Despite my best efforts to push those thoughts aside, the Curse that had surrounded the Lycantroll kept lingering in my mind. It was a gorgeous piece of magic, mind-bogglingly complex, yet I suspected that at its core, barely any power was required. The crux of the matter was quite simple, to the point that it had taken me longer than it should to realise it, but I shouldn’t have been able to parse the different elements within the Curse, even with my affinities to Blood and Darkness, divine magic was something else. Something beyond the ordinary elements, so why, how had Lenore and I been able to get an overview of a Divine Curse?

One possibility was that Olivia was wrong, that the Lycantroll, or maybe all Savages, hadn’t actually been transformed by a divine Curse, but by a mortal’s work, a powerful and brilliant spellcaster similar to the Grandmother. Maybe posing as a deity, which would raise questions of its own, but it was a possibility. That was the simplest explanation, but it required such a spellcaster to exist and act in an, in my opinion, extremely illogical manner. Possible, but I wasn’t happy with the idea.

Thus, my second hypothesis was born, that the Divine Curse itself wasn’t what I had seen, but that there was a smaller core, possibly even a physical carrier of said core, that was created by divine Magic. Said core would act similar to a virus, using the host and the host’s connection to the Astral to fuel the curse I had seen, with the brilliant, likely fully intentional, side-effect that the power of the Astral was channelled through the mind - and a mind that was too weak to handle such a strain, which might as well be any mind, would likely be burned out, akin to an attempt to connect a microchip directly to an electric mainline. If my hypothesis was correct, I wanted to applaud the deity who had come up with the idea and study at their feet. Not necessarily worship, but such a being would undoubtedly be deserving of my respect.

Focusing my main attention back to the outside and quickly going over what Olivia had explained while I had pondered the underpinning of the Curse, I realised that the journey through the mountains would be both interesting and dangerous. Manticores were but one of the monstrosities that had emerged from the ruins of the Ancient Empire, destroyed in a magical cataclysm, bad enough that it had affected the Gods themselves. Olivia’s words, and she had been unable, or maybe unwilling, to elaborate on that. But whatever the circumstances of that cataclysm, the result was that large swathes of land south of the White Mountains were filled with wild magic, infusing and changing whatever was unfortunate enough to be in the area. At times, the magic might even create such monsters but due to obvious reasons, study had been slow, the chaotic effects caused by uncontrolled magic of such magnitude making things nigh impossible. Things weren’t helped by the fact that there was no unified power on Aretia, who might have the budget and desire for such an effort, leaving it to those with both curiosity and determination.

A part of me had already made a mental note to study the area in the future, probably in the live-game, the limited time in the beta just not enough to go there.

But back to the manticores and the troubles on the road ahead. Literally. Manticores were chimeras, for the most part lions with the tail of a scorpion, making them problematic foes, but not impossible to handle. They were, essentially, just an alpha-predator with an additional, deadly weapon that covered their flanks.

The real problem, and what Olivia thought we were dealing with, came when the mix wasn’t between lion and scorpion but when the mix included a sphinx, a mystical cousin of the mundane lion, and coming equipped with wings. Which added to the already problematic Manticore the ability to fly and to resist magic, thanks to their mystical heritage.

Apparently, there was another variant, this one not just a mixture of a mundane scorpion and a mythical sphinx but between a dragon and a sphinx, further increasing their magical resistance, giving them the ability to use an elemental breath-weapon and turning their deadly stinger into something worse, though she hadn’t been able to elaborate on what that was. She simply didn’t know but was reasonably certain we wouldn’t be facing one of those, due to their solitary nature and extreme rarity. It was a little weird to be told that reports of a group of flying, mystical alpha-predators was a good thing. But that would be a problem we’d have to deal with at another time.

Once we had sufficiently caught our breath, made sure that all injuries were treated to the best of our abilities, which meant quite a lot between Olivia and myself,we decided to head back towards Carinthia, even if they might have closed their gate during the night and while scaling the wall was easily within each of our abilities, it would somewhat send the wrong message. Or maybe the right message, if they wanted to quibble regarding our reward.

As we walked Olivia and Adra continued to discuss Manticores and other monstrous trouble that had been spawned by the Ruins of the Ancient Empire, a region that, to my gamer-instincts, just screamed high-level area, possibly even massive, high-level open world-raid. For now, I was only interested in circumventing it and the ecological reasons why a pride of flying manticores had left their habitat and made themselves a home in the White Mountains were off lesser importance. I still listened, simply due to a sort-of morbid fascination, the descriptions of ordinary beasts, changed beyond what even crossing the first few divides would normally accomplish, were fascinating. Horrifying and scary, yes, but fascinating. As long as I, and the rest of my group, especially Sigmir, had some distance to them, I would happily listen.

My interest in their conversation instantly vanished when I noticed that Sigmir, along with Ylva, had fallen back a little, the connection between us giving me a hint at Sigmir’s mental state. She was deeply worried, even if little showed outwardly.

Falling back to join her, I even had Lenore hop onto my shoulder, so she could use her magic to make sure the others wouldn’t overhear anything accidentally. Reaching out, I took her hand, simply to physically impress that I was there, to remind her of my affection. Like that, we walked for a minute or five, with me simply waiting for Sigmir to put her mood into words.

“That beast.” she began, her voice soft, worried. “Do you think I’ll turn into something like that?”

Her question threw me for a second, until I realised what she actually was worried about. Her avatar-ability, if it continued to progress as mine had, which seemed somewhat likely, would turn her into a mix between herself and Ylva, similar to the way mine turned me into the being that called herself the Raven’s Shadow, different and distinct from both Lenore and myself, yet comprised of the two of us. But what would that mean for Sigmir and Ylva, would their form be something like the Lycantroll we had just killed?

“No.” I confidently told her, quickly putting my earlier thoughts about the curse and the nature of that transformation into a more coherent form.

“The creature we fought, it wasn’t natural. It was merely a single troll who lacked loyalty and conviction. So, when someone called upon the Gods, maybe to punish him, maybe to teach him loyalty, he was struck by a curse. You, on the other hand, you and Ylva, neither of you need to be taught loyalty. Nor would I curse you, ever.” I assured her, trying to project complete certainty.

“What’s more, the Avatar-form, the merge between Ylva and you, is something entirely different, instead of a single mind trying to channel enough power for such a massive transformation, the burden is shared between the two of you, in addition, Ylva herself adds the wolven nature, something that was entirely imposed from the outside, onto the troll. There was nothing wolven in him, only the curse.” I added, my mind less concerned with explaining what conclusions I had drawn and more with the necessity to ease Sigmir’s worry.

“But, you know, even if you were struck by such a curse, you would never turn into a beast. I wouldn’t allow it, nothing will take you from me, not even the combined might of the Pantheon.” I added, mustering all the conviction I could, not only trying to convince her, but also trying to convince myself. As it was a promise I wanted to keep. That I needed to keep, not just for her, but for myself.