“Curse breakers?! She’s been cursed?!” That was decidedly not good. Curses were some of the rarest and most complicated forms of magic, their complexity and rarity meant there were exceptionally few people who could get rid of them. There were probably 10 known curse breakers on this entire continent, he doubted the school had one that was there 24/7. Then again the school had quite a few oddities so who knows maybe they do have one.
“There are these purple vein looking lines spreading across her body, and she’s having trouble breathing.” He couldn’t see her face as they were running full tilt towards wherever Luna was, but he could see her shoulders tense. “I’m sorry, I suggested we grab you Azura, but you’re the only one we know that might be able to do anything.”
Enchantments and curses weren’t too different. 2 sides of the same coin really, so he understood what they were saying, but there was a reason artificers were artificers and curse breakers were curse breakers. “Do you have any idea how ridiculously underqualified I am for this!” Talk about pressure. He had studied curses a little to try and get some ideas to improve his enchantments, but people who could make curses were extremely rare. Curses were heavily frowned upon by just about every kingdom on the continent. So people crazy enough to use them don’t usually stay alive very long, as such there wasn’t exactly a whole lot of information about them and he never really felt the need to focus on the skill of breaking them.
“We aren't exactly flush with options!” He knew that. Of course he knew that, but what was he really supposed to do? “Is there any chance at all you might be able to help?! If not, she's going to die for sure.”
“Well I guess we’ll find out.” He probably wouldn’t be able to break the curse, but he could probably cancel its effects at least temporarily. She probably wasn’t going to like it though, even if she did survive. They stopped suddenly as Cynthia threw open the door to Roran’s room. He rushed in knowing they were on time constraint, and nearly panicked. The curse was much worse than I thought.
Luna’s skin was deathly pale, and dark purple almost black veins criss crossed every visible part of her body, disappearing underneath her armor. He imagined they weren’t any less apparent under there. “Everyone out, I’m going to need to focus, and am definitely going to have to invade her privacy a little.” He began stripping her armor, which seemed to help a little on its own as her breathing became ever so slightly less ragged. He couldn’t afford to shift focus, so he just had to hope they trusted him and did what he asked. Once all her clothes were off he was able to see the center of the curse, a beating black circle above her heart.
He almost let out a hysterical laugh. “You really want to make my luck look good in comparison don’t you.” This was a terrible curse, every beat of her hurt must cause her tremendous pain, and the more she hurt the more the curse spread. By looking at it he didn’t even think the end result was death, just torment as she slowly lost every bit of herself and turned into some kind of incarnation of pain and suffering.
Glowing runes and symbols appeared on her body, glowing a bright cyan, a deep blue, and stunning silver. She was fighting the curse, some part of her brain knew he was helping and was supplying mana to his efforts, that would definitely help. Some of the runes slowly turned purple and faded as the curse ate away at the offending magic, he didn’t slow down. He pumped as much mana as he could control into trying to fight back the curse. He was making some headway as the purple veins began to recede, but the progress wasn’t fast enough. He would run out of mana before he could put a temporary block around the curse.
Her mana was helping, but it wasn’t enough. He drew mana from the enchantments on his body, silver and blue markings appearing across his entire body as he continued to write runes into her skin. He could do it, last resort, if he had to use his grimoire he might be able to break the curse completely, but that would come with a heavy cost he wasn’t yet prepared to pay. This should at least buy them some time to think of something else. It was definitely a stopgap measure though.
Her breathing started to ease back to normal as the veins had fully retreated into the pulsing black circle. Now for the really hard part. He etched runes around the circle and above it in the air a complex magic circle forming around them. He needed every ounce of focus to not lose control and kill them both. After several minutes the circle was complete, and it contensed around the circle creating a silver wolf crest with the black circle that had shrunk to the size of a small coin in its mouth.
He fell on his back the second it was done as the receding marks on his own skin left a feeling of bone deep exhaustion.
***
Cynthia was worried. It had been an hour since Azura had told them to get out of the room. Her and Lily had stopped Roran and Katy from rushing into the room. Katy had surprisingly fought harder to get in than Roran. Katy normally seemed to have such unwavering faith in Azura so her vehemence that he needed help was somewhat surprising.
“It’s been more than an hour, shouldn’t we at least check to see if they’re ok?!” Katy had been trying to get her and Lily to let her in for almost the full hour, but she remembered how serious Azura had been about needing to focus.
“There isn’t anything any of us can do, we would just be a distraction for him. We’re just detrimental in this scenario.” She idly noticed that Lily seemed especially upset at her own word choice, and decided to try and talk about it with her later.
Katy seemed about to argue again, but they were saved from denying her again by the door opening. Azura walked out leaning on the door frame for support. He looked like he hadn’t slept in a week. Dark bags under his eyes and visible exhaustion in his stance. Katy had rushed past her and Lily to put Azura’s arm around her shoulder and help support his weight, which he absolutely did not seem capable of doing on his own.
“She’ll live, but I'll have to regularly check the enchantment.” He looked like he was going to say more, but his eyes went dull and his head slumped. Clearly unconscious. Katy wasn’t expecting the additional weight, and nearly fell, but Lily stepped in and grabbed his other side to share his now dead weight between them.
She was so relieved she couldn’t help the few tears that sprang to her eyes. She had never really had friends before. Aside from maybe Roran, but that was his job it didn’t count. She really didn’t want to lose the friends she had made here. She peeked past Azura and the duo holding him up to see Luna sleeping peacefully, as if she hadn’t almost died horribly. She even had a small smile on her face as if she was dreaming pleasantly. Cynthia noticed that she was wearing different clothes from earlier, being in comfortable looking sleepwear.
That had to have come after whatever magic Azura had done to make him so exhausted, so putting her in new clothes in his current state must have taken an insane amount of will. Honestly when he came out he looked like he was running on pure stubborn refusal to leave a job half finished. Even if the part completed was the much much bigger half.
“They both need to rest now, we’ll take this reckless fool back to his room so he can sleep and then maybe the rest of us can talk about our trials.” Katy spoke softly and quietly, as if Azura was in any state to wake up from a little noise.
“Maybe we should wait on that. I’m very curious about Luna’s trial, and I get the feeling she’s going to want to hear our stories too. No reason to go through them all twice.” They were all used to her telepathy by now, so none of them flinched at the sudden intrusion.
“Yeah, honestly I’m pretty tired myself. After I help you get him to his bed I think I’ll head straight to mine.” Lily sounded apologetic, but Katy actually looked a little relieved.
“Sounds good, tomorrow then.” They all nodded and the duo carrying their unconscious friend made their way to his room. She almost began walking to hers when Roran broke his uncharacteristic silence.
“Hey wait, where am I supposed to sleep, Luna’s in my room.” She chuckled silently, she knew it actually weirded people out, but being mute didn’t mean you didn’t still shake when you laughed. “It’s not funny, I can’t just sleep in her room, that would be a total invasion of privacy.”
This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.
***
Azura had never had alcohol. It’s not like he wasn’t allowed or anything, but he didn’t like the sound of his mind not being clear and as if that wasn’t bad enough he was told hangovers felt a lot like how he felt now. That is to say he felt awful. His head hurt, the light was too bright, and his body ached. Yesterday had just been non stop work, his rest had been 5 hours intensely studying in the library. He felt exhausted, it was late in the morning compared to his normal waking time and given his memories of yesterday just kind of went blank after leaving Roran’s room and the currently ok Luna he knew he fell asleep rather early.
Yet even the extra few hours of sleep hadn’t eased how awful he felt. Or maybe they had, and he had just been in that terrible of a condition. He hadn’t truly appreciated the 2 preparation days until now. If he had to do the fifth trial today or probably even tomorrow he would have failed immediately, by virtue of barely being able to function let alone fight. He at least felt a little better knowing that at least his suffering was for a good cause instead of just the universe trying to show how much it really didn’t like him.
He wasn’t really all that surprised when he opened his door, and his whole group were sitting in the hallway chatting. It was only an hour till noon, so it wasn’t surprising to see them all up and waiting on him.
They all gave him sympathetic looks. Well except for Luna, she just flushed and failed to meet his eyes. He had to fight back a flush on his own. He hadn’t really been thinking about it like that at the time, but he had seen her naked. He quickly cut off that line of thought before it could lead him down a dangerous road. His pulsing headache made it very easy to focus on the pain instead. “Wow you look awful.” Ah well no one could really accuse Lily of being subtle.
“Yeah, this may actually be the worst I’ve ever seen you. I didn’t think it was possible, but you may actually look even worse than yesterday.” Thanks Katy truly, being insulted by all his friends was definitely what he needed right now. Katy knew him well, because apparently his face was enough to tell her he was thinking sarcastic thoughts towards her. “Hey don’t blame me, you’re the one who decided it was better for you to try something you have no real training for instead of getting a teacher.”
He rolled his eyes. “What was getting a teacher going to accomplish, I highly doubt there is a curse breaker on staff.” Katy deflated a little, as did the rest. Katy was lucky in that she was the only one other than Luna herself that hadn’t seen how terrible the curse had been.
“Thank you…” Luna looked down bashfully. “.. for you know, saving my life.” She smiled shyly at him. Technically he didn’t save her life per se, but the end result was worse than death in his opinion so he didn’t feel the need to argue semantics.
“Normally I would say no worries, but I feel awful and I almost died. So I think I get to say you owe me one.” He spoke as playfully as he could manage with his pounding headache and hoped that everyone could still tell he was just joking. It seems his tone got through to everyone ‘except’ Luna.
Everyone else chuckled, but Luna gave him a determined look. “I think I owe you a lot more than one. I know It will never cover the debt I owe, but if you ever need anything don’t hesitate to ask.”
He was taken aback, that was definitely not what he was expecting. She looked so determined he got the feeling telling her he was just kidding wouldn’t be received well. So he just nodded at her in thanks. That seemed to satisfy her and she smiled at him brightly.
“So how about we all go get some lunch and trade our stories! I am really curious to know what kind of crazy awesome stuff you guys had to deal with!” Roran brought some energy back to the group. Which was decidedly not good for his headache, but the pain in his stomach reminded him that he hadn’t eaten in almost 24 hours so he went along with it.
***
“No way, a true dragon!! That’s awesome! I mean they bound you to a blood oath which sucks, and killed your proctor, but you got to see a true dragon! What was it like?!” Azura wasn’t quite sure how Roran could go from excited to somber and then back again that quickly, but he did know it made his headache hurt worse.
He figured Cynthia caught that and reprimanded Roran internally because Roran gave him an apologetic look. “Sorry I’ll try to be quieter.” Yeah she had definitely said something to him.
He waved it off. “It’s fine, I would probably be excited too, if it wasn’t me that had to deal with it.” He was second to last in the storytelling circle. They had gotten food from the mess hall and then retreated back to his room which was the closest. He was slightly relieved that his story had been the most eventful so far. He figured Luna’s was going to drop a lot of bombs, and he really didn’t want to have to deal with anymore insanity than he had to.
“As for what the dragon was like, it was probably centuries old if I had to guess from the size. Even worse, it was a true dragon through and through. Usually for things that became dragons one way or another can at least be reasoned with properly, but true dragons always seem to have a distorted sense of normal.” Like claiming a clearly owned area as his and then forcing someone to take a blood oath with some truly ridiculous conditions.
“You sound like you have dealt with them in the past.” Lily spoke up with a raised eyebrow.
He laughed. “I can see how it might sound that way, but I assure you my knowledge on true dragons is entirely second hand. Although I have spoken to a dragon spirit once or twice, that's not really the same thing though.” His family had a close association with the dragons of this world and the spirit world for generations. So he had never been short on reference materials about dragon behavior.
“As curious as I am about the dragon, honestly I’m more interested in what Luna went through that ended in a curse.” He winced, he knew Katy and subtlety weren’t the best of friends, but surely she could see that was a little blunter than it probably should have been. Given the unrepentant look she was giving him she didn’t really care.
Silence descended on the group. If Luna wasn’t ready to talk they shouldn’t make her. He was about to suggest taking a break when Luna finally broke the silence. “It was different from what you all went through. Each of you was in a relatively normal place with normal conditions, but I was somewhere odd.. distorted maybe.” She was struggling to find words, and her frustration was obvious to anyone looking.
He put his hand on his shoulder to try and calm her. It seemed to have the opposite effect as she began turning red, and shifting uncomfortably so he let go. He couldn’t see her face fully as she seemed intent to stare at the ground in the middle of the circle. “It was dark all the time, but not like night. I could still see, it was just like a mist I guess, but not really… I don’t think I can put it into words properly.”
“That’s ok, just say what you can.” This time at least Katy managed to sound gentle. Which was especially good, because he didn’t think Luna could handle any extra pressure right now.”
“Thanks.” Luna resolved herself before going back to her story. “It was like a maze except there wasn’t any right or wrong way to go, it was shifting all the time, and even though I knew where the artifact was I could never seem to reach it.” She looked so shaken, but he knew anything he did wouldn’t really help right now, so he was pretty relieved when Katy showed her some support.
“After the safehouse locked, I knew I couldn’t afford to go about it normally anymore, so I tried to break the walls, and I was honestly surprised when they shattered like glass.” He raised an eyebrow, what was the point of a maze if the walls were flimsy. “And not just the one I hit either, all of them broke down. I regretted it almost immediately though, shadows started rising up from where the walls had shattered. They were shaped almost like people, but horrendously deformed.” She was breathing faster now, the memories were no doubt coming back to her.
She shuddered. “They were awful, the air grew cold as if their mere existence drained all the life in the area, and even worse no light could penetrate them, my clairvoyance almost couldn’t perceive them at all. Because of that I hadn’t seen the monstrosity protecting the artifact.” Her eyes began to look glassy, but she seemed to be valiantly fighting off tears.
He and the rest of them remained silent as she took a second to breath before continuing her story. “There was this pervasive feeling of dread in the air, like I should just lay down and die. Thoughts invaded my mind that I knew were not my own.. I almost did, but a memory from a long time ago helped me find my courage and keep going.”
“I had to rush through the shadows, but somehow I instinctively knew that if they touched me I would die. Thankfully they weren’t particularly fast, so I managed to get to the artifact, but the hideous being guarding the artifact was different. It looked almost like the shadows, but made flesh. It was horrible. Deformed black flesh in a deformed approximation of a human….”
Azura wisely chose not to say that if she didn’t regularly have him maintain the enchantment sealing her curse then that would be her fate after it finished its course. She took a few long stuttering breaths, no doubt even the memory of the creature haunted her. “...It shrieked when I got close, and I don’t think I’ve ever heard anything like it. It was the sound of all hope being lost, of a world descending into chaos as shadows consumed it. It wasn’t loud, but I could feel it in my bones.”
She was panting now, at first he thought it was nerves, but he felt her magic start to wobble and his eyes widened. He moved more quickly than he thought he would be able to given how exhausted he was. He put his hand over her heart and closed his eyes. The wolf crest glowed even through her clothes, along with other runes around the curse. Her breathing slowly returned back to normal as the others looked on in panic at his rapid movements.
He was sure he saw mouths moving, but the world was enveloped in silence. He was barely able to register it as his sight left with his hearing and the world went black.