Shadows & Sorcery #48
Greeting, salutations, hails, and welcomes to the forty-eighth edition of everyone’s favourite fantasy flash fiction newsletter, Shadows & Sorcery!
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This week we’re going deep into the Cursed City, we shall gaze upon the Stars of Madness, we’ll fortify ourselves against the Kings of Winter, we’re going to learn about the power of a Labyrinth Lord, and encounter a Profaned Knight…
Cursed City
Vitave recalled the guard's shaking voice to his young comrade, Luvodo. "It's getting really bad in the East Quarter." Dark rings had hung under the lad's bloodshot eyes, he blinked slowly, and his breathing was shallow. Frankly, he had looked ready to collapse any moment. Unfortunate as it was, city guard on the streets were the best test to determine the state of curse build-up. Particular individuals might be extra sensitive, accounting for nightmares and misfortune at otherwise quiet times. When the guards began to be affected, it was time for the hunters to step in.
East Quarter was a maze. It was ancient. Older than the rest of the city, older the cities around it, older than perhaps most people could, or would like to believe. Something about the age of it made the city seem alien. Like it had been come upon by the primordial humans rather than lifted from the earth by their hands. Maybe that's exactly what happened. Maybe that's why the people who lived and squatted there had such an odd reputation. It was long abandoned for the most part, only the outermost layer of it had poor tenants who only returned there to have a roof over their heads, not out of a sense of safety, comfort, or community. The people who dwelt deeper within were far worse off.
Signs of the curse began slowly. Bad dreams that turned to nightmare. Bad luck into tragedies. Then it started affecting people physically. Strange births, deformities. Degeneration. And finally, whatever it was began to be so thick in the air, in the walls, in the people, it started manifesting itself. And it never really left, there was never a normal state in the city, some tendril of it always reached out from below and was affecting somebody in some way. The city was cursed, and no one knew why. The best guess peddled by scholars was that all the death and sorrow that such an ancient place suffers seeped down, and gathered, and went from bad to worse.
Silver charms rang and wooden talismans gave hollow clacks as the two hunters moved through the depths of the Eastern Quarter. Holy oil had dried upon their foreheads, and minute scrawls of apotropaic dwimmerscript covered their faces. Hatchets and flat tipped hacking swords hung at their sides. Hard leather plate creaked and chainmail shook. They did not stalk through the sunken passages, but walked open and brazen. Their coming had to be made known.
Figures had been skulking through the shadows alongside them for some time now. While the "cleansing" of curse-laden individuals was expected of hunters, most hadn't the heart to harm those who likely wouldn't last much long anyway. But they would defend themselves if the need arose. Parts of the Eastern Quarter seemed almost subterranean, so covered over were they higher, newer structures. Damp collected everywhere in pools or as long streaks down sagging stone walls, mustiness hung in the air and caught in the throat. There were collapsed foundations and walls that led into pits of darkness, each of which the hunters knew they were watched from. Refuse from those who'd fled here in desperation, or from what the original inhabitants stole and brought back littered the stone and mud. Splintered, torn and rusted metal, soaked piles of fabric. Bones.
At a point, the street fell away into rubble, which the hunters now descended. It opened into some ancient sewer system, the floor sticky with a long trail of damp filth in its center. Trails of something in the air slunk by them. That was bad, but it meant they were close. The passage was lightless, and the twilight of the outside had ceased the second they entered. Luvodo, the younger hunter, struck a torch, only to reveal a shapeless mass of tatters lurking not a foot away. A rasp escaped it as it jumped up, misshapen fingers grasping the dull gleam of a stained blade. It leapt at Luvodo soundlessly. He unsheathed his cleaver and blocked the slash with the wide flat of the blade, pushing it aside. Vitave had already unhooked and threw his hatchet, the blade sinking into the tatters and eliciting an inhuman bleating. But the eyes that looked out of the rags were human. Eyes never changed.
There was a violent gurgling as the vagrant pulled a part of its clothing aside. The hunters braced but it was too fast. A torrent of fetid smoke was spewed forth, enveloping Luvodo. Only Vitave's cleaver buried in the face of the vagrant stopped it. There was a ragged sound, and it collapsed. The torch had fallen to the ground, and sent bad shadows across the jittering vagrant's body. The older hunter helped Luvodo to his feet. His charms had saved him, but they'd been consumed by the curse vent. Vitave plunged his cleaver into the body and removed his hatchet, and looked down upon the still form with a look intense sorrow. He couldn't even begin to comprehend how bad it had been for the vagrant.
The sewer tunnels would have been impossible to follow, were it not for the maledictions in the air showing the way to the growth, and the growing sense of dread in young Luvodo, whose defense against the effects of it had been greatly lessened. The curse never recedes, never lessens, but it does get broken up and diluted. When it gathers, it begins to form vile growths of wrinkled, sqaumous flesh. These physical manifestations emanated malevolence, and if unchecked, they spread for miles upon miles in the undercity of the Eastern Quarter. There are sections that in the past were so badly affected that, though cleansed of growths and seeded with numb blessings, what dwells there has been sealed away forever.
After a long journey through the sewer tunnels, the hunters found themselves inside what seemed to be an old, stagnant cistern. Luvodo shivered as they entered. Pillars rose to a vaulted ceiling shrouded in murk, and the ground was covered in a layer of thick sludge. It was in here. It had to be. Luvodo strode ahead, and thrust his torch into the dark, perhaps trying to fight his sense of disquiet. Hatchet and cleaver in each hand, Vitave closed his eyes, walked slowly, and listened for the approach of anything that might be slumbering in this seedbed. There was his own deliberate footsteps, separating the muck with ease. There was the solemn drip of moisture from above. There was the crackle of the torch. Suddenly, there was a cry. Luvodo was staggering back. The hunter's eyes shot open and he saw then what his comrade cowered before.
No more incongruous a sight could human eyes perceive than the image of a monolithic curse growth amidst the careful, clean craftsmanship of human hands. Among the ridges and scales of the sagging, lumpen flesh-like exterior, Vitave swore other eyes looked back at them. Likely the younger hunter was still partially numb to the vileness it emanated, thanks to his oil and the parchment wrapped about his limbs under his armour, and Vitave was glad for it. It was worse than they'd thought, and the older hunter gave thanks that his protections were intact. Tendrils had begun spreading across the ground. Vitave looked at it for a moment while Ludovo began to shakily prepare for the purification.
What stood there was ten thousand years of accumulated misery and madness, the weight of every bad thought, shed tear, and malediction gathered and given a dreadful form. Thoughts, feelings, actions, all lingered and stuck, and now rose up from a depth that didn't want to be forgotten.
The purification was lengthy and exhausting. There was no great battle, but hard work, and the curse resisted many attempts at being broken down. It wasn't really alive. It was, in truth, more a physical symbol than an entity, but nonetheless it was endowed with a kind of intelligence, thanks to its human source. It showed every ugliness it possibly could at each step. But finally it was flayed, anointed, soothed, and as the seven-hundred and thirty-fifth benediction was spoken, the ragged remains of the curse growth fell to pieces, and flaked away into the sludge harmlessly. Luvodo slumped against a pillar and sighed, saying he could feel a difference in the air already. Vitave assured him that the folk above likely could, too. That's what made it all worth it in the end.
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