Curselock

Chapter 218: Boil

Fires spread from the battlefield, igniting buildings and burning infrastructure. Guards, Inquisitors, adventurers, and even a few mundane shopworkers, laborers, and even retired elders worked in tandem to battle the flames.

Those who could create water, through Legacy or not, pooled their resources, creating a haven within the heat. Buckets were summoned or taken from houses, each pailing out palpable amounts to quench the worst of the flames.

Somewhere in the mess, High Inquisitor Rushwin fought, his stagnant water, water all the same. Pulling children from adjacent homes, leading soldiers to cut off the flames before they spread, informing runners of active reports, he did it all.

And the whole while, he watched the far, far end of the street – the crossroads of the battle. The starting location of the fire, the hellscape that amounted to blood and death. The location where the Sightless King would die.

And he would join the fight as soon as all of the innocents were out of harm's way.

Portals opened around Glenny, but he didn’t spare them a glance. He knew Spencer’s power quite well by know, understanding that they only protected and supported—

A flicker.

Glenny didn’t flinch, the attack pushing the upper limits of how fast he could see. Could he have dodged the attack? Yes, there was no doubt in his mind. But he didn’t need to. While Spencer watched, nothing would be harmful, not at this distance.

These thoughts, however, were a distraction. Instinct was all he needed and all he wanted. The Void, it called his name. It’s silence like a grand tide, pulling him closer to serenity.

To his side, Jude, the Browns, and his father lowered their postures, eyeing the enemy before them. Glenny did the same, pushing a lock of his greasy red hair from his face.

White, black, white, his eye color flickered. He had many questions about the Void, though he knew nearly none would be answered. It was too vast, too infinite. So he didn’t worry. He’d fight until he couldn’t, and that would be enough.

The monster before them roared, the blood along the floor vibrating like dancing men. Glenny’s ears began to ring and he noticed many of the soldiers around him clamping down on their heads. How many would die tonight? How many bloodied bodies would the Sightless King claim?

A false wind rolled through the battlefield, leaves made of mana aiding its claim. Together with her partner, the Inquisitor blasted the King.

Glenny found himself unable to focus on them, as he and his nightmare stared at one another.

Black, white, black.

Another portal opened just before him, swallowing an attack whole. Could he have dodged that one? Yes, but he didn’t want to. He didn’t want to play defense, he didn’t want to dodge. Spencer had that duty, and he placed his faith in that.

“I’m going,” he whispered, his voice drowned away by the cacophony of magic and devastation.

What was once a city section home to a community space was now nothing but broken flat land. Pitfalls and piles of rubble alike littered the area, just like the bodies of those unlucky enough to have been killed in the initial barrage of blood magic.

Glenny disappeared, invisibility removing his presence in all but memory. He dashed forward, splitting hard to the side and wrapping around. Briefly he recognized his friends movements, his gaze caught on his dad for a short moment.

There was no fear.

There was only calculating ferocity.

Shadows licked the ground as Glenny moved, his parasitic cloak brimming with glee. The sun was down, and the fires provided excellent shadows. He allowed his partner’s wish, dipping in and out of the darkness while stepping across the battlefield. Each time, the darkness brightened just a little, his cloak getting its pound of meat.

He stabbed.

Primordial magic, the very same that the Sightless King used, ruptured into the King himself, a wound the depth of a forearm ripping in deep. Glenny shadow stepped away, a spray of blood and viscera narrowly splattering him.

Reappearing under the guise of a partially destroyed arch, the darkness obscured him enough to completely hide him from the sightless. Blood dripped from his dagger, he watched it fall methodically. The drop squirmed in the air, whatever magic fueling it lashing out at its attacker.

Snarling, Glenny remembered first hand how the Sightless King’s blood magic worked. His neck still had bruises. With a flourish of his wrist, he reforged his crimson weapons, making them far hotter. The one covered in blood sizzled, a shrill scream echoing along the broken arch.

A shadow step later, Glenny dismissed his invisibility.

“Fire hurts him,” he muttered.

Jude flinched from his friend's reappearance. A portal then opened in front of them, taking another blood blast to a new continent. Neither of them reacted.

Having stayed mostly to the outside of the battle, Jude hadn’t had the opportunity to dip his axe in blood. His mother and father, however, had. They had rushed in with Glenny and Carmon, assisting the two other Inquisitors currently on scene.

“Where’s Leland?” Jude asked. “His fire—”

“We can’t wait on him,” Glenny seethed, his eyes still flickering white to black to white. “This needs to end, now.”

As he said that, a hand sprouted from the cracks on the ground. Having grown from the blood that soaked the floor, the attacker took the leaves Inquisitor by the throat, hoisting her into the air in a familiar fashion.

Before she eclipsed the tops of the few shredded trees in the area, a portal opened to her side with a flash of deafening power. A bolt of lightning ripped through the air, piecing into the bloodied hand like an arrow to an apple. The spearing shot took the hand far, hurdling it at the very monster that created it.

The bolt and the strung along hand dissipated as a wall of crimson magic raised from the ground. The Sightless King growled at the Inquisitor, but by now her leaves had swooped down like thousands of tiny birds, carrying her safely to the ground.

“Fire!” Glenny shouted at the crowd of guards, Inquisitors, soldiers, and adventurers. “Use fire! Boil the blood!”

His shouting fell on deaf ears, the roar of battle and the panic of chaos canceling—

“HEY!”

While nothing had taken Glenny by surprise during the fight yet, Jude’s glass rattling scream did. He was not alone in this, most of those preparing attacks and regrouping into ranks turned his way.

“Boil the blood!”

Whether or not they understood, the boys didn’t know. The fighters weren’t the only ones to have heard his yell. The Sightless King, and his massive body made entirely of a single eye, moved. He floated just above the broken pavement, silent, just like the swoosh of darting muscles. And while he wasn’t fast, his presence was.

Like a wave of lava, spiteful foreboding shifted through the air. Some reacted viscerally, an invisible force shoving them back as if the very fabric of reality tackled them. Dark colors illuminated in the eyes of the many, an unrestrained aura cascading and lingering in their mind. Waterfalls had broken, trains of thought detonated.

Those who withstood and witnessed the Sightless King’s march fought back, clashing against his primordial nature with sheer enigmatic instinct. Guardian Spirit Beast? Artificial Lord? A being born before humans and only saw them as food?

No.

It was just a floating eyeball.

And this was their home.

“Brigade one fire!”

Some snapped out of their allure, the enthrallment they faced. Others failed to act, but most responded.

“Brigade one fire!” the many echoed, the command silencing the dread.

Then the Palemarrow Kingdom roared.

Arsenals of magic turned the dark sky light. Shields the colors of the rainbow sprouted throughout the wreckage. Protection and assault, fire and safety. Horrid heat trembled against crimson might, and yet, blood began to boil.

Through the bursts of mana and dueling forces, the flooded cracks and dyed stonework turned sour. The smell of an active forge inside a graveyard battled timelessly against the purity of the open air, and as the ground turned into a stove, the smell won.

The monster front and center for the assault suddenly became a miniature sun, his primordial shields cracking under the immense heat.

“Brigade one halt! Brigade two fire!” that same soldier yelled, activating the second wave.

“Brigade one halt! Brigade two fire!” the many echoed back.

The might of the first wave quickly subsided, and the second pounced. Reserves, the less powerful, those not fit for ranged magical combat, whatever. They rushed, weapons out and sharpened, boots slightly melting on the hot ground.

Jude and Glenny moved in with this team, their parents already in the fray.

A knock sounded at the same time a very tired looking clerk appeared in the doorway. “Emergency report ma’am!”

Aunty P, having already heard the man’s footsteps running in from outside the castle, didn’t react. Leland and Isobel, however, stiffened.

“Out with it,” she commanded, her cup of tea already set on its accompanying plate.

“Confirmation of battle against the Sightless King. East district nine, called ‘the Garden’ by locals.”

“I know the place,” Aunty P said, finding Leland and Isobel’s hardened faces quite interesting.

The clerk gave a firm nod, continuing, “Battle has caused widespread fires in the area. Head Inquisitor Rushwin has taken the mantle of evaluations and fighting the flames. Defenders are pushing the Sightless King back, and more are adding to their ranks by the minute. End report.”

Aunty P ignored the man bowing and turning on his heel to leave and instead focused on her dinner guests. The initial conversation had ended a few hours earlier, much to everyone's happiness. And while she didn’t fully understand the picture Leland Silver created, she understood enough to know he was no threat.

Not in his current form at least.

So they ate dinner. Leland had opposed it at first, but even the righteous needed to eat during a war. They discussed many things over that time, especially about the very enemies they faced. The Sightless King was a large topic.

He brought interesting points about the beast, as well as personal accounting and details that only her most experienced spies had found. All in all, he had a plan to kill the monster, but apparently it wasn’t needed. Not that he would tell her what it was.

“I guess you two aren’t needed after all.”

That… wasn’t the right thing to say, it seemed. Leland, and Isobel to a degree, looked puckish. Their posture had suddenly slipped, the same nervous ticks she had identified earlier in the meeting reappeared, and, maybe worst of all, both looked guilty.

“What?” Aunty P asked, fearing the answer.

“We… we should be there,” Leland muttered.

“You heard the report. They have it handled. You two aren’t the only powerful people in the city. Besides Rushwin, we have at least four others at his power level. And they haven’t even been called in yet.”

“Why not?”

“Ah, youthful ideology.” Aunty P found her voice a bit too mellow for the situation.

Not that she’d admit it, but she was, frankly, happy. As much as those who truly knew her thought her a monster, she hated giving orders of death. Whether sending soldiers to die, or the execution of subordinates, she hated it. So knowing that Leland and Isobel were just two oddities rather than two enemies, made her happy.

“See, Leland, it is like this. If the powerful dealt with every situation, then nobody would be there to inherit their positions. Those equivalent to Rushwin are his age, if not older. They are nearing the end of their lives, and I hate to admit it, but events such as war are a proving ground for the kingdom’s next great defenders – those who stand against the real threats.”

Leland glared at the older woman. “Even when the current threat is a real threat?”

“That’s not—”

“Because you forget, Aunty P, that the Sightless King isn’t the only enemy out there. Ashford is still—”

Aunty P’s face crumbled, overhearing the pitter-patter of feet rushing to the room. And while she didn’t know what the report would say, the sound coming from the clerk’s wheezing chest was alarm enough.

He didn’t even knock, instead simply shouting once in the doorframe, “Ma’am! The Sightless King—” He took in a horridly short painful breath. “—is dead!”

But before anyone could celebrate, the clerk added, “Killed by Harbinger Ashford! And Harbinger Ashford has taken the Sightless King’s Claim!”

Leland tilted his head at the word “claim.” It sounded important, but he didn’t know why. Obviously, Aunty P knew, as she was out of the room first after a loud curse, leaving her niece for the first time since the attacks began.

His gaze lingering on Sybil in the cocoon of bone, Leland soon followed the regent queen, Isobel following closely behind him.

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