Curselock

Chapter 236: Beast

Leland didn’t see what he expected to see when he entered the Beast Lord’s domain. Expecting dung-piles and musky fur, he envisioned a tapestry of pelts and hordes of animals. Grazing land as far the eye could see, with animals filling every inch. Maybe even some predators hiding among the shadows, waiting for opportunities to pick off the stragglers.

Instead, Leland arrived at a circle of flat stone and weeds. Cracks meandered around and through the flooring, giving way to struggling life. Yellowing straw-like flowers, wilted crabgrass, and even thinned patches of various ivies.

Taking in his surroundings, Leland found the stone floor to be a platform of sorts. Past a certain point, the gray rock ended and overcast skies began. Clouds took up the remainder of the Lord’s home, blocking most of the sunlight.

Slowly, Leland stepped to the edge of the platform and looked down. Nothing. Nothing as far as he could see. Just a pit of darkness.

“What is up with Lords and bleak landscapes,” Leland whispered aloud to himself, his mind going to many of the Lords he’d contracted with. “Where are the tropical beaches? The castle in the clouds?”

He shook himself out the train of thought, instead moving back to the center of the platform. Then he waited. And waited. And waited. By the sixth minute, he removed his birthday gift from his pocket. The second hand wasn’t moving.

Leland stared at the device, shaking it when he thought it was broken. But then he remembered, time is much faster while he’s conversing with a Lord. During his extended wait, not even a second had passed in the real world.

It was then the ground shook.

He felt it, even from way up in the sky. He felt the earth quake and the ground move. Crushing booms echoed at evenly spaced seconds, each the sound of a cannon. Boom, boom, boom.

As the sounds grew nearer and the quaking grew stronger, Leland recognized it for what it was, after all, he had just felt the same thing minutes earlier.

Something big was approaching, like Floe walking toward the dungeon’s entrance.

Sudden noise caught his ear. Leland twisted, finding a flock of birds blending in against the gray sky. And as much as he wished he could inspect the birds, something else was more pressing.

The weeds around his feet bloomed. Their yellow dying color instantly shifted to bright green, like a jungle in peak spring. Their stems went stiff, their patchy area grew. Soon the platform was rich with life, life that quickly fought for dominance. Ivy grew over dandelions, crabgrass ate away at the remaining real estate.

Leland had to kick his feet out when roots started to grip to his boots.

Then rain appeared.

The first drop landed at the edge of the platform, the next landed closer to the center. The booming steps were getting closer now, the quaking far worse. Leland no longer felt like chiding himself for wobbling knees. Now, he fought to stay standing on two fronts.

Boots now thick with weeds, legs like jelly, he fell, entangled. The weeds grew over him, the rain now falling like daggers. Vines wrapped around his face and mouth, roots grew to consume his vision. As the stray light peaking through the clouds began to fade from his sight, Leland decided he had had enough.

Wings appeared from his back, breaking through the weeds like a thug kicking through a window. Leland then shot to the sky, becoming one with the fleeing birds. And as he stared at the platform now home to literal bushes of weeds, his face grew cold.

“You attack a humble guest?” Leland screeched into the ethos.

The rain stopped.

The weeds withered.

Even the birds seemed to ease, their flapping and flocking turned mute against the dire backdrop.

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Leland eyed all of this, cracking his neck. With a heavy face, he understood what was meant. He wasn’t attacked, this was just the leaking power of the Beast Lord. This was all but confirmed when the Lord finally appeared from the darkness.

Horns came first, each fluted and curved like a metrete’s mustache. They drifted through the darkness far higher than Leland’s flight took him..

Boom.

Boom.

Next came the Beast Lord’s snout and face. Nostrils that could serve as entire cave systems, eyes that reflected the surrounding darkness like ponds reflecting the night sky. More of it peered from the dark, a wide neck, a humped back and stout front legs.

Leland stared down from his heighted vantage, unable to find the hooves that trampled the unseeable ground. One thing was for certain, he recognized the Lord’s form.

A buffalo.

Boom, boom.

Grass and trees grew on top of fur and skin. Animals, some mundane, others magical, grazed or hunted like the grass was as natural as not. An entire ecosystem lived on the Lord’s shoulders, fit with watering holes and differing biomes.

Boom—

It stopped and peered down.

Leland held its stare, his crow wings flapping occasionally to keep him afloat.

He decided to rectify his error. “Apologies for accusing you of attacking me. I realize now that the rain and weeds were akin to a swimmer’s wake. Their destruction is hardly an afterthought to the swimmer.”

With a deep breath that seemed to stretch on, the Beast Lord spoke. “Indeed. But it is I who should apologize.”

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His voice was deeper than the oceans, thicker than syrup, slower than a sloth. Vowels droned on, consonants became stepping stones for the beginnings of new and different conversations. But despite taking such a long time to speak, the Beast Lord didn’t once stutter or lose his place.

“I am a Lord. I should have a proper grasp over my power.”

Leland felt as though he could have eaten a full meal in the pause between sentences. Still, he appreciated the acknowledgement.

“Thank you, Beast Lord. That means a lot to hear.” He gave a short bow to punctuate his words.

“Well,” the Lord then said, the tone rumbling the platform. “I don’t have all day. What do you wish to barter.”

Leland almost recoiled. He was the one being rushed? If Glenny and Jude were here, he would have assumed this was some elaborate prank. But they weren’t, and he was speaking to a Lord.

“I come for knowledge more than physical or personal gain. My friend, Floe, a Guardian Spirit Beast, wishes to leave her dungeon home. I wish to barter for a solution.”

“You already have a solution.”

Leland’s face twisted at that. “A Claim and divinity?”

“Correct,” the Beast Lord said, raising his head in a slow nod. The wildlife living on him didn’t react to the sudden movement.

“Is it possible?”

“Perhaps, perhaps not.”

“Hmm… Allow me to rephrase. If I give the Claim in my possession to Floe, how likely would it be for her to achieve Lordship?”

“Likely,” the Lord answered, not skipping a beat.

“That’s… a rather direct answer.”

“I speak not in riddles. I find it…” the moment stretched… “tedious.”

“Could you speak more on the process?” Leland asked.

“I could. But I will not.”

“Alright then. Could you tell me if I’m missing something?”

The Beast Lord stared at him. He continued, “I have a Claim. Floe is very powerful and is quite in tune with her element. But I suspect there is more to that. Floe has owned the dungeon she lives in for many, many years. She literally keeps the dungeon core on a necklace. The dungeon fears her, it tries to kill her at every chance it gets. But it fails because Floe is just that much more powerful than it.”

He paused, eyeing the Lord. The buffalo gave away nothing.

“Floe controls everything about the dungeon. Anything that bothers her about it is instantly killed the moment the dungeon reforms it. She’s gathered so much control, in fact, that she can sense the outside world somewhat.”

Leland collected himself. “So, I believe Floe would be a good candidate to become the new Lord of Dungeons. She has the power, the experience, the ruthlessness. And with my Claim, that reality could be.”

Again, the Beast Lord made no motion to confirm or deny. He didn’t even blink.

Sighing, Leland asked, “Is there another way? I don’t want to force divinity on Floe. But I don’t know another way to break her out of the dungeon.”

“There are many ways,” the Lord said with a great huff from his great nostrils. “But there are few that you are capable of without significant personal payment.”

Figuring as much, Leland felt it couldn’t hurt to ask. “If I were to contract you to remove Floe from the dungeon safely, what would it cost me?”

“More than you could pay.”

“What about from another Lord? Would the price change?”

“Insignificantly.”

“Why? I mean, why is removing a monster from a dungeon so difficult?”

The Beast Lord stared down at him. “I shall not answer that unless you decide the answer is worthy of a contract.”

It was then Leland realized every answer the Lord had given had been open, meaning without a contract. And if the answer to that question was deserving of a contract… well… it made him all the more curious.

Instead of accepting a contract, Leland instead asked, “Who, or what, created dungeons?”

It was a simple question, one that researchers had been asking for thousands of years. The basics behind dungeons were simple enough. They were magical in nature, but too perfect to be natural. They grew, like weeds, from places rich with magic, or life in some cases, creating sub-worlds to house vast things.

The Beast Lord didn’t answer, but the silence was answer enough. A contract could answer the question.

So Leland tried again, this time taking a bit of a leap. “Do dungeons have to do with becoming in tune with an element.”

“No.”

“Well okay then.”

“Do you wish to forge a contract or not?” the Beast Lord asked, his words still long.

Leland thought for a moment. The question of who created dungeons loomed in his mind, like an itch under the skin. But no. That answer could wait.

“You’re a Guardian Spirit Beast, right?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “How about your blessing? But not for me. My friend Jude, he is trying to collect them. Well, collect sounds wrong. Animals like him, is what I’m getting at. And a blessing seems like a good fit for him.”

Hot air ruffled around Leland as the Beast Lord exhaled. “Acceptable,” the buffalo said. “In return, I want you to…”

The pause lasted for two minutes.

“You are venturing into the two Tears leading to world Alpha, correct?”

World Alpha was one of the three, possibly four new worlds. While the others had proper names, or no name at all, Alpha was called that because there was no local intelligent life to tell of the world’s name. In fact, there was no life at all. It was just barren, or so the reports went.

Leland shrugged. “I don’t think anyone expected us to go in, just secure it from others wanting to go in. But yeah, I figured we would take a quick stroll inside even if it was empty.”

“It is not empty.” The Beast Lord’s eyes darted to the side, staring at nothing for a long moment before returning to Leland. “My request is this, enter world Alpha. And wait.”

A chill went down Leland’s spine.

“Wait for what?” he asked.

“Something.”

“No. No, no, no, no.” Violently shaking his head, Leland added, “I’m going to need more information than that. ‘Something’ is too vague and too eerie to agree to.”

Again, the Beast Lord’s eyes went to the side. And this time, just for a second, Leland thought he saw the Lord look past the side. As if the Lord was looking into a different reality. As if the Lord was speaking to someone wishing to be unseen or someone unable to be—

“Talking to the Lord of Curses, huh?” Leland asked, having experienced this same phenomenon with other Lords in the past. “Hey!” he then yelled in the general direction of where the Beast Lord was looking. “Let me make my own contracts! Stop interfering or I’m going to start calling you granny to my friends!”

The Beast Lord’s eyes flicked to Leland and back in an instant, far faster than any movement he had made previously. Another grueling moment passed, then he looked back to Leland.

“You are correct. The Lord of Curses is… coaching me through creating a contract with you.” the beast cleared his throat. “She has a message for you. ‘Leland accept the dang contract. Trust me.’ End quote.”

Leland rolled his eyes. “Jude gets a blessing or me waiting inside world Alpha? How long?”

“An hour… at most.”

“Fine. Let’s get this over with.”

“Jude can receive his blessing at any temple of mine…” the Beast Lord’s eyes darted to the side. “The Curse Lord has a final few words for you. ‘Don’t make any more shrines, you idiot.’ End quote.”

Sighing, Leland said, “Well now I want to make more shrines.”