Chapter 5 #2
“It concerns one of ours, so it concerns all of us,” Randy said, his arm around Martha. They were both carrying matching crossbows, which was either romantic or terrifying.
Illanya laughed, but it sounded forced. “You think your little town can stand against a dragon and three world-class magic users who owe me a blood debt?”
“No,” Zelda said, stepping forward. Her magic flared and suddenly looked hella ominous. “But we think we can make it inconvenient enough that you'll leave.”
“Inconvenient?”
That's when my magic turned the party up to eleven.
Every weapon the townspeople carried suddenly transformed. But not into something less dangerous. Into something worse.
The pitchfork became a pitchfork that shot fire AND played banjo music. The spatula grew to the size of a battle axe but dripped scalding hot honey. And the butterflies?
The butterflies shrank themselves down and became flying knives made of crystallized rage and poor judgment that aimed straight for Illanya’s beautiful green-gold eyes. “What the hell?” she said as she took a step back.
“I don't know!” I admitted.
The chicken-witch tried to cast something, but all that came out was what sounded like the poultry version of profanity. Her face was red with rage.
“Enough!” Illanya's form rippled, scales spreading across her skin. “I'll burn you all!”
“Try it,” Baz said quietly. Something in his voice made everyone freeze.
He stepped forward with his claw weapons gleaming in the dying light. But it wasn't the weapons that were scary. It was him. The way he moved. The way his eyes had gone completely gold. The way the air around him seemed to bend and curve.
“You want her?” he asked, his voice dropping into something that wasn't quite human. “You'll have to go through me.”
“And me,” Zelda added.
“And me,” said Dee Dee.
“And me,” the crowd said in unison.
But this time, it wasn't creepy. It was powerful.
Illanya looked around at the shitstorm she’d most recently found herself in.
At her mercenaries trapped in Gary's shame spiral, still confessing embarrassing secrets.
How did they have so many? At the chicken-witch, who was now literally laying eggs out of frustration.
At the army of townspeople either shifted into their animal form or wielding transformed weapons that defied all logic.
And at me, standing there with butterflies made of knives and a disco ball that had started playing “We Are the Champions” for some reason.
“This isn't over,” she said.
“It kind of feels like it is,” Gary said with a smirk.
* * *
Illanya's wings burst from her back in a shower of scales and angry screeches. She was shifting, right there in the yard, becoming the thing that had haunted my nightmares for months after I left her.
“Everyone back!” Zelda shouted, but my magic had other ideas.
Instead of retreating, it surged forward, wild and uncontrolled. But not toward Illanya. Toward the curse itself. I could feel it, like a burning chain between us, visible for just a moment in the dying light.
It was a rope made of fire and broken promises, stretching from my chest to hers.
“What?” Illanya started, then her eyes went wide. “No. That's not possible.”
“What's not possible?” I demanded.
“The curse. You're…you're making it visible.”
I looked down. She was right. The curse was manifesting physically, pulsing with an angry red light. And with each throb, I felt it weakening. Not breaking, but…loosening.
The now-visible curse-chain pulled tight, yanking both Illanya and me to our knees. Pain pierced my chest, but I saw the same agony on her face.
“It hurts you too,” I gasped. “The curse. It's connected to you. It's been draining you just like it's been draining me.”
“Shut up!” she snarled, but tears were streaming down her face.
“That's why you want me back. Not because you love me. Because the curse is killing you too.”
“I said SHUT UP!”
She breathed fire, but it wasn't aimed at me. It was aimed at the curse-chain itself. The flames hit it and bounced back, striking her in the face. She screamed as her skin blackened from the soot.
Oh, goddess. That’s not soot.
They were burns. Third-degree burns.
“Stop!” I reached for her instinctively. “You're hurting yourself!”
“I'm hurting YOU!” she corrected, but her voice broke on the words.
“No,” I said, true understanding finally dawning. “You're hurting us. You've been hurting us this whole time.”
The curse roiled again, and this time, I saw something else. Memories. Not mine, hers.
Illanya, on the day she hexed me, tears streaming down her face, thinking, “If I can't have you, no one else can.”
Illanya, waking up in pain every morning since, the curse eating at her just as much as me.
Illanya, realizing what she’d truly done, that dragon curses always demanded a price from the caster. This was why she came back so soon to claim me. Why she’d threatened the town with immolation and brought three mercenaries to secure me.
“You didn't know,” I whispered. “You didn't know it would hurt you too.”
She looked at me, and for the first time in years, I saw the woman I'd fallen in love with. Not the dragon. Not the monster. Just Illanya, broken and afraid and in so much pain.
“When I saw it was you, after all these years… I just wanted you back,” she sobbed. “I just wanted to stop hurting.”
“I know.” And I did. Because, despite all the bullshit we’d been through, in my weakest moments, I'd wanted the same thing.
The curse-chain flickered, weakening. My magic swirled around it, not attacking but examining. Learning.
“Tansy,” Gary urged gently, “whatever you're doing, keep doing it.”
“I'm not doing anything!”
“Exactly! Your magic is showing the truth. Her dragon curse was built on lies. The lies that love is possession, that pain is passion. Your magic can't lie. It's making the curse reveal itself.”
The chain throbbed one more time, then did something unexpected.
It spoke.
Not in words, but in feelings. All the pain, all the rage, all the desperate loneliness that had gone into its creation. But underneath that, something else.
Regret.
The curse regretted existing.
`”It wants to die,” I said, stunned. “It wants to be broken. At any cost.”
“That's impossible,” Illanya said, but hope flickered in her eyes. “Curses can't—”
“Dragon curses can't break themselves,” Zelda interrupted, stepping forward. “But they can choose to release. If both parties agree.”
“Both parties?”
“The caster and the cursed. You're both bound by it. You can both release it.”
“Would you? Even after everything?” Illanya asked.
I thought about saying yes immediately. The heroic thing. The right thing. But my magic didn't let me lie, not even to myself.
“I don't forgive you,” I said honestly. “Not yet. Maybe not ever. But I don't want either of us to hurt anymore.”
She nodded, tears still streaming. I thought she might say something tender and sweet, but the venom dripping from her voice was low and viscous. “I will never release you. I'd rather see you suffer and both of us die than see you happy with someone else.”
The words hung in the air like poison. The crowd gasped. Even the chicken-witch stopped clucking.
And the curse-chain? It went bonkers.
The visible manifestation of the curse writhed between us, momentum building until it was nothing more than a vibration. It was pure, unadulterated rage. But not at me. At her. The curse was ready for release, but Illanya denied it.
“What's happening?” Illanya gasped as the chain turned white hot and burned her more than her own fire. The flesh where it connected was consumed with flames, burning down to the bone. Pretty impressive to burn a dragon. Everyone within fifty feet took several steps back.
“You betrayed it,” Gary said, his voice filled with awe. “Dragon curses are about balance, and you broke that balance.”
The chain whipped back toward Illanya like a striking snake. She screamed as it hit her chest right over her heart, not entering but…rejecting. Pushing away. The connection between us stretched, thinned, then snapped with a sound like breaking bones.
Illanya flew backward, slamming into a tree hard enough to crack the trunk. The curse was still there. Felt it in my own chest, heavier than ever, but the link to her was severed.
“No!” She struggled to her feet, blood trickling from her mouth. “It's mine! You're mine!”
She tried to reach for the curse again, but it recoiled from her touch. Recoiled, like she was something so repulsive, so disgusting, it couldn’t even bear the thought of her.
“It doesn't recognize you anymore,” Zelda said softly. “You orphaned it. A dragon curse without a master is…”
“Dangerous,” Baz finished, stepping forward. His eyes were pure gold now, and something about his presence made everyone, including Illanya, hesitate. “But not unclaimable.”
“Don't you dare,” Illanya hissed.
Baz moved faster than anyone his size should be able to move. One moment, he was beside me; the next, he had his hand pressed against my chest, right where the curse lived. His magic, warm and steady and ancient, poured into me.
The curse fought him. Of course it did. But Baz's magic didn't try to break it or control it. It just held it. Like a parent holding a thrashing child caught up in a nightmare until they calmed themselves down. Just like he had held me this morning.
“Mine,” he said quietly, and the one word had weight. It had power. The kind of authority that came from being something very old, powerful, and wise beyond its years.
The curse sent waves of agony through me.
I screamed so loud, my throat became raw.
But something else happened too. Illanya screamed as well, clutching her chest. I felt a sense of freedom.
Release. Don’t get me wrong, the curse was still mine, still painful, still very much active, but I somehow knew some vestige of Illanya that had been hidden, even to me, had been removed.
Illanya stared at him in horror. “What are you?”
Baz smiled a smile full of very sharp, very pointy, very dangerous teeth. “I'm her fated mate. And I just severed your connection to her. You can't track her through the curse anymore. You can't feel her through it. She's free of you, even if she's not free of what you did to her.”
“This isn't possible,” Illanya whispered. “Bear shifters can't do that.”
“I'm not just a bear.” His form rippled slightly, and for just a moment, I saw something else. Something massive and terrifying. “I'm the last of the Berserker line. We used to hunt dragons for sport.”
Even I took a step back at that.
Illanya had gone pale. Well, paler. “You're all extinct.”
“Almost. But the Goddess has a sense of humor about second chances.” He removed his hand from my chest, and the curse settled into what felt like a cage made of his magic. Still there, still mine, but contained. “Leave. Now. Don't come back.”
“The town—” Illanya started.
“Is under my protection,” Zelda interrupted, and her magic flared bright enough to make everyone squint.
“It’s mine. And theirs.” She gestured to the assembled crowd, whose medley of odd weapons, and several sets of claws and fangs, was still gleaming with murderous intent.
“And hers,” she said, as she gave me a genuine smile that infected me with a mad case of the warm fuzzies.
But the real power move came from Gary.
He slithered forward, leaving a trail that glowed silver-white in the dying light. “Illanya Draconius, daughter of the Storm Line, cursed by your own hand and rejected by your own magic, I name you Outcast.”
The word hit like a physical blow. Illanya staggered.
“You can't do that!”
“I can. I have…certain authorities. Old ones.
The kind that come with consequences I'd rather not discuss in front of these fine folks.” His form shimmered like a mirage in the distance, and for just a moment, I saw what he really was.
Not a snail. Something else. Something with way too many eyes and wings made of starlight.
“Let's just say I'm calling in a very old favor to make this declaration stick.”
Then he was just Gary again, looking smug.
“Off you go, then,” he said, “before I lose my bloody patience.”
Illanya looked around at us, at me with the curse now caged but not broken, at Baz, who was apparently some kind of ancient dragon-killer Berserker, at Gary, who was clearly not a mere fucking snail, at the town full of armed citizens who still stood at the ready to defend me as if I were one of their own.
“This isn't over,” she said, but it sounded hollow.
“Yes,” I said quietly, “it is. At least for now.”
She turned to her mercenaries, who were still trapped in Gary’s shame spiral. As soon as my benevolent not-actually-a-mollusk familiar freed them, the chicken-witch immediately started cursing in actual human words. Which was almost worse than the clucking.
They limped away into the forest, Illanya pausing at the tree line to look back once. Our eyes met, and I saw everything there. Hurt, betrayal, and underneath it all, a love so twisted, it had become hate.
And then she was gone.
The disco ball played “Another One Bites the Dust,” because…well, of course it did.