Chapter 4-108: Cursed, Branded, and Marked

Sama sauntered back to the Ritual taking place.

The pillars of moonfire had already faded down, not that anyone outside the temple’s grounds could actually see them. They had left behind themselves a floating form writhing in the silver magic of the Goddess of the Moon and Stars, and the Patron of all Good Magic.

Ignoring the startled looks of the Priestesses performing the Ritual of the Silver Queen, Sama stepped into the circle of the grand pentagram they were in, channeling and guiding the moonfire that was battling with and eroding the power of the Hag’s Curse that was trying to claim Leslie Vanderbilt.

Leslie’s face was a mask of pain, violated in mind, body and soul, yet still screaming and writhing to resist the power that was trying to claim her, responding to the gentle moonfire that was with her just as much as the doom of the Curse...

Sama lifted the misshapen skull in her hand by its moldering, iron-like hair, and cackled, the laugh cutting through all the chants and screams... and even the sussurus wailings of the Curse as it fought with the whistling moonfire. Leslie’s eyes, gone completely black, like pools of ink, snapped open.

“Your Curseline is severed!” giggled Sama, and Tremble impaled the skull, blazing with six different types of energies... but the most important of those was vivus.

The greenhag’s skull blew apart, and hungry, anathemic energies chased them through the air... but all of them bowed to vivus in the end, white mists devouring every last shard of her, and her Hag’s Curse.

They swirled in the air, buoyed by the moonfire swooping and swirling past.

The Curse opened Leslie’s mouth, and crawling tendrils emerged, as if they wanted to lunge out at Sama... or maybe truly scream, as the vivic fire ignited.

It flashed up the slightest thread of darkness like flame following a vapor trail, and exploded over the darkness of the Hag’s Curse and moonfire alike, feasting on both sets of energy wildly.

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Sama watched the vivic fire devouring all the energies at play here. Naturally, the Curse and the moonfire wouldn’t stop until the dawn, connected to greater energies vile and Celestial... but the Curse was being eroded twice as fast as before, as the moonfire ignored the vivic fire growing so rapidly, focusing on the Curse it was meant to suppress.

Multiple energies were playing through Leslie’s naked body, but the vivic energy was clearly the hungriest, devouring everything involved... and giving that energy to the one at the locus of the fight.

Leslie latched onto that thread of power instinctively, and her eyes began to burn with unwhite mistfire. The screams and gargles and gasps that had been escaping her lips dimmed down, and began to change in tenor.

They now sounded like growls, and snarls, and hisses.

Her fingers began to twitch, but not in convulsions. They tensed, arched like claws, and began to grab and grasp, twist and strangle, rip and tear at all the darkness about her... and as they did, they trailed hungry unwhite flames.

The priestesses were quite wide-eyed watching all of this, but seeing that Sama looked supremely unsurprised and quite smug, they decided that they couldn’t let a non-Powered show them up, and continued with their Ceremony.

Sama smirked smugly, seriously insufferable for a second. She hadn’t been sure the trick would work, but it seemed to.

Vivus feeding on the death of a Cursed person could eat the energy of the dissolving Curse just like any other magical energy, and in doing so attune to it.

Then it could feel the dying Curse being assaulted by the moonfire in mutual oblivion, and pulled to it like fire to tinder, it leapt the gap from the dead to the dying, and started feeding.

Of course, it wasn’t feeding that energy to the Land right now. There was someone too attuned to it right there, and all that energy was going into her.

Leslie was going to come out of this looking plenty different than she had, but she’d be getting some serious physical buffs out of it... and mental, too, judging by how she was now fighting back so energetically, using the instincts and drives of the Curse against it.

One would be master, and one would be twisted and slave to the imperatives of the other. Alas for the Curse of the Hag!...

Sama chuckled, and if it sounded like something on the hunt ready to feast, well, that was just the way of things.

There was little in life as satisfying as killing a Hag and saving a sister Hagchild in the process of doing so...

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Natural Renewal was still Aru’s time, and the moment Dark magic of any sort was at its weakest. It blew across the world at the speed of the coming dawn, and slammed through the fading Ritual of the Silver Queen.

Silver ignited into gold, flared with all the holy power of The Light, and both it and the Curse blazed and were feasted on by vivus shooting in all directions in ecstasy.

Sama caught Leslie as she fell from the air, the girl utterly spent physically, and a great shuddering breath about four times longer than it should have been wracking her as she inhaled all that burning vivus.

Grinning ear to ear, Sama faced the morning, and began the Salute to Aru in a strong, sure voice. The startled Priestesses just let her sing it, humming along under their breath, as Sama lifted the new Hagchild and her long green locks to the morning of a new day.

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She looked at herself in the mirror, and didn’t recognize the person looking back at her.

Her new face wasn’t bad-looking... at least, the part without the brown-green Curse Brand occupying it. She was also taller by a good three inches, and looked at least five years older, advancing from a middle-schooler to her late teens almost instantly.

And she had all the curves to go with it, too...

“Your name is Lily now,” Sama said calmly, pulling Lily’s long green hair back over her ears and braiding it with nimble fingers. Sama was a full six feet tall, although skinny enough she didn’t loom. Lily was two inches shorter, but with her curves, should definitely outweigh Sama... although she had the feeling that she did not.

Sama also touched the edges of her Brand, and pulled back with gentle nails. Lily gasped as the Brand was dragged back along her face and down her neck, with some protests she could feel, letting her look at her full, untainted face.

If she wasn’t a great beauty, she was definitely attractive, sexy, and friendly, with dancing green eyes verdant of hue.

She smiled, and found herself staring at the eight canines in her mouth. She looked at the hands in front of her, the bright green nails, then slowly lifted up her right arm and flexed her bicep.

She had a lot harder muscle now than she’d had before, too...

“You can’t stay here, of course,” Sama told her kindly, and Lily listened. “Even if your family doesn’t try to discover who you are, the Church of Imprus will. The Sylunar have already agreed to send you off to Heavenbound Hall to get trained properly.”

“Heavenbound Hall?” Lily squeaked, despite herself. Even her voice was new, and the thought of training, and fighting, got her strangely excited. Especially there, where they trained heroes!

“We can’t be Heavenbound,” Sama said softly, giving her a calm hug. Lily slumped slightly, and leaned back into Sama. She was much stronger now than before, but that just made her that much more aware of how strong Sama really was. “To embrace magic is to fuel the Curse. We’ve denied the Curse, and with it all magic. We are Null Forsaken, and the only magic we will ever wield is that of Gear bound to our soul.”

Their blue and green eyes seemed to glitter in counterpoint next to one another.

“We are Hagchildren. We start as human, but we can grow into the power of the Hags that the Curse tried to turn us into... without all the twisted physiology.

“But that takes time, Karma, and training. You are a Verdant Hagchild, and when it comes time, you will give any Amazon a reason to regret the fact that they don’t wear their power on their face.”

Lily’s Curse Brand crept back up her face as she watched, alive and strong... and completely subservient to her now. It was a useful tool, and as long as it stayed useful, she could keep it around.

She met Sama’s eyes in the mirror. “Verdant Hagchild. What does that make you?”

Sama’s predatory smile turned her clear good looks into a hunting mask. “Brutal Hagchild.”

Lily smiled despite herself. “I think you Annis-bloods got the short end of the stick.”

“But think how much I’m going to save on bras over the years!” Sama laughed back, and Lily had to chortle despite herself.

“I think you have a lot to tell me about,” Lily said seriously.

“Oh, do I!” Sama rolled her eyes. “And we don’t have enough time to do so, so we’re going to do something else. Do you know what a Hagmark is?”

Lily furrowed her brow. “No. Is that a variant of a personal Sigil?”

“No. It’s a line of unique Runes. They have great power, if they can be powered up... which naturally requires...”

“Goldweight!” Lily filled in promptly, wrinkling her nose. “What does this entail?”

“Well, I don’t want others to mar it, so it should be put in some place where they can’t see it to interfere with it... or even realize that you have one.”

Lily looked at Sama grinning over her shoulder in the mirror, and had a strange feeling. “So... just where are you going to put it?”

“Inside your nasal cavity.” Sama’s eyes were dancing even more.

Lily blinked despite herself, her hands going up to her new nose. “I... how are you going to get in there? Do I need to be under anesthesia or something?”

“Of course not.” Sama’s hand came up and turned Lily’s chin around to face her. “Powering it up uses Investing, the same process Primos use to enchant things up. But the making of it just requires some trust. Trust your big sister, I’ll do it right now.”

“Mmmff!” Lily exclaimed into Sama’s mouth as their lips came together, and suddenly something large, sensuous, dangerous, and very flexible was filling her mouth, caressing her tongue, and tickling the back of her throat as it extended right through and up and around inside her head.

The sensation of a golden knife being unsheathed inside her skull made her tense up, but Sama had her securely, and she wasn’t going to fall. Indeed, given how distracting the rest of Lily was reacting to this kiss and embrace, the fact a tongue had suddenly became a scalpel inside her head was almost a minor matter, especially since that tongue was making her entire head dizzy to taste it...