Breaking The Curse.

Heya Everyone! 

This was not my original plan for today's blog post, but I got sidetracked and carried away with the starting point for the original post - so that's coming next week See you then :)

Every curse ever cast has the ability to be broken, it’s the law of magic, what can be done must also be able to be undone. That’s where I come in. I work for Her Majesty, Queen of Locleynia, also known as the Queen of Mages. All those that come to her with a curse are sent onwards to me, she calls me ‘the royal curse breaker’, but in reality, I owe her a debt, one I’m paying off with each curse I break.

My home is called Itaso, it’s on the far edges of Locleynia, nestled behind both a swamp and a dark thick forest. Very few leave our town, and even viewer arrive. It’s known throughout the realm as the place that cultivates and thrives with dark magic - a topic forbidden everywhere else.

Itaso see’s itself above the rules of the realm, armies cannot broach it’s forests, mercenaries and merchants get bogged down within our treacherous swamps. It is here that dark magic is not forbidden, but instead taught and loved like all other magics. From birth, we are taught that all magic is ours to hold and master, be it the magic of the light, or of the dark, of the earth or of the sky.

But as we all know, dark magic has its own challenges and drawbacks. It sucks mages into its hold, driving them crazy with the desire to do more, be more. The draw of its power is too much for most to resist, and for those that do manage to resist the call of the darkness, they overestimate how much they can manage. Spells take too much out of them and they fall prey to them, leaving themselves open for what the dark magic brings with you.

Very few of us survive, managing to balance the magic’s we call upon, heeding the warnings of those that had come before. I was one of the lucky ones. Some say it’s because I have a strong heritage, my family exclusively reproducing with only the smartest mage of the realms, others say it’s just dumb luck.

I can tell you the tales of the others who succeeded our training. The powerful evil mages they grew up to be, those that went to Roset to take on Her Majesty, to take her place as rulers of the mages. They became the mages you never want to cross on a path. Those that will spite you for the slightest action you never realise you did. The ones that, for a fee, will curse an entire family, or village. Those that have skewered moral compass and prefer to serve their own interests rather than anyone else's.

We were the mages that people turned to when they wanted to do bad, and we enjoyed it. Each request was a chance to one up our fellow mages, to show off and prove we were more powerful than the others.

That was when I made the mistake of accepting a job I never should have, but I was weak. One of the others sent a small child my way, knowing that I had a fondness for our kinds offspring, and I was powerless to resist when she begged for me to help her get revenge on those who had killed her family and left her an orphan.

I didn't bother to check the facts, a few tears and an inconsolable child recounting the story of how her parents were snatched away in the middle of the night and murdered while she was held back and forced to watch.

The curse I cast was horrid, full of all the hate I felt for daring to mess with a child like that, damaging their fragile growing minds. It made my blood boil as hot as the curse I brewed, calling on all aspects of my training and all the types of magic I had at my disposal.

It was the curse to end all curses, stronger than anything we could ever dream. The child left with their thanks and plans to go to her grandmother. I gave her gold and silver, a horse from my stables, and directions to the town she named. Her gratitude the only payment I needed.

The Queen fell ill within hours.

Naturally, word spread like wildfire, the Queen stuck ill with an illness no magic could fix. The strongest ‘good’ mages summoned to the palace - or racing their of their own free will in hopes that they could save her. The Queen had no heir if she died the country would be thrown into turmoil, civil war breaking out as mages fought mages for the right to wear the crown.

All they could manage to do was trace the source of the curse, and follow it straight to my doorstep.

An act against the royal house was the highest act of treason, one that promised certain and instantaneous death, and I expected that when an army of royal guards showed up at my front door. I didn’t bother to fight back, it was useless when they had a platoon of mages who had spent years studying the art of suppressing other mages powers. Nothing I could have done would have worked.

I wasn’t killed, no one even raised a weapon towards me when I went outside to meet with them and surrender. Instead, Her Majesty herself stumbled out of a carriage towards me, assisted by her young lover.

She begged for me to help her, not for her own sake, but for that of her country. She couldn’t bare the thought of her people falling into chaos. She didn’t even want a cure, all she wanted was time, a chance to marry and have a child with her lover, provide a heir for the country and hope for a future ruler.

Queen Marya didn’t even request a chance to see her child, just to birth it before the curse took her life. An extension for a mere year to do what needed to be done to secure Locleynia’s future.

Her army didn’t move as I helped her lover escort her into my home. A wave of his hand stopping her personal guards where they stood.

I found out the child had lied, it was well known amongst those I trained with that no one would be able to curse the queen directly, she was too well protected for that. They also knew that if anyone was going to be able to do it, it would be me. I was constantly ahead of them while we were young, but it wasn’t me who found the loophole.

I recounted my tale, of how the child came to me begging for revenge against those who had dared to kill her parents, and in turn the Queen’s lover told me of how she had just signed a new order to get spies out of Locleynia, thanks to magic they were easy enough to find, and we all know how a cornered animal reacts.

The girl's parents were some of the mages helping to route out spies, and those that murdered them the spies hoping to escape. The curse was designed to take revenge on those that had caused the parents death, and the magic took that far too logically, going straight to the person who had signed the order that started the spiral in motion. The Queen.

That’s the first time I broke a curse, dedicating my time and energy to trying to figure out how to undo what I had done in anger. To save the life my curse had slowly started to take, and the mercy I showed to Her Majesty was the same mercy she showed me, giving me the chance to fix the damage I’d caused. To stop using dark magic for bad and start using it for good,  cursing those the queen’s court deemed worthy, working with the queen's mages to teach them how to counter the work my kind could do.

I could never refuse a challenge, and to undo what my fellow trainees had started, reverse curses and find loopholes to help those that were innocent... I could think of no greater redemption tale.

It started the chain of dominoes that lead you to me.