“Where is he?!” came a voice.

Efrain turned to see a tall, slim woman, draped in furs. Her dark hair and complexion indicated that she was likely born far to the south of here. Her eyes were wild, red rimmed from weeping, which promptly locked on him. She strode toward him, her pace so furious he prepared for a blow. To his surprise, she dropped to her knees and bowed her head, fresh tears sliding down her cheeks as she stared up at him.

“Lord Efrain?”

“Yes?” he said, glad that his mask, or his skull for that matter, did not have the capacity to show expression.

“I beg of you, please,” she said, taking his hands, “help my daughter.”

Efrain looked back and forth between the alderman and the woman, wondering if this was some elaborate set-up.

“Assiera, what are you-”

“Shut your mouth, old man! You let them take her.”

The man flinched back from the sudden imposition, and crumpled inward, shame lining his face. Efrain carefully pried the woman’s hands off him.

“I take it your daughter isn’t just sick, and you’re not looking for a healer?” he said, trying not to engage. He didn’t want to spend anymore time in the village than he had to, and he still hadn’t learnt about the church knights.

“Well, no. I mean yes, I mean…” she stammered.

“And just how do you know who I am?”

“Well, I was in the village and Giyeth told me about…” she shook her head as she cut herself off.

“Of course,” Efrain sighed - trust townsfolk to be anything less than loquacious.

“No, wait. Carnes sent me.”

“Of course they di- wait, what?” Efrain said as both his and Innialysia’s heads snapped at the mention of the flesh lord.

“He did, he did. He said to tell you, er…” she said as she strained to remember, “he said… that she was ‘quite interesting’, and to tell you that he sent us.”

“Oh,” Efrain said, the gears in his mind going from grinding to a blur in an instant.

“You are ‘Efrain’, right?” she said.

“I am,” he said slowly, “now, tell me more.”

The woman related the story of her daughter, and the difficulties and strange happening throughout her life, Carnes’s intervention, the travel through the woods.

“I see,” interrupted Efrain, “show me the hillside where the grass died.”

The woman took him outside the house of the alderman, and back into the village. The day was well into the afternoon, most people returning to their houses in preparation for the night ahead. Assiera took him some way up a path that led to the north, up the meadow outside the village. The location was quite obvious as they crested the hill, the circle of dead grass that stood dry and brown against the green stalks.

By that time, Efrain’s casual interest had begun blossoming into full-blown curiosity. Taking a second look at the woman, he glanced up and down her clothes, seeing them stained with mud, worn from travel.

Unfortunately, that was not the only thing that awaited them there.

Two men, one dressed in the simple clothes of a labourer, the other in the white robes of a priest, stood in the wavering grass. Both possessed what could be described as uncharitable expressions at best. Efrain elected to ignore him, until they called out to them from their position outside the dead circle.

“Assiera, get away from it!” shouted the labourer.

“Friends of yours?” Efrain said, this time making no effort to conceal his irritation.

“Husband, and a priest,” she responded, “let me deal with them. See what you need to see.”

She set off toward the pair as he stepped off the path into the grass. Reaching down, he picked a handful, only for it to dissolve into ash.

“Oh, that’s uncomfortably familiar,” Efrain said as he looked at the dust, drifting away on the wind.

“Hmmm. Past experiences aside, can you feel that too?” asked Innie, “this place reeks.”

Efrain was inclined to agree, the sensation was something similar to the smell of rotting logs. A rich, cloying earth feeling, that clung to the body and clothes, tinged with something hot that made the back of his nose itch.

“Looks like she wasn’t lying,” he said as he crouched to inspect the ground.

“Who’d put all that effort into a story just to get you out here?”

“This could all be a trap,” he said, feeling rather catty after the day’s events.

“It could, and you’d be foolish for blundering into it,” she said, “now are you going to do anything about the two men that are coming this way?”

“I was rather hoping that they’d turn around half-way,” he said, noticing them past the curve of his hood.

“They’re already three-quarters, Efrain,” she said.

“Alright, try not to burn them when they say stupid, obviously wrong things,” he said.

“Oh that’s rich, coming from you,” she said.

Efrain stood, turning to meet the oncoming men, mostly being lead by the priest. The other one was lagging rather behind, possibly because he was scared, more likely because he had his wife hanging off his arm demanding that he stop. In any case, the priest was the one who spoke first.

“You must leave immediately. Go back to whatever hole you came from, beast.”

Innie snorted at the temerity of the man, Efrain hoping that she wouldn’t be leaving corpses in her wake.

“I am merely providing a harmless service, priest. Unless my eyes deceive me, I believe that I’m not currently in your church, so you have little to worry about.”

“Magic of all kinds is not to be given quarter, not in any of the four corners of the earth.”

“Do you think he means that literally?” Efrain asked Innie, who couldn’t hold in her laughter.

The priest’s demeanour turned from belligerence to barely-hid terror as he heard the disembodied chuckle of the wisp-mother.

“G-get back, demon!” he said, holding up a flask of some clear liquid.

“Oh you’ve got to be kidding me. Is that ‘holy’ water?” Efrain said, trying to not laugh as well, as Innie howled even louder, though with an edge that suggested there would be dire consequences for her getting wet.

“You’re not taking me seriously!” he cried, before hurling the thing at Efrain.

The thing shattered upon his pants, sending the glass shards falling onto the path. Efrain gestured to the non-effect of the fluid and back to the priest.

“I trust you understand that what you do will have no effect. Now that we’ve cleared that up, please go away and let me do what I’ve agreed to do.”

The man’s lips trembled, but he couldn’t manage to say anything.

“Innialysia, if he tries to do something that’s even more stupid than what he’s already done, please leave him with a reminder of the consequences.”

“And who are you to order me?” she asked as she curled her tail around her legs, setting her amber eyes upon the priest’s face.

“The one stopping you from currently doing it,” Efrain said dryly as he came back into the center of the path. He reached out with both his arms to the field around him, letting his mind expand with his own magic.

“What are you doing?” said the priest.

“Shut up for a moment and I’ll show you,” Efrain said, feeling tiny smudges of magic, scattered across the meadow.

A hot wind blew, wavering the grass toward him as he created his attractor. Slowly, ever so slowly, little dark blots drifted off the grass, flowing toward him and circling the bar. To an outsider, it would’ve probably appeared as a set of small flitting darkness, like little black cinders, drifting backward toward a log fire.

Once he was reasonably sure he had the majority what was scattered across the meadow, he ‘shut’ the attractor, trapping the scraps in an endless loop, at least as long as he provided his own magic as a power source.

“Now, let’s see what we have here,” he said as he held it up.

“What is that?” Assiera said, her husband’s arm forgotten.

“This, my dear, is an attractor. When one constructs a curse, the attractor holds it together and provides it power. I can create my own and attempt to reconstruct the curse after it’s been dissipated, with varying degrees of success, depending on the curse.”

“What does that mean that- that I stopped my daughter from-”

“Cursing that pair you mentioned. She was lucky that you were there. You said that she was fourteen, no?”

“Yes.”

Efrain began to shift through the pieces, attempting to stitch together some level of comprehension from the patchworks magic. Going simply by the amount, it was plentiful and potent, but the construction was sloppy. Still, the amount of children that would possess the knowledge, experience, or power to craft a curse at all was small; especially in a forgotten village at the edge of the Giant’s Spine.

The Efrain noted something that set off a cacophony of alarm bells in his head. The pieces locked and separated with each-other, repeating, in a pattern. The curse was perpetual, making Efrain glad he had touched the grasses with his gloves on.

My, my. What have I stumbled across? Wondered Efrain.

“So, what does this mean?”

“It means, your daughter is gifted. Very gifted. This curse is rudimentary, but potent. Frankly, I am unsure of how she even has the knowledge or skill to create an construction like this.”

“She said, she… she’s had dreams, ever since she was young. I told you about them. Maybe she got the idea from them.”

After taking one more glance at the swirling magic, Efrain turned and let it scatter to the wind. The little pieces flitted out into the world, and dissipated.

“I can think of a handful of people who could construct curses at such an age, though none like this. Most either became exceptionally wealthy or died horrible deaths, sometimes both.”

“What should I do?”

This was a bad idea, Efrain told himself, it couldn’t possibly lead to the peace of mind that he desired. Still, his curiosity had been piqued as it hadn’t been for decades. He turned back to the desperate woman, rubbing his hands together to get rid of the slight sting.

“What I want you to do,” Efrain said, “is start over at the beginning, and tell me everything.”