The Cursed Extra

His father had always said that courage wasn’t about being fearless. Any fool could claim to feel no fear, and most of them died proving themselves liars. Courage was about acting despite the fear, about finding solutions when the obvious ones had failed, about looking at a situation that seemed hopeless and finding the one angle nobody else had considered.

Rhys’s eyes swept the tunnel, cataloging details his borderland training had taught him to notice. The habits of a lifetime spent watching treelines for movement, scanning clearings for ambush points, reading terrain the way scholars read books.

The shaman’s staff lay several feet away, its bone fetishes still rattling faintly against the stone like whispers from the dead. Goblin corpses littered the narrow space, their black blood making the footing treacherous for anyone trying to move quickly. And above them all, suspended from the tunnel’s ceiling like ancient teeth waiting to bite down, hung a cluster of stalactites that had been growing for centuries.

The grey-robed figure dodged another swipe, but his movements were becoming more labored. Whatever impossible abilities he possessed, they had limits. His breathing was heavier now, his footwork less sure. The shaman might be crippled, but it was still a creature of immense strength and supernatural endurance, a being that had survived for countless years by consuming the life force of its victims. It could keep this up far longer than any human student, no matter how skilled.

Rhys’s hand closed around the broken spearhead.

The metal was still warm from the battle, slick with goblin blood and his own. It wasn’t much. Maybe eight inches of good steel attached to a splintered wooden shaft. Not enough to pierce the shaman’s hide, not when wielded by someone with a useless left arm and ribs that screamed with every breath. He’d seen how the creature had shrugged off attacks from the hobgoblins, how its transformed skin had turned aside blows that should have drawn blood.

But it might be enough for something else.

The shaman lunged forward, both claws extended in a killing strike that came from two directions at once. The grey-robed figure threw himself to the side, but this time he wasn’t quite fast enough. One claw caught the edge of his robes, tearing through the fabric and drawing a thin line of blood across his ribs. Red blood. Human blood.

The figure gasped, the first truly human sound Rhys had heard from him. The mask of ancient knowledge slipped further, revealing someone who might have been no older than Rhys himself. Someone who felt pain. Someone who could bleed. Someone who was very much mortal, despite the impossible things he’d done.

Rhys drew back his good arm and hurled the spearhead upward.

His father had taught him to throw when he was eight years old, using practice spears against hay targets in their village’s training yard. The lessons had continued for years, in rain and snow and the scorching summer heat. They’d been about more than accuracy, his father had explained. They’d been about reading the environment, understanding how wind and gravity and distance all worked together to carry a weapon to its target. About finding the solution that nobody else could see.

The spearhead spun end over end, its broken shaft providing just enough weight to keep it stable in flight. Rhys wasn’t aiming for the shaman. That would have been suicide. The creature’s hide was too thick, its supernatural constitution too strong for a desperate throw to do more than annoy it, if the spearhead even managed to pierce at all.

Instead, he aimed for the cluster of stalactites directly above the creature’s head.

The spearhead struck the ancient stone formation with a sound like breaking bells. Cracks spread outward from the point of impact, racing through limestone that had been slowly weakening for generations, undermined by water and time and the constant vibrations of the shaman’s rituals. The stalactites swayed, groaned, and then began to fall.

The shaman looked up just in time to see its death descending.

Stone shards rained down like earthen daggers, each one sharp enough to split bone. The creature threw its good arm over its head, protecting its skull from the worst of the barrage. Smaller fragments bounced off its transformed hide, leaving shallow cuts and bruises but nothing more. The larger pieces drew black blood and sent it reeling backward, disrupting its pursuit, breaking its concentration.

The distraction lasted only seconds, but seconds were enough.

The grey-robed figure moved while the shaman was still shielding itself. He flowed across the tunnel floor like shadow made solid, his earlier awkwardness replaced by something that spoke of training so thorough it had become instinct. His hand closed around something at the shaman’s belt, a curved dagger with a bone handle carved in spiraling patterns that seemed to writhe in the torchlight.

By the time the creature lowered its arm, the blade was already at its throat.

"Now," the figure said, his voice dropping to a whisper that somehow carried more menace than the shaman’s roars ever had, "where were we?"

The shaman froze. Its burning eyes fixed on the dagger’s edge, which pressed against the softest part of its neck, right where the pulse would be in a human throat. The blade was its own work, carved from the thighbone of some long-dead rival and etched with symbols that spoke of old hungers and older hatreds. A weapon designed to cause suffering, now turned against its creator.

"Ah, yes," the figure continued, his tone conversational despite the deadly tableau they presented. "You were telling me about how you were going to make him scream. The young man with the spear. The one you were so eager to break."

Rhys found himself holding his breath. The tunnel had gone silent except for the soft patter of settling stone dust and the shaman’s labored breathing. The creature that had seemed so unstoppable moments before now lay helpless, its own weapon turned against it by someone who moved like death itself had taken human form.

But there was something else in the grey-robed figure’s posture now, something that made Rhys’s skin crawl despite his relief at seeing the shaman subdued. The casual dismissal was gone, replaced by a cold focus that spoke of someone who had done this before. Many times before. The way he held the dagger, the angle of his wrist, the positioning of his feet to prevent the shaman from making any sudden movements. All of it spoke of experience. The wrong kind of experience.

The dagger didn’t waver. Neither did the figure’s voice as he leaned closer to the shaman’s ear.

"I’m waiting," he said softly, almost gently. "Tell me again about the screaming. I find myself... curious about your methods. Walk me through the process. Step by step, if you please."

The shaman’s eyes darted between the blade and the figure’s face, searching for some trace of mercy or hesitation. Some sign that this was a bluff, that the grey-robed student was simply posturing to secure a surrender. It found neither. Whatever this stranger was, mercy didn’t seem to be part of his vocabulary.

"Please," the creature whispered, its ancient voice cracking like old parchment left too long in the sun. "I yield. I submit to your power, young master. Show mercy to one who has already lost everything. I am broken. I am defeated. What more could you want from me?"

The figure tilted his head, considering. The dagger remained steady at the shaman’s throat, its bone handle slick with the creature’s own sweat. A long moment passed in silence. Two heartbeats. Three.

"Mercy," he repeated at last, as though the word were a foreign object he was turning over in his hands, examining it from every angle to see if it had any use to him.

The syllables sat in the air between them, neither warmly offered nor coldly rejected, simply suspended there, a concept being weighed with the kind of dispassion one might apply to a cracked tool.

"An interesting concept. Deeply human, in its way. Perhaps that’s why it’s so rarely found in places like this." He let the silence breathe for a moment before continuing, his voice dropping to something quieter, more deliberate.

"Tell me, Ghel-thak-mor, did mercy cross your mind when you fed your own people to the blood-songs? When you listened to them scream and decided the sound was acceptable currency for whatever power you were buying?" The dagger’s edge shifted by a fraction, just enough to remind the shaman that the hand holding it had not grown tired, had not trembled once. "What about the travelers who came through these tunnels? The merchants who took a wrong road. The pilgrims who trusted that the dark wouldn’t swallow them whole. The children who wandered in and never wandered back out. Did any of them get to use the word you just used on me?"

The shaman’s breathing quickened. "That was different. That was survival. That was, that was..."

"Necessary?" The figure’s laugh was soft and terrible, the kind of laugh that belonged in nightmares rather than waking life. "How convenient. The same excuse every monster uses when the knife finally turns toward their own throat. It was necessary. I had no choice. The circumstances forced my hand. Tell me, does that excuse feel different now that you’re the one bleeding?"