Curselock

Chapter 247: Spells

To say that obtaining a Heartgem was painful was an understatement. In the moments before Leland was cast into the Void, the Mending Flame Lord operated.

She started by flicking out her finger, a bead of power forming like sweat along the tip. Long sharpened nails stylized the bead, providing a backdrop of terror along with astonishment.

Leland stared at her finger, the warmest, coziest wave of elation filling his body. Mentally, he knew that if she wanted to, that single fingernail was enough to kill him. But his body didn’t listen. He moved, practically crawling over the table, to follow her finger as she waved it through the air. Milk spilled, cookies crumbled, and more power consolidated.

Then it stopped. And Leland came back to his senses.

“Uh,” he cursed, finding his knee wet with milk and gooey chocolate. “What just happened?”

Despite the mess, the Mending Flame Lord didn’t anger nor punish. Instead, she said, “You’ve just witnessed what you might call Flameheart mixed with Healingheart and a drop or two of Lifeheart, Happinessheart, and Vitalityheart.”

Her words, while obviously important, rebounded off Leland as he found his abandoned seat. And perhaps focusing on the wrong aspect of her answer, he asked, “There are that many -hearts?”

“There are thousands of hearts.”

“Is there an Axeheart? Or Daggerheart?”

“Hmm… that means there is elemental axe and dagger.” He leaned back. “And why was I compelled to crawl over the table?”

She chuckled. “Because, well, opposites attract.”

“Please don’t do that thing all of my mentors seem to do – answer something with very unhelpful riddles.”

Again she laughed, the amber flame between her horns growing in size just as her eyes turned to slits. “I do as I want! I am a Lord!”

Leland waved a hand. “And please don’t do that thing Lords do – pretend to demand respect as a joke.”

Her eyes returned to normal, but her smile pulled back until it was like a cat’s. “Playing with fire, Mr Silver.”

“Yeah, yeah. So this ‘opposites attract’ thing.”

“It is simple. You know souls. Death, decay. You know how to fight, you understand how to kill.”

“And I also know a bit about creating. I’m out of practice, but I was taught basic enchanting and runes. And I know healing. Lord of Nature’s Healing Touch.”

He cast the spell as demonstration, tapping himself a few times with a green finger… which he realized was similar to how the Mending Flame Lord created the Heartgem. On her finger.

She broke him out of staring at his finger. “It seems you have made a realization.”

“Maybe. Does my—”

“Not answering. Every journey is different.”

Leland sighed, purposefully making it long and loud. “See, now you are doing that thing all mentors do where they hint at something, but make the mentee figure it out themselves, quoting a ‘journey’ or ‘path.’”

She reached out, taking one of the last intact cookies. “Yes, yes I am. And there are reasons for that, and not just because I think you could figure it out. For all I know, you may try your whole life and fail. I do it because my journey was different from what yours will be. Interfering with yours will only be a detriment to you.”

He thought about that for a second. “Fine. Continue about the ‘opposites attract’ thing.”

She raised an eyebrow. He quickly added, “Please?”

With a nod, she continued, “You are death. I am life. The Heartgem I made is my magic, my elemental foothold.” She waved her finger and his eyes snapped to it. There he saw it, a grain of sand the color of amber. “Cultivate it and it will bring all answers you seek.”

Before Leland could respond, she spoke one last time before sending him to the Void. “Sorry about this next step.”

He couldn’t so much as blink fast enough at her movement. One moment she was chomping on a cookie, the next she had her pointed fingernail impaled in his forehead. There was pain, sure, but since she was the Mending Flame Lord, that pain was gone before he could finish blinking.

“And like that, you now carry a Heartgem. It will adapt to your own element soon enough, all the while providing you with a sliver of mine. Your healing spells, when you utilize your Heartgem, will be amplified.”

“I-I—” Leland felt his forehead. Just as expected, a grain of sand was stuck to his skin. Or rather, in his skin right where the Lord of Mending Flame’s own was in her skin.

“But before you go,” she slapped him on the back. “That was for making a mess in my home. What a rude guest you were.”

As he hurtled through the Void, he rapidly tapped himself with Touch of Healing, finding the pain to remain. He screamed into the nothingness, his back seared with a five fingered handprint.

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But despite his own pain, the parasite living on his back had it worse. Lodestar understood the message the Lord had presented him. Leland had protection. Silently he thrived in agony, his thoughts on his wayward host. What to do, what to do.

“Lord of the Sanguine Surgeon, I humbly wish to strike a contract with you.”

Leland appeared in the Lord’s domain fearing the worst. With a name like Sanguine Surgeon, he was half expecting a laboratory full of chopped up bodies and bloodletting stations. Luckily, that was not the case.

Appearing in a dark dining room, one by one candles lit themselves highlighting a set table and steaming food. Soon dozens of flames filled the room, which seemed to be the perfect amount for the presiding Lord. Leland only noticed him because of the slight shimmer of dancing flame in his eyes.

Seated like a statue, the Lord rested his head in his palms, his elbows set on the table. He stared at Leland like an eagle tracking the movements of a rabbit, his facial features completely obscured by shadow and darkness.

Leland found himself compelled to sit. A plate of rare roast beef sat before him, along with an overfilled glass of red wine. There were no vegetables, he noted, only bloody, rare meat. And wine.

Movement caught his eye, the Sanguine Surgeon held his hand out, taking a golden chalice. He sipped from it, still staring at his guest.

“Despite what you might think,” he said, his voice solitary and cold, like a dog let out in the kennel one too many times, “this drink I have served is not blood.”

That was not what Leland was thinking at all, but now? Now he suspected it was blood. Who would feel the need to make the distinction? It was then he realized. Sanguine Surgeon? Rare meat? Blood-wine? Shadowy, dark windowless room?

He cursed internally. Where are the windows!?

Not breaking from staring at his guest, the Lord saw Leland and all of his confusion. “Might you… might you not have known about what I used to be?”

“What did you used to be?” Leland asked, his voice choppy like a lake during a thunderstorm.

“A bloodsucker.”

“Are you going to suck my blood?”

“No.”

He repressed a sigh of relief. Why was he scared of this Lord again? Dinner, politeness. Assurance. Leland kicked himself, and picked up his glass of wine. Overexaggerating the motion of drinking, he made fully sure the drink smelled fruity before sipping.

“It’s good.”

“I should hope so. It was incredibly expensive and magical in nature. You will not have to use the facilities for three months if you finish that glass.”

Leland took another sip. “Thank you. I should have brought you a gift.”

The Lord raised a hand, the darkness alluding to nothing but silhouettes and shadows. “Think nothing of it. I do not entertain many guests…”

“Because of the bloodsucker thing?”

“It holds an unsavory reputation. But in the last two hundred years, I have come to realize drinking blood is a plague.”

“And gross,” Leland added.

“Don’t knock it until you try it. The good blood was… divine.”

Suddenly, Leland didn’t want to take another sip of anti-bathroom wine. He set the glass down, finding the meal before him also unappetizing.

“Forgive me for not eating,” he said, “the Lord of Mending Flames baked cookies.”

“No matter. I will bag it and send it home with you. Breakfast of champions, some might say.” The Sanguine Surgeon Lord cleared his throat. “Shall we discuss? As I understand it, you wish to heal.”

“Yes. Something that would go well with a Heartgem and Imbue Life from the Lord of Vitality.”

Leland couldn’t see it, but the Lord raised an eyebrow at the other Lord’s name. “An interesting request filled with formidable hazards. Unfortunately nothing I could offer has quite the same umph as Imbue Life…”

“What about something that harmonizes with it instead of rivals it?”

“Hmm… An interesting proposal. I suppose, in case of proper wounds, you might appeal to improper spellcasting. A safeguard for protecting one’s body in war? Sounds stellar.”

Leland went to respond, but the Lord spoke over him.

“The spell I can offer is called Prepare Body. Used by my Legacies to prepare patients for amputation, the idea is simple. A tense body responds to magic improperly compared to a relaxed body.”

“The spell changes a person’s mental state?” Leland asked.

“No. It does nothing physically or mentally. It only opens your body to the proper ways of healing magic. For example, preparing an amputated nub of an arm to receive regenerative magic at a later time. Prepare Body would maintain its equilibrium until that point. But for you, it would be instant, allowing Imbue Life to properly activate to its fullest degree.”

“That sounds wonderful. What do you ask in return?”

“It is simple,” the Lord said, for the first time leaning into the light. A hearty scar crested his left eye and two sharpened fangs lowered from his top set of teeth. “I want you to kill a Lord.”

Leland didn’t react for multiple seconds. Then his face devolved.

The Lord interrupted his worry with a laugh. “I am only kidding! No such requirement is necessary. I ask for something much easier. I wish to try the wine of these new worlds. Gather some, and offer it to me. Three bottles from each intelligent society.”

“So that would mean twelve bottles in total?” asked Leland, completely ignoring the fact he had just been pranked by a Lord. “Since there are three intelligent races from one of the worlds and a single race from the other?”

“Yes. That sounds reasonable.”

And with that, the Lord of the Sanguine Surgeon talked with Leland for a few more minutes all the while trying to goad him into eating the meal and drinking the wine. The battle was well fought on both sides, but ultimately both considered it a win. Why? Because Leland’s stomach was empty but his hands were full. Bags of food rested in his grasp as well as mugs of wine filled his inventory ring.

A short trip through the Void ended as abruptly as ever, plopping Leland down in the camp.

Both Jude and Gelo sniffed the air, finding the sudden divine meal hand delivered to them. “Leals?” Jude asked. “You sharing?”

Leland shoved it all off on Jude, though he kept the wine secret. It was good, and as long as it was wine, he supposed he didn’t mind drinking it.

With that out of the way, he marked his list of Lords and moved on to the next one and the one after that.

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