acts like a curse. A blood curse, at that. Heritable curses are rare; it sounds like it might be tied somehow to your foresight.” Serenity was sure Rissa had thought of that possibility; it was implicit in the way she’d described the problem.
“I’ve wondered, but I don’t know how that helps us.” Rissa shrugged helplessly. “I wouldn’t know where to begin.”
Serenity wasn’t a specialist in curses; realistically, he knew the basics but disliked them enough that he’d only practiced when he had to. His knowledge of cursebreaking was even more rudimentary; mostly, he knew to go to a specialist. Unfortunately, it sounded like Rissa and her family had already tried that. Not that the best specialist on Earth would hold a candle to a good offworld cursebreaker, but taking Jacob offworld wasn’t even an option.
Not only was it essentially impossible to accomplish, it might trigger the problem. In fact, offworld wasn’t the only thing that could do that. “Has he been through the Tutorial?”
Denise shook her head. “He hasn’t mentioned it. I’m not sure he’d remember if he had. I know that whenever I talk about mine or the dungeon-running I’ve done a couple of times, he’d freeze up. He has some story about me being mad at him about not playing a game to explain it to himself, I think.”
Serenity shook his head at the grim thought of what would likely happen to Jacob. “I guessed not. He probably wouldn’t survive, unless there’s a good enough cursebreaker and they figure out what the problem is quickly.”
The three people in the living room looked anywhere except at each other for a long moment.
“I think I know why he froze.” Rissa’s voice broke the silence. “He called because he was hearing voices. One of Dad’s gifts is telepathy. What if he ‘heard’ something that way that he couldn’t deny? Even if it wasn’t about magic, if it was something he couldn’t deny as going insane - he did seem pretty convinced that was the explanation…” Rissa trailed off. “I guess that doesn’t help us fix him.”
“Maybe it does,” Serenity said. “If that’s the case, it means the curse hasn’t changed. That’s good. The bad part is that it means we - and by we I mean you, Rissa - can’t teach him control without doing something about the curse first.” Serenity took a deep breath and let it out. “I see two options here. We can either try to return things to where they were, convince him that everything that’s happening is something else, something other than magic … or we can try to fix him. And in this case I think “we” means “I”.”
“Break the curse. I’m sure there’s some risk, but I’m also sure Jacob would take it if he could make the decision.” Rissa didn’t hesitate.
Serenity looked over at Denise, who seemed less confident. She sat at the table with her eyes closed. “Denise?”
Denise opened her eyes, startled. After a moment, she nodded more clearly. “Yeah. Jacob always wants to know, even when he doesn’t like the answer. There’s no way he’d want to stay in a fantasy of reality, even if it’s better for him.”
Serenity nodded. “I’ll try, then. But as I’ve said before, I’m a mage, not a healer. My methods of breaking curses are … rough. They can have side effects. If I can even break it at all; I can’t do much if it requires an Affinity I’m not good with or can’t really touch. I don’t have a Curse Affinity. Don’t want one at all.”
“Is that what you need to have to break curses?” Denise sounded startled. “I thought that was just for creating them. That’s what the instructor said; he said that’s part of what makes them so powerful, that they’re hard to remove.”
“There are other Affinities that can remove curses; you also don’t have to have the Curse Affinity to set curses. It does help, but there’s always more than one way to do things with magic. The trick is thinking of a way; once you’ve done that, you can often get there. There are limits, but they’re generally about effectiveness, side effects, and power cost, not whether or not it will work at all.” Serenity knew he’d set his own limits in the past that never happened - and he also knew that a lot of the reason he was as effective as he was came from his refusal to accept others’ limits on himself and his magic.
He’d have to be careful not to limit himself, at least not in the same way. Thinking outside the box was important when it came to magic.
Breaking curses was one of those things. He was terrible at healing. He always had been. This wasn’t really healing, though, even though people with a Healing Affinity could often do it - no, don’t think about it that way. This was breaking a curse. Serenity was good at breaking things.
He simply needed to be sure they were the right things. Limiting collateral damage would be especially important.
“I need to take a good look at Jacob while he’s frozen.” Serenity stood. “I should have done that earlier, but I didn’t think of it.”
Jacob was still curled up the way he’d been while sitting in the chair; Serenity hadn’t been able to lay him flat so he’d be more comfortable in bed, so he was on his side. Serenity had pulled the covers partially over him, but it still looked strange; no one would hold that position while they were in bed. It would be too tiring too quickly if it was even possible.
The first thing Serenity checked when he looked at Jacob was his Vital Affinity. Not only was he not breathing, his Life Affinity - the same one that both Denise and Rissa had, but Serenity did not - was nearly missing. There were wisps of it around Jacob’s body, but nothing like what it should be in a healthy person.
Jacob’s secondary Vital Affinity was pulsing. Serenity had seen that effect before, but only in people who were using a Skill that drained their own life or stole life from another.
Serenity doubted Jacob was stealing life from someone else.