Funk and Abby had gone to sleep, I stayed awake for now. I had grabbed a book out of my inventory about the Cursemorph. It said here, it is extinct. I softly laughed, “Extinct my ass.”
It has no corporeal form, and it feeds on the life force of unique beings that are not tainted, as its weakness is tainted life force. Preferred food is beings from other dimension, these will get knocked out the second they enter the spectral form of the Cursemorph. Then they will get dragged into the core to get skeletefied. I scratched my head with my skeleton hand, “That is not a word you stupid book.”
Once skeletefied, a person cannot be brought back. The process can be reversed if someone takes the place of the person who is going is set to be drained. “It seems I got lucky.”
The cursemorphs, which are basically a grave, only have one natural enemy. When I looked at the name, it had been scratched out with a pen. “Ah, come one, that is the answer I am looking for. This must be what I am, or I would be dead.”
Captain sighed, “Just, come here and I can fix your arm.”
“Fine,” I closed my eyes and took a few deep sighs. Then I found myself in the white space. I walked over to Captain, “Now tell me, how do you intend to fix this?”
“You need to put your skeleton arm through the mirror, then I will heal your arm.”
I looked at my skeleton hand, “This is not a trick?”
Captain sighed, “There is no time for tricks I promise, we need to save Haley and you have already wasted two days. I don’t have the patience to trick you. I put my skeleton hand through the mirror.”
It is something I can do, apparently. Captain let red energy flow over it and I screamed out in unimaginable pain. Slowly my flesh grew back.
When my arm had been healed, Captain pulled on my arm and my face slammed against the mirror. “Listen up Steve, you are a meaningless, annoying little bug that I am going to crush. You might be in control at this moment. The moment we save Haley, all bets are off. We play this nice and fair, we fight for control over this body.”
I managed to get a few words out, “And what if I lose?”
Captain looked at Agent S, and the others. “That is where you are going to end up, Steve. A forgotten remnant of my past, as I am the strongest one around here, unless you let the devil out of his cage.”
I chuckled as I moved back a little, “But you are incomplete, if there is indeed such a devil, then you needed to work together. We are all a piece of each other. As long as we are not all one being, you will never have all of your power.”
Captain grunted, “I know that, and the only way we can merge is if everyone agrees. Do you know what we all agree on here?”
I pushed myself back, “On nothing.”
Captain nodded, “Exactly, nothing at all! How can I get control back if you cannot just agree with me and let me out? I am more fitted to saving Haley!”
I brushed off my clothes, “This is your own fault. Deal with it.”
He punched the mirror, “You are being smug now, just you wait till I get out of here. Then I will wipe that smug smile off of your face. You had been dead if it were not for me, a couple of times over. Where do I start, the plant? Maybe the zombie bite? Oh wait, that tainted marble? You know, the one you used so recklessly that tainted our shadow?”
I looked down, “I might not be as strong as you are, Captain, but I have a heart, and a soul. You seem like the person that would stab people in the back, the moment you see fit.”
He laughed, “You are painting me to be the bad guy, but I know the truth, you are much more evil than you think you are, you might even be worse than the devil inside of me. Bella put that power limiter on you for a reason, she feared you, and she had every right to be.”
I made a portal and left as I ignored him. I woke up, the sun seemed to be rising and Lory was hugging me.
She looked at me, “Are you alright Steve?”
“Yes, why do you ask?”
“You screamed out in pain and I came to hug you, but you did not respond. I figured you were doing something in your head to fix your arm.”
“Yeah, the better question is, how are you?”
Lory shivered and got goosebumps. “I tried to fight back but damn those Prowlers, My head got filled with horrible flashing images.”
“What was that thing even? What the heck is a prowler? It tried to drag me into a cocoon.” I gave her the book with the information on the Cursemorph.
Lory faked a gasp, “No way.”
I looked at her, she knew much more about this than she was letting on, “Does it mean something to you?”
Lory nodded, “It does, my grandpa is the one who wrote this entry, but as you can see, there is no picture of this thing, I never knew what it looked like.”
I looked at the information, “How is it possible that your grandpa wrote this section in the book?”
Lory sighed, “The Fairy Kingdom was under attack by this thing once. It killed my grandma, but she managed to save my grandpa. He wrote down the information and left to fight it. He never came back, but this thing also disappeared.”
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We both looked at the forest, I spoke up, “Do you think, this is the same creature?”
Lory looked at me, “it is supposed to be extinct, how big are the chances, there are still two of them roaming around?”
“It would explain why it went after us, it must have identified you as a threat, what are these Prowlers you were talking about?”
“Prowlers? I have never heard of such a thing, you must have misheard me.”
I decided to ignore it, as I do with almost all of her secrets, “We lost two whole days Lory.”
She sighed, “At least we are alive. What did you even do to it?”
“To be quite frank, I didn’t do that, I think.”
Lory shook her head, “What?”
“Captain seemed to have done something to it. If it were not for him, that thing would have completely skeletefied me.”
Lory looked at the book, “That is not a word, I am pretty sure my grandpa made that up.” She mumbled something under her breath, “It was not him, it was you, only an Eldritch being can stop a living grave.” She cleared her throat and spoke up louder “Is it dead?”
I shrugged while wondering, did she really think I did that? What does she know? We are married. Why doesn't she tell me the truth? “I am not keen on finding out. But, I don’t think so. For some reason, it is contained to the forest.”
We both looked at the shadows trying to exit the forest. Lory nodded, “Yep, not dead. We are not going back into the forest on our way back, are we?”
I laughed, “I never want to see that creature again.”
Abby climbed out of her tent. “Lory? It is good to see you are still alive.”
Lory beamed, “It is good to see you too Abby.”
Funk climbed out of the tent. “I am hungry!” I gave him a sandwich.
After we had some food, we packed up our camp. Funk looked back, “Damn, that was not fun.”
Abby looked at him, I saw them both share a look. Captain spoke up, “It seems your friends are hiding something from you, but the one closest to you, is hiding the biggest secret.”
I sighed, “Shut up Captain.”
Lory looked at me, “Is he being annoying?”
“Yeah, he is trying to stoke some fires.”
Abby looked at me, “Do we just follow this dirt path to the Northern Desert?”
“Yeah, I am not sure how far we need to walk, but there is not much around here. Just a lonely dirt path with a few trees around us. How long have been traveling to the capital now?”
Lory started counting, “Along with the days we lost, this is our seventh day of travel. We have rested at nights at the campfire, and one day.”
Funk looked around, “We still have quite some ways to go, we are coming to the biggest part of the island.”
Abby nodded, “Didn’t Bella call the part between the Lifeless Jungle and the Duality plains the wilderness?”
I looked at her, “I must have missed that.”
Lory scratched her head, “You must have been busy with other things, you do that sometimes.”
Funk chuckled, “He likes to gawk at things, like your tail for example.”
I hung my head, “Come on, are we still not letting that go? I wonder what Bella is doing right now.”
Lory smiled at me, “That is a good way to change the subject, but I bet she is working hard on the airship.”
Abby looked at me, “Maybe, we should have stayed behind.”
“What do you mean Abby?”
“Well, if we had stayed behind, then we would not have gotten captured by Lance and Haley would not have been taken.”
I shook my head, “Don’t do that to yourself Abby, it is not going to get you anywhere. We should just focus on the task at hand, reaching to the duality plains and eventually saving Haley. We need to trust in her, that she is safe. She has this Shirley woman looking out for her.”
Funk put his hand on his chin, “Abby?”
“Yes?”
“You asked me about televisions one time, right?”
Abby nodded, “That is right, I did that in the beginning.”
Funk nodded, “the word seemed familiar, the Bolugan people had televisions. They were also bakers. With some delicious items they baked, I,” he looked at me, “I went there once with a relative. We ate a round dish called a pizza. The king and queen of Boluga had a daughter, she got lost in transit.”
Lory looked at him, “What the fuck is that even supposed to mean?”
Funk grunted, “The rumor is that the sky people came to Boluga for a meeting. Boluga saw the void incoming, they wanted to ask the sky people for help, knowing they could stop it.” He waved around us, indicating they can. “The sky people did not want to help Boluga, but they did trade some resources. After the sky people had left, the king and daughter seemed to have lost their daughter. It is possible, she accidentally got loaded into the airships, her name was Shirley, she has never been found.”
I scratched my head, “Are you saying, the woman that Haley found, is the Bolugan princess?”
Funk nodded, “If she knows how to bake pizza’s then that is a fair assumption.”
Abby shrugged, “well I guess we have to trust Shirley then.”
Lory nodded, “The kindness of strangers can take you very far, right Steve?”
“Yes, or that stranger might betray you and get you locked in a cell after being tortured, right Funk?”
He sighed, “Are you ever going to let that go?”
I smiled, “not by a long shot my friend.”