Cursed Prince

I was expecting the king’s legitimate heir to be a likeable 6 years old boy with big anime eyes, but he was actually 16. When you see an 11 years old face every time you pass a reflexive surface that starts feeling like someone old, mind you. Old enough to die and not be mourn too much, perhaps. Hard to say if the man was likeable or not, he was in coma. Comatose people are never particularly unlikeable, they are just incapable to carry on conversation.

Hard to blame them for that, though.

There was about 50 master healers in the room next to the royal heir’s quarters. Only tree among them didn’t looked offended when we entered. They didn’t knew who I am, therefore I assumed they didn’t approved Verenice’s presence.

I wasn’t wrong.

Verenice’s brother in a half-human. Someone made that clear in a comment, but I half suspected it already. Man has glowing white eyes, and glowing in this instance is not just an expression. On Earth the fellow would be able to drive a car at night with lights off without risk. We cannot look his face directly when he takes the mask he usually wears, covering the upper half of his face. The mask does not block his view but protects anyone else.

Usually he uses transmutation spells to hide his non-human traits, but the contingencies of security in this palace make it unpractical for him.

Also, his hair is white, and glows a little bit. And likes on his neck and face that could be tribal tattoos but are actually written language. Also, birthmarks.

What makes a strange combination with the 30-ish years old military official. Who could pass for an army tenant on any army on Earth as far as his general behaviour and sense of humour are concerned. Man just happen to be commandant of a Battle-Mage unity, instead of mechanized infantry.

Those who welcomed us were an Elven Woman, another non-human woman of low size, I didn’t though she was a dwarf but could not be fully sure. The last one was a human man. Like anyone else in that room except for the Red Guard knights, me and Verenice’s brothers, those three belonged to the top of the list of most prestigious healer mages available.

The queen was with his son, most healers had already examined the boy, Verenice would get her chance to do so soon. Her brother was hopeful. What was not surprising, after all, he was her brother.

He was not the only one anxious to her Verenice’s diagnostic, though.

“Maybe I am reading the room poorly. I was never in a place as elegant as that, among such powerful people. However, my impression is that there is some hostility directed to this particular side of the room. Should we not try stand somewhere else? Clearly people here strongly dislike that piece of art in the wall behind us”

My attempt of humour caused a moment of confusion, but then worked.

“You got yourself a spirituous assistant, Vivi. Reminds me my third son, Blummelington. Do you mind if I break human protocol by speaking directly to him?”

“Please, Fanielliailleiniimindallaif! You know better than most how I am in regards to protocol. I would not me here if I could tolerate it! Go ahead.”

The small Magister turned her big yellow eyes to me.

“Your mistress was the mentor of Ephesus when the man was about the same age you are now. I don’t imagine the Battle of Minotaur Hammer depicted on that wall has many fans in this audience lad. Also, I am sure some in this room would object having any non-human in the same room on grounds of principle, if circumstances allowed. However, true as that is. That’s not what is attracting the angry looks right now.

Archemage Ephesus is the person who killed the king and cursed his heir with a deadly spell. Some here suspect Verenice is still connected to her former pupil, and will finish his work if given the chance. Others would have her killed just for being the man’s mentor, regardless of she being in contact with him now or not. Do you understand?”

There was nothing hostile about her question.

“They assume she is the mastermind behind this conspiration.”

For some reason that comment caused the three of them to erupt in laughter. The elf was a bit more discreet, but giggling too. Verenice looked her brother with fake anger for a moment.

“I could be!! I have made plans before, you know.”

“Sorry, sister. I am sorry! Of course, you could be a master mind behind a lot of things. You are the most intelligent person I know, in many aspects. Just not political conspiration!

Half the time you cannot remember the name of the king of this country. I remember when you called King Jargar, Alan! Who was his grand, grand, grand grandfather! My father was speechless. Even our mother disapproved your behaviour than day.”

“In my defence, he do look a lot like King Alan.”

“Looked!”

Said the human magister, and a wave of genuine sorrow broke on them all.

“So, small human. How familiar are you with my people? You may call me Fany, by the way, if you don’t feel entirely comfortable pronouncing my name. Aunt Fany, to show proper respect for our protocol.”

“I was wondering, actually. You are about the size of dwarf, but there is something elvish in your ears and eyes. Albeit, the ears are proportionally far too small to be elvish, I think. The eyes too big, also. Answering your question, Aunt Fany, I am not familiar with your people at all, I am afraid. Sorry!”

“Don’t be. I was not familiar at all with your people either, when I was your age.

Gnome, is the answer for the question you didn’t made explicitly. You are good with words for someone that young, your parents deserve to be praised for that! Or who raised you that well, if wasn’t your parents.”

“It was, actually”

Aunt Fany successfully redirected the conversation from grief to domestic matters and hunting stories.

“My father is a hunting too” she said “albeit not a professional one. Gnomes can naturally talk with all animals and plants, without spells. We like to hunt, as much as we like to cultivate our plants and trees, but hunting professionally is a bit of a taboo among my people. We use every part of any animal we kill, whenever possible, and we may give gifts made of fur and bones. Contradictorily, we avoid to sell those things, as much as we can. Maybe that’s why my people developed a reputation as artifices, working with metal, stone and glass. Sometimes wood. That way we don’t have to sell any animal products.

My mother would feel uncomfortable even selling carrots in the market!

Silly.

Probably a cultural objection against profit and accumulation of resources. No proper gnome would ever admit it! However, we do have a little itch on our noses when we think about huge treasures or talk with the typical human or dwarf about business. Is not the money itself, or the profit itself, our traditions are just too strongly grounded in the notion of cycles. Natural cycles. Anything that seems to grow forever, for the sake of growing. Make them uncomfortable.

Naturally, that’s only reasonable because we are ephemerals. Makes us a little bit xenophobic in regard to the Void Races, sometimes. Unfortunately.

Elves, dragons, titans, fae. The fundament of their existence is endless accumulation of wisdom, power, and experience. Verenice once…”

My mentor looked angry, and her brother posed his hand gently on the gnome’s shoulder.

“…my human friend, Verenice. She once mentioned to my father how curious was that aspect of our culture. When we have so much similarities with the ways of some Void Races. Specially Wooden Elves” aunt Fany concluded.

A maiden came to call Verenice.

She looked back to me and said “Let’s go” leaving me no choice but follow her inside the prince’s room.

The boy was small in his bed. A ball of living smoke formed by translucent dark clouds shaped like eels surrounded him. Dense black tentacles coming from the chest and neck of this comatose patient attacked anyone who approached too much.

“They emerged when other healers tried…, everything they do only make it worse!! Are you, can you do better??” asked the queen. Political ambition or not, in that moment I believe she was nothing but a mother in panic. Watching her son die in front of her eyes. Impotent to do anything about it.

I almost could not notice her larger than usual boobs. And elegant figure, in the rich golden dress. Her face was a mess, makeup all over the place, she had not stopped to wash it since her husband died and her son felt in that condition. About 12 hours before.

Verenice looked at her directly. Without cruelty or kindness.

“I will tell you soon, however, to know if I can help him or not I must exam your son alone. And my divination spells shall disrupt the spells active here. Your guard and your healers will feel the silence and may suffer some discomfort. I need your permission for that”

“You know what is that?”

“Time is of essence here. You must send me away and trust your other healers, or leave with your guard now and let me work undisturbed.”

A couple of guards almost took the initiative to bring their swords to this conversation. However, the queen grabbed the smaller woman by both shoulders so strongly that I suspect they didn’t found courage to get between the two women.

After stare the healer for what felt like a long time, the queen said.

“Your brother said, you are his only hope. I want to trust him! Do your best”

The queen forced the Red Guards and all servants to leave, and followed them. I tried to leave to, but Verenice prevented that.

As soon as we saw ourselves alone she made a spell. That was no divination, was something far too complex to me but the general lines I understood: anti-magic. Not directed to the curse, centred between us both.

“Let’s stop the masquerade here. We may leave this place, I will tell there is nothing I can do for the boy, he will die, the next king will be a puppet of powers that have no love for this country. Your father may escape, I will try to rescue him, but the Marquese family will die along with most the people in this nation.

Or, I may try to save his life. However, to do that I need your cooperation and there is danger in that to you. The boy is a puppet of his mother, and they are hardly examples of wisdom or benevolence. However, they love this country, as much as any noble. Besides, if it means anything to you, I suspect the boy can grow into a better king than his father, and his father was not worse than most.”

“Why me? I am only an apprentice of …”

“I suspect something more about you, but that is not relevant right now. What matter is that I know you have some sort of dragon blood in your veins. You got it somewhat recently, little before we met. Choose now, are we saving this patient or not?”

“Alright! How dangerous is this, what are we talking about?”

“I have only one way to solve this. Any fancy strategy will make it worse, what can be done here is a barbaric art used by orc shamans and gnomes, almost exclusively. I can take this curse from the boy. A shaman traditionally absorbs the damaging spell to heal it inside his body. However, the point this thing is, right now, I would die before heal it, and is very possible that this thing would still be connected to the prince. Growing back to what it is now in few years.

Besides, this thing was trained to set roots in a human boy. I am, something different. Attract it to me would be far harder.

Tell me one thing. Do you know which kind of High Dragon it was?”

“Hydra”

“Good! I could not hope anything better. In that case, I can definitely keep you alive with the curse for long enough to heal it inside you. If you trust me.”

“You are not human”

“No, I am not. If you must know that is a disguise, I am something else.”

“Good enough. I will trust you with this, them perhaps we will trust each other with other subjects.”

“Go and bring me those three healers we were talking to if you can find them. I only really need Fanielliailleiniimindallaif, but the other two would make this easier and I think the experience would be instructive for them. Tell the gnome to inform the queen we need as many large mana crystals as they can get us in the next couple hours, green crystals are better but whatever they think they can spare to save the life of their royal heir, they may send. Just nothing smaller than an apple.

Don’t talk with anyone else, speak only with Fanielliailleiniimindallaif, and don’t answer any questions of her or anyone else. It they insist, tell them your mentor commanded you to not say anything else.

Oh, tell my brother we need his ugly carriage waiting to take us from this palace to his house here in the capital. He will understand”

This situation was solved with amazing speed and practically no opposition. I was expecting something very different, but, turns out no one objected anything by this moment on. I suppose they were still waiting for a diagnostic, before a possible strategy could be considered.

The assistants of the other healers brought us hundreds of mana crystals, all larger than melons and almost half of them green.

Meanwhile, aunt Fany prepared the room for this spell, and Verenice started her preparations, drawing orc shamanic symbols on my naked body.

“I have to kiss you now. In order to send some of my energy inside your body. You will feel my tong doing unusual things inside your mouth. Don’t worry about, just let it happen. If you feel uncomfortable or dizzy you may embrace me harder. No need to be ashamed, this is orc ritualistic, some rustic sensorial intensity is to be expected”

“I trust you on that”

The ritual itself was simple. Me and the patient on tables. Aunt Fany made cuts on our chests, above the hearths, and on both hands of Verenice. My magic teacher placed her hands on our wounds, closing a blood circuit so to speak.

When I realized something was about to happen, it was over. The scary dark things of energy and smoke where gone. The boy was weak but breathing easily again.

Two thirds of all green crystals were consumed, and some small portion of the others. All mages in the room were white and dripping cold perspiration.

I was feeling fine. Actually.

Until I walk three steps outside that room.

Then I felt something strangling me from inside. Ropes cutting every part of my body, piercing needles alive and angry inside my bones and my flesh.

I don’t know who carried me to a dark locked carriage without windows, heavily isolated by anti-magic armour. But I was conscient all the time, while the servants carried me from that carriage inside a large mansion, and downstairs to a sort of laboratory.

“I need a few hours of sleep and a bath, to recover. You will not be able to sleep until that is done, or rest. Don’t worry. That is normal.

Don’t feel normal to you right now, but the discomfort will end soon.” Said the Healer.

“You are doing a great service to our country, young man.” Said her brother.

I was barely able to hear anything.

She was right though, no matter how much pain and exhaustion I was enduring. I didn’t lost my senses and was not able to sleep, for the following days.

I could not move, eat, think, sleep or rest. Only think I did was try not to move, because any movement escalated the intensity of that torture.

No one could use healing magic to help me, this thing feeds on it and grows more aggressive. I was in too much pain to understand it or anything else at that moment. No magic to alleviate my discomfort was worth the risk. Aunt Fany and her elven friend helped Verenice with incenses and other mechanisms to provide some non-magical help. Halflings exist in this world and they have considerably less talent for magic than gnomes, even a bit less than humans apparently.

What was a blessing for me, because both Gnomes and Halflings have developed conventional pharmacology far beyond what is usual in this country. Gnomes for cultural bias, halflings for fundamental necessity.

For eight days I was in too much pain to eat anything, the house maidens pressed wet towers against my lips to keep me for collapse from dehydration. My intestines emptied more than I would have believed could fit inside me, and I shall spare you any comments about the smell. There was no sense of relief and somehow being unable to sleep or stop thinking feverish thoughts was the worse part.

That was only a fraction of what that heir of the throne was enduring when we saw him. The curse was mostly inactive in me, still. That’s what “mostly inactive” looks like.

In the nineth morning the obsessive stubbornness gnomes are famous for managed a small success. Aunt Fany was forcing a pipe against my lips for the best part of the past day, and tree days before that. I finally managed to cooperate with her efforts and get the smoke inside me.

The process was repeated for a couple hours, and my mind finally started slowing down.

All the pain was still there, but now I was able to give a little less importance to it.

That smell was somewhat familiar to me. I cold not put my finger on it, exactly. Neither can you, I am sure.

Latter that evening I was able to finally take some light soup of vegetables and turtle meat.

Aunt Fany told me that Sheva had an ugly fight the day before. Accusing Verenice of stealing her pupil just to brake “the boy”. As if Verenice has made it all on purpose, just because my father chose to abandon her for my mother over a decade before.

Sheva was being sweet and protective, but also unfair. In any case, was interesting to me, imagine the dwarven lassie, this overpowered healer mage, and my mother. All three, fighting for my father’s love!

I never would have imagine the blunt hunter had it in him.