Vladimir Greymoor

The next thing I knew, I was back in the cavernous, unfeeling halls of my digital realm. A part of me had missed the nostalgic hums of static ether buzzing off these walls. The other part of me knew better.

Vivian and Diane were lying prone in Vladimir’s father’s study with Emily standing guard over them. They stirred together and the maid bent down to grasp her lady’s hands.

“My lady,” Emily gasped, “Oh thank goodness. You were gone for quite some time.”

“What about me, Emily?” Diane feigned weakness, “Is it possible that I deserve some credit for finding the Caxton Manuscript and saving Vivian’s precious bracelet?”

“Kyle,” Vivian whispered.

“What did you say, my lady?” Emily asked, “Lady Astral! You’re bleeding!”

“Again?” Diane said.

“What’s wrong?” Vivian said, “That’s the second time in the last day or so.”

“Oh, it’s just a result of neutralizing the Caxton,” Diane shrugged and pinched her nose, “Any half-decent curse is going to try to fry a mage’s circuitry when they try to dismantle it. Some of them are so powerful you get scorched for even trying to mention they exist.”

Was that why Diane suffered a similar nosebleed previously? Was she trying to dismantle a curse inside of me? Had her warning to me triggered a response from a curse?

“We should have Vladimir take a look at you,” Vivian said.

“Bah!” Diane scoffed, “The man’s getting married to your brother and you want him to play doctor? Come on, let’s head back.”

The Astral Viscountess brushed off the dust clinging to her skirt. With her fingers still pinched over her nose, she left the study and made for the banquet hall. Emily and Vivian shared an exasperated sigh and followed her, knowing there was no point trying to convince her otherwise.

The hall, or perhaps more accurately the wedding hall now, looked quite different when the three ladies returned. The splintered holes in the roof had been patched over and the wood appeared like it had been lathered with fresh vibrant paint. The glass windows on the sides of the hall had been opened, letting in stunning strobes of light. Freshly picked flowers and what lush foliage could be found had been draped over their rails.

“Aren’t I such a fabulous interior decorator?” Diane admired her own work, “You know how much a royal wedding consultant costs these days?”

“Yes, yes, we are mighty thankful,” Stefan approached, “Took you three long enough.”

“My, my,” Diane eyed Vivian’s brother up and down. Stefan had donned a slim tuxedo with a rose tucked into the front pocket, “Well, as they say, clothes do make the man.”

“It was his father’s,” Vladimir chuckled, “Stefan hates formal attire.”

“It’s a little bit tight around the waist,” Stefan complained, “Why don’t we throw away tradition, Vladdy, and I just attend the ceremony naked? That’s what I’m gonna be after the ceremony anyway.”

“Stefan!”

“It’s true.”

“Okay,” Diane rolled her eyes, “Emily, go dress Vivian in something nice. I’m going to go pick out a dress for Miss Veridian while I’m at it.”

Emily led Vivian back to the carriages to choose her wedding attire, and I retreated into my lair to investigate the meaning behind Diane’s warnings.

Had I been cursed? That seemed to be the most obvious implication of her words, but if that was the case, how was I supposed to know what that curse was? More importantly, even if I found it, how could I get rid of it? I wasn’t Diane who made things happen with the snap of a finger.

One step at a time, I told myself. If I was inflicted with a curse, and if this world operated on stats and logic like Vivian’s attribute menu, then a curse would be some kind of status effect.

I loaded my own character menu. On it, the menu listed my level, my skills and abilities, and even trivial details like the amount of hours I had spent looking at said menu or how many words I had written in all the documents and widgets I had prepared for Vivian. I looked up and down and scrutinized every mark, perhaps hoping that the curse would simply be lost as a footnote or somewhere in the fine print.

But there was nothing.

I could also have been cursed by the presence of a foreign object, so I scoured my digital lair for something out of place. Maybe there was a stuffed animal that didn’t belong or maybe there were nefarious writings on the walls. This turned out to be a relatively easy task; I had painstakingly arranged my room dozens and dozens of times and it was shockingly easy to tell if anything was out of place or not.

Once again, my search turned up empty.

“If you were a curse, Vivian would have never parted with you willingly, so I…intervened, on her behalf,” Diane had once said.

Perhaps the curse was something familiar to me, something that I explicitly wouldn’t have wanted to part with? My bed was an easy suspect, as were the pictures of Vivian I had plastered over the walls, but none of these seemed thematically compatible with the idea of a curse. Why would my bed be a curse?

“There!” Emily’s excitement filtered in from the outside world, “You look lovely, my lady.”

Vivian did look lovely in that leafy green dress, her hair folded into buns by a pair of ruby hairsticks. Emily dashed Vivian’s face with puffs of beige powder and carefully stroked her eyebrows with a dark brush.

“I don’t know how you do it,” Vivian looked at herself in a mirror, “I don’t even want to remind myself what happened the last time I tried makeup.”

“Your only job right now is to look beautiful,” Emily bowed.

“We really need to find you a man, Emily,” Vivian sighed, “Or a woman, whoever suits your fancy.”

“After you find yours, my lady,” Emily said.

Vivian chuckled and kissed the bracelet (now known as me) nestled against her wrist.

“Well. Let’s find your partner then.”

“My lady?”

“Nothing, nothing,” Vivian shook her head, “Let’s go.”

Once back inside, Vivian took her place at a newly set podium at the head of the banquet hall, carrying the two boxes holding the wedding rings. Vladimir and Stefan walked down the makeshift aisle, flanked by Eleanor and John Greymoor. In the background, Diane, Guin, and Emily sat side by side on one of the benches.

“I just realized,” Stefan said, “We don’t have an officiant.”

“Did we want one?” Vladimir asked.

“Not really,” Stefan shrugged, “I was just hoping to exchange vows and make out.”

The two of them glanced around the hall. No one seemed particularly opposed to this idea, so the two men squared off and produced from their tuxedo pockets separate pieces of written paper.

“Vladimir,” Stefan’s voice trembled, “Words cannot express how I feel at this moment. Yes, I’ve written words down here, but they alone do not suffice to express the magnitude of both joy and fear at our predicament. Joy at the celebration of our love, fear at how brittle our circumstances can be, fear that our love can be smothered and taken from us. But in these moments of terror, you alone, Vlad, have given me strength like no one else. You have given me the strength and capacity to resist the malice of human affairs in favor of the eternal and the transient. It is because of you, that I now do not truly fear, because I believe in our love, and our love above all else, will always conquer fear. There is no one else that I would rather spend the rest of my life with.”

“Stefan,” Vladimir replied, “Those who know me, know me to be a man of few words. To express my emotions as a Dimoski was often to embrace a kind of tepid weakness. Wearing my feelings on my sleeve has thus never been an option for me. But in the affairs of the heart, I have discovered that my love for you is best expressed with the economy of language and expression, that the affairs of the complex universe, in all its hidden circuitry and mysticism, will never move me the way your kisses or ‘good nights’ ever could. I love you Stefan, and may those words be etched upon your soul for eternity.”

Vivian passed to both Stefan and Vlad their wedding bands. The two linked arms with misty eyes and trembling lips, and then sealed their vows with a kiss. In the audience, Diane and the others stood and applauded. John and Eleanor Greymoor shared a tearful hug. Vivian Greymoor cried and embraced her brother and now brother-in-law, pressing her bracelet once more against her lips and welcomed a new Greymoor into the fold.