Born a Monster

364 264 – Curse of War

Those good feelings couldn’t last forever; Gamilla took every chance she had in those next two days to try grinding me down.

I didn’t blame her, from her point of view, I’d been doing that to her for a year and a half. So it wasn’t that which made me alter my daily routine to maximize exposure.

I knew my greatest desire; I wanted to explore. And now, I knew my greatest weakness. Yeah, yeah, the Charisma was still dragging up as the low core statistic.

But there’s a thing about fear; it can be faced down with courage and discipline. And nothing Gamilla said would kill me, unless she put a high portion of her mana behind the words. Mystically speaking, I had a fair deal of experience with curses and breaking them apart, for my age.

And what she did physically? So sorry, Kismet had done worse. Humanity had done worse than that. So, being elbowed out of the way? Grabbed by the back of the throat and held against the wall so Gamilla could whisper into my ear?

This was nothing compared to the sheer force of her...

[You have successfully tapped into this source of Rage. You have 1/1 Rage mana.]

[By learning to tap five different emotional faiths, you have unlocked the Divine Emotions track of your divine magic. Core Ability: Calm Emotions has been purchased.]

Blah, blah, new cultivation methods.

.....

“What did you just DO?” Gamilla hissed, more angry than ever. “Some psionic trickery?”

“Is your nose bleeding?” I asked. “It’s not psionic.”

She pulled me back, slammed me into the wall. Ooooh, two damage, and some minor pain. Honestly, I was bored with Gamilla and her vendetta. I suppose that was selfish of me... wasn’t it?

“Gamilla, if it truly hurt so much, why did you say nothing?”

She flung me down the hallway. “Don’t you DARE! Don’t you dare be who you are, and ask why I can’t trust you. Hortiluk told me about the Conclave of Thorns.”

“The Conclave of Thorns? Why are we discussing what secrets I stole from those fanatics?”

“Stole? Secrets? YOU KILLED HUNDREDS OF HOBGOBLINS!”

“Not with these hands. My strength is something recent. You think younger me walked among a people like YOU, leaving a swath of bloody corpses?”

She raised her hands as though to grasp her head, but stopped them midway. They trembled for a few seconds, and then she formed them into fists. “You. You created a religious schism. Threw their whole nation into chaos and civil war.”

“I... I’m sorry, I did WHAT, now? I think I’d remember such a thing.”

“You released two religious terrors upon their capitol. Deny it!”

“Can’t. That, I actually did. One spiritual, one physical. Both of them prisoners of their church.”

I made the mistake of rising. With a Flash Step, she was there to kick me over, to try a throat stomp that ended up pinning my lower jaw to my chest.

“We keep prisoners! The Empire, not us personally. Would you free them as well?”

“Possibly some of them. Others belong in prison.”

“Stop trying to sound reasonable. Rational. Sapient. YOU are not people.”

I raised a foot, rested my Reticule upon it.

[Person.]

[Monster.]

I sighed. “My System confirms that whatever else I am, I am still a person.”

“Then you are a horrible person!”

“Should I be otherwise? People treat me horribly; why should I bow before their wishes?”

Her eyelids narrowed. “There. There you are.”

“You want me to say it?” I asked. “Fine. I have wishes. My friends have wishes. Those come before the wishes of people I don’t know. The time when I thought the wishes of all could be answered died with my first mentor. This world is cruel and merciless; such is life. For so long as I have the ability, I will endure. I will survive, for so long as that is an option.”

She crushed down on me, perhaps two thirds of her weight. “No. Show me the real you. The wrath, the malice. You HATE the world.”

“But I do not hate the world.” I said.

“Liar!”

“I am a Truthspeaker, a Speaker of Truth. I literally... AYARGH!”

[Minor injury: Twisted neck. Rapid healing engaged.]

“Whatever I have become to survive in this world, YOU ARE WORSE. YOU ARE LESS THAN ME. You will ALWAYS be less than me.”

And then she stormed off.

I didn’t understand; allowing people to vent was supposed to calm them down, not antagonize them like this. And the part of me that DID understand wasn’t playing nice with my conscious mind.

Okay.

So this was an emotional thing. I’d just unlocked:

[Calm Emotions: Reduce known emotional influences by the rank of mana expended.]

[Ten point cost. Emotional Control, reduce/suppress only. Known emotions only. Requires expenditure of appropriate emotional faith. Serenity can substitute at three to one ratio.]

[Four point cost: Two uses per day.]

[Total cost: fourteen development points.]

What manner of other emotional things might there be? How could I use them to aid Gamilla, my loyal companion for more than a year?

If that doesn’t seem like normal thinking to you, tough. I’m not your species. I mean, unless you are. I suppose others of my kind might learn to read.

But yes, looking back on it I wasn’t in the best of emotional places myself. I might not have been as broken up about it as Kismet was, but I was also having problems letting our group fall apart. And that’s how I saw it, as falling apart, not as Gamilla just leaving us.

Anyway, enough about me. You’re probably curious about how emotional magic works. If you’ve been paying attention, you’d know the answer is – not as well as bards have led you to think.

The detailed answer is that you have to be subtle about it. Imagine water, for example. Splash someone with water, and they know they’re wet. Splash someone with Love, and they’ll know they’re being manipulated. Their natural action is to suppress the very feelings you’d hoped to engender. No, you have to be subtle about it, let the emotions build slowly.

Yeah, I had no clue about ANY of that, and wasn’t about to try manipulating others. Remember how much of a pain it was, keeping Courage and Fear and Duty apart? Well, I’d had a notion for some time that maybe they formed some kind of second tier faith.

Yes, it’s obvious in retrospect. But it wasn’t to me at the time.

I wafted mana from various faith pools in front of the three. Courage, Discipline, Duty, Fear, Blood. All of them seemed to WANT to come together. It would only take a little bit of willpower...

The War magic got away from me, did what it wanted.

[Curse of the Myrmidon. One level of hostility in all social encounters.]

“Drown Curse.” I said, trying to just GET IT OFF. I had enough social problems without such a curse on me.

It was like when other people tried to drown me. The curse just settled in and made to live there.

“And that’s why I need your help.” I said to Madonna and Kismet.

“He was doing so well.” Kismet said.

“Husband, perhaps if you didn’t poke sleeping bears, you’d have fewer claw marks on your face?” Madonna asked.

“Yeah, it’s bad enough when other people curse you.”

Madonna got a wicked smile. “This will hurt. Flames of...”

“Wait, let me get outside.” Kismet said. “Rhishi smells bad enough without being on fire.”

“No, hold him DOWN.” Madonna said. “I’ve seen him break a man in half.”

Kismet snorted. “It’s Rhishi. You’re safe.”

“AM I safe?” she asked.

“Only as safe as you want to be.” I said. “If it’s a concern...”

“BURN CURSE!”

I can’t even blame that one on the curse itself. That one was all me, and I deserved every moment of agony that brought. Honestly, for someone with an Insight rating of four, I was profoundly dumb when it came to other people.

I lay there, openly weeping. It felt like the front of my entire skin had been burned away. I knew it hadn’t, because that kind of damage would have left me incoherent for a week or so. But it felt like that.

Madonna looked down at me in dawning horror. “Husband...”

“It’s gone.” I said. “I can feel it gone.”

“Yes.” she said. “I fear the damage to your skin is ... extensive.”

What? I’d been referring to the curse. How much of my SKIN was gone?

As I turned my head to look, the baked skin cracked, and blood shot from my neck.

[Bleeding: 3] my System informed me.

“What the anal assfarts?” I asked, instinctively clapping a hand to the wound. You guessed it, cracking and bleeding from the arm.

“Stop that!” Madonna said. “By the hatred of the gods, just STOP MOVING.”

She moved, pounded on the door. “Kismet. We need leather straps. We need to tie him down.”

.....

[Status damage detected. System is attempting to repair your Title: Titanspawn.]

What? How? Why would I care about THAT right now?

“What did you DO, Donna?” Kismet asked.

Okay, THAT, I knew how to stop.

“Only what I asked.” I said. “The curse is gone.”