The Cursed Extra

"It’s like watching someone try to pick a lock with a fish."

***

The shaman’s roar shook loose stones from the tunnel ceiling.

Each one clattered against the floor like broken teeth. Rhys pressed himself harder against the wall. His injured shoulder screamed in protest as the rough stone dug into his back.

The creature’s rage had transformed into something beyond fury. A primal force that made the air itself feel heavy and wrong.

He could taste copper on his tongue. Whether from blood or fear he couldn’t tell anymore.

"You dare mock the songs of my people?"

The shaman’s voice cracked like splitting timber. Each word reverberated through the narrow passage until Rhys felt it in his chest.

"You think your words can protect you from true power?"

The grey-robed figure remained motionless.

Hands still clasped behind his back. His posture spoke of boredom rather than fear. As if he were watching a particularly dull lecture rather than facing down a monster that had just torn apart two hobgoblins with its bare claws.

Rhys couldn’t understand it.

The casual stance. The relaxed shoulders. The complete absence of anything resembling survival instinct.

Either this stranger was the most powerful person Rhys had ever encountered, or he was utterly insane.

"Oh, please do," the newcomer said. Examined his fingernails with the careful attention of someone who had nowhere else to be. "I’ve been curious about your technique. Show me this ’true power’ you keep mentioning. I could use the entertainment."

The shaman’s transformed features twisted into something approaching a grin.

Its elongated jaw unhinged slightly. Revealed rows of needle-sharp teeth that gleamed wetly in the torchlight.

Rhys had seen predators smile like that before. In the Whisperwood when the beasts knew their prey had nowhere left to run.

Ancient words began spilling from its throat.

Not the guttural chittering Rhys had heard from the goblins during their raid. Something older. Far more terrible. Something that predated language as humans understood it.

"Mor-thak-gul nethek shalar-ven..."

The syllables hit Rhys like a blow.

Each word carried weight that pressed against his mind. Tried to burrow inside his skull like parasites seeking purchase in soft tissue.

He recognized the sensation from moments before. The same invasive cold that had nearly overwhelmed him during their fight.

But this was different.

Stronger.

The shaman wasn’t holding back anymore. Wasn’t playing with its food or conserving power for later threats. This was everything it had. Unleashed without restraint.

Green light began seeping from the creature’s eyes. Spread down its arms like veins of sickly fire that pulsed in time with the chant.

The fetishes on its dropped staff rattled against the stone floor. Responded to the magic even from a distance. Bone clicked against bone in a rhythm that made Rhys’s teeth ache.

The very air around the shaman shimmered with malevolent energy. Distorted the torchlight until shadows danced on the walls like tortured spirits.

"Gorthek mal-shan, vel-thak morun-dar!"

The chant reached a crescendo.

The green light exploded outward in a wave that filled the entire tunnel from floor to ceiling. Rhys felt it wash over him. A tide of despair and madness that clawed at the edges of his consciousness with hooks made of his own memories.

His vision blurred.

His thoughts scattered like leaves in a hurricane. Whipped away before he could grasp them.

This was the power that had broken Jorik.

The curse that turned minds inside out and left nothing but screaming shells behind.

Rhys had seen his teammate’s face when the magic took hold. Had watched recognition drain from those eyes like water from a cracked vessel.

Now he understood why.

Now he felt the same hooks sinking into his own thoughts.

He tried to think of Elara. Tried to hold onto something real. Her smile when he’d left for the academy. The way she’d pressed his father’s spear into his hands and made him promise to come back.

But the green tide was too strong.

It pulled at his sanity with fingers that knew exactly where to dig.

You’ll never save her.

The thought bloomed in his mind like rot spreading through fruit.

She’ll die alone while you rot in this tunnel. Your father will weep over two graves instead of one. Everything you’ve done, every humiliation you’ve swallowed, every coin you’ve scraped together. None of it matters. You’ll fail her just like you’ve failed everyone else.

The thoughts weren’t his own.

But they felt real.

They felt true.

They carried the weight of every fear Rhys had ever harbored. Every doubt he’d pushed down during sleepless nights in his cramped academy dormitory.

He felt his grip on consciousness slipping. Felt himself falling into the same abyss that had claimed his teammate.

But the grey-robed figure simply reached into his pocket.

Rhys watched through the haze of mental assault as the newcomer withdrew something small and crude-looking.

A piece of roughly carved stone. No larger than a copper coin. The kind of trinket a child might make during their first lesson in runecraft. The surface bore scratches that might have been symbols. Though they looked more like the work of an amateur than any proper runic inscription Rhys had seen in his academy textbooks.

The wave of green energy struck the figure head-on.

The malevolent light wrapped around him like grasping fingers. Sought purchase in his mind. Probed for weaknesses the way a locksmith probed tumblers.

The shaman’s grin widened. Anticipated the moment when another victim would fall to its ancient curse. When this arrogant child would finally learn respect.

The grey-robed figure crushed the carved stone between his fingers.

As casually as one might crumble a dry leaf.

A brief flare of dull light pulsed from the crumbling fragments. Barely noticeable compared to the shaman’s spectacular display.

The green energy recoiled as if it had struck a wall.

Flowed around the figure like water around a stone planted firmly in a riverbed.

He stood untouched in the center of the magical storm. Looking mildly inconvenienced by the whole affair. As if the most devastating mental attack Rhys had ever witnessed was nothing more than an annoying draft.

The crushing weight on Rhys’s mind vanished instantly.

The invasive thoughts scattered. Left him gasping against the tunnel wall with tears streaming down his cheeks that he hadn’t realized he’d been shedding.

He blinked rapidly. Tried to process what he’d just witnessed. Tried to understand how a cheap-looking trinket had just neutralized magic that should have shattered any mortal mind.

The shaman’s chanting faltered.

Its burning eyes widened in disbelief as its most devastating attack simply... stopped.

The green light flickered and died like a candle drowned in water. Left only the wavering torchlight to illuminate the scene.

For the first time since the creature had begun its transformation, something other than rage flickered across its features.

Fear.

"Was that it?"

The figure dusted stone fragments from his fingers with an unhurried motion, the remnants of what had been, moments ago, the most terrifying magical artefact Rhys had ever seen reduced to nothing more than grit and powder. His tone carried the same flat boredom he’d maintained throughout the entire encounter, as if the shaman’s assault had been a minor inconvenience he was already forgetting.

"I’ve had more stimulating conversations with moss." He paused, tilting his head as though genuinely trying to recall a more disappointing experience and failing. "Very disappointing, really. I had been hoping for something worth remembering. A challenge, at minimum. Even a mild one."

The shaman staggered backward.

Its massive frame trembled, the hulking body that had seemed so utterly immovable now shaking with something caught between rage and a confusion so profound it bordered on anguish. The great corded muscles, the ritual scars, the burning eyes—all of it seemed somehow diminished now, stripped of the terrible certainty that had accompanied every previous movement.

"Impossible." The word came out cracked, hollow. Raw. "The Mor-thak-gul breaks all minds. Every mind. It is the song of endings. The whisper that stops hearts and empties skulls." Its voice rose, spilling toward desperation as it gestured at the grey-robed figure with one enormous clawed hand. "You should be screaming. You should be broken and weeping and empty. Your thoughts should be scattered across the void like ash in a gale!"

"Should I?"

The figure tilted his head to the other side. He considered the statement with the same mild, detached expression a scholar might wear while examining a flawed theorem—not offended by it, not alarmed, merely noting where the logic had gone wrong.

"I suppose that would be more dramatic. But honestly, your technique needs work. The mental vectors are all wrong, and you’re broadcasting on frequencies that any first-year ward can deflect."

He brushed specks of dust from his grey robes.

"The resonance patterns are sloppy. The anchoring mechanisms are centuries out of date. And your pronunciation of the final syllables was frankly embarrassing."

His smile widened.

"It’s like watching someone try to pick a lock with a fish."

Rhys felt his jaw drop.

The creature’s ultimate weapon. The power that had nearly shattered his mind in seconds. Had been stopped by what looked like a child’s craft project.

A roughly carved stone that the grey-robed figure had destroyed without hesitation. Without even a moment’s concern for the power arrayed against him.

What kind of person carries pocket wards capable of deflecting ancient curses?

What kind of person thinks to prepare for such things?