Desnid
100th Vhalar, 719
100th Vhalar, 719
Tio couldn't sleep.
It wasn't the uncomfortable beds at the House of River's fault, nor the lack of any and all alcohol about the place. Something was niggling at the corners of his consciousness, every so slightly tickling a part of his brain enough to ward sleep away. It was like he was a spider in the middle of a web, sensing the slight vibrations of something caught nearby and unable to resist the instinctive urge to go to it. Eventually he resigned himself to the fact that trying to ignore it wasn't working, got to his feet, threw on some clothes and wrapped a blanket around himself. Following the tingling sensation, Tio wandered out of the temple and off into the forest. Snow and ice clung to every inch of the tree and blanketed the ground, chilling the tips of his toes even within his warm boots, and Tio offered a word of gratitude to the night for not being windy as well. Deeper and deeper he traversed into the woods, until eventually a flicker of amber light came into sight up ahead.
Heading towards the light, Tio stumbled across a crude campfire fighting to stay lit and a figure curled up unconscious next to it. It was an old sev'ryn man, wrapped in a dusty grey blanket but still shivering from the cold. He was completely bald and gaunt, his face haggard and, unless the light was playing tricks on him, strangely blue. Tio rushed to his side and tried to wake him, yet the moment his hand touched him and he felt how cold the man was he realised that he was at death's doorstep. He needed warmth, and fast!
Tio whipped his own blanket off his shoulders and draped it across the elderly man, then began to forage around the ground for small twigs to rekindle the fire with. Once the fire had grown enough to sustain itself for a little while he snapped some of the bigger branches off of the nearby trees and added them, frowning as they took worryingly long to light and produced far too much smoke. Was it because living branches had so much moisture in them? Regardless the fire did continue to slowly grow, spreading its warmth further out and beginning to reheat the old man. Tio continued to collect whatever firewood he could find until the fire was properly roaring away, and a modest pile of spare wood was tucked away at a safe distance to keep it going. At last the old man's violent shivering stopped, and blearily his eyes winked open, revealing a pair of colourless, milky orbs.
"What is-... is somebody there?" He asked meekly, letting out a horrible wheezing cough as he tried to push himself up. Tio put a hand on his shoulders and gently helped to pull him up.
"Easy there old timer. You had a bit of a close call there." He tried to keep his tone light and casual, but he couldn't quite keep the note of concern out of his voice. Despite the fire and the blankets the old man was still worryingly cold to the touch, and now that there was more light he could clearly see the veins of blue coloured flesh crawling up his neck.
As if he could feel Tio's gaze on him the old man sighed. "You're curious about the blue skin aren't you?" Tio's silence was all the confirmation he needed, and the old man held his hands out to warm them by the fire, revealing them to be completely blue as well. "It's a curse you see: the wrath of Ziell. It-..."
"- rends blood and flesh an icy cage, to cool the heart that burns with rage." Tio interrupted abruptly, his mouth moving on its own accord without him even thinking about it. Before he even realised what he was doing he was holding the freezing blue hands, staring at them with fascination. "How beautiful..."
The old man squinted at him curiously. "It's strange, but I swear I can almost see you in front of me, as if my curse is trying to pull me towards you. Just who are you boy? What are you?"
Tio let go of his hands and forced his gaze away from the beautiful curse, stubbornly fixing his gaze on the fire. "I don't quite know that myself yet. Something new I'm told."
"Are you cursed yourself?"
"No, but I used to be. I had quite the impressive collection actually. But they're gone now."
The old man hummed thoughtfully, and turned his own sightless eyes to stare vacantly into the fire. "Nothing is ever really gone, not as long as the memory of it remains. In my youth I was hungry for battle; so hungry in fact that I sought out wars that I didn't even have a stake in, caring not for the causes for which they fought." He let out a mournful sigh. "What a fool I was: oblivious to the fact that each man I slew upon the field of battle was a son to someone, and each woman a daughter. In a way I am thankful to Ziell for this curse. It has made my life a misery, but misery is a great teacher, and this was a lesson I needed to learn before I took more lives simply for sport." He held his azure hands up to his face. "My curse taught me an important lesson, and I'll wager yours did the same for you. They have shaped you into who you are now."
Tio scoffed. "Well they certainly did a bloody good job then."
"Indeed. They are as much a part of you as the blood in your veins." The old man continued, apparently missing the sarcasm. "You have been reborn: a child of curses. Learn the lessons they have to teach you well, and you will be among the most wise and powerful of men."
A child of curses? The words struck a strange chord with Tio's heart, and he looked down at his own hands in contemplation. He had wondered what domain he had become bound to after ascending, and he had to admit that curses certainly suited the life he had previously led. To say that he had been cursed a lot was an understatement, and yet despite the hardship they'd brought him Tio had to admit that each one had forced him to grow as a person in ways he never would have done on his own. If curses really were his domain it would certainly explain how he'd been able to look at Ziell's curse and just instinctively know what it did.
As he pondered the subject another peculiar urge welled up within him, like a frog was crawling its way up his throat. It was a word, a name, that he'd never heard before and yet somehow knew was familiar to him. Unbidden, the name slipped from out of his lips as a hushed whisper, barely audible over the crackle of the fire.
"Blestem."
The campfire suddenly burst up like a blazing pillar, bathing the two of them in amber light. From out of it a fireball shot into the air and landed a few feet away from them in a cloud of smoke and embers, melting a good portion of the snow around the crash site away into steam. The old man turned to him with a look of startled fear.
"What the everloving feck did you just do?!"
"I don't know! You were saying all that stuff about curses being a part of me, and that word just popped into my head-..."
"I was being metaphorical! By the Immortals, you must really be cursed. Do you just make everything you touch explode or something?!"
"No! Although that would explain a lot..."
Cautiously Tio approached the crash site, catching hints of a silhouette amidst the clouds of smoke and steam. Something was stirring within, a creature of some kind about the size of a cat. As the air started to clear more of the creature came into view: leathery black wings, orange fur, and a black snout tipped with two sharp fangs. It appeared to be some sort of hybrid between a fox and a bat, with bright amber eyes that shone in the dark like hot coals. Shakily the creature rolled up onto its feet, stretching out its wings as if about to take flight, and then fixed its eyes upon him. Then, to Tio's surprise, it bowed low towards him, flourishing one of its wings like a cape.
"Master." The creature acknowledged, speaking not with words but directly into his head. Its voice was male, but with an accent he'd never heard before: a rather posh and musical one, but with a sinister note to it.
Although initially surprised, the rational part of Tio's mind recalled feeling a similar sensation once before: during the brief time he'd possessed Delroth's mark and had one of his bird spirits, the aptly named Diva, serve as a familiar. He'd met a number of followers of other Immortals who'd also been given spirit familiars in the form of animals, most recently Ni'wei and his wolves. Was this creature a spirit too? It would certainly explain how it had popped out of the fire, although Tio was at a loss as to what animal this spirit was supposed to be.
As if sensing his thoughts, which indeed was probably exactly what it did, the spirit continued. "You called for me at last my master, and so here I am. My name is Blestem, spirit of hexs, and the first of many such spirits who will serve your marked forevermore. It is my pleasure to meet you."
"A familiar. My familiar." Tio replied, a wolfish grin beginning to slide across his face. Now that was pretty cool. He reached out to shake its tiny paw. "A pleasure to meet you too. So if you are a spirit of hexs then I suppose my domain must be-..."
"- curses, yes." Blestem finished, mimicking Tio's lopsided grin on his own face. It looked a lot cooler with fangs. "You are the lord of bewitchment. The ruler of jinxes. The Cursefather. You shall bestow punishment upon the wicked in a way that no other Immortal shall ever match."
Tio's smile morphed into a frown. "But how? It's all well and good saying I have the power to do these things, but I wasn't born an Immortal. I don't know how to unlock this power within me."
With a quick flap of his wings Blestem launched up off the ground and perched upon Tio's shoulder. "Then I shall show you how, my master. Allow me to guide you; to teach you what a curse is and how to create them yourself, so that in turn you may teach your disciples. It is your destiny to take the art of cursecrafting to greater heights than any being ever has before."
Now that sounded like a good idea. Tio looked over to his new companion with a sharp-toothed smirk. "Where do we start?"
Blestem matched his smirk with one of his own. "Follow me master. Follow me."