A Curse Upon Thee 2-29B

“Let’s die!”

It echoed out across the cavernous ballroom, carried on the heat of the flames and bouncing over ruined marble flooring.

Finn meant it, too.

Not as a threat. Hell, not even as a plan.

The words left his bleeding mouth and something deep in his chest settled around them, a heavy iron weight dropping right into the roaring furnace of his cursed energy. The math was simple — violently simple.

If he stopped, the ash would put him to sleep.

If he slept, Aurora died.

So he just wouldn’t stop.

Across cracked marble, Ashen Slumber dragged itself out of cratered masonry, pieces of the wall still falling over it as ash rolled back over its cracked coal-black body like liquid skin trying to remember its shape.

For a second, Finn’s brain blanked as he saw it again; the jagged cracks spider-webbing over the Curse’s dark shell, blinding ember-light leaking through the fractures in its chest-cage.

Then it sparked up again like an engine and laughter came bursting out of him.

It wasn’t even funny, but it kinda was. He was half-dead, ribs grinding together with each breath and his left shoulder exposed to hot air as if it was a steam-cooked hamburger, but he wasn’t the only one hurt. 

That towering impossible Grade One that had been making fun of him and floating around like death in a pretty dress was bleeding heat and struggling to hold itself together.

“You don’t like that, do you?” Another thick wad of black-specked blood left his mouth, steaming atop scorched marble. Finn’s left eye twitched, his grin stretching wider in a look he knew had to be ugly across a bruised face. “You really don't like getting hit."

The thing didn’t answer him with words, that fake-princess voice nowhere to be heard as ash laced out across the floor. It wasn’t close enough to reach for him with those claws, so it used the world around him; a heavy veil of soot whipping up towards him as charred hands erupted from marble flooring to grasp at his shins. 

Finn laughed again, dancing back as the rough sound left him.

A half-formed hound, missing half its many legs, crawled out of burning debris in a failed attempt to force him sideways into a thrusting spear of waiting ash.

“There it is!” Cursed Energy flared atop his skin, a bright red aura intensifying around hands and feet both. “That’s what you want!”

Finn rushed straight in, cursed flame around his hands burning brighter as he pulled on his technique. Boots hit marble hard enough to shatter tiles to powder as his reinforcement spiked in erratic flashes of power through his calves and thighs. More! More! MORE!

More heat.

More force.

More of him deciding that he did not care if his own technique burned him alive from the inside out.

Someone was gonna die here tonight — if not two.

“You don’t like to get rough?” Finn roared out, slamming his fists together again. The red flame compressed tight and he swung out, Angry Ember fired right into another blinding veil before it could settle over him. “You’re strong, but you’re not tough!”

He didn’t wait for the blast to clear, his body already following the fireball right into the breach as soon as the shockwave blew back on him. “You don’t wanna fight!” Soot scattered as flame punched a tunnel open through the smoke. “You wanna make me tired!” 

Hot wind tore at his face as he rushed through the open air, body low to the floor as he held Slaughter Demon tight against his ribs.

Still silent, Ashen Slumber met him with its actual body, the curse snapping out with one arm aimed in a clawing sweep right for his neck.

Finn grinned as his forearm came up, the strike caught right on bone. The impact might as well have been a baseball bat against concrete, bloody teeth gritting together hard enough his jaw popped. Pushing past the spike of pain shooting straight through his shoulder, Finn rushed into the curse’s guard anyway.

“Spark Strike!”

His right fist burned bright red with roiling cursed-flame, impacting a brutal slam into the Curse’s chest. Coal-black ribs cratered, that ember-core flickering bright again as Finn fought its heat with his own.

A mad cackle escaped him as he drove another flaming strike down with his off-hand.

Ashen Slumber’s retaliation came quick, a backhand from a claw catching Finn square across the jaw. The blow forced his head to the side in a sick snap, muscles protesting as blood sprayed from his tight-pressed lips.

It still didn’t stop him from laughing though.

“You’re strong!” He rode the momentum of the hit; the backhand spinning his entire body like a top as he forced it through him — motion and cursed energy both — like a coiled spring. “But you suck at this!”

It exploded out through his right leg. “Kindle Kyaku!”

The hit was ugly; his footing off, angle too high, and his knee screamed as it landed — but it did land. His flame wrapped boot crashed hard into the side of the curse’s body with enough force to send the Grade One skidding across marble.

That cinder-skirt barely held, the ashes tearing apart under thermal shock.

Ashen Slumber finally shrieked, loud enough for Finn to hear.

He heard the pain — “That’s it!” — and a grin split his face.

“You’re a nightmare! A trap!” Cursed energy burned even brighter around his legs, the red aura crawling up his torso like a wildfire gorging on oxygen. “You’re not a fucking fighter!”

He didn’t even know if that was true, not in any real sense. It was still a Grade One, and could hit hard enough to ragdoll him. But it didn’t matter if it was entirely true.

It just had to be true enough.

If he was sure enough, if he screamed the insults hard enough, then every time he forced himself to believe it harder, his cursed energy answered him.

The Curse shrieked again, mask cracking as it threw itself at him — slow sleepy glides forgotten as it went for claws and ash simultaneously. Finn laughed out loud as one hand slashed for his throat in a lethal arc, while heavy cinder chains snapped up from the floor just to root him in place for the kill.

“Weak!” He tore his left leg free, a flaming stomp shattering the cinder links. No time to dodge the claw, Finn roared back and flared his reinforcement as he took it across his chest, blood welling up from three shallow slices.

Slaughter Demon swung forward without a moment of wasted breath, the heavy meat cleaver biting deep into the shell. It didn’t dig deep enough to hit the core. 

Finn didn’t need it to.

"Come on!" Finn pulled himself in closer, screaming right into the featureless red mask through a mouthful of blood. "No curtain? No sleepy bullshit? Hit me!"

The Curse hit him.

A clawed hand jutted out, grabbing the thick leather of his jacket from behind, to smash him into a pillar of cracked marble. Breath burst free, laughter and screams escaping from his lungs in a rush.

Before he could burst free, black and gray crawled over him — snow-thick powder tracing over his ribs, packing into his wounds and sinking into his skin to drag him back down into the drowsiness.

Sleep.

Sleep.

SLEEP.

Finn planted his hands as he screamed louder than the command in his skull. His body surged as he forced himself back, grip tight around the Curse’s hands as a soot-streaked forehead slammed directly into a cracked red mask.

The Curse jerked backward, dropping him as it stumbled; one hand going to its ‘face’ as the cracks spread further.

“Wrong guy!” Finn didn’t let up as he snarled at it, blue eyes blown wide. "Forge Brand!"

The extension roared to life around the heavy blade of Slaughter Demon, red flames forced down the length of the cleaver as he kept it there. The metal burned bright and long, heat so intense it crawled back up the grip; searing the skin of his palm through the fur and thick dark wood.

Ashen Slumber felt the difference. The curse felt the heat radiating from the blade, and it reacted just as Finn expected.

Hounds formed from the ceiling and dropped toward him as chains whipped from the walls in desperate arcs he cut down. Hands tore out from the floor while suffocating veils of soot dropped like iron curtains. 

“You’re scared!”

And the voices; Aurora's loud and weeping pleas atop the poison-laced promises that he could just stop — that it would be so much easier if he just closed his eyes.

Finn laughed at that, too.

"You're scared of me!"

That dual-toned voice cracked as badly as its mask as Ashen Slumber shrieked back at him. At once, the entire ballroom answered its panic. Ash surged his way in a floodfrom every single direction — ceiling, walls, and floor — a massive tidal wave of soot to bury him alive before he could take another step.

Finn took the step anyway.

“Kindle Renkyaku!!!”

His right leg came up, wreathed in a roar of red flame. A low kick swept through the first wave of constructs, weaker for all their numbers. Finn spun through, momentum carrying him forward through collapsing soot with a second snapping side-kick.

Chains and spears shattered against his legs, soot-links and ember-iron breaking apart with each rush forward. A knee on its own crushed desperate hands — malformed and barely-coordinated — before their stubby fingers could close around his joints.

Pure violent refusal defined every motion.

Knee. Stomp. Roundhouse. Heel.

Each strike burned brighter than the last, reinforcement spiking harder through his legs as the marble floor spider-webbed and shattered with every blow landed.

A thick veil of soot flew up as Ashen Slumber made an attempt to hide its movement.

Finn kicked straight through that, too.

The Curse's body jolted back as the edge of Finn’s roundhouse clipped its cracked torso, cinder-skirt torn completely apart as the Grade One was forced back into the open. It wasn’t finished, but it was enough to stagger it.

Enough to make it struggle.

And it was enough to make the core flash again.

Finn spotted the bright beating heart of the nightmare as the thing rose its hand again, all the scattered ash forming another wave of malformed constructs; another distraction to keep him at a distance while it recovered.

No.

Finn slammed his fists together one more time, the impact loud enough to crack like gunshot.

"ANGRY EMBER!"

The blast ripped free like he’d torn it loose from his own chest, pure conviction and everything else spiking hard in the form of a flaming fist of pure cursed flame punching straight through the final wall of ash.

Hounds, hands, veils, chains — all of it shattered and scattered in a burning ring of displaced air as Finn rushed after the flame, Slaughter Demon still burning bright against his blistered fingers.

Aurora's weeping, terrified face appeared right in front of him, born from ash, right in the path of his blade.

Finn didn’t hesitate, the blade slicing clean through it.

For a single heartbeat, there was absolutely nothing between Finn and Ashen Slumber. 

Nothing but distance.

Finn erased that too.

The Curse scrambled back, no ash left to glide on; spindly feet struggling to carry it as its heart beat faster and brighter.

Finn saw it.

Finn went for it.

Slaughter Demon sunk in, steel buried all the way to the hilt; red-hot flames of Forge Brand flooding the core of the Curse. For all of a heartbeat, Ashen Slumber froze with those spindly arms locked in place.

Then, it cracked from the core out.

Light shot through fissures in charcoal skin, ash-veils hanging around the ballroom igniting with it and burning away into nothing as fires blazed brighter for a single second. The false bodies collapsed into dust and the hands creeping around Aurora's piano and against her skirt fell apart into loose dirt.

The curse's voice tried to speak one last time; Aurora's voice escaping past the mask, then the other older purr. Finally, it sounded like neither, whatever sound it had left breaking into a high whine of escaping pressure.

Finn twisted the blade; hard and to the right.

Black ash filled his face as the body under him vanished, the fire in the grand hall finally guttering out into darkness.

The world under him gave way as he dropped down to one knee, Slaughter Demon held in a blistered, bubbling and white-knuckled grip. Half his body he knew was covered with burns, skin dry like paper even as he bled from a half-dozen deep cuts.

"Princess..." Finn croaked for Aurora, blinking through the darkness, but the girl was nowhere to be seen. “...Aur…ora?”

Without another word, Finn fell back onto the suddenly-cold marble as the room vanished around him.

– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –

Finn gasped out, blue eyes snapping open to the smell of damp pine and wet dirt. Wh-where?

The night sky stretched above him, above the dense canopy even, the pale light of the full moon pearing down through the branches at him. O-oh.

He was awake.

He was alive. 

He was — “...ow.” — in pain.

The cold unforgiving floor of the Enchanted Forest returned to him all at once, every single burn on his body somehow following him from the burning ballroom. 

He blinked again, gaze struggling to focus as he realized he wasn’t alone; three pairs of eyes staring down at him with varying degrees of exhaustion and concern.

“Did you do it, sorcerer?”

Finn blinked again, not needing perfectly functioning eyes to know exactly who that voice belonged to. He opened his mouth to answer but the sound of soft breathing at his side pulled his attention. Finn slowly turned his head, the spike of pain ignored as he saw Aurora sleeping in his burned arms; chest rising and falling in a perfectly steady rhythm.

Finn let his head loll back into the dirt, hair a perfect cushion as he forced bloodied and cracked lips to stretch into an immensely painful grin. His right hand rose, giving the warrior woman a trembling thumbs-up.

"...D-Done."

The exhaustion rushed back in, a dark tide pulling him under as he let his arm drop, Just as his vision began to blur, a sudden weight dropped directly onto his burned chest.

Finn grunted aloud, heavy eyelids peeling back open to blink down at his own torso even through the darkness edging into his peripherals. Lying across his blistered chest, gleaming faintly in the moonlight, was solid wood and taut string.

"A bow and arr-?" 

Before he could finish the sentence, the world went black.

– o – o – o – o – o – o – o –

Regina stood in the archway of her living room, hands gripping painted wood tightly enough to turn her knuckles white as she watched Henry sleep peacefully. 

The potion had worked.

It worked.

She let out a shaky breath, the sound entirely involuntary as it left her in a humiliating wave of raw relief. The heavy thud of the front door slamming open forced her spine rigid, the mother spinning around; hands raised to curse anyone that would dare—

“Henry!”

David Nolan stumbled into the living room, the man looking like he’d been dragged through a slaughterhouse as the prize cut. Face painted in drying blood from a vicious gash weeping down his forehead, his clothes were torn and coated in mud and rainwater. Panting heavily, his broadsword clanked against the wall as those stained fingers struggled to find balance.

"David? What happened to you?” Regina froze, blinking at the man as her hands fell and the magic slipped away from her grasp. “Why are you covered in blood?"

The hero didn't answer, eyes not even turning to the striking woman leaning casually against the hallway wall opposite him. He pushed right past Regina, stumbling into the living room to drop to his knees beside Henry, a ragged, wet sigh tearing out of his chest as he saw his grandson breathing peacefully.

"Thank God." David rasped under his breath. "You're okay, kid."

Regina stared at the bleeding man, utterly bewildered as she took a step forward. "David, answer me. Was the town attacked? What is going on?"

Before she could cross the threshold, a pale hand caught her forearm.

"Careful, Regina.” Regina turned to face Maleficent, the witch of the hour staring at her with features set in cold stone and no poisoned smile to be seen. "Do not distract yourself. Our arrangement was quite clear."

Regina pulled her arm free, temper flaring as bright as her hands. "Not now. Can't you s—"

"No, no, my dear," Maleficent interrupted as she stepped closer, invading Regina's space. "My part of the deal is done. Now, let us not pretend we have other business." 

The melodic trap snapped shut, leaving only the knife. "Where is my daughter, Regina? Where is my Mal?"

– o – o – o – o – o – o – o –

So-So Sorceror - 200 GP
Advance to Grade 2 overall.

Above Your Pay Grade, Paid Anyway - 300 GP
Exorcise your first Grade 1 Curse Spirit.

Radiant Example (400) [Super Dragon Sword] {Benevolence}
Why simply settle for being a good leader, when you can be a legendary one? You can strike a pose and give a rallying cry, granting your allies the Vigorous (effectively doubles health) and Haste status effects. In addition, this Radiant order enshrouds the weapons of your allies in your choice of air, water, or fire energy.

Talon Bow (300) [God Of War (2018)] {Destruction}
A yew bow, created with the purpose of harming even the gods if the need arises. Something that is interesting about the bow is that it scales with the level of Divine Physiology that you choose earlier in the Jump. Someone with an Unnatural physiology would find their bow being as strong as the one Atreus uses when it is upgraded to the max, with it being able to cause flesh wounds even on a god. Whilst someone with a God physiology would find that they would find their arrows going deep into the hides of dragons and gods alike. So long as the quiver of arrows is never spilled you will find an unlimited number of arrows, and within the quiver are ten arrows which will deal lightning damage along with the damage they would normally do. These special arrows restock ten minutes after they are fully depleted. You have one arrow which never refills, an arrow which will dissolve the magical defenses of whoever you declare the target, this would work even on divine spells such as the one which grants Baldur his immortality.

Grimoire Points: 450