Curselock

Chapter 162: Warm

Chapter 162: Warm

“What are you doing! Sprint!” Isobel narrowed her eyes. “I said sprint! You call that a sprint!?”

Sybil put her head down and ran. She knew the Huntress was not speaking to her but that hardly mattered. She was slowing and the yelling reminded her of the goal. Her goal.

Idly Sybil recognized Leland a few dozen paces away speeding through the woods and increasing the gap between them before abruptly reversing directions and sprinting back. She was passed three times before she reached the reverse mark, and four more times on the way back. By the time she had finished one lap, he was already on his third.

And he wasn’t even using magic.

Well, sort of. Leland had the contract with the Lord of Endurance activated and was repeatedly healing himself with the Lord of Nature’s contract. Magic yes, but not the kind that allowed him to increase his speed like Erupting Steps. No, he was running like any common nonphysical rank two Legacy. His legs and feet were unaugmented and his Legacy provided him with intelligence and magic sense rather than increased muscle mass and agility.

He had just grown, trained, to the speed at which he ran.

Did he think about how he was leaving Sybil in the dust? No, but Sybil sure did. She was Legacy-less. Unbound to a Lord despite being host to one. But that mattered little more than the fact she was a princess that, not too long ago, was locked away in her room. She did not, was not, allowed to exercise any more than walking from her favorite courtyard to the dinner hall then to her room.

Did she care that she was being lapped by Leland? Yes, but not in the sense of feeling inferior or jealous. She was a princess, not an adventurer. No matter how hard she tried, she would not out-pace Leland any time soon. Not with his head start fighting monsters and traveling cross country.

So why did she run? Because she could.

At first she told herself she ran to pull herself out of the rift, to make herself “useful,” not to be dead weight in the case of trouble. She saw training as a means to not feel like a burden, to become something more than a princess.

Oh how naive she had been.

Seeing Leland go from fight to fight, battling down monsters without so much as a second thought, she started to realize her mistake. What drove him Sybil couldn’t say, only that between the Archon and the note his Lord passed to him, something had changed.

He fought harder. He pushed more. He strategized and limited himself. Anything to gain an advantage over what threats could be ahead – what threats could be within the storm.

But for how much Leland wished to protect her, Sybil realized he was far from being the protector he wanted to be. But Leland was not dumb, he knew his limitations far better than anyone. So why did he try so hard? Why did he sprint every morning until he threw up only to battle to the death with a monster not twenty minutes later?

Sybil thought about the question after seeing Leland, even while eating dinner, practicing. Invisible casting and some memory cantrip. Every meal, every rest, Leland would work on the pair of Legacy-less magic. It consumed him, the magic, to the point the Huntress had to yell at him to sleep.

But lying there awake, with her belly full of food, Sybil found an answer to her question. It came in the form of a muted grunt from the Huntress and a whoosh of stirred up leaves and wind.

Sybil sat up, finding the Huntress still sitting and staring out into the woods. The Archon Valley was never truly dark, so she could see what the Huntress was looking at. A monster, a variant of a wooden tree-man thing.

Sybil had been told the name of the creature the first time the group encountered one, but she was never one to remember such things. She only knew that it was scary, that its strike could sunder even the eldest trees around, let alone shatter the bones of whatever fought it.

Leland had killed each and every one they encountered without ever getting near it, simply allowing his ethereal crows to distract it while he removed its soul. The process took several minutes, but the effect was as true as the monsters’ dead corpses.

“What—”

The word slipped out before she had time to think, echoing her disgust. Brash and piercing, the single word cut through the eerily quiet woods and into Leland. He flinched, his guilt quickly changing to confusion.

“I just mean, like, I’m sorry I failed to gain a teleportation contract.”

After successfully making a deal with the Lord of Pathways, Leland had tried several more times with several different Lords to make a long-distance teleportation contract. None had succeeded at all, and in one particular case, crashed and burned. The Lord of Ley Lines and the Lord of Curses were apparently not friends.

Still, Leland had more Lords to petition. The Lord of the Void was his next big attempt.

“No,” Sybil said through gritted teeth. She couldn’t back out of the conversation at this point, not without coming across as spiteful. “I meant, well, I don’t understand why you are apologizing.”

“Because it’s my fault we are even in this mess, as much as I’d like to not admit it.” Leland had put his elbows on his knees and leaned forward. He stared at the dirt like a man standing before the executioner. “Two months,” he whispered.

“Two months is plenty,” Sybil said. “I trust you to figure out how to get back home in that time.”

“Its already been a week,” Leland then said. “A week and my best guess on how to do that is to walk into a storm?”

“Where is this coming from, Leland? You are usually much more level headed than, well, this.” She gestured at him.

“I-I’m just worried.”

“Well don’t be! I have absolute faith in you.”

He didn’t laugh, per say, but did grunt with a smile on his lips. But as the seconds ticked by, it was clear to Sybil that his smile was somber and tired.

“Hey,” Sybil said, leaning hard to the right, bumping her shoulder into his. “I trust you. Just like Glenny and Jude would if they were here.”

She then leaned back, staring up at the sky. It was starless, no doubt another Archon Experiment. “Glenny would say something a bit profound to cheer you up. Something like,” she put on an imitation voice, “‘we have been friends since I could remember. Have you ever not pulled through when we needed it most?’”

Leland looked at her.

She continued talking, “Jude... well, he’d say something loud, like threatening to punch you if you didn’t stop sulking. And if that didn’t work, he’d play you a tune on his harmonica.”

Leland snorted, a real smile crossing his lips this time. “I hate that thing.”

They fell silent at that, their shoulders touching just enough to remind each other that they were in this mess together. And that warmed them both far more than any running could.