Kalender tapped his fingers on the table. Shal-yen continued to stare out the window, watching the world outside turn in slow-motion.

There was yet to be any decision made. Shal-yen couldn’t even think to entice Kalender with deals or offers. Doing such a thing would poison the intent for Kalender to make his own resolve.

Resolve was a frightening word for him. Minimine had given him his mission in this world straight out of the gate, but he also knew ever since—painfully so—that there were parts of him that were irreconcilable with it.

To fight the curse was the mission; to live peacefully was the irreconcilable. He’d simply avoided having his mind hold both ideas at once, two ideas whose coexistence was conceptually impossible. Should the two ever meet, they would co-annihilate, and he felt as if nothing would be left of him if they did.

Still, it hadn’t been enough to keep him from moving forward. He’d met Jyn and Page, and even when things got a little fantastical with Minimine and her devoted followers…it was a semblance of a fun and fulfilling life, wasn’t it? This should be enough to live on, wasn’t it?

He was out of his element in a real fight, enough that he freely derided himself for being about as good as some conscript picked up off of the side of the road, shoved a gun, then told to kill a god.

Now he felt it strange that Minimine had ever chosen him as her Champion. How did just being some half-decent guy qualify him to become one when the world’s battles eclipsed him and made him feel so small?

He was small. He was just a tiny human soul playing in a sea filled with gods and their soldiers. There was no escaping that fact.

He traced his thoughts all the way back to memories of his time in heaven…and the grin of the invading god flashed by his mind’s eye. That damned god put a curse on him as his first act—on him, who hadn’t even agreed to anything yet.

Why did it have to be him?

Kalender could’ve been living life. It was that god’s plan to take it away, wasn’t it? Had that god wanted to watch and laugh as the curse tore at him and destroyed every vision he had of what should have been a good life? He must have. He would never have given him such a powerful curse if it didn’t truly curse him. He would have never gone out of his way to break through heaven’s walls if not for the sole purpose of insulting the very nature of how life should be.

This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

— A curse that could not be removed, even with death and rebirth.

An insult with no rhyme nor reason—a cruel irony at Kalender’s expense and more. The more he thought about it, how the root cause of all of this liked to watch him and everyone suffer, the more his heart raced no matter how he wished it to slow down and the more he scowled no matter how hard he wished to hide it.

He felt like a child about to throw a tantrum. His mind burned with thoughts colored red, imagining all the possible scenarios where he’d confront that god and beat him down.

These new feelings, he became aware of them.

What where they? Spite, contempt, hate—he’d never felt these before. He’d never needed to, and yet here he was now, swimming in it, becoming more familiar with it, becoming more comfortable with the dark and ugly.

Should that be the case? Was it alright to be comfortable with anger? In an instant, he feared that if he was capable of these new emotions, ones he was too unfamiliar with and too inexperienced to handle, that one day he might lose control; it wasn’t the anger he feared, but the possibility of the people who loved him coming to fear him for it instead.

That seed of doubt became a growing wave of fear that crashed against the wave of anger. With every smile and peaceful memory—every touch felt around his hands, every good word that had comforted his ears, and all the good things that had flourished from them—with all that had ever graced him flashing by his eyes, the wave of fear gained more and more mass, growing taller than his anger—flattening it like it was never there.

He got to his feet, the chair’s legs scratching against the floor. He could still feel the tremors of his heart. He had to breathe deeply, or else he might not show the right face to Jyn and Page.

Once upon a time, he’d said he didn’t like what the curse was doing to its victims, but now, he was well and truly aware that he was one of them.

His mission had not changed. What he’d said he’d do had not changed.

It was just personal now.

The same thing that afflicted him—right now, he could use it to charm away the ravenous hordes right outside the castle’s walls, taking them away from the boy-playing-king. It was the only thing he could do, but thinking about how it would probably piss off the ###### God, well, it’d be a good thing to do, wouldn’t it?

When he faced Shal-yen to tell him what’s what, the door burst open and a Maid rushed past Kalender. Her hair whipped around as she did, and her heels scraped against the floor as she stopped before Shal-yen.

“M’lord, report! Maid Sherry and the sally force have been surrounded! The Royal Detector is with them!”

Shal-yen opened his mouth to speak. Kalender’s feet were faster. “Wait!” Shal-yen shouted after him, but he didn’t stop.

He dashed out of the door, and what did stop him was the sight of Jyn and Page. The two were taken aback by his sudden breakout—taken aback, but not surprised. They’d overheard the messenger’s report, and now they were witnessing a face Kalender had never made before.

“We need to go,” he told them. Jyn nodded resolutely, while Page gulped, but she planted her staff firmly on the ground. Everyone here knew what he was about to do.

Fear mixed with resolve to give birth to courage, because today, the shackles would come loose.