Memory is a Curse

As my eyes peeled open and the cold water of consciousness rushed across my crag-filled mind, the primary sensations that reached me were two.

First, and most worryingly, was an emptiness—though of mind, not body or space. Where consciousness spilled forth, it filled a dry riverbed that had once overflowed with thoughts and memories. Now, there was only the path that raging river had once carved to remember it by.

The other was the sight before me: a boy—perhaps, a man—knelt on the floor before me, the rags adorning his body scarcely hanging to themselves enough to be said to clothe him. His feet were bare and dirt-covered, and soot stained deep all the skin I could see. He was significantly smaller than I was: even curled up and freshly woken, I still stared far down at him.

Beyond those two sensations—the regard of my own cognition and of the person knelt before me—all else was sluggish to return to life. My limbs, trapped between my body and the stone walls around me, shuddered with each attempted move. I was restrained by accursed stone, which pressed in around me as if there for the purpose of restraining me.

“Please,” the man before me whimpered quietly. “You must release us from this… Unmake this curse…”

He must not have heard me stir, I reasoned to myself. This was the whimpering of a man too absorbed in his pity to turn out his gaze. Had he been the cause of my waking?

He was alone. Among all the gaps in my mind, I knew that my capacity to detect such things was well-honed. It was unclear how long he had been waiting there, and how long it had taken my mind to stir. However, neither his eyes nor words betrayed any realization of my awakening, as I thought. And seeing as such, he could wait a while longer for my response. My eyes turned up to the room around him.

It was far more intentional than a simple room, I realized immediately. What I had thought was a box of stone was in reality wrought in perfectly smooth, glossy granite polished to a reflective shine, perfectly sheer save for the web of veins inlaid across it. Along the entire length of all four walls—up to the extent that I could see—was inscribed a complex network of interlocking patterns and words, the glyphs of which I did not recognize. There was some regularity to the lettering—some direction of flow. But it would take me far longer than I had to parse it.

How had this man entered the room? The thought suddenly crossed my mind as I scanned the indecipherable text. Among all the delicate inscription, there was not so much as a crack to reveal the location of an opening.

“Please, Great One…” he whispered. “We have suffered long enough…”

Perhaps it was time to engage with this person.

To whom was he referring as having suffered? That was odd. I could remember nothing of him, and certainly not of inflicting him with any condition. Nothing about him evoked any memory. He was soot-stained, as I had observed before. Had he come from somewhere that a fire burned? I did not recall causing such an event in the past. But then, I recalled little at all.

What had happened to my memories?

“Great One…” He looked upon my countenance unfearingly, but with an unmistakable reverence. It touched his voice with the tremble of uncertainty.

My voice rumbled a thoughtful hum deep in my chest, setting the granite walls trembling in place. The man leapt back, surprised. Or, at least, he seemed surprised. I could not read him directly.

“Great One!” he cried in awe. “You’re awake!”

“Indeed.” The power in the single word thrust his head into a bow as it crashed over him, shaking the very earth on which we stood.

“This is excellent. I had thought this would never work. But now, I can have hope.”

“Hope?” I shifted my arm beneath me trying to free it. It ground against the stone, the spines growing from it rustling on the rough rock beneath me. It would take some effort to get free, I determined. And who knew if the room was big enough for my full stature.

“Yes, hope. My family is suffering at the hands of a curse. You have the power to dispel it.”

“Do I? I do not recall placing this curse on you.”

“Yes—because it was not you that placed it. You see, one of the other Great Ones—”

“Perhaps you should seek audience with them, not me. It is known that we cannot unravel the magical works of others.” Did the man lack a basic understanding of magic? Perhaps that was it. I lacked my memories, true, but certain things were foundational to reality itself—did he lack information so basic? What was the era? Was magic unknown now?

An odd expression flashed across his face: something that bent his brow inward and down, and set his eyes squinting. It was brief, but telling. It was frustration.

“Ah, right,” he responded. “Perhaps you are right. However, I believe this curse has a unique nature.”

“It cannot be done, boy. Leave whence you came, at once. I will not entertain this.”

This was the way of the world. I did not need memory to know this. Magicks worked into being by my kind were singular. Such was the way of it. That truth was ingrained into my very being.

“I am no boy—” he cut himself off, breathing a single shaky breath. “I have worked myself up. I apologize, Great One.”

“Mm,” I rumbled. “I do not serve you, and so I can refer to you as I wish.”

If only I could have gotten the man to leave, I could have spent some time getting myself free—and determining what happened to my memory. However, he persisted in spite of my resistance.

“If I may,” the man continued, “if you would allow it, I have something else.”

“What? Another request?”

“No, the same.” He drew something from behind his back, as though my question were an invitation to continue. “Please, look at this.”

He unrolled before him a bundle of blankets, throwing aside twisted fabric in thin layers until reaching the object swaddled at its center: a sheathed sword. Its scabbard was wrought in dull brown, clearly faded from some more brilliant red or orange. The blade within was curved, which was reflected by its container. Its crossguard was ornate, featuring a detailed image in thin strands of metal that I could not make out from my distance.

“This object is the key to the curse. If you could just—”

“Impossible.”

“You haven’t even looked at it. And you didn’t let me finish.”

What he asked was an impossibility. It was a fundamental truth of the world. What was so difficult to understand about that? Was his obtuseness a ruse? Or were humans all so dense, and I had simply forgotten?

The answer was of little consequence, really. If only my arms were free, I could have punished this fool for wasting my time—my magic could not affect him directly.

“Please, take up the sword, and inspect it. I think you will find what I ask is not so farfetched.”

Skepticism would not sufficiently describe what I felt in that moment. The man was clearly inventing a concept that had no basis in the workings of magic. However, with my memory… I supposed it was possible one of my compatriots discovered or pioneered some generic technique.

Or, perhaps, the genesis of this curse was with humans, not another of my kind. The extent of modern human magic eluded my knowledge, so it was possible. But if that was the case, why would he lie about it being the handiwork of another Witch?

“Please, Great One…” he fell to his knees again, and pressed his head firmly against the floor between his planted hands, elbows flared to the sides. It was an extravagant bit of groveling. But while I tried to make myself unstuck, I supposed I could inspect the sword, at least as a curiosity.

So, I reached out with my power.

The sword rattled in place. The man remained prostrated before me even as it moved of its own accord. The man had experience with magic, then—his measuredness was telling.

The sheathed blade lifted slowly from the ground, the tassels near the crossguard falling loosely behind it. I dragged it through the air toward me in my mind’s eye, and the physical sword obeyed, floating lazily on an invisible current to be just before my prone body.

Up close, the blade and its housing were even more lavishly ordained than I had initially thought. The scabbard, worn though it was, showed signs of an engraving of some kind, that looked in places to be filled with a thin line of gold. It glinted in the room’s uncertain light as I turned it over and over, inspecting the other parts of it. The pommel and hilt were standard, according to some deep corner of my mind: steel and cloth-wrapped wood, respectively.

The interesting piece, though, was the crossguard. What I had misinterpreted before to be an image of a scene, perhaps from this family’s history, was incorrect. No, rather, the image was no still at all.

Even as I looked at it, the characters enshrined in it moved, rendering both their actions and their surroundings in a flow of swimming metal.

“Great One, touch the weapon, if you must—it may reveal its truths to you. If after seeing them—or seeing nothing at all—you still believe this impossible, I will leave without complaint.”

“Mm. Swear it.”

He glanced up, concerned. A promise to a Witch was not a trifling matter. More evidence of his learnedness in our ways. “On?”

I shook my head. “My deals do not work that way, as I think you know. I will do as you ask. But if you do not uphold your side of the bargain—to leave—a curse shall be laid upon you of a kind I will decide. Nothing you would offer me has value. But what I can take…” I smiled at him.

He tilted his head for a beat, apparently pondering it to himself. “And … I will not know what the curse is until you place it?”

“You may never know its precise nature. I guarantee nothing.”

At last, my arm wriggled free enough to expose my hand. The spines on it shivered as they leapt along the last short distance to freedom, snapping back to their combed-back position they normally ran, parallel to my hand and arm.

The blade hovering before me emanated a magical energy unlike what my body was familiar with, and I felt it wash over my now-freed hand. It thrummed with not the energy of just one power, but two. Perhaps the blade and scabbard? A curse and a seal?

As I drew it closer, I could not keep my eyes from the crossguard. It showed some other moment in time now, capturing the actions of two people. They spoke with each other, before a depicted blade whistled across, lopping off the other’s head in a single stroke.

What these powers and enchantments meant, I did not know.

With a deft move of two of my fingers, pushing the blade up with one finger and pulling the scabbard with the other, I unsheathed the blade.

Immediately, power surged from it.

A red light flashed free, illuminating the inscribed walls as if the setting sun’s light streamed from it. The crossguard began to glow a sickly yellow.

“What is this?” I growled, trying to force the blade back inside. However, it wouldn’t move any direction but free of its sheath. The glow grew brighter by the moment, and the crossguard itself began to grow in size.

I looked through the confusing phenomenon to the human to find him standing, no longer groveling beneath me. The expression on his face was utterly neutral.

As though this was the most natural thing in the world.

And then I was gone.