Realm of Monsters

Chapter 616: A God’s Curse

  Gale wrapped her arm under Stryg’s shoulders and helped him out of the barracks and into the awaiting carriage. The ride was short and filled with silence. Lunae’s thunderous howl had left neither of them in the mood for talking.

  Although he hadn’t asked Gale about what had happened between her and Lunae, he knew a bond had been created between the two of them. She had been blessed by Lunae, that much was certain. The lock of white hair that Gale now wore in a braid was evidence enough of that.

  “You think she’s angry?” Stryg finally broke the silence as the carriage stopped in front of the abandoned temple Lunae had taken as her temporary home in Hollow Shade.

  “Yes,” she said as if it was obvious. “Lucky for you, she loves you too much to kill you for whatever fuck ups you will inevitably make in the future.” She opened the carriage door, stepped out, and made sure the coast was clear before helping him out.

  “You say that like you have no faith in me.” 

  “On the contrary, I have the utmost faith that you have a penchant for chaos.” 

  “I can always count on you, my dear Shadow.” He rolled his eyes and followed her into the temple.

  “Always, my lord.”

  The first thing Stryg noticed about the temple was that its roof had been torn down, giving a clear view of the orange evening sky. Lunae sat reclined in her wolfen form atop a carved mound of ice. 

  Gale bowed, “Mistress, I have brought your Chosen.”

  Her massive wolf head swerved around at their entrance, her silver eyes gleaming. She pulled back her black lips and bared her fangs, “What have you done, Little One?”

  “Me?” Stryg pointed at himself and made his face a perfect expression of innocence.

  “Something risky and stupid, obviously,” said Holo. “You were on watch, why didn’t you stop him, Melantha?”

  She shrugged. “So long as he isn’t in danger of igniting the Astral Light, I won’t interfere. Besides, he’s coming into his power, it’s good for him to push himself to his limits.”

  Stryg turned and spotted both his sisters standing on either side of the doorway, he hadn’t noticed them when he had walked in. Lunae’s wolfen form shifted in a blur and she appeared as a towering beauty, her dark silver skin in contrast with her radiant white hair. “Stryg,” her voice was sharp, like a mother chastising her son.

  Cold mist suddenly wrapped itself around Stryg and he felt himself floating towards Lunae’s waiting arms. Compared to her, he was quite small, not even reaching her hips, and as she held him up by scooping her hands underneath his arms like an infant, it was made that much more painfully obvious.

  “Stryg,” she repeated. “Tell me what happened.”

  He tried to squirm his way out of her grasp to no avail. “Don’t you already know?”

  “I want to hear it from you.”

  He breathed out in frustration. “I ordered one of the Veres legions to bring the Cairn Tribe’s elders to the city for peace talks. But things went awry and one of my captains led the men on a rampage. The entire Cairn is dead. A lot of people are now going to die because of Captain Vern.”

  “And that bothers you?” she asked, staring deep into his eyes, searching for how he was feeling.

  “I’ve seen a lot of people die, but when I looked through my great-grandmother’s memories in her book, it was like I was reliving it right next to her. I saw the ruin of Lunis, I saw how my father decimated her forces, and I saw what happened to the Sylvan and Hollow Shade armies. It was like nothing I’d ever seen, it was horrible. I don’t want that for my people.”

  “Your people?”

  “House Veres and all the other Houses and people who have sworn themselves to me. They entrusted me with their safety and lives. I can’t betray that trust. With the Cairn dead, the Valley Tribes will never stop fighting. Even if they retreat for now, war will eventually return to Dusk Valley. And it will be the people who swore their oaths to me who will have to fight and die.”

  “All because of this Captain Vern?”

  “I should have gone with the legion. If I had been there I could have stopped Vern. But you refused to let me leave the city.”

  “So you blame me for all of this?” Lunae lowered him to the ground.

  “Honestly, I don’t know.” He glanced at his sisters, “I know we are children of a Calamity and that means death will follow us everywhere, but not like this. I don’t want it to be like this. Had I not sent the legion after the Cairn, would their tribe still be alive?”

  “It’s possible. Probable. But for what it's worth, I don’t think your decision was wrong. You wanted to end the war, save lives. You couldn’t have known it would have ended like this,” said Melantha.

  “What did you do with Captain Vern?” asked Lunae.

  “You already know. You were watching, weren’t you? I killed him,” Stryg scowled and looked away.

  Lunae tilted his chin up with a touch of her finger. “Why?”

  “He doomed our city to war for decades if not centuries to come.” 

  “There is something else.”

  “I… Vern asked me if Marek had been among the Cairn would I have killed them all to get to him.” Stryg clenched his trembling fists. “I know the right answer would have been no, but the truth is, it wouldn’t have stopped me. If peace meant Marek would escape with his life, I don’t know if I…”

  “You don’t have to say it.”

  Stryg sighed. “It doesn’t matter anymore. Marek is dead. The Cairn is dead. Vern is dead. What’s done is done.” 

  “What’s done has only just begun. The effects of the curse you put on Vern and his family will have long-reaching consequences.”

  “Curse?” He frowned. 

  “He doesn’t even know what he did,” Holo groaned.

  “The reason you feel exhausted, Little One,” Lunae explained. “When you killed that vampire you unwittingly gathered your power and spoke words into reality, forming a divine curse.”

  “Um, what is a divine curse?” Stryg asked, though he was beginning to suspect he wouldn’t like the answer.

  “It is dangerous and a power that should not be trifled with. It is nothing like the Grey magic sigils that chromatic mages call curses, such simple spells only last as long as the caster holds the spell in focus. A divine curse is something entirely different, it is ancient and it bends the weaves of fate once spoken into existence. Few can cast one and fewer should even dare try to.” Lunae gave him a pointed look.

  “I didn’t mean to,” he admitted.

  “And you shouldn’t have been able to. Nothing so complex as this, not at your age.” She pinched the bridge of her nose. “Your relationship with the vampire must have played a larger role than I expected.”

  “I hadn’t even met the man before today.”

  “Gods don’t ever meet most of their worshippers, but they are still worshipped, still connected. Divine curses are deeply interpersonal. When Vern swore his allegiance to you, he gave you power over him. As did his House when they swore fealty to you.”

  “I don’t understand, how does that give me power over them?”

  “You are a god, Stryg, albeit a godling. Such oaths sworn to you carry power, especially when it comes to curses. So when you told Vern, ‘may your bloodline die with the countless you’ve condemned,’ it was not an insult, it was a curse you spoke into existence.”

  His eyes widened at the implication. “I didn’t mean to—”

  “Some part of you did, even if it was just in a moment of blind anger. Otherwise, the curse would have never come into existence.”

  Gale cleared her throat. “The fallout with House Blackvein will be problematic. They will seek retribution for the death of their heir. This may not be entirely a bad thing.”

  Stryg sat down on the ice steps leading up to Lunae’s throne. “First, war with the Valley Tribes, and now war between our own Houses?’

  “It will not get that far, Elise and I will make sure of it,” said Gale.

  “Elise?” Stryg furrowed his brow.

  “Elise Veres is a dangerous woman, but in this situation, that could prove quite useful. There are few people as well-versed in the dangers of politics as she,” said Gale.

  “Even still, we failed. The Cairn is gone. We will never have peace with the Valley Tribes now,” said Stryg.

  Lunae sat down next to him and placed her hand on his back. “Such peace would have been difficult to come by. There was a curse on their tribe. Its exact nature I could not determine, but its origin was clear. Queen Ananta cursed the Cairn.”

  “Why would she do that? They were loyal to her.”

  “Ananta despises all the chromatic races, what more reason than that would she need? The fact that they swore themselves to the god they knew as Caligo only gave Ananta more power over them.”

  “I noticed it on Marek as well,” said Melantha. “The curse’s bonds seemed twisted, whatever its initial purpose had been has changed.”

  “Curses can be altered?” asked Stryg.

  “Yes, they naturally alter themselves when the cursed individual tries to go against their fate,” replied Lunae. “Let’s say a woman is cursed to die at sea by drowning. She may try to avoid her fate by never going near the sea again. If the circumstances of her curse are unable to be fulfilled, the curse may warp itself; Raiders might come from the sea, attack her village, and kill the woman. Or perhaps her village is flooded. It could be something as simple as the woman slipping in her tub, hitting her head, and drawing in her bath.”

  “Curses are that powerful?” Stryg asked anxiously.

  “It depends on the strength of the divine curse, but usually, yes. If the curse is too powerful, it might even bleed over and affect those around them. Such as the woman’s entire village dying to the raiders.”

  “And what exactly determines the strength of a divine curse?” The last thing Stryg wanted was to be cursed by a god and have it hurt his loved ones.

  Lunae lifted two fingers. “The one who cast the curse and the relationship between the caster and the target. For example, if a mortal has sworn their allegiance to a god, or worse, struck a deal with a god and failed to uphold their side of the bargain. Such circumstances would allow the god to cast a very powerful curse.”

  “Can a divine curse be broken?”

  “Not so easily,” Holo said, her expression grim. “The founder of House Noir was once my apprentice. Noir was a bright individual, but he fell in love with a woman he could never have. That’s when Caligo came and offered him a deal. I warned Noir not to take it, but he made it anyway. Caligo always asks for more than people realize they are willing to give up. Few uphold their bargain with the god of the deep earth. Noir was not one of them. So Caligo cursed him and all his descendants.

  “Because of the nature of the deal struck, I am unable to break the curse. And the Noir family has paid dearly for it all these years. Even now, Caligo’s curse has twisted its way into the fates of Noir’s descendants. Their family has dwindled to so few and it will not stop.” Holo looked off into the distance and bit her lip, “The only one who seems to have resisted the curse’s effects is Unalla.”

  “Your granddaughter. She has your blood,” Stryg noted.

  Holo nodded. “Perhaps she may be the key to finally breaking the curse on the family. Time will tell.”

  “Either way, what happened to the Cairn Tribe was not your fault, Little One,” said Lunae.

  “But it will be the people of Hollow Shade who suffer for it,” said Stryg.

  “Mortals die, Little One. It is their nature. You must come to grips with that truth.”

  Her words bothered him more than he wanted to admit.