“This temple hasn’t been used for worship in years…” Rufian said, his fingers tracing over the wooden pews lined with cobwebs and dust. He was marveled, something pulling him closer and closer to the altar, but I had no idea what. He walked forward like he was in some sort of trance, and yet all I could do was stand there and call out to him.
“Rufian!” I said much louder, anxious to leave.
“This place… it houses curses…” Rufian chuckled. “How very poetic!” He turned to me with a malicious grin on his face, Rufian creeping me out. “Can’t you feel it, hero? The dark energy? It’s under our feet, behind the walls, embedded in the ceiling…”
“Shit, Rufian, quit freaking me out and let’s get already!”
“The Forfield Temple of Imerssia–there are plenty of haunted tales about this place, which makes it the perfect hideout for The Deo Guild. Fae fear curses, and they hate dark energy even more. But someone like Clave would feed off of it.”
“You sound like someone who knows a little too much about me,” a voice called out from above our heads. When I looked up, I noticed someone standing there in the balcony several feet over us, with Clover standing right by him. “Too bad I don’t know anything about you, especially seeing as you’re our guests!”
“Uninvited guests,” Clover said bitterly. “The both of you should leave, now.”
“What, no way, sis! It’s been a minute since I’ve had a house party!”
They sure were twins, with the same sharp cheekbones, black hair, and piercing blue eyes that seemed to glow in the dimly lit temple. But while Clover was calm and mellow, her brother exuded a wild and reckless energy.
Clave leaned along the railing of the balcony with a devilish grin that triggered Rufian. Rufian sparked a flame ball in one hand and an ice crystal in the other, then whispered under his breath, “Oh, how I’ve been longing to settle this old score…” His eyes flickered with a deep vendetta that I was haphazardly tossed into, and I felt like a total chump for falling for it! “I can’t wait to disembowel you and delve in your treasures!”
“Treasures?” Clave laughed, his eyes pooling black. “I’m afraid you won’t make it out of here alive, let alone with any treasures.”
“Shit, Rufian, what the hell did you get us into?!” I grunted under my breath.
“Let’s make it a true party and invite the whole crew over, shall we?!” Rufian suggested with a crooked smile. “Pixie, Lanette, and that tubby dwarf Gam.”
“Oh, if it’s a party you want, I’ll be happy to oblige!” Clave hissed back, the energy around us beginning to magnify.
I was oblivious to the history between these two. Even though Clave had no idea who Rufian was in his disguise, Rufian sure as hell knew Clave, and I knew that we had to leave before things escalated further. I grabbed Rufian by the arm, trying to drag him away from the altar and toward the exit. But he resisted, his eyes still fixated on the level 150 fae above us.
“Rufian, we have to go,” I pleaded with him. “You need to put this vendetta aside before you get us both killed!”
But it was too late. Suddenly, the ground beneath us began to shake, and the walls groaned as if they were alive. I could hear the sounds of whispers and faint laughter echoing throughout the temple. Panic set in as I realized that we were trapped, the door behind us shutting with no way out.
“Fucking hell…”
CHAPTER FORTY
Flashbacks of being back in the mountaintop temple of shaman orc Ezmar filled me with chills. Except these weren’t ghosts we were dealing with. These were the dark energies of curses. For whatever reason, Clave could orchestrate them, their shadowy embodiments sprouting across the nave of the temple. Amorphic shadows traced in murky red and black outlines bubbled from the walls, the floors, and even the pews. Conflicted from going full metal on their asses, I kept with my fae persona, squaring my fists to fight as Clave leaped from the balcony and on top of the altar.
“Big mistake following Clover here. You should have taken the High Order’s hint and forgotten about that bounty on our heads. Everyone else has, for their own sake,” he said as he crouched, his scheming eyes glued on us.
“This isn’t about the bounty,” Rufian confessed. “It’s more personal than that.”
“Oh?” Clave scratched at his chin while Clover misted over to the right side of the altar. “Jog my memory—you don’t look familiar.”
Rufian cocked a smirk. “I am sure I don’t. Let’s keep it that way.”
Clave laughed. “Seriously? You’re going to keep me in the dark, here? Ru-fi-an, a level 68 fae. Pretty mediocre level there, most likely a high-classed civilian, possibly even an ex hunter. Hmm, let me guess? I outranked you and kicked you out of the corp? Final examination?”
“Keep gloating. It is all you were really good at, anyway.”
“Now, we all know that’s a lie. Or else you wouldn’t have been so eager to spill my blood. What did I do to you, Rufian? Steal your girl? Beat you at a game of cards?” Clave taunted him. “Come on, spill the beans. I am itching to know what’s gotten you so wrapped up in this death-wish.”
“I don’t owe you an explanation,” Rufian growled, clenching his fists. “And your level is merely a testament to your savagery!”
“It’s more than that and you know it. That’s just the lie you tell yourself to sleep better at night.” He chuckled. “It’s funny how creatures are so afraid of things they simply don’t understand. Upon my appointment, I was given a power that seeped with darkness. Made sense, my mother was cursed, and she was forbidden to give birth on the off chance her offspring would be cursed too. And you know how fae are, so up and above anything that tastes like the backwash of true magic. You pop a super spicy spell and get both the goods and the bads of the ordeal. Sometimes you’re lucky enough to live through the bad, or maybe not so lucky. Because your life will be shit once society catches wind of it, and they will shun you for the rest of your life. But you see, mom was petty. Really petty. She showed the High Council that she couldn’t give a rat’s ass about their rules and systematic oppression, having Clover and me here out of spite. To push their buttons further, we were secretly brought to the master elixir and given our appointments. Clover here got a special treat, rare but orthodox. But me, I got something better: the ability to manipulate shadows and energies spawning from darkness. You could say that I got the rotten side of the deal, but I call that a true blessing. Because as far as I know, there’s no one out there that could control curses and shadows, making me one in a mil. And you know what they say about unknown territory, right?”
He raised his hand, a glove of black shadow enveloping around it. “It’s unpredictable, uncontrollable, and tantalizingly dangerous. And that’s exactly why I love it.”
“The High Order surely doesn’t think so, especially after what they did to your mother.”
He shrugged. “A price to pay, one that dearest sis and I avoided by being raised as soldiers and forced to serve as hunters. In exchange for our services, we will get to live the rest of our long lives. And as long as we knew our place, we wouldn’t share the same fate as Ethyl. But after a while, things got out of hand. The outlook of war was daunting, and those wrinkled bastards cracked open the Grimoire and weaved a few spells. They gave me an opportunity to express my true powers, and I made sure they got their rightful serving of karma.”
Rufian grunted. “It was a shame they let you out of your prison cell early for treason!”
Clave chuckled. “Honestly, I could have gotten my sister and I out sooner, but I was having so much fun in detention. You’d be surprised by the type of fae you meet in the pits. It was how I met my associates, and they share the same ideologies as I do.”
“I’d beg to differ. Lanette and Pixie don’t seem to believe in curses.”
“No, but they believe in shadow magic, and honestly, that’s the only thing that’s important. The Deo Guild is set on a foundation of functional change, setting forth a movement that would disrupt the power grid of The High Order. In order to do that, claiming the Grimoire is important. Only after you take away the weapon of our enemies do you begin to see progress, and progress is what’s needed to end this war for good.”
Rufian smirked. “A righteous man? You must have yourself fooled. It is clear as day that only you benefit from stealing the Grimoire. As soon as you unleash all hell upon Mavriel’s enemies, you will also set forth wave after wave of curses, curses only you could control.”
He laughed. “I never said using the Grimoire wasn’t without its personal perks! Besides, it is better this way. With me in command, those dreadful curses can’t hurt any innocent fae,” he said with a false sympathetic and taunting voice.
Rufian glared at him. “You are way over your head if you truly believe you can control a deadly force at that magnitude!”
“You haven’t seen me in my prime…”
