Chapter Text
Unease continues to settle over the party in thicker and thicker layers as they cross each rickety rope and plank bridge or crest each small hill in the road. The air feels too dry, too sharp, and a feeling like walking through a deep shadow on a too hot day, the warmth of the body leached from the marrow grows ever stronger. The hillsides have changed from broken stone and scrub into a tangled mass of some strange plant-life and crumbling, dry clay. Birdsong stopped hours ago, replaced only by the sound of wind scouring through the canyons of the pass, its tone growing more ominous with the passage of the sun overhead. Even the sunlight seems muted, hours of daylight robbed from them the closer they draw to the border of the cursed landscape. The air on Ninox’s tongue tastes of dry, old bone, mixed with a tang of old necrotic magic.
Gale had spoken at length earlier in the day on the Shadow-Cursed lands, and what little he knows of them. A terrible curse, the result of a battle a hundred years prior, which twists the landscape and strangles out all light loving life. The town of Reithwin and Moonrise Towers had been obliterated, the lands around it blighted for leagues, its borders ever growing and changing with time since its first appearance.
“It seems odd to me,” Ninox comments, “that nothing has been done to attempt to remove the curse.”
“Many people have tried, at least according to the sources I’ve seen,” Gale says. “The curse is deeply pernicious, and seems to have some sort of anchoring component that no one has quite found yet. Curses were never my speciality, of course, but I imagine if such an anchor were to be found, it might yet be unravelled. A curse is but a desire to inflict harm given form, and the emotions of the caster can flavour its effects. There is a baleful malice in this curse, Ninox, whatever its source,” Gale says with a sigh. “And the strength of it is staggering. I have heard it compared to some of the acts of the Thayan Red Wizards, even; however, there is much debate about how accurate that comparison is, of course.” Gale’s tone implies he very much doubts it to be anything at all like the magics of Thay, but is too polite to say as much.
Ninox considers the nature of the curse as the wizard continues to discuss the academic writing on the topic, looking at the vine-like plant life growing from the rocks, how it twists and tangles into the soil. He stops, looking even more closely at one of the vines. The thorns are nearly as long as his fingers, including his claws, each barbed to catch flesh and stick, perhaps even work their way deeper in as the target struggles to remove them. They are unlike nearly any plant life he is familiar with, at least in the haphazard remnants of his mental catalogue. Something about the way they seem to writhe through the soil, the way their bark knots and twists even where it should not, even the shape of the thorns seems fundamentally at odds with what Gale has described of the magic behind it.
“It isn’t malice,” Ninox says, watching the way the vines seem to reach out for his flesh with grasping tendrils, the thorns like clutching claws. “This is grief.”
Ninox acutely feels the moment they cross the actual border and into the curse. The air suddenly shimmers with shadow as green and blue threads of the curse’s power snake up from between loose stones, seeming to reach for them like a spreading bruise through the air. The scent of dry bone and necrotic magic suddenly overwhelms all else, and Ninox feels his breath catch in his throat as every last bit of heat seems to drain his body, leaving him chilled to the bone.
Die. Die. Die. Dead. Dead. Already dead. Too late. Gone. Gone. Die. Dead. All dead.
Something inside of him aches suddenly, a heartbreaking longing turning to grief turning to anger, pulsing in time with the movement of the shadows around him. He wants to weep with it, to howl alongside it, to strike at whatever caused this pain. Yet there is nothing left to strike against. The curse’s targets are as dead as its caster, yet it permeates the world still. It is exhausting.
What good are you to them, you ruined, mangled thing? What will you do except hurt them? Come, come to us, they will be safer without you.
Ninox tosses his head trying to shake off the feeling of something like breath whispering in his ear, words too quiet to hear. His teeth begin to ache, a dull, throbbing pain, and he feels something slick and dark in his lungs as he breathes. Claws prick his scales, invisible touches run along his back and tail, under his robe, pulling at him.
Why do you fight us, you are like us, one of us. We can feel your darkness. Come, be safe with us.
He hears it clearly, a voice seemingly speaking directly into his ear, standing just behind him, whispering with hundreds of voices at once. The claws dig deeper into his scales, scrabbling at them as if trying to find purchase. He snarls, shoving back against the thing mentally, feeling his magic running hot and raw under his skin, feeling the surge of power push back against the curse. He is nothing like these things, nothing at all.
Yet for all that he feels the pain of the curse, the others are suffering more, far more vulnerable to it than he is, he realises, snapping out of his own fight. He sees lines of the curse begin to reach for them, digging in long tendrils into their flesh, their faces begging to contort in sorrow, anger, rage.
“Torches, light, anything, quick,” the crawling threads of the curse are growing stronger with each moment, tangling into their bodies. “Everyone, any light source you can get out, get them out now.” Even as he says it he goes to cast a light spell, and feels his magic fail him completely for the first time he can remember. The spell is simple, basic, so easy he could have cast it in his sleep, yet suddenly it fails. He tries again, and he feels something like laughter in the magic.
What good are you, sorcerer, if you cannot even cast a spell? A weight for them to drag behind, a useless, mangled ruin of flesh.
He looks to Gale, and sees the wizard with a strong, clear magelight glowing from his staff, concern and consideration on the other mage’s face. Ninox shakes his head, holding his hands out in confusion, and Gale simply nods, wrapping his hand around Ninox’s staff to add the spell to it. The others light torches, and Shadowheart, after a moment’s hesitation, unbags the holy mace, and its sunlight glow illuminates them all in a golden light. The shadows retreat from its light, releasing the others, the feeling of it trying to worm between his scales lessening even as he squints against the sudden flare of daylight, the glare dazzling his vision for a moment. Better this than the alternative , he thinks, blinking purple and white afterimages out of his eyes.
“Stay out of the deep shadows, and let’s stick together, alright?”
The only reply is the silent, hysterical laughter ringing in Ninox’s ears.