Waking up was a pleasant experience. There was Sigmir’s familiar scent lingering around me, and while I was a little sore, it was a good soreness, the one that came from pushing yourself just a little further than you had thought possible. Painful, yes, but also so very satisfying.

After stretching and wiggling around between the sleeping furs, I rose, looking around for a moment. The day was already half-over, the sun on its descent towards the western horizon and not too far away, I could see the hill I had been working on throughout the night, shrouded in a hazy gloom.

Letting out another yawn, I started to frown. There was something niggling in the back of my mind, but I couldn’t quite grasp the sensation. I was certain I had forgotten something, but what that something was, I had no idea. A dream, fading under the light of the sun.

Shaking my head, I banished those vague, dream-like impressions of darkness, flickering torches and amused laughter back where they belonged, into the realm of my subconscious and imagination. Maybe I shouldn’t be too surprised to have some strange dreams, after creating and conducting a massive ritual to curse someone who had wronged me.

“You’re awake,” Olivia stated, looking at me with a frown on her face.

“Apparently.” I grinned, stretching myself again, “Though, I’ll admit, I could sleep some more.”

“That’s not a surprise. The amount of power you channelled yesterday was…” she paused, shaking her head, a wry smile on her face, “It was impressive. Or maybe insane would be a better descriptor.” she admitted, turning to look at the nearby hill-top.

“Thanks for the compliment,” I replied with a grin of my own.

“What exactly did you do?” she prodded, and for a moment, I needed to consider my answer. How much did I want to tell her? At the end of the day, I had proclaimed that the Gods would punish Jakyl for his actions and yet, I had given him the punishment he deserved. Would a Cleric like Olivia see that as blasphemy and if so, did I want her to know just how little regard I held for deities of her Pantheon, of any Pantheon, really? Crusades had been started over lesser offences.

“Grand-scale magic, using celestial bodies to boost the power of my working. The purification ritual at the Shadow Cleft inspired me.” I briefly replied, without going into details. She looked at me expectedly, but before I had to come up with a better reply, we were interrupted.

“Morgana, you’re awake. That was nuts last night.” Mal came jogging towards us, Gilo in tow.

“Do you have a moment? Traveller-trouble.” she asked, quietly gesturing a little away from the group. Curious what was going on, I excused myself from Olivia and Gilo and followed her over.

“Just so you know, Jakyl’s thread blew up during the night. Apparently, he was struck by a divine Curse this night,” she told me, her eyes flickering to the gloomy hilltop.

“Anything you want to tell me?” she raised an eyebrow, while I felt my eyes widen in surprise. Certainly, I had cursed him, and had tried to use a Divine Curse as the basis for my working, but that the system would classify my magic as divine, not just divinely inspired, was unexpected.

“Did he give any details?” I asked, curious to hear if I actually had done what I had intended or if there was something else going on.

“He posted screenshots, the curse is apparently called Curse of the Restless Night, inflicting him with nightmares whenever he tries to sleep. There are some conditions for the curse to be lifted, but he didn’t share those,” she explained, her voice vibrating with curiosity.

It sounded as if I had succeeded, though I wasn’t quite sure what the conditions could be. So, calling it a half-success might be more appropriate. As I thought of my success, I decided to glance at my log, as large-scale magic had a habit of raising skills, sometimes even giving titles or traits.

Title gained You gained the Title: Maleficar Few have the ability, or the ruthlessness, to weave their magic into the Blood of their foes, to curse their essence and turn it against them. To blight their mind and make them their own worst enemy. For your actions, you have been named Maleficar. Special Ability gained You gained the Special Ability: Dark Moon’s Justice

Not all Justice can be carried out in the light of day. Sometimes, Justice requires dark deeds during the darkest of nights. The Justice of the Dark Moon is not merciful, it cares little for excuses or justifications. Only to avenge wrongs. Curses you weave in the pursuit of a just cause gain the strength of the Dark Moon, making them harder to remove, until Justice is served.

Skill increased You increased your skill: Darkness Rune-Mastery [74/100] Skill increased You increased your skill: Blood Rune-Mastery [63/100] Skill increased You increased your skill: Blood Magic [81/100] Skill increased You increased your skill: Darkness Magic [70/100] Skill increased You increased your skill: Astral Meditation [54/100]

As I read through the skill gains a smile grew on my face. The title was, as they often were, a little unclear, leaving me with little information other than that it was problematic. Similar to Mortal Hubris, I’d have to conceal the title and slowly try to figure out what it did.

The Special Ability, on the other hand, sounded incredibly interesting. A part of me wanted to experiment, to find out what constituted a ‘just cause’. Did I need to be convinced of the ‘justice’ of my actions? If so, could I successfully delude myself, or were there outside checks and balances? There had to be some, or the subjective nature of ‘Justice’ would make the ability either incredibly powerful or incredibly weak.

Shaking my head, I decided to essentially ignore it. Without knowing the conditions that triggered it, I couldn’t rely on the effect and trying to look for the right conditions might invalidate those conditions as the spells woven wouldn’t be cast in the pursuit of a just cause, but in the pursuit of knowledge.

Focusing back on Mal, I gave her a smile.

“Well, I did say that he’d get his just deserts, didn’t I?” I grinned, my smile turning just a little bit smug.

“And you just happened to hold a ritual during the night he got cursed? A ritual big enough to leave a permanent mark on the land?” she paused, holding up a finger, “Want to pull the other one?”

“Well, do you know what it takes to contact certain deities in this world?” I asked rhetorically, though I tried to make the question sound serious. “And what better night to phone a friend, than an extreme point of their power?”

As I tried to obfuscate what I had done and misdirect Mal, I realised that it might even be what had happened. My ritual had been large and I had tried to use the curse of a Goddess of Vengeance as a starting point. Who knew if that was enough to get their attention, maybe even push them into action.

“Either way, what’s done is done. He is no longer our concern and we’ll continue to travel west,” I shook off my contemplations, focusing on the present and future.

“If we break camp quickly, and hurry until nightfall, we might get far enough from the mountains to use Olivia’s rituals to speed up our travel. I’ll have to ask her about it. When do you need to log out next, you mentioned you had some obligations?” I asked, completely changing the topic and laying the question of divine curses to rest. At least for now, I certainly would keep an eye on that forum’s post.

For a moment, Mal studied me, as if she wasn’t sure if I was sincere or not, but she let it go.

“I’ll need to log out tomorrow evening, it’ll take three hours in the real world, so I’ll be gone for the night,” she told me, and I nodded in reply, pulling up my own menu to make notes.

“How did you do it with Jakyl and the others? The scheduling must have sucked.” I frowned. This time, the timing worked relatively well as it was similar to my next session with Mrs Wu, but that was merely a coincidence. The amount of time needed to seriously engage with Road to Purgatory made playing together difficult, which, once again, made me worried for the game.

“We scheduled our travels around me as much as possible. Honestly, it kinda sucked but if I want to eat…” she shrugged, and we continued to discuss and plan our schedules for the next few days. Luckily, I had my Hallow and Lenore could carry me along, or things would be a real pain in the neck. Maybe there was a way to get Mal a Spirit-Beast of her own, though I doubted it. Sigmir and I had been incredibly lucky to encounter them, especially so early on.