Moira was reaching her thirties and sleep deficits had begun to take their toll on her recently, so she allowed herself to sleep a little longer if her work required her to stay up late into the night. Until a few years ago, she didn't have to worry about this, but she accepted these changes with understanding. Entropy is a non-negotiable constant for all living beings, unless you have a magic at your disposal. After a morning toilet and changing into a simple, lilac, loose-fitting gown, she ate an upbeat breakfast in the common room, ordering a bath in the meantime. The inn had a couple of employees, but the bathwater was usually prepared for her by the host's wife, with no shortage of floral oils. This time was no different.
"Oh, Rose, it smells lovely, thank you," Moira chuckled cheerfully to a passing host's wife, pausing for a moment at the entrance to the bathroom.
"A trifle Moira, have a pleasant bath," she replied smiling.
Moira was a good customer, she paid on time and used the innkeeper's help with other errands, when she wanted to send a parcel or a letter to the city or organise some equipment, in a word, she let them earn from these extra jobs, so they both made sure she was satisfied with her stay in their establishment, called ‘Under the White Goose’.
As she bathed, she thought about yesterday's discovery. She wasn't going to let it go, some action, intentional or not, was negatively affecting the burial place of an ancestor of the Haas family and while she wasn't worried about the possible consequences, even the most vicious wraith or phantom was no challenge to her, she was more concerned about the possible cause.
"Eh, it won't give me a break," she muttered to herself as she finished scrubbing her hair.
As she dried herself with a towel, she realised that she had missed out on handling the mushrooms. For this species, the oils are now the most valuable. With her red hair still slightly damp, she walked down the corridor from the bathroom to the common room, attracting a few male glances before returning to her chamber. There she placed an oil-based maceration of finely chopped mushrooms. She then drained it and poured it into about twelve vials. An alchemist from a nearby town asked her to supply him with any quantity, at a really good price. After the whole process, they still have to stand before they can be transported, but in a day or two she will be able to send them out. As usual, through the innkeepers.
The oils were already cooling in the vials, and Moira looked through her notes for inspiration. The inhabitant of the tomb had died almost two hundred years ago, and on further reflection, she had to admit that she had not heard a word about the Haas family in all her time here; asking around the settlement about them was unlikely to yield any results.
She decided that before broaching the subject with the locals, which would raise legitimate questions as to why she had even bothered to take an interest in some nobleman who had died in a war two centuries ago, she would check the very spot of the fluctuation once more. She changed into leather trousers more comfortable for the effort, a light-coloured shirt and a waistcoat in the same shade of brown as the trousers. She tied her hair into a low ponytail and put on a blue headscarf, picked up her bag of herbal tools, a notebook and set off along the same forest path to the cemetery. In the southern light it looked almost idyllic. The new part was even well-kept, but the crypt was overgrown with ivy, and between the tombstones adjacent to the entrance, sagebrush and field flowers reigned. The descendants of those buried there must have left the area long ago.
This time, instead of going down to the crypt, she opened her notebook and looked at the well sketched map. Staying on the surface, she walked according to the indications of the map to the site of yesterday's fluctuation, and it was a hit. Just a dozen steps from this point she could clearly sense that the disturbance was not deeply underground, but closer to the ground surface. She cautiously walked closer looking also to the sides and behind her. It appeared that she was alone here. At the point marked in the notes, a noticeable cursed aura emanated, disturbing the surrounding waves of magic, just above the very resting place of Killian of House Haas. Moira took a trowel out of her bag and began digging over the point of greatest concentration, convinced that whatever it was, it couldn't be deep. She wasn't wrong; about half a meter down, she found the source of the problem.
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Curses are one of the oldest branches of magic. The first person with an unconscious talent for magic, who had someone getting under his skin, cursed his adversary in his mind so intensely that he wove the first, crude and simple curse. After that, things went downhill. Today, almost every field of magic has developed its own, including protective spells, talismans to guard against such charms or, on the contrary, objects that cause them. This was precisely the situation here, a copper arm bracelet, probably fashionable two centuries ago, emanated an unpleasant aura of curse. It must have been washed from the grave itself into the higher layers of earth above.
The less direct the curse, the more effective it is. Placing a curse on someone via an object is a simple way to amplify its power. Fortunately, this curse seemed to work only on the living, so it hadn’t disturbed the dead or caused any damage for well over two hundred years. It may have contributed to its owner’s demise, but that no longer mattered much. The question now was what to do with it.
First things first, I need to clean this up, Moira thought, scooping the cursed item onto a garden trowel and setting it a few steps away. She quickly filled the hole with soil and covered it with grass, not wanting any passerby to mistake her for a grave robber. When she finished, she stood over the bracelet, clasped her hands behind her neck, and stretched with a quiet sigh.
"All right, now what am I supposed to do with you?" She murmured to the cursed object.
The physical destruction of an object, although usually entirely possible, involves the risk of an unpredictable violent reaction. If the bracelet is not just covered in brass, but is all made of it, a decent bonfire would be enough to melt it. However, it is impossible to predict the behaviour of the curse, it does not cease to exist itself, it only loses its carrier. History is full of examples of how badly this can end. There are spells that can undo a charm, but the ones she knew from her field tended to focus on redirecting the effect on the charm caster or bystander, strengthening the curse or extending its reach. There was a reason necromancy was not the most highly regarded of the arts, in a word, nothing that would be of much use now.
Herbalism, on the other hand, offered certain options. There were potions that could etch away a cursed bracelet like this, but the ingredients were costly, and the result wasn’t entirely guaranteed. Truth be told, most institutions that deal with such items keep them in secure places, partly because they’re dangerous but also because they’re valuable. Moira, however, didn’t approve of that approach; in the end, these objects always caused more harm than good, regardless of intent.
She took a deep breath, and, as if to convince herself, she voiced her idea aloud. "It’s been over two hundred years; what are the odds the item's creator is still alive? Elves aren’t known for crafting cursed objects, and dwarves don’t wield magic. I’ll bounce the curse back to the owner; in theory, it should dissipate along the way to nowhere." She nodded firmly to herself a few times.
"This is the safest way," she added reassuringly and set to work.
Moira tapped into the rich currents of magic flowing through this place. She focused and began to visualize, forcefully imprinting the structure of the spell onto the object—a spell that would, in a sense, tear the curse out of it, stretch it like a taut string, and, after a few tense breaths, release it, shooting northward.
"Ha, and that’s that!" Moira exclaimed cheerfully, clapping her hands as if after a hard day’s work.
She picked up her trowel, brushed off the dirt, and left the now harmless bracelet where it lay. She was just about to leave, feeling quite pleased with herself, when a distant crash sounded to the north, like a thunderclap from far off, though the sky was clear.
"Well, of course," she sighed. "How could it be any different?"
Moira packed up her things and strode quickly back to Forest Row, wonderwing what exactly went sideways. Meanwhile, far to the north, something stirred from a long slumber among the ruins of a fortress, struck by the echo of its own long-forgotten curse. Confused, it reached out slowly but surely, while focusing all its senses to the place from where the attack had come. All it found was a faint memory of a human sorceress presence.
"You can run, but you can’t hide" it rasped in a dry, low voice in the language of its people—long unseen, known in human chronicles as the beasts of the north.