Chapter 13: Curse
After getting drunk, Alan seemed to become even smaller.
Light, soft—so much so that it felt as though one could gently knead him and slip him straight into a pocket to carry away…
Veles took a deep breath, forcibly cutting off the strange thoughts that kept bubbling up in his mind.
As time passed, the effects of the alcohol seemed to surface at last. Veles was convinced that he, too, must have been affected by drunkenness; otherwise, it would be hard to explain how abnormal he had been behaving that night.
Of course, if he followed his instincts, he should have tightly confined the soundly sleeping Alan within the small territory he had circled out with his tail. Yet it was precisely because he sensed this irrational desire that Veles ultimately forced himself to restrain that flame-like instinct.
As the Blood Moon drew nearer, the curse’s influence on him gradually intensified, and its consequences were not limited to changes in his physical appearance alone.
Not only did he grow ever more like some filthy, evil monster, but mentally he would also become increasingly impulsive and irritable.
Veles, of course, did not dare keep such a fragile human as Alan by his side.
—Not just Alan. In fact, no one at all should remain beside a monster like Veles.
…
With great difficulty, Veles escorted Alan back to the small cottage not far away.
He did not even dare stay long inside Alan’s house, because he realized he liked the little cottage quite a lot, even though it was filled everywhere with another person’s presence.
That was Alan’s scent.
Sweet and warm, with hints of jam, small biscuits, almond candy, and little cakes.
And Alan lay on the small wooden bed in the corner of the room, wrapped in fluffy bedding.
Veles stared at Alan for a while. For a fleeting moment, he even felt that the quilt was rather in the way. He shrugged his shoulders, sensing something beneath his back beginning to stir restlessly.
Deep in his heart, he felt that he should be wrapping Alan up with his wings instead. His tail could coil around Alan’s waist—or his calf would do just as well—while his arms would clamp tightly around him, restraining him so completely that no matter how the frail human struggled, there would be no escape…
Then, at once, the unfriendly fairies snapped Veles back to his senses.
Thwap.
Thwap.
…
Veles raised his eyes and saw the tiny, half-transparent figures pacing angrily outside the window. They watched him warily from beyond the glass, and whenever Veles drew close to Alan’s bed, the fairies would hurl several raspberries hard against the window.
As though that might wake the soundly sleeping Alan.
Veles stared at the fairies expressionlessly for a moment. He did not much care about these hostile little creatures—every natural being instinctively loathed an existence like his.
He had understood that ever since he was a child.
A few minutes later, Veles draped himself once more in his heavy, somber cloak, pulled his hood low, and left the sweet, warm room that belonged to Alan without a trace of expression.
When he returned to his own hut and saw the elven mage standing before it—covered in slime and looking thoroughly bedraggled—the light, sweet mood that the alcohol had brought him that night scattered as swiftly as a midsummer night’s dream.
“Prince Veles!”
The elven mage cried out theatrically the moment he saw him.
“For the sake of the Forest Goddess, are you all right? I’ve never seen those dragon vines in such a bad state. If I didn’t firmly believe your curse couldn’t truly flare up ahead of time, I’d have thought they genuinely wanted to kill me.”
From beneath his hood, Veles cast the elven mage a cold glance.
The dragon vines quickly conveyed to him what had happened earlier.
The elven mage had tailed Veles all the way back, but at the outer edge of the cottage he ran into a spell maze and the dragon vines. He had nearly interrupted Alan and Veles’s dinner; in a sense, his guess had not been wrong.
If they truly had the means, those dragon vines would probably have killed him.
Unfortunately, as a high-ranking elven mage dispatched by the Grand Mage Tower to keep watch over Veles, someone like Antara was not so easily killed.
“There is still one month until the Blood Moon.”
Veles ignored Antara’s slick tongue and reminded him calmly.
He understood perfectly well the real reason Antara was willing to risk his life to follow him so closely. According to the task assigned by the Mage Tower, if during his period of free movement Veles were to fall into a frenzy because of some accident, Antara was obligated to end his life in advance—before he could cause massive casualties.
On the surface, Antara appeared to be his attendant, but in truth, Antara was his jailer, and his executioner.
“Oh, of course, there’s still time before the Blood Moon,” Antara said with a snicker when he heard Veles’s words, though his emerald-green eyes carefully surveyed everything around them. “But you do seem a bit different from usual, Prince Veles. Look at you—you’re speaking the common human tongue much more smoothly than before… Wait, this pumpkin? What kind of magic is this? The construction is really quite exquisite.”
Antara had noticed the enormous pumpkin that looked slightly out of place in the barren garden, and naturally he did not miss the plate atop it, smeared with only a trace of sauce, nor the now-empty wine bottle.
The elf’s eyes lit up at once.
He took two unconscious steps toward the pumpkin. “Did you make a new mage friend?”
This time Antara asked in genuine curiosity, purely out of interest. But the very next second he stopped short, as several dragon vines surged out aggressively to block the pumpkin. At the same time, he felt an unusually ferocious glare from behind—Veles staring him down.
“That is mine.”
Veles said it word by word.
Antara shrank back.
“Oh—of course,” he muttered dryly. “No need to be so tense, Your Highness. I’m an elven mage, not a goblin.”
‘Please don’t act like I’m about to steal your pumpkin,’ Antara held back, not daring to say it out loud.
At the same time, his curiosity had turned into a hundred cats clawing relentlessly at his heart. It had been a very, very long time since he’d seen the lifeless, indifferent Veles display emotions this intense.
‘Is it because of that mage?’ he guessed.
The next instant, the hairs on the back of his neck shot upright—Veles had somehow already flashed to his side.
Beneath the hood, those silver eyes were like the eyes of a true silver dragon: cruel, cold, bloodthirsty.
“I will absolutely not allow you people to harass him.” Veles issued the warning to Antara.
Overwhelmed by the crushing pressure, Antara began to tremble uncontrollably.
“Of course,” he promised at once.
Veles stared at him for a long while longer. Antara was drenched in sweat, and only after quite some time did he feel that almost tangible killing intent slowly recede.
Truth be told, by Antara’s own wishes, he very much wanted to find an excuse to teleport away as fast as possible—far away, the farther the better—as long as it meant putting distance between himself and the man before him. However, thinking of the hefty salary he was paid, the high-ranking elven mage suppressed his shuddering and, at the risk of his life, offered a quiet reminder.
“Prince Veles, you are a great hero, a valiant prince. The people of the kingdom should all be grateful for everything you’ve given over these many years. But once your curse flares up, the decayed dragon blood within your body…” He paused, not voicing the consequence both of them already understood. “The Red Moon is approaching. You should finish purging the forest as soon as possible and return to the royal capital early. That way, if the worst does come to pass, the Mage Tower can still help suppress your frenzy.”
Antara watched helplessly as the aura around Veles grew ever colder.
“…You’re not suited to close contact with the outside world, Prince Veles. It isn’t good for you—or for him.”
The elven mage spoke the cruel conclusion in a low voice.
“I know.” After a long silence, Veles finally answered softly. “The things in the deep forest were drawn here by me. I have an obligation to clear away those filthy abominations for the humans here. And if anything truly goes wrong, I’ll return ahead of time.”
At last, those silver eyes settled on Antara.
“If I can’t make it back, you have a way to kill me too, don’t you?”
Antara fell silent.
After that, the high-ranking elven mage carried out a routine inspection of the seals on Veles as part of standard procedure. Once he confirmed that the seals were still secure, he swiftly vanished into the other end of the forest.
The ranger’s dilapidated hut returned to silence.
Veles went back inside.
Antara’s appearance had once again reminded him of what a filthy, pitiable existence he truly was. Over the long years past, Veles had long grown accustomed to his identity and had calmly accepted the fate of inevitable destruction that awaited him.
Yet for some reason, on this night, Alan’s drunken murmurs lingered unceasingly in his ears.
“…Your tail is very beautiful.”
Veles lowered his gaze.
He suddenly raised a hand and summoned a mirror of water.
Then he roughly tore off his heavy, somber cloak. Beneath it was light mithril armor. Veles tapped it once, and with a series of clattering metallic sounds, the armor fell to the ground as well.
What finally appeared before the water mirror was a powerful body, completely bare and unadorned.
Reflected in the mirror was an extraordinarily handsome man, beautiful as though he were the moon god himself. His long hair spilled over his shoulders like moonlight, and his silver eyes were snow-capped mountains beneath the moon.
Of course, what truly left one utterly awestruck was that his body seemed like a work of art personally forged by a god. Every muscle, every line proclaimed power and ferocity. He was a weapon made for killing, a walking instrument of death, a living reaper, a savage beast that even demons would tremble before.
But he was not human.
No one who laid eyes upon this body would ever mistake him for a human being.
Though he still retained most of a humanoid shape, what had grown from his hands and feet were no longer fingers, but dagger-like claws that gleamed with a faint bluish light.
Tracing upward along the tail covered in scales and barbs, fine yet resilient scales had already spread up to his waist—they should, in fact, have covered his entire back, for one could see gentle, triangular protrusions hidden beneath the skin along the center of his spine.
Intricate, silver-sheened tattoos were densely etched across his back, precisely where scales, barbs, and enormous bony wings ought to have grown.
The sealing magic, jointly chanted by ten of the greatest archmages in history, had been condensed into those tattoos, mercilessly suppressing the horrific bloodline within his body.
The tattoos seemed almost alive, flaring and dimming with his breathing. The inscribed chains that extended from them coiled around other parts of Veles’s body, and wherever the sigils spread, his flesh was deathly pale, like carved stone, devoid of any vitality.
Worst of all, at the extremities of his limbs, many of the runes had begun to fade, and in those places, one could clearly see scales gradually emerging beneath the pallid skin.
Veles stared fixedly into the mirror, forcing himself to study the scales, claws, and venomous spines that belonged to him. Yet the more he looked, the darker his expression became.
“Truly a disgusting and filthy creature—”
He hurled the vicious curse at himself in an unfamiliar arcane tongue. Then, no longer able to endure it, he abruptly raised his hand and smashed the water mirror to pieces.
In this world, only a weak mage drunk on alcohol would ever say something like that to him.
A beautiful tail…
“*&…￥#!”
Veles abruptly collapsed onto the restraint apparatus, letting out a curse.
He felt a profound weariness toward himself—for having spawned such strange thoughts over a single drunken remark.
Then he increased the power of the restraints for the night, allowing those cold magical chains to pierce through his body from within, drawing out the excess magic in him amid searing pain.
The pain would make his understanding of himself clearer, more deeply etched: he was nothing more than a pitiable, ugly monster born of a curse.
Nothing more.
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Author’s Note:
Fairies: Human! Foolish human! Wake up already—ahhhhh!
