Chapter 5: Herald of the End

I’d been searching just about everywhere on our property for about half an hour when it suddenly hit me where Cat might have run off to if she wanted to be alone.

When I first came back from the war, Cat had been eight years old and had never met me in her life. I had been in a bad place and not only had Catherine been a lovely kid, she had also been a great distraction. So I’d done my best to bond with her and during that time I showed her all the places I’d found while exploring the woods when I was a kid. There had always been one that she liked best, because it was a place I had never shown Marcus and no one but the two of us really knew about it.

I set off into the woods, my time as an [Imperial Scout] making them as easy to navigate as if I were walking through my own home. For half an hour I walked, going up some steep inclines most sensible people would avoid and squeezing myself through crags that appeared for all the world to lead to nowhere. The hilly and rocky countryside of Iskander made for an unexpected number of hard to find little places one might never stumble into if they didn’t know about them beforehand. Eventually I pushed my way into a small clearing amid a circle of tall cliff-like rocks that stretched high like fingers into the sky.

This was a clearing I’d found as a kid. It was just like I remembered it, with a small creek cutting though the middle of it and one single drooping tree growing close to the water. I quickly spotted where Cat was sitting under the shade of the tree, hugging her knees to herself and looking out over the creek with moist and red-rimmed eyes.

While she still hadn’t noticed me, I discreetly used my [Observe] skill on her.

Level: --

Name: Catherine Maria Chapman

Skills: None

Status: Cursed

Stones of Apotheosis: 0/4

Title: [Second Herald of the End]

As expected, she had no level since the Divine System only gave someone their [Level 1] sometime after they began to go through puberty and Catherine hadn’t quite gotten there just yet. However I felt my stomach drop when I saw her [Status] and the [Title] the System had given her. I had not thought that the priests had been making that story up, it would have been absolutely idiotic and instantly disproved, but hearing it and seeing it for myself were two very different things.

Silently, I prompted my skill to show me more details about her [Status].

Status: Cursed (Curse gives user the Title [Second Herald of the End])

I frowned at the unhelpful description, and the System would not elaborate further. Looking for any more information that might shed light on all of this I looked for more details about her [Title].

Title: [Second Herald of the End] (Title declares the user’s status as [Second Herald of the End])

Really? Why even bother putting in such a useless description?

With a sigh I stepped into the clearing and approached, making no effort to silence my steps or conceal my approach. Cat didn’t even look up as I stopped a few feet from her, staring off at nothing. I’d been weighing how to breach the subject when Cat beat me to it.

“So what did they want? Do they want to lock me up? I bet father would have agreed for a fistful of silver.”

“No one is going to lock you up,” I replied immediately, automatically. There was a long pause before I continued. “Father wouldn’t sell you out that way, either.”

“Father’s never much cared for me,” Cat said, looking away as she rubbed her eyes. “I could… I never... damn it. I wish I could have gotten the chance to meet mother too, you know?”

I agreed, but wasn’t sure how to say that. Hesitantly, so as not to spook her, I walked up and sat down next to her. Both of us just sat there looking out over the tiny creek for a few minutes before I spoke. “So… how did it happen?”

“I suppose you mean the [Curse],” she said, practically spitting the word. “You saw it with your [Observe] skill? Was that how someone found out about it?”

“Yes and yes. Now spill. Was it a mage who cursed you? Some strange magic beast out here in the woods? I need to know, Cat.”

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“No, nothing like that,” Cat said, clearly carefully picking out her words. “So… do you know those old ruins? The ones to the north side of town? The ones that ah… well, everyone always insists you should never ever approach under any circumstances or unspecified but horrible things will happen to you?”

“Cat,” I said, growing horrified. “Tell me you didn’t.”

“Well, I thought they were full of it,” Cat said with a little desperate, self deprecating laugh. “I mean, only a few walls left of a bunch of old pre-empire ruins only a short walk from town? How could something literally next door to us for centuries be all that dangerous? Guess maybe I should have listened after all. There was something there. A… a spirit. Or ghost. Or the ghost of a god, if that’s even a thing, I don’t know. It’d been there this whole time. Like it had just been waiting. Underground,” Cat swallowed, her speech becoming strained. “There was nothing on the surface, just some ruined buildings, but by chance I found what looked like the entrance to a cellar. Well, it wasn’t a cellar. There were caves, and some kind of underground complex. I… I had to go. Something was calling out to me. Something from below. It was… it was that thing. It wanted me to come to it.”

“You had to go?” I asked, feeling colder and colder as she continued to speak. “What does that mean?”

“I – I don’t know, okay? Just, it was a feeling I’d had for days. I thought it was just me, but I kept dreaming about it. I couldn’t get going to the old ruins out of my head. So… when I saw my chance, I sneaked out. Not that hard to do. Then it just drew me down, though the tunnels, until I came to a chamber so high and wide and low that I couldn’t see the ends of it. It was like the night sky, but with no stars. I- it was waiting for me.”

“What was it?” I asked, growing equal parts fascinated and horrified by the tale my sister was weaving.

“I don’t know,” she practically hissed, grabbing at her head. “It was see through, like a ghost, and it was big, bigger than any building I’ve ever seen, filling up the middle of that entire chamber and just waiting there,” she said with a sob. Cat buried her head in her arms, her next words so low I had to strain to hear them. “It talked to me, but I couldn’t understand it. It hurt. It hurt and I couldn’t understand. So… it showed me. I couldn’t keep it out. I swear I tried, but I couldn’t. It… it was inside of me. What it wanted to show me, I could feel it digging into my head, wiggling in like worms. I begged it to stop, I begged and I begged, but it wouldn’t.”

She was sobbing and miserable now, hugging herself and hiding her face away from the world. I didn’t think, I just took her in my arms and held her there while she shook and cried. Cat leaned against me and pushed herself into my embrace as much as she could. My experience comforting people was limited at best, so I just hugged her as tightly as I could without hurting her and hoped that in some small way it would help. Inside however, I was seething. Angry at whatever had done this to my sister. Angry at myself for not noticing something sooner. Angry at seeing Cat like this and having no idea how to make any of it better.

Angry that I needed to push her just a little more.

I waited until her sobs slowly petered off. She sagged into me, seemingly exhausted from her ordeal. Before I could lose my nerve I asked her what I needed to.

“So what happened next? What did that thing show you?”

Cat stiffened a little. She was silent long enough that I wondered if she might not answer before she slowly pulled herself out from our hug. She looked at the ground, a frown on her face as she seemed to gather her thoughts.

“Magic,” she said at last.

“Magic?”

She nodded once. “It was all about magic. It wanted the magic to grow.”

I frowned at that. “What magic?”

Cat shrugged. “All the magic. Everywhere. It wanted the magic to grow. And then return. It wanted me to understand.”

“Magic to grow? To return? What does that mean?”

Cat shook her head and grimaced. “I don’t know, okay? What it shoved into my head, it’s still all a jumbled mess. I’ve honestly been trying not to think about it. It… hurts, and feels all weird when I do, and it makes me want to throw up. All I know is that it wanted me to understand something. Then I passed out. When I came to in that chamber, the thing was gone. When I checked my status to see how I was, that’s when I saw that I’m [Cursed] now. After that, I just… I don’t know. I guess I thought that if I just forgot about it and didn’t think about it then everything would still be fine. That if I ignored it then it couldn't hurt me. But… but I guess that didn’t work. Kinda stupid, huh?”

“I don’t know about stupid,” I said, reaching out and squeezing her shoulder. “I think a lot of people would have tried something similar. Hells, I think even a lot of adults who should definitely know better would have absolutely still done the same thing you did.”

“Yeah, well,” Cat murmured, sounding emotionally exhausted. “Adults are stupid.”

“Even me?” I asked, trying to lighten the mood a little.

“I’d rather keep my opinions to myself. Wouldn’t want to insult you,” Cat said with a deadpan voice. She still sounded exhausted and wrung out but she couldn’t completely a tiny little tug of a smile.

However her bit of good cheer was quickly replaced once again by a morose mien. Cat looked up at me, eyes filled with fear and apprehension. “What’s going to happen? Are the priests going to take me away?”

I thought through my answer and turned to look my sister in the eye. “Well, I don’t know. Tell me honestly. You’re not suddenly overcome with a powerful urge to end the world, are you?”

Cat blinked and then looked at me like I was crazy for a few seconds before affecting a casual shrug. “Ending the world doesn’t strike me as a good idea, personally,” she said. “I’ve always been more partial to the ‘crushing all opposition and crowning myself Dark Eternal Empress of the World’ type strategy. But hey, to each his own. I try not to judge.”

I looked at her in silence for a few moments before replying with a solemn nod. “World domination is much more acceptable than trying to destroy it.”

“I thought so, too. And you didn’t answer my question.”

The priests had insisted that Cat was some kind of threat to the world. Looking at her as she tried to look brave while being obviously terrified, I just knew from the very bottom of my soul that they were full of shit. No matter what they believed, no matter what their sham of a god told them, if they wanted to force the issue and came for Catherine they had better be prepared to pay for their arrogance in blood.

“I swear to you,” I said to her, squeezing her shoulders and looking her intently in the eye. “The only way anyone will take you from us will be over my cold, dead corpse.”

Her hesitant smile and the fragile hope in her eyes might have been the most beautiful thing I had seen in my whole life. Though the muscles felt stiff from disuse, I found myself returning her gentle smile with one of my own.