A web serial about curses, magic, and the friends we made along the way. Updates when it updates.
Due to things becoming extremely hectic for the next week or so, story updates will be paused until next Friday (May 10). Weekend art posts should continue as scheduled.
As always, if you ever want to talk about Curse Squad or get updates as soon as they happen, come join our official Discord server (it’s free)! We’d love to see you there!
Cheers,
Jesse
Rebecca smiles brightly. “Oh, it’s no problem at all! You’ll come to see the Lighting, won’t you? The whole town will be there, I’m sure. We get lots of visitors from all over the Empire, just like you.”
“Of course we’ll go see it,” Isla says. “It sounds exciting.”
“Great!” Rebecca says. “Do you have any festival clothes? It’s too late for us to tailor a new one for you, but we have a lot of dresses that are already finished that might fit you. We have special dresses here for the festival, in all sorts of colors. Each pattern and color represents a different blessing for the coming year, and–”
“Sorry, but we can’t afford to buy a new dress. We don’t have the space to carry it, either,” Lucian cuts in.
Isla walks down the streets, picking directions at random, as if she can physically shake her thoughts off. She feels like she’s being watched, and if she slows down, she thinks she feels tendrils of darkness creeping over her shoulders again.
“–Isla! Isla!”
Isla looks back. It’s Lucian, right behind her.
“Isla, I’ve been trying to get you to listen to me for almost four blocks now. What’s going on?”
“Nothing,” Isla says. The witch’s voice offers no comment. “I just needed some air, okay?”
Isla’s eyes widen and she whirls around towards the source of the voice. Em stares back at them, looking less than happy.
Lucian’s eyes narrow. “Who the hell are–”
“What are you doing here?” Isla asks.
Em crosses their arms. “I’d ask you the same thing. This house is outside the town border. You shouldn’t be here.”
The random shop they walk into appears to sell knives. They sell other things, too, but mostly knives. Isla is never more glad that Solanus can’t see.
“Hey there,” the shopkeeper says. “You folks looking to buy something? I’ve got some premium blades here for you.”
“We’ll think about it,” Lucian says in a tone that means she will not think about it. “We’re actually new in town, and we were wondering about that house on the west edge of town.”
Em looks from Isla to Lucian, then back to Isla again. Something akin to realization crosses their face, and they point at Isla. “You still remember me.”
“Yeah, of course I do,” Isla says. “We talked to you yesterday. My memory might suck, but it’s not that bad.”
Em’s eyes narrow. “Are you a witch?”
“She is not a witch, thank you,” Lucian says. “And I’m still lost. What’s going on? Why do you two know each other?”
Isla dreams of eyes glowing in the darkness, glowing green, glowing gold, glowing red. There’s a person standing there, shadows shifting over the outlines of their form, growing into something larger, something monstrous.
The monster lumbers towards her, and its footfalls make the very ground shake under its weight and force. She can feel the magical power burning off of its ink-black skin and it feels like standing in an open flame, like standing in a sandstorm with her skin exposed to the buffeting winds. It eats ad eats and eats away at her, and she can’t move away, or won’t.
“Go back to where you came,” a spidery voice says, filtering down through the darkness.
There’s a lot of things about that statement that don’t make sense. Isla decides to tackle the obvious one. “What do you mean, it never finishes?”
Em shrugs. “Just how it sounds. It never gets to the end. It starts over before it finishes.”
“They…start over?” Isla asks. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“I can’t describe it any better,” Em says. “But if you want to see it for yourself, you can. Down in the square, they’re doing the Lighting. If you get there fast enough, you might get there before everything starts over again.”
Isla blinks. “But how–?”
“I think I’d like to see this,” Lucian says. “Come on, Isla. I think I’m feeling festive all of a sudden.”
It’s a long, quiet walk. There’s a lot of claw marks in the road as they go forward, but nobody comments on them. They already know there’s a demon problem in the area. No need to belabor the point.
It’s a few hours later, when the sun is dipping under the horizon, that they see something out in the distance.
Isla squints. “Is that the town?” she asks.
Lucian unfolds her map and checks it. “If my math is correct–which, to be fair, it’s usually not–that’s around where our destroyed town should be.” She puts her map down. “Correct me if I’m wrong, but that doesn’t look very destroyed to me.”
They leave town. It’s a bit of a hassle to get through all of the crowds and find the right way out through the circuitous streets, but eventually they manage to get out, passing the line of protection stones around the town, and head north.
When they’re a little ways off, Lucian opens the lantern on her belt again.
“Oh, what’s this? You’re finally letting me talk again?” Solanus asks. “Wow, thanks so much! I thought we were all friends here, and you keep me closed for a hundred years. I thought I would forget all about you, my best friends who used to help me out by carrying me around and talking to me.”
“We were in the middle of town,” Lucian says. “And it’s literally been about an hour since I shut you off. You can stand to be quiet for that long.”
“Yeah, but I don’t want to,” Solanus says petulantly.