Rebirth of the curse (We actually are quitting our day job)

It was true: the three arrivals to this world didn’t have ordinary bodies anymore. They also had the beginnings of abilities that were beyond the ken of most mortals.

Nonetheless, it was three against a mob that could have easily numbered thirty, and only one of them had something that could even constitute a weapon.

It wasn’t their finest hour, to say the least.

Trudy reached down to grab a stone from the floor, but try as she might, she couldn’t summon up that same sense of desperate fury that would enchant the rock as she hurled it. It sailed through the air and tagged one of the figures in the chest, who gave a yelp and a swear as he staggered back, but nothing more.

Bao charged forward, swinging his charm-covered stick at the crowd, forcing some of them to raise their own weapons to block his strikes. With the muscle memory imbued in him, he was even able to slowly duel a few of them, distracting the group that began to surround him

Paul, in the back, was completely useless, though he had turned his attention to seeing if he could wrench the locked cage open somehow.

It was all downhill from there.

A few choice men shoved their way into Bao’s melee, and he could hear the sneer in their voices.

“We got a swordsman here, huh!?” One laughed as he drew a pair of knives. “Astral Lord, bless me!”

Through his open shirt, a searing glow began to shine through, so fierce in its luminance that the curved shadows of the man’s ribs were rendered visible through both skin and fabric.

Bao balked for a moment, even as he kept trying to strike. But this time it was different, with the two short blades quickly binding the solid pole before one of them darted in to leave a long gash on the inside of the larger man’s forearm.

Before Bao could even give off a curse, another voice and another glowing chest appeared in the corner of his vision.

“Astral Lord! I dedicate this wound!”

Once more, Bao was caught off guard, and another searching blade sliced into his side, forcing him to swing at open air in retaliation. More beseechments and more glinting edges came for him, and no matter how strong he thought he was, it was not to the level it should have been to fight a crowd of skilled fighters.

Trudy could feel sweat run down her brow and the pang of animal fear begin welling up in her as she reached for anything she could throw, though it wasn’t working like it had back on that day in the fortress, against that big cat.

“What are you even doing…?” Another Astral minion muttered before bringing out a chunk of carved wood that glowed with the same vicious hue as the others, which was thrust at the woman. “Smash her!”

She didn’t even know what hit her. Whatever passed through the open air between them, it only ended when it smashed into her chest. Trudy could feel her bones creak, bend, snap like matchsticks, her organs almost pinballing off the broken ruin of her rib cage as she went flying through the air before skipping and grinding across the ground.

Paul could only look over his shoulder in horror as his friends were systematically taken apart by the mob. With the most combative members out of the way, it only took a slight turn of the head to fix their gaze on him next, and the crowd set upon him with relish.

“You son of a bi-”

Paul tried to swear before his voice was drowned out by the frenzy. Grabbing onto the bars kept him in place for only an instant, before all the hands grabbing onto his hair, arms, and clothes wrenched him away to throw him to the ground.

Trudy and Bao were roughly tossed next to him, and Paul quietly bristled at the sound of their whimpering and gasping, bodies convulsing in paroxysms of ragged breaths and overwhelming agony. He couldn’t even do anything about that except glare at the ring of masked men and women crowding around as an eager audience.

He could only spit out an ultimately rather pointless question, his last bastion of resistance.

“Who the hell are you people…”

Through the crowd, the original, relatively well-dressed spokesman poked through, hand still wrapped around his staff. “Just like-minded folk making the most of a priceless opportunity. Astral power is wasted on you, but I’m glad to know you prove we can achieve greater heights. Your bodies will be of great help to our research, once appropriate measures have been taken on the matter of…storage.” Spreading his arms wide, with an almost blissful sigh in his voice, he cried out to his flock. “Let’s make some room, people!”

As the fanatics backed away, Paul looked up and saw that the tumour of Malevolence – that thing they so revered as being “Astral” as opposed to whatever “Spirit” meant compared, such arbitrary and nonsense words – hanging right over their heads.

All around, all sorts of voices were whispering and whimpering and moaning. Among them, those who yet held to their senses issued desperate prayers, going almost unheard.

“Spirits, save us. Spirits, save us…”

Yeah, if only they could.

“Paul, this was all my fault,” Trudy moaned as she tried to futilely fight through the burning pain in her chest.

“Not it isn’t,” Bao grunted, desperately trying to stay awake through the blood pouring through his clothes.

“Know who to blame, Trudy,” Paul muttered, acidic. “And then know how to make them pay.”

Turning, he fixed his glare at the leader, who raised the staff up at the tumour, beseeching it. As the implement grew ever brighter, the three could feel in their bones how the Malevolence seemed to writhe with the staff’s motions and the man’s cries.

“To our Astral remnant, take this flesh and bone, grow stronger, and repay us in turn!”

Above, the bulbous mass began to lose consistency and then spilled down in a torrent of ooze. For the prisoners, it was an undeservedly familiar sight, some wincing and turning away, others looking with grim horror at the mass and the sight of bones and half-melted flesh still being worried away by the thing the crazed mob praised – some animal, plenty human, all victims.

Paul, Trudy, and Bao only had an instant to look up before the Malevolence washed over them like planks of driftwood before a crushing wave, to the eager yells and whoops of the masked figures.

It should have been the end. It made sense: it was a recurring pattern that had yet to break, and no man or woman, however blessed by either the Spirits or anything else, would have withstood the pure force of the power that the Menace from the Stars, the supposed Astral Lord, spewed for years, before congealing where it was now.

They should have died.

For the three, it was darkness. And then heat, like the caress of hot irons that should have burned, but instead simply reawakened them.

Days ago, they had been graced by the whispers of a distant, cosmic force, feeling only the faintest traces of the Menace’s power as it had urged them to rise from their slumber and see its will made manifest – that feeling was nothing compared to the infusion of purpose this overwhelming outpouring of Malevolence was giving them.

This matter belonged to the being sealed in the tree, and it had chosen them, no one else.

It was a simple matter of obedience, no matter how unwilling, no matter how unconscious.

Outside, the ooze writhed and quivered, a motion none of the mob had ever seen before, and they felt a smothering coldness descend on them, accompanied by a communal sense of unease. A bitter chill seeped into their very bones, and it was increasingly apparent that something, somehow, had gone terribly, horribly wrong.

There was a sudden roar, and the Malevolence erupted in the sight of wide and disbelieving eyes. Within the living torrent were three silhouettes, who sat or stood on the fluid even as it seeped into their flesh, and adorned them anew.

Paul, once a simple man, was clad once again in his old bone white armor, his face replaced by cold steel – a skull locked in a rictus grin – and Malevolence flowed from his shoulders in a cape of vivid, rippling miasma.

Trudy looked down at the silent crowd and spied their leader, keeping a vice-like grip on his casting tool. All it took was a lift of her index finger towards it, and an invisible hand wrenched it from his grip and sent it sailing into her open palm.

Bao’s expression seemed near blank, as if his mind had reached some epiphany, and he gripped one end of his rod and pulled, tearing the talismans free in the process. What was once a solid shaft of wood became a sheathe, and from within, a blood red blade emerged, whispering death threats and seething with bloodlust.

The three looked on, their eyes aglow from within, lit by the energy the kidnappers had venerated, yet there was not a shred of recognition or willingness for repayment in the power that poured forth from the bodies of their captives.

Instead, they now felt that Malevolence begin to press against them.

“Astral Lord, save us,” a voice in the crowd whimpered.