Chương 5: Fate Cursed

Viren was pretty sure he was kind of crushing Tallow in his hug. The kitten mewled as it struggled against his embrace. He wasn't letting go that easily, though. It was embarrassing, but if he let go of the kitten and looked away, he was probably going to break down into ugly sobs. His glasses were already askew, his heart was pitter-pattering like mad, and he kept seeing that awful, clawed, glassy monstrosity looming over them and swiping away Tallow with impunity. Tallow's next mew sounded a lot more comforting.

Viren tried to calm his impulse to hyperventilate. Steady, steady. This wasn't how he was supposed to act. If terrible odds made him fall apart like this, then he had no business dreaming of being anything more than the street urchin he'd been born as. Soft steps belied the sheer presence that settled down next to him.

"I'm sorry," the man said. He didn't sound regretful or apologetic. Just sympathetic.

"I have a Glyph of Tranquillity that can calm you."

"I'm calm." Viren hiccupped down a sob, blinking through the tears blurring up his vision. Great, he'd need to clean his glasses yet again.

"W-why haven't you used it yet, sir?"

"Because it's not something to be used lightly. Glyphs of that nature, ones that affect a person's mind and emotions, need careful deliberation before administering. And in almost all cases, it would be remiss to use it without the recipient's consent. Besides, my Glyphs are…" Powerful. That's what they were. Ridiculously powerful. So much so that he had literally ripped open the fabric of spacetime to snatch Tallow's soul before it could properly pass on.

At least, that's what Viren understood from what the man had explained.

"I'd like to feel calm," he said quietly. The strange man didn't hurry, choosing instead to observe and consider a bit more.

"As you wish." His Glyph almost blinded Viren with its intensity. It was so bright, it was impossible to make out its shape besides the soft curls around its edges. And its colour wasn't even constant. The gleaming white was interspersed with soft rainbow hues. That meant it was at least Tier 15 magic. Viren only knew of a handful of people at the academy who were capable of that level of power. At least Tier 15. If not higher. Probably higher.

What Viren certainly knew was that no one at the academy had tampered with Fate itself. Not to this degree.

"You broke one of Kolmik's Laws of Magic," Viren said, hardly believing the words tumbling out of his mouth.

"Never use magic to tamper with Fate in any way. I… I think stealing souls before they can fully die counts."

"And you already sound a little calmer," the man replied.

"How is the kitten?" Viren could hear the man's smile. He was right, though. Viren was calmer. And that too, despite the fact that the Glyph had been cast at least thirty handspans away. It was so strong that he was being subtly affected even this far off. With his newly dry eyes, Viren took in his crazy cat.

"He seems fine. Which means I can berate him a lot for running into a dungeon and getting lost." Tallow protested with a growly meow. The man laughed softly.

"Don't worry," he said.

"Blaszius Kolmik wasn't the sort of fellow to stress over technicalities. We're not doing anything evil, after all." Viren thought about begging to differ, but he was mostly just a tiny bit flabbergasted at the casualness of his saviour. The man sounded like he had known Blaszius Kolmik. The Blaszius Kolmik, the ancient archmage who had set down the guiding principles of magic that had formed the bedrock of the Grand Frame. No, no. That was just insane. Viren needed to stop jumping to crazy conclusions.

He was pleasantly distracted by a glowing notice window. [Achievement Recognized: Fate Cursed The soul of a manabeast bonded to your manasoul has defied Fate. As the bonded owner, you are now cursed by Fate itself. Reward: You now take more damage from all sources and are more susceptible to death. In return, you can now earn Achievements much faster.] Was that good? Bad? It sounded perfect for non -risk-takers actually, and Viren… Well, he had just dashed through a dungeon two entire rank-tiers above his own.

Had his somewhat eccentric saviour not been around, Viren was positive neither he nor Tallow would have made it out alive. Which hurt to consider. He was just glad that the curse part of the achievement was targeted at him, not at Tallow. Poor kitten was innocent in all this. Said saviour got back to his feet, his evening-blue cloak shifting as he pulled in his skeletal arm made of metallic bones and muscles. His clothes seemed normal, but the material caught Viren's eye.

The cloak had a strange crosshatch quality to it. The threads of his amethyst robes seemed to writhe like they were alive. Viren realized he was staring rather impolitely and quickly corrected himself. He also realized the Glyph of Tranquillity was fading, but the calmness wasn't receding. As long as he didn't—no, he had to stop thinking about it, for the Everlasting's sake. The point was that Viren had been far too self-absorbed these last few minutes and he needed to correct that.

"Thank you," Viren said, bowing his head and making his cat bow its head too. Tallow meowed accordingly.

"Thank you so, so much, sir. If you hadn't been here…" The man's eyes were focused on something invisible in front of him when Viren looked up. A window from the Grand Frame, probably. No one could see anyone else's notices from the Grand Frame. Viren swallowed at a sudden thought. What sort of achievement would the Grand Frame reward someone for literally defying Fate itself? The author's narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon. Wait, no.

The even more wondrous thing was that he was in the presence of someone who could defy Fate. Viren had so far been kind of repressing that fact from taking over his head. Because the idea of a mage who could literally pull a soul out of Paralimb before inserting it back into its fully healed and functional body wasn't just absurd. It was downright insane. If he told the truth of what had happened in the dungeon, he'd be ridiculed. Probably bullied too.

That thought reminded him of Kohn and Vrahm again, igniting a spark of retribution he couldn't tamp down. He chided himself. As he had already told himself, it wasn't so much getting back at them as it was meting out deserved justice. And Viren would dispense justice.

"Don't be too thankful," the man said, refocusing on his vicinity. The fading light from that Glyph of his was making his supremely dark hair look almost more deep-brown than black.

"Without knowing the full story first." Viren blinked a bit. What was that supposed to mean?

"No offence, sir, but you're kind of patronizing, aren't you?" He clamped his mouth shut as soon as he finished speaking. His eyes had gone as wide as his glasses. Silent though Viren forced himself to remain, his mind was screaming and cursing at him like the time Academ Sylva had done when he had burned through the professor's prized potions cauldron. Way to go, stupid Viren. Surviving a deadly dungeon with his cat's life intact only to piss off his saviour and immediately get obliterated.

The man had frozen, puzzled for some reason.

"Patronizing? But I'm not your patron, though?" Viren blinked. The man blinked back. Rather expressively at that, too. Almost like he was trying to communicate via the blinks. Wait, was he…? Maybe it was a language issue. He had noted the stranger was odd in several ways, not least of which was how he spoke in a somewhat older dialect that Viren had to pay proper attention to. Even if certain words felt a little unfamiliar, the surrounding context always helped fill in the gaps in meaning.

So, maybe that was affecting the man in reverse. Maybe he wasn't fully familiar with modern-day Androvian. That obviously led to Viren wondering just who in the whole wide world his saviour was supposed to be. The man had actually told him this long-winded story about other Realms and all that, and Viren was a bit ashamed to admit that he recalled little. He had been too pressed for time, too anxious about whatever state Tallow was in, to pay attention. Not that it was a good excuse.

"Anyway," the man said.

"I understand you may be a bit troubled by everything that has transpired. But I don't think there's anything you need to worry about." He was trying to be kind in his own way. Viren wanted to be reassured, but the way the stranger was being so utterly casual about defying Fate itself just made Viren feel a tiny bit faint more than anything.

"I'm sorry, sir," Viren said, shame making his face burn. He felt like he had plunged his head into a vat of unicorn piss.

"But I, uh, I'm not sure what to call you…"

"Ah, right." The stranger laughed good naturedly.

"My apologies. As you've probably noted, my social skills are on the rustier end. But yes, you can call me Ryland."

"Ryland." Viren cleared his throat, then got up. Then he bowed. Again. Formally and properly this time.

"I owe you a big debt." He spoke with conviction, trying to correct and make up for his earlier fumbling.

"I know you said not to be too thankful, but Tallow and I wouldn't be standing here, alive and well, if not for you. I don't really know who you are, and I don't know what you want, but if there's anything I can do to help, I'm your man!" Tallow meowed in agreement, squirming enthusiastically in his grip. Ryland looked impassively at Viren. He found the gaze difficult to meet. In the dungeon's dim light, Ryland's eyes glowed amber, the dark pupils within almost demonically thin. Hold on, was he a demon?

Obviously not a typical one, considering his capabilities. And he didn't have any other markers besides those strange eyes. Plus, his face was a little too sharp, a little too agelessly smooth, almost elfin in a way. Viren's mind raced. Don't tell him Ryland was a secret, illicit son of the Demonic Imperator and the Elvhenan Empress.

"I applaud your conviction," Ryland said.

"But um, you are not quite a man just yet." Another moment of silence where they blinked at each other.

"It's… a figure of speech, sir," Viren said slowly. Oh, wait. Speech didn't have figures, right?

"Figure of speech is… also a figure of speech." Viren paled. Crap. Had he just been patronizing to Ryland? Crap, crap, crap. Viren was about to open his stupid mouth to apologize profusely, but then, strange light washed him in dark purple.

"What in the…?" Viren looked up to see the weirdest Glyph ever floating far over his head. He couldn't begin to decipher it because half of the pure black Glyph wasn't even visible. Then the sheer wrongness of it hit him. Lines of darkness slowly wormed into the world, edged with a deep violet light that triggered a primal instinct of pure, absolute terror. One that lasted only a few, heart-wrenching moments. Because within a couple of heartbeats, Ryland's Glyph of Tranquillity had resurged even brighter. Wait?

Was this man, this inconceivable mage, capable of making his Glyphs even stronger than they already were?

"Ah, it seems Fate is determined to interfere," Ryland said with that unshakeable relaxed manner of his.

"But, as I said, not to worry." Viren was pretty sure he wasn't worrying mostly because he was under the auspices of Ryland's overpowered Glyph. And then the man cast more impossible magic." [Ephemeral Fortress]." Ryland might have called it a spell circle, but what actually appeared was an honest-to-goodness sphere forming between his head and the black half-Glyph far above him. Viren could only gawk. A three-dimensional spell circle?

The last time he had seen one was when Headmaster Alaric had set off the magical fireworks during orientation this year. But that had been a spell circle worked on by multiple high-ranked mages at the same time. Yet here, Ryland was casually placing Subglyphs front, back, below, and above the central gleaming green Glyph that reminded Viren of a shield. A strange aura settled around Viren. The final twinges of terror that the dark lines had tried to leave on him now faded into absolutely nothing.

There was an intellectual level of anxiety Viren couldn't rid himself of. Fate cursed, his achievement had read. Had that dark half-Glyph been a manifestation of the "curse"? Intrinsically, though, Viren's soul just no longer felt the deleterious effect after Ryland's spell came into play.

"What… did you just do, sir?" Viren asked, a little wondrously.

"Actually, who even are you? How can you even do all this…?" Viren had frantically avoided asking what Ryland was supposed to be. He was learning from his stupidity.

"I believe I mentioned a great deal of context earlier," Ryland said, which made Viren's face burn in shame again. That was true. He hadn't paid enough attention at the time. And he wasn't about to make excuses for it.

"But no matter, I can reiterate. Later, however. Right now, I need to take advantage of our little debacle." Viren frowned. Take advantage? To accomplish what? Cracks split the space of the dungeon. A new spell circle had alighted from Ryland's outstretched hand, a "simple" two-dimensional one this time, but no less impressive going by how it twisted and warped space itself. Another rift formed, like the ones he had created earlier. Right.

This was a different Centreglyph from the one that made up Ryland's barrier spell. Viren was going to lose track of how often he was being forced to stare incredulously. He was just reminded that he had actively seen Ryland use multiple Soul Glyphs. Only Soul Glyphs could act as Centreglyphs for spell circles, so a different Centreglyph meant Ryland had more than one Soul Glyph. Viren could count on one hand the number of people he knew of who had managed to eke out a second Soul Glyph in their lives.

High Academ Warston, even the Headmaster, they all had two at most. And here, Ryland was casually slinging around several. Insane. Viren went still. More rents in reality opened up as Ryland's magical diagram of Glyphs disappeared. From within each rift, those bone-white tendrils with fatal dark fangs slowly slithered out with heart-stopping menace. But Viren could only stare at the rift in the very middle of it all.

Where Ryland had plunged his skeletal arm to clamp down on and pull out a weird orb of metallic blue stone etched with liquid magic.

"What is that?" Viren asked. Tallow growled at the orb.

"Easy, there."

"This," Ryland said, "is the dungeon core." Viren gawped a bit. The orb started spitting magic, but Ryland cast another spell circle faster, another barricade spell with that green-tinged Soul Glyph as the Centreglyph. Of course, this Glyph was edged with iridescence too, just like the other ones from Ryland. An indication of its true Tier. Inconceivably strong magic. Which was proven when the violent cracks and fatal lashes of magic spewing out of the screeching dungeon did absolutely nothing at all to Viren.

"I think that's enough," Ryland said. Somehow, despite the shrieks that echoed and rebounded in the chamber, Viren heard the man with perfect clarity." [Moon Eater]." A second later, the tendrils lashed in faster than lightning. The black teeth sank into the dungeon core, into the heart of the dungeon that few mortals ever saw. Then the core was ripped apart unceremoniously in the blink of an eye. The shrieking was snuffed to silence.

"Oh, how fascinating," Ryland said as a storm of magical sparks danced around his body from the shattered core. His eyes were a bit distant.

"A new Soul Glyph! This Grand Frame of yours is rather charitable!" Viren felt like he was choking on a fishbone.

"No, sir, it really isn't. I think that's just you."