Church of the Three - North Jaga City. Troug, 3rd.

Darius

He could hardly believe it when he received word of a curse victim who was not immediately healed by his old friend Donovan. The man was humble and lacked the confidence someone of his position should possess, but he was a true devotee serving in his own way here in this corrupt little city.

Darius knew too well that this city was a den of snakes. His home across the lake had some issues with the guard and the occasional overreach that would occur, he knew too well that it was true. Here though, the people sitting upon their council were well known for taking bribes and offering favors to gain more power, hadn’t he just left a meeting some few weeks back with one such bad actor?

Yes, Andrea should be in the city again, no doubt committing more atrocities in her search for personal power.

Now that Darius had seen the victim of this curse, he had to act. He had never met the girl face to face, but he had seen her before. Yes, she was usually running about South Jaga wearing tattered bloody clothes, but she was always showing a bright smile on her face. It was not until much later that he had learned that this girl was the same one his friend Doogan had boasted of during their previous meeting.

That thought brought a small frown to his face, he would have to get word back to Doogan letting him know his protégé yet lived. That man had truly mourned her as if she had passed, though not without verifying what he could of the matter beforehand. The cracked adventurer stone in the hall was not always a sure-fire method of tracking such things as was obvious now that Darius stood before the ghostly-white and bone-thin frame of said adventurer. Maybe he should escort her home instead, though it would need to wait until he had rested, and she had recovered, he had no doubt that they would both need time to recover after this ordeal.

His mind once again focused on the ritual he had begun formulating as he studied the weaves of the curse energy afflicting this poor girl, he started drawing small runic marks on the floor in a circling pattern to help focus the energy on the central point that was the platform holding the child. He saw the woven cords of energy pulsing in the air, malignant and menacing; they would have to act quickly and efficiently on this day.

He stopped after finishing the ninth circle around the central foci, he was very thankful that the room was available as most of the more common but laborious rune work was carved into the room’s walls, floors, and ceiling as they were static and provided the underlaying framework for most every holy ritual. It would save him countless hours and a great deal of stamina, mana, and blood.

Runes and glyphs representing the divine host and the many subordinate gods were now interwoven across the floor, their colors becoming more vivid as mana was drawn into them from the surrounding environment. Soon they could begin their work and send off the taint that was afflicting the young elf.

The curse itself was oddly powerful, he saw the subtle strings and redundant channels of energy that flowed through the body of the child in front of him. It was infecting each of the conduits that she had established in her body, highlighting a roadmap of energy he could also see now that the ritual circles were doing their work to expose the vile energy.

What astounded him most was the pathways he saw; they were much like his own. Sure, there were several missing, but to see so many already opened and established, it boggled the mind that a mortal being so young could possess such an array of skills. More astonishing was that he could sense some of those pathways were at or above the third tier.

Though he supposed that this revelation also brought other issues, as Donovan could not fully work with the flows that he had attempted to remove considering that he himself lacked the full foundation required to cleanse pathways he himself did not have opened.

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

A tricky aspect to curses was that they could infect a pathway wholly or in part, but the worst part was that to effectively cleanse the pathways a person would need to understand the pathway that was infected; in simpler terms you needed skills that aligned with or exceeded the skill and spell pathways in the body of your target patient.

The beauty of rituals like the one they would be performing in this room was that with all the clergy made present they could rely on the collective knowledge and skills of each participant, this removing any chance that the spell would fail to cleanse every pathway.

Another thought that broke into his mind was Doogan’s mention of soul-related skills, divine skills such as that were not entirely rare, but having multiple divine skills was very rare and often people would not unearth these traits until much later in life. Darius himself had two such skills, he also knew that Doogan possessed at least one. What was truly vexing to Darius now that his mind was more focused on it was that this child had no less than six, with more possibly waiting to become known to her. Had Darius known these facts he was sure he could have mobilized the entirety of the church to act on her behalf.

Was Doogan intentionally masking her skills from being known, or had she developed these after leaving South Jaga somehow? Another question burning in his mind was her rapid advancement, mana storm victims usually had their pathways seared away and their progress reset upon rematerializing in another part of the world. Yes, most people never truly discovered that aspect of the process. During a storm the magical levels are so high that the body was twisted and destroyed only for the soul, that one unbreakable part of your being, to remake your body after being transported through the plane of the ethereal to some other destination on their vast world.

“It all just seems so convenient…” Darius muttered to himself, mulling over the issues present. For all these things to fall into place, like a great clockwork puzzle ticking closer to some unknown time. Darius loved a good mystery as much as many other people of world, but this mystery seemed as if it was best left to the gods; he would do his part in their plans, ever faithful, but he had no doubt in his mind that the end game would be far beyond his ability to shift or alter in any meaningful way.

Darius truly had no idea of the storms that were to come.

Meanwhile on the Other Side of the City

Andrea Avery

“Are you sure the elf-girl is there?” she asked of the robed man before her.

“Yes, mistress. I left not long ago after hearing Darius confirm my own suspicions.”

“Hrmn, it seems we shall need to intervene.” She said as she thought over the news. If Darius were here that meant something was very wrong in the church, at the same time it had to be true that this was the girl she had heard Doogan speaking of in the meeting last month.

“What would you have me do?”

“You will need to find an opportunity to make off with the girl, you said she was comatose, correct? It should be no matter for someone such as you to assist her in finding her way here while she is asleep.” If the girl were to be cured of whatever malady she had picked up while running about it would only make her more valuable. To think that she would soon have a new slave to find a home for; a very young, very weak, elf-slave. Doogan had said she was only around level three, there was no way she could cause issues being so weak, and even if she somehow had gained more levels, she could not have found a teacher for any particularly useful skills while in the wild.

“It shall be as you say then, mistress. I believe the ritual is set to begin as soon as Donovan gathers the rest of the clergy for Darius. I can execute your plans immediately afterward.”

“See that you do. And I would have her taken to the facility after dark if possible. We don’t need to be observed even if no one will notice such a small package being delivered as anything out of the ordinary.” She then waved the man away indicating that she was done speaking to him.

The past few weeks had been very good for Andrea, she had acquired many new assets to be bartered off to the local nobility and other enterprises. The number of favors and coins she would be bringing in could very well fund her organization for several more years, especially if she could secure the green-haired elf that was in the nearby town of Eldor.

She saw no reason why she would not be able to complete that task before the turning as she had a spot om that towns council as well, the river would also make for a convenient method of transportation when she struck. She had already placed several men in the town waiting for the order to move when the time was right. Yes, it would be much easier to stow the elf on a barge with the other base materials she had already purchased.

There was no way that she could fail to win this time. Two young elves were better than one after all.