Chapter 67: The Curse of Minor Inconveniences

The sun rose over the capital city of Aethelgard, casting a golden light that promised a new day, a fresh start, a world of heroic possibilities. None of that light, however, managed to penetrate the single grimy window of the Precious Friends Adventure Squad, LLC’s corporate headquarters.

Silas awoke not to the gentle call of a songbird, but to the rhythmic drip… drip… drip of questionable brown water landing squarely on his forehead. The leak in the roof had, overnight, migrated directly over his sleeping spot. He sat up with a groan, his back aching from the dirt floor, his hair smelling faintly of the previous night’s culinary disaster. For a blissful, fleeting moment, he thought it had all been a nightmare. The glitter-ash, the crater, the bill, the shack, the burnt bread…

Then he saw a tiny goblin in a moss suit doing stretches in the corner, and a pink-haired girl trying to teach a spider how to wave. The terrible reality came crashing back down.

He let his head fall back with a thud, narrowly missing the drip. This was his life now.

“He’s so pathetic, I almost feel bad for him,” I said, taking a delicate sip of my starlight mocha. I was lounging on my divine throne, watching the pathetic morning scene unfold on my main monitor. “Almost.”

A wisp of black smoke coalesced in the chair beside me, forming into the smirking, handsome face of Isao, the God of Death. He was holding a cup of what looked like pure darkness with a little foam skull on top.

“Feeling bad is for lesser deities, Akane-chan,” he purred, propping his feet up on a cloud. “I, for one, think his suffering is an art form. But it lacks a certain… finesse. A certain je ne sais quoi. The big disasters are fun, but the true torture is in the details.”

I raised an eyebrow. “Oh? And what does the master of doom and gloom suggest? Should I give him a hangnail?”

Isao’s grin widened. “Precisely! But why stop at one? Why not a thousand? The big tragedies shape a hero’s destiny. But the small, endless, infuriating annoyances? They break a man’s soul.” He leaned in, his silver eyes gleaming with a special kind of evil genius that I had to admit, I admired. “Let’s curse him.”

My own grin matched his. This was why I kept him around. “Not a big, flashy curse. Not something that would show up on his character sheet.”

“No, no, nothing so crude,” Isao agreed, waving a dismissive hand. “I’m talking about a death by a thousand papercuts. A symphony of petty frustrations. A masterpiece of minor inconveniences.”

My heart fluttered. It was the most romantic thing a guy had ever said to me. We spent the next hour brainstorming, our divine minds working in perfect, malicious harmony. We giggled like schoolgirls, scribbling down ideas on a celestial notepad.

The Itch That Can’t Be Scratched (Always in the middle of his back, just out of reach).

The Perpetually Warm Pillow (Both sides. Forever).

The Uncooperative Utensil (Spoons that are just a little too flat, forks where one tine is always bent).

The Phantom Buzz (The sound of a fly, but there’s never a fly).

The Curse of the Almost-Sneeze.

The Last Pickle in the Jar That Defies All Attempts at Retrieval.

It was a list of pure, unadulterated evil. It was perfect.

“Alright, let’s do it,” I said, rubbing my hands together. “Celeste, prepare the divine channels. We’re casting a tier-one micro-hex.”

“You are about to expend enough divine energy to cure a plague to make a man’s socks slide down,” Celeste’s voice intoned flatly.

“Best energy I’ll ever spend,” I chirped.

Isao and I stood side-by-side, holding our hands out towards the monitor. “By the power of our combined pettiness,” Isao intoned dramatically.

“And my deep-seated need for cathartic revenge,” I added.

“We curse thee, Silas the Supposedly Heroic,” we said in unison, “with the [Divine Art: The Thousand Annoyances of the Petty God]!”

A faint, almost invisible shimmer of energy flowed from our hands, across the cosmos, and settled directly onto the unsuspecting head of my ex-boyfriend.

Back in the shack, Silas’s day immediately took a nosedive.

He reached for his waterskin to get a drink. As he poured it into a cup, a single, determined stream of water defied physics, ran down the side of the skin, and soaked his glove. He tried again. It happened again.

He sighed and went to put on his boots. The leather lace on his left boot, which had been perfectly fine for years, crumbled into dust in his hand. He moved to his right boot. The lace there immediately tied itself into a knot so complex it looked like a sailor’s practical joke.

“Is everything alright, my precious person?” Yui asked, peering at him with concern. “You’re making a face like you have to poop.”

“I’m fine,” Silas ground out, finally managing to yank his boot on with a broken lace.

It was at that moment that the itch started. Right between his shoulder blades. He tried to reach it, contorting his arm. It was no use. He rubbed his back against the rough-hewn wall of the shack, a move that completely shattered his cool, brooding image. It didn’t help.

“Ah, a strategic market analysis session!” Kenji announced, striding into the room with a new, even more detailed flowchart. “Excellent timing. I have procured our next quest. Given our… probationary status, our options were limited. Therefore, I have secured a contract to ‘Investigate the Strange Noises in the Dank Cesspit Caverns.’ It’s a D-rank quest, but the contract allows for full salvage rights on any phosphorescent moss we find. The artisanal lamp market is about to boom!”

The Dank Cesspit Caverns. It sounded less like an adventure and more like a punishment.

The journey was a masterclass in suffering. A small, perfectly-sized pebble found its way into Silas’s boot. He stopped, took off the boot, emptied it, put it back on, took two steps, and another, identical pebble materialized inside. Yui tried to help by picking him up and shaking him upside down, which only succeeded in making him dizzy and emptying his pockets.

His cloak, which was enchanted to be snag-proof, got caught on every single branch they passed, while Kenji and Yui sailed by without issue. A bird, the only bird for miles, flew directly over him and scored a direct hit on his freshly-singed silver hair.

“Fascinating,” Kenji muttered, making a note on a scroll. “The statistical probability of a targeted avian fecal strike is remarkably low. This suggests a localized atmospheric anomaly. We must factor this into our risk assessment.”

When they finally reached the entrance to the Dank Cesspit Caverns - a gaping, foul-smelling hole in the ground - Silas was at his wit’s end. The itch on his back had reached maddening levels. His boot-pebble was now a permanent resident. He could faintly hear a fly buzzing by his ear, but could never see it.

“Alright,” he said, drawing his sword and trying to salvage a shred of dignity. “Let’s get this over with. Stay behind me. I will take the lead.”

He took a deep, heroic breath, ready to charge into the darkness and prove his worth. This was his moment.

He took one step forward onto what was a perfectly flat, dry patch of rock at the cave entrance.

And he tripped.

His feet went out from under him as if he’d slipped on a banana peel in a cartoon. He pinwheeled his arms, let out a very un-heroic squawk, and fell face-first into a large, stagnant puddle of mud and primordial ooze just inside the cave.

He lay there, stunned, covered in filth. From within the darkness, he could hear the squeaky, surprised chittering of dozens of kobolds.

From his hip, his sword offered its support. "He falls in goo, a hero's grace, with mud and shame upon his face."

From behind him, Kenji sighed. "Well, that's one way to make an entrance. A very inefficient, messy entrance. This will be a nightmare for the laundry budget."

Yui just gasped. "My precious person is trying to become one with the earth! How profound!"

Silas pushed himself up slowly, his entire body dripping with slime. The phantom fly buzzed. The itch raged. His sock slid down into his muddy boot. And from far, far away, carried on the wind, he could have sworn he heard the faint, jaunty, and utterly infuriating sound of a ukulele.

Up in my divine realm, Isao and I were on the floor, clutching our sides, tears of laughter streaming down our faces. My starlight mocha was spilled all over a nebula.

“It’s… it’s a masterpiece!” I wheezed.

“The timing! The execution!” Isao howled. “That was a work of art!”

This revenge was turning out to be more fun than I had ever dreamed possible. And we were just getting started.