Camp had felt different since Daivad got back. He had this prickling at the back of his neck, this sense that something stalked the shadows, watching him—

For the fourth time this morning, Kitten burst from nowhere, face split open, and snapped at Daivad’s leg.

“Agh!” The final two crates from the last wagon wobbled in his arms as he tried dodge Kitten’s assault, but he was too fast.

The little beast dug in his heels and threw all of his weight backwards. It wasn’t nearly enough to take Daivad’s foot out from under him, but the next time he lifted his boot to try to pull it away, the leather ties gave, and the boot slipped free. Kitten tumbled backwards, ass over head, but didn’t for a second loosen his grip. The instant he’d flailed back to his feet, he took off with his trophy.

“Maxea!” Daivad growled.

But the Wolf, just on the other side of a tree root, simply scratched her ear. It wasn’t often Max ignored him.

“Daivad!” Kadie called from the direction of the infirmary.

She had taken Edgar in to examine the curse rune on a sedated Lenna while he and the others finished unloading the wagons. Now, the horses were rubbed down and back under the care of Drauge and Kunin, the wagons were emptied and being hidden in the brush, and all but these two crates of supplies in Daivad’s arms had been sent off to their new homes.

It was a good haul—a great haul. All the medical supplies they’d need for another month or two, clothes and even some armor, blankets and bedding, a good bit of dry foods, and weapons. Swords to be sure, but firearms and ammunition too. Something Daivad was increasingly anxious they might need very soon.

And it was a haul they wouldn’t have without Lenna’s planning. Guilt soured in Daivad’s stomach—he should have asked Nyxabella more about breaking her curse. Then again, there were some other things he should have done too. Or, more accurately, shouldn’t have done.

He glanced at Kitten, now zooming triumphantly back and forth in front of Maxea, showing off his prize.

“Don’t let him chew that up,” Daivad grunted at Maxea before stalking off, one-booted, toward the infirmary. These crates were medicines and potions anyway.

When Kadie saw him and his crates coming, she called back into the entrance to the infirmary, “Ellis! Take these too!” It was only after he’d been relieved of his crates that Kadie noticed his single bare foot.

Either she could surmise what had happened, or she was too annoyed with him to care because she didn’t ask, just waved him after her, into that tiny, smothering back room of the infirmary. Every step into the earth wound Daivad’s muscles tighter and tighter, and he glared at the back of Kadie’s orange head, wondering if she’d chosen here to have this discussion on purpose.

He ducked into the room to find Edgar bent over a wooden table, a piece of paper with the rune in question drawn on it in swooping, charcoal lines. He examined the rune with the new wire-rimmed eyeglasses Kadie had made him and was muttering quietly to himself.

Kadie placed a hand gently on his bony shoulder, and the little man started like he hadn’t realized they’d come in. He blinked big blue eyes (made enormous blue eyes by the magnification of the glasses) at Daivad towering over him.

“Give him the same words you gave me, Ed.”

“Aye!” He cleared his throat, and immediately his manner changed. Those big eyes sparkled and his old body took on a youthful animation as he held the paper up beside him for Daivad to see clearly. “You guessed correct, sir, about this being Xo. The odd formless composition of the rune combined with the clear purpose of the curving lines names it so. For one who has forgotten—ah, for one who doesn’t know Xo, reading the intent of the curse from just the rune is near impossible, to say nothing of the dialect that gave this curse its name. Fortunately, in my day I worked to preserve the Chaos cultures around Lushale, so I’m familiar with many of the different flavors of the language throughout the region.”

He paused here and pulled off his glasses to regard both Kadie and Daivad with the air of a professor looking at his students. “Can either of you claim knowledge of the Chaos cultures around Lushale?”

“I couldn’t even name Xo until five minutes ago,” Kadie said. “Didn’t even know it was a language. I just thought it was sounds monsters made.”

“Well, see, ‘the language of monsters’ isn’t the best fitting name itself. Monsters use it, dialects of it at least, because they never learned not to, the way humans do. It might be more accurately called—”

“The language of magic,” Daivad said.

Edgar straightened, surprised. “Yes! Exactly. You do know about Xo.”

“Not really.”

Kadie side-eyed him. “Something you picked up from your little friend?”

Daivad said nothing, wishing he hadn’t spoken. He just didn’t want to have to spend any longer in this room and had been hoping to speed this conversation along. He flexed his hands, rolled his shoulders impatiently.

“Find the point, Edgar,” he said.

“Right. Well, most of the Chaos cultures have been wiped out—actually, the term ‘Chaos culture’ doesn’t truly fit snug either. It’s a name given by Order practitioners, not claimed by the cultures in question—” At a look from Daivad, Edgar said, “Ah, the point. The few cultures that have survived are ones who shelter in places too wild for Order to touch. Xatei, or ‘Monster Island,’ being one of them. But Xatei’s runes are sharper, ah … quicker than this. There’s a familiar fluidity and severity to their marks, but this rune language is much heavier. See how the lines here at the bottom are thicker than the ones at the top, how they all lead to this low point, weighing the rune heavy at the bottom?”

“You know the culture this comes from?” It was Kadie’s turn to be impatient, which was unlike her. Once again, Daivad tasted spoiled guilt in the back of his throat.

“I do,” he said. “Now … which news would you like first: good or bad?”

“Bad,” Kadie said right away, her brown eyes locked on to Edgar’s mouth, waiting for it to form his next words.

Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road.

“Bad news is,” he said, “in short: I can’t break this curse.”

“She said only Lenna could break it,” Daivad said to an empty spot on the wall.

Edgar blinked, then quickly replaced his glasses and laid the rune on the table before him, reexamining it. “Yes…” he mumbled to himself. “That would—ah! Yes, this symbol reads ‘core!’ Soul, or self. How have I let it become a stranger in my eyes?”

“I’m not following, professor,” Kadie said. Whether the title she’d given him was a teasing nickname or an earnest accident, Daivad didn’t know.

“Curses to the self, the core are… How old did you say the caster was?” Edgar asked. “Dolly named her Girl, but no less than a Master could have stuck a curse to the core.”

“Mid-twenties,” Daivad said.

Edgar gaped, then bent forward to re-reexamine the rune, a crease that had to be an inch deep appearing on his brow. “No, that’s… I can say it sure, that is the symbol for core. Mother Dark, a Master so young… It seems you attract them, Daivad. That, or practitioners are far more skilled these days than they were when I was young. You, Dr. Kadie here, Bennen and Tobei, now this ‘little monster girl’—before I met y’all, I’d only known a handful of Masters younger than forty.

“Curses to the core are at once the simplest and the most complex curses possible. They’re the most difficult to make stick, and most powerful once cast. But it’s true that with a curse of the soul, only the soul itself can break it.”

Daivad added, half musing to himself, “She said the fact that it was affecting Lenna so badly was a sign that she could break it.”

Edgar nodded. “A curse like this, for it to find home in the self, there must have been part of the self exposed. Essentially, there must have been some … for lack of a better word, humanity for it to latch onto. Perhaps a more fitting term would be a willingness. Openness? We really don’t have a word for it in our language. But—when the soul is no longer willing, open, vulnerable, it … well that’s a whole philosophical discussion, but the gist is that…

“See this symbol here?” Edgar held up the paper once again and pointed to a large squiggle that looked like all the other squiggles. “Looks a little like a sapling?”

Sure.

“This is the symbol named Memory, if my own memory is holding true. And this swirl here I’d name Death, or more accurately Transformation, because there is a separate symbol for true death, probably better translated as End. The concept of becoming Nothing. Many cultures, including the one from which this rune comes, believe that dying isn’t the end, because dying is changing. Change is living. It’s stagnation, unwillingness, becoming Nothing that is true death. If there was pure unwillingness, the curse couldn’t affect Lenna because there would be nothing to affect. That it torments her is proof of her ability still to change, and to potentially heal this curse.”

“How?” Kadie asked.

Without missing a beat, Edgar said, “Couldn’t begin to imagine.”

An anger Daivad didn’t think he’d ever seen on Kadie’s soft face flared across her features.“So we do nothing?”

“Now we get to the good news,” Edgar said, but tempered expectations with a sheepish expression and a, “though I admit it’s not as good as the bad was bad. I know where you might find someone who could guide Lenna through such a change. Likely the only place you might find someone like that, in fact. The users of this rune language—the Iba du Dahg.”

“Where?” Kadie demanded.

“Well, see, that’s the second round of bad news. They live in the heart of the Aleketur Furidra Dahg, or as you may know it—Fury Swamp.”

Kadie stared, and Daivad suppressed a frustrated shudder. He wanted out of this tiny room.

“Fury Swamp,” Kadie repeated, stunned toneless. “They live with the Gator.”

“Aye.”

All hope melted out of Kadie and she collapsed onto a wooden stool, caught her head in her hands. “Shit.”

“You’re sure there’s no one else?” Daivad asked, tight.

“If there is, I can’t name them,” Edgar admitted.

Without lifting her orange head, Kadie said, “You have to make Belle help, Daivad. If she cast it, she can teach Lenna to break it.”

“Even if I could get her here, even if I could make her help,” he growled, scratching at his neck, “Lenna would never accept her help. You know that.”

“So what, then?” Kadie glared up at him. “We take Lenna to fucking Fury Swamp? Just hope we can get our asses through the deadliest terrain and the foulest nightbeasts in Lushale, hope we miss the last living Great Monster in the land, and try to convince these strangers to heal our bitchiest firehead?”

“That’s the option that earns my vote,” Edgar said humbly, “though I know a vote from me weighs light.”

“Why?” Kadie asked.

“Because I’ve counted out nearly forty years since the last I saw the Inhumans of the Dahg, and I’d hate to count out any more before I see them again.”

Kadie looked at Edgar. Then at Daivad. Then back at Edgar. “You’ve been to Fury Swamp? You’ve met these people?”

Edgar blinked those owlish eyes. “Apologies, I thought the words had already passed my lips. Must have misplaced them when getting to the point. Yes, I studied with one of the Iba du Dahg. It’s a coming-of-age ritual for them to leave the Dahg for a few years, to study the other cultures of the land, their practices and technologies, and return with what they’ve learned. It’s named Aobura’dahga—‘Leaving home.’ I studied with one of them in university and was honored to be invited to come along when they returned home.” He straightened up and smiled, proud.

“You know the way?” Daivad asked.

“After forty years?” Kadie added, incredulous.

“There’s a town, a little one, on the edge of the Dahg. There’s an Inhuman family living there—descendants of one of the Iba who decided not to return after their Aobura’dahga. They now serve as guides through the swamp—for a price. They can take us, though the journey won’t be easy.”

Kadie said, “You want to go?” at the same time Daivad asked, “What kind of price?”

“I do,” Edgar answered excitedly, and to Daivad said, “Not money—they bargain with practice. Magic or knowledge. Teach them something only you can, and they’ll carry you through the Dahg. That will only get you to the Iba, though. Getting them to let you in, to help Lenna heal—that would be a separate issue. We don’t have one of their own naming us Trustworthy like I did last time. Only a human man who lived with them for a few months nearly four decades ago.”

Daivad tried to think—which wasn’t easy with his skin crawling and that young, wild version of himself trapped in his skull screaming and scratching to be let out.

Kadie asked Edgar, “And how would you suggest we convince them?”

“If my friend from university remembers me, that will help. But… Well, personally I’d suggest sending Tobei along for the trip.”

“…Tobei?”

“His magic is unique, and it should certainly be enough to convince the guides to carry us through the Dahg. And he’s Inhuman, which is an added layer of familiarity to the Iba. But most importantly? I think he’s the only chance we’ve got to charm our way into their village. If he can charm Dolly…” Edgar gestured as if that sentence could finish itself.

This idea, as far as Daivad could see, was still far, far-fetched. Fury Swamp was hundreds of miles away, and traveling through it would be more dangerous than even the permanent residents of Silvax Forest were used to, and with Lenna so unwell, the journey would be that much harder. Having a guide through the swamp might make things possible, but only just. And all it would take was a simple “no” from the Iba to make the entire trip worthless.

But Kadie seemed to have latched on to the idea. “Tobei would be good for that. He’d name it Fun.”

Which was just about the sweetest shit Daivad had ever heard. Facing new beasts, meeting new people might be fun enough in Tobei’s eyes, but the long journey, the lack of whiskey, and all the grit and grime that came along with a swamp would more than outweigh any fun. He’d be miserable.

But he would do it.