The Cursed Codex

by Matthew S. Cox

  “Ow!” whined Tira Shadow, waving her hand (and dagger) around. “It froze my fingers!’

  Nasir puffed out his chest. “Perhaps you are not as tough as I.”

  “Norns are resistant to cold,” said Fuegor.

  Docar groaned in pain.

  The Mourning Shade moved to swing at him again, but Kyra ran headlong in the way, taking the phantasmal blade across the chest. Foggy breath leaked from her nostrils like an annoyed dragon, but she didn’t otherwise show any reaction.

  Docar, not bothering to stand from where he’d fallen to one knee, pressed both hands to his chest while chanting to Hæm. Golden light surrounded his body for a few seconds, then seeped into his muscles. He took a few quick breaths and straightened his posture.

  Fuegor coughed out a mouthful of smoke, waved his hands about in an intricate dance, and thrust both arms out at the same time. A miniature comet of fire rocketed forth, striking the Mourning Shade in the face. The creature burst into a pillar of flames that lingered for a split-second after the Mourning Shadow vanished. When the fire dissipated, only a cloud of icy mist remained.

  “Excellent cast,” said Docar.

  “They are vulnerable to fire,” said Fuegor. “…and I got rather lucky. Hit it in exactly the right spot.”

  “Guess that made up for the fumble last round,” said a disembodied boy.

  Nasir helped Docar up. “Next time, friend. Tend to yourself first.”

  “What sort of chanter would I be to put my needs ahead of others’?” asked Docar.

  “A living one,” muttered Tira Shadow.

  “Well…” Nasir patted him on the shoulder. “If we are attacked by beings of cold, favor aiding thyself over me, if you are also injured.”

  Kyra collected her arrows. “Those creatures are most dangerous at night. It is not easy to see them approaching until they are upon us.”

  “Aha!” Fuegor rummaged a book from his backpack. “I believe I can offer some assistance in that regard. Allow me a few minutes.”

  The group walked onward into the waning light while the elf studied on the hoof. He seemed to possess the remarkable ability to walk while reading.

  Some minutes later, Fuegor looked up with a smile. He invoked magic, which sent a web of thin blue lines stretching around in all directions. They bounced around off invisible walls fifty feet away from him, and returned. When the beams met above his head, they created a hollow pyramid with an eye sitting inside near the top.

  “If anything moves within fifty feet of wherever I use this spell, I will be aware of it.” Fuegor raised one finger. “Not how many, or where they are coming from, but I will know that danger approaches.”

  “That is most helpful.” Nasir nodded.

  Fuegor dispelled his Arcane Sentinel, and the group continued walking.

  As the first traces of moonlight illuminated the barren, black wasteland, the shape of a stone tower came into view up ahead. Walls extended out to both sides, a great distance in either direction, too far to think about hunting for a way around before resting for the night. At the point where walls met the base of the tower, a barred gate blocked an arched passageway.

  “A gate,” said Nasir.

  “Truly, you are a warrior of great insight,” said Fuegor.

  “Stuff it, elf,” muttered Nasir.

  Kyra Redmane looked around, shifting her weight from leg to leg in a nervous, repetitive motion.

  “I got it.” Tira Shadow hurried up to the barrier. “Hmm. Someone was trapped here. There’s gunk on the bars and I see handprints. Maybe a half-elf. They’re about the size of my hands.” She gripped an untouched spot to make a new print for comparison.

  “Open it,” said Docar.

  Tira Shadow rattled the gate. “It’s locked. Hang on.”

  She took out her lock picks and settled into the task of opening the door. A few minutes later, she grinned. “Easy.” When she went to pull it open, the door didn’t budge.

  “It’s still closed,” said Nasir, though he didn’t sound mocking. “What happened?”

  “I know I should’ve gotten it. I can’t do much better than that, and I, uhh, felt the tumblers move.” She tugged on the barrier again, but it only rattled.

  “I’ve got no idea why—” Tira Shadow paused. She leaned close to the lock, peering into the keyhole with one eye. “Oh. I can’t pick it because it’s enchanted.”

  “There must be a key,” said Fuegor.

  Nasir spun to face him. “Oh of course there is. Who makes a lock without a key? Obviously, there’s a key.”

  Fuegor folded his arms and frowned.

  “We must find it.” Docar raised his hands, one to the warrior, one to the wizard in a calming gesture.

  “Where are we supposed to start looking?” snapped Nasir. “We’re in the middle of nowhere. This is probably the Dark Wizard’s tower, and we can’t even get in. Why didn’t anyone know we’d need a key?”

  Fuegor approached the door. “Patience, Norn. Perhaps I have some magic that can open it.”

  The elf spent a good twenty minutes studying the door, but eventually gave up.

  “You’ve been here before.” Nasir approached Kyra. “How’d you get past this?”

  She kept staring down. “It wasn’t closed last time. I don’t remember it being locked. I… am unable to open it. I tried and tried, but I can’t get past it.”

  “Dude, chill out,” said a ghostly boy from Docar’s direction. “You sound like you’re totes ready to cry for real.”

  “Yeah he does,” said the invisible little girl spirit.

  “Uhh.” Spirit Boy sniffled. “Just playing the NPC.”

  Kyra Redmane swallowed and stood taller. Her sadness evaporated to anger. “This is obviously some new trick Yzil has devised since my last group came so close to defeating him. There must be a key, but I don’t know where I left it.”

  “Wait, you left it somewhere?” asked Nasir. “You had it?”

  “I…” Kyra opened her satchel. “I don’t remember. Maybe we were only talking about finding the key and I dreamed I found it. I don’t remember losing it, so it must’ve only been a dream. My former allies helped me in searching for it, but I don’t think we found it. A seer told me that it lies within a forgotten place, a place removed from time where no one goes except for an ancient wise-woman. She is the guardian of the shrine, who keeps sacred the old treasures without knowing why. When those who are destined to destroy Yzil find her, she will let them take the key.”

  Docar, Nasir, and Tira Shadow stared at Kyra with a mixture of awe and worry.

  “That sounds… complicated,” said Fuegor.

  “You’re smart. Figure it out,” said Nasir with a wink.

  Docar paced back and forth. “Is this forgotten shrine inside the Devouring or do we have to go all the way back?”

  “Why didn’t you tell us about this shrine before?” asked Nasir, a touch of annoyance in his voice.

  Kyra met his challenge with a steely stare, not the least bit frightened. “If you must know, I am not entirely sure. When we first met, I was not fully myself, almost as though I had been asleep for a great while and only began to awake.”

  “You’re lucky you’re pretty, and you can talk pretty.” Nasir folded his arms. “I don’t like being lied to.”

  “Calm, friend. I do not think she is lying, and forgetting is not the same as deceiving,” said Docar. “There is strange magic in this place. Perhaps it has affected her thoughts?”

  Tira Shadow looked at him, impressed. “Wow. You’re getting into it. Uhh, oops.”

  Everyone blinked as if forgetting the past few seconds.

  Tira Shadow looked at him, smiling. “Well said. Kyra’s on our side. Why don’t we rest and think about where to go in the morning?”

  With some grumbling, the party settled in for the night. Kyra set out her bedroll as far away from the gate as possible, while remaining near enough to still be considered part of the camp. “I’ll take w
atch.”

  “I got second,” said Nasir.

  Fuegor cast Arcane Sentinel, creating a large magical pyramid over the campsite.

  Kyra smiled. “It’s not necessary. I have magic that lets me stay aware while I rest. I can sleep and watch for danger at the same time.” She held her arms out, palms toward the ground, and concentrated. Green energy started to well up from the ground, but fizzled out. “What? No…” She stared in shock.

  “The Devouring has consumed all life here,” said Docar. “Even that of Naluria, the Nature Spirit. Yzil must be vanquished. Bear no guilt. We can keep a normal watch this eve.”

  “Umm.” Fuegor pointed up at the pyramid. “My enchantment watches all.”

  Kyra set her hands on her hips, her expression a mixture of anger and heartbreak. “All right. I’m too angry to sleep, so I’ll take first watch.”

  “Done,” said Docar before nodding to Nasir. “Wake me for third.”

  And with that, the party bedded down.

  Tomorrow, they had a key to find.

  Or at least, a direction to pick.

  19

  Margin Notes

  Keith’s mother poked her head in the door.

  He nodded to her. “We just reached a good point to stop. Thanks for letting us go a little later than usual.”

  “You’re welcome. I got off the phone with Mr. Zuabi a moment ago. He was about to walk over here, but I explained you were close to a stopping point.” She looked at Ashur and Tira. “You two should hurry.”

  “Thanks, Mrs. Croft,” said the Zuabi siblings at once.

  As soon as Keith’s mother walked away, Tira scowled at the table. “Ooh, that’s so stupid!”

  “What?” asked Elliot while packing up the new dice he’d gotten. Bright yellow ones, naturally.

  “Why even have a lock picking skill when all the important locks are magical locks that can’t be picked? It’s just like a video game, and it’s stupid there, too!”

  Keith glanced down at his notebook where Kyra’s dialogue about the shrine took up a few lines in his handwriting, but he didn’t remember writing it down. “Umm. It’s like a puzzle. Something to figure out because it’s part of the main storyline. It wouldn’t be as fun if you could just pick the lock and skip going to get the key.”

  “It would be fun if my skills worked.” Tira folded her arms.

  Carlos put a hand on her tiny shoulder. “Think about the experience points we’ll get on the way. If you opened that lock we might miss out on a whole level.”

  “Oh.” She sighed, grinding her toes into the rug. “Okay. I still think it’s silly. Don’t even make it a ‘lock’ then. Make it like a socket you need to put a magic rock in.”

  Ashur chuckled. “Cosmetic. C’mon, Tir, we gotta get home.” He gave Keith a playful whack on the arm. “See you Monday at school. I might be able to hang out later Sunday if you wanna do something.”

  “Yeah, cool. Hope you can get away.” Keith stood and walked with his friends to the front door.

  Once everyone left, he headed to the kitchen to make good on his part of the bribe for extra time—doing the dishes. For the half hour or so that took, his brain ground on the whole idea of the locked gate in a tower with a wall going far in either direction. Where had that come from other than his dream? He didn’t remember any maps for that mini tower in the module.

  Keith did a fast (but reasonably thorough) job on the dishes and ran upstairs to his room. The table remained set up, since everyone had rushed out at the last minute. He collected paper plates and plastic cups into a trash bag, which he took to the kitchen. Upon returning to his room, he nabbed the Gamemaster’s Codex from the table and flopped on his bed, opening it to the module at the end. The Devouring didn’t include any mention of such a tower (or wall) in the printed text, but Sarah’s silver-ink handwriting along the margins commented about adding it in the second time she ran the game to change things up for the players.

  Evidently, her friends had also used the included module for their first experience with C&C, but from what Sarah’s notebooks explained, they didn’t get far at all and stopped playing those characters. Their next set of characters ran a different story, and they didn’t go back to The Devouring with them. For whatever reason, they decided to try it a second time, despite no longer being new at the game.

  Sarah made a few changes here and there so her friends didn’t know all the answers, and adding that tower with the gate had been one. Her margin notes mentioned a couple of small children from a nearby farm finding a magical key in a field and thinking it ‘pretty,’ so they took it home. This had happened before the Devouring began spreading, and when the family fled the encroaching darkness, they left the key behind at their house.

  “She probably put it in that village they found… with the skeletons.” He scrunched up his face. “Why would they play the same story over again?” He thought about Kyra first talking about all her companions dying, and then saying only one died but the rest got away. “Duh. They were new, and they probably didn’t have a Tira, so their characters weren’t too good. Bet they wiped.”

  Keith snapped the Codex closed. After a minute or three of making faces at it, he crawled off the bed and sat in the folding chair behind the GM screen. The description of the shrine he’d come up with didn’t exist in the printed module or in Sarah’s notes. That had been his creation…

  Or had it?

  “I didn’t write this. Maybe my arm did when I wasn’t paying attention.” He gasped. “Sarah? Was she talking to me? Or… Through me? What did I have her say…? She wasn’t fully herself when they first met her, and she felt like she’d been sleeping and now she woke up?” Keith’s breath picked up and he broke out in a sweat. He had no idea where any of that had come from. It simply flowed out his mouth when his friends tried to talk to Kyra. And Elliot caught him crying. Kyra had been sad and homesick. No Sarah was sad and homesick, and he had shared her emotion.

  She was in a fog. Holy crap! Sarah is Kyra. Somehow. Inside my head?

  Again and again, he read the passage.

  “Lies within a forgotten place… a place removed from time.”

  “No one goes there except for an ancient wise woman.”

  “She keeps the sacred treasures without knowing why.”

  “She’ll let them take the key.”

  Keith read it five more times until a spark of insight leapt across his brain. Kyra was trying to talk to me!

  “Damn.” He glared at the clock. “Too late. I’ll do it tomorrow.”

  20

  A Key to the Past

  A little after eleven Sunday morning, Keith hopped on his bike and raced down the sidewalk. He cut right on the second corner and pedaled hard down a street surrounded by the browns and yellows of an autumnal tree-tunnel. Crackles and snaps rose from his tires, the death wails of fallen leaves as he ran them over.

  At Mrs. Norris’ house, he skidded to a stop, set the kickstand, and ran up to the front door.

  This has got to be right.

  A forgotten place removed from time. Mrs. Norris said she’s keeping Sarah’s bedroom just like it was when she lived here. No one goes in there except her. She thinks Sarah’s stuff is sacred—she didn’t want to sell me those model planes, or even the book. She can’t explain why she keeps the room. He stared up at the porch ceiling and sighed hard. I hope she’ll let me take the key!

  Mrs. Norris answered the door, a curious smile on her face. “Good morning, young man.”

  “Please, Mrs. Norris. You can call me Keith.”

  “Of course, Keith. What can I do for you?”

  He took a breath, held it, and let it out slow. “Can I see Sarah’s room, please?”

  She regarded him for a while in silence, her lips creasing thin. “I’m not sure that’s a good idea. For me, I mean. I don’t like going in there too often. It brings back too many painful memories.”

  “I understand.” Keith bit on his knuckle. She’s going to
think I’m crazy. “Umm. It’s really important.”

  “Why? What’s so important for you to see my granddaughter’s bedroom?”

  Keith bowed his head. “This is going to sound nuts, but if you had a chance to get Sarah back, even it was kinda crazy, would you do it?”

  Mrs. Norris grasped him by the shoulders. “I’ve spent the past thirty years refusing to come to terms with the fact that my granddaughter is most likely dead somewhere no one will ever find her bones.”

  He braced for her telling him to go away and never come back.

  She stared into nowhere for a few seconds before refocusing her gaze on him and sighing. “I don’t know where you’re going with this, but to answer your question, if there was anything I could do to find her, even if it’s finding her body, I would do it.”

  Eyes wide in shock, he stared up at her. “Does that mean I can see her room?”

  “You still haven’t told me where you’re going with all this.” Mrs. Norris leaned down, eye to eye with him. “What’s going on in that head of yours?”

  He kept as straight a face as he could. “I think she’s trapped inside the book you gave me.”

  Mrs. Norris blinked.

  “I know it sounds completely crazy, but if you hear me out…”

  She backed up. “Come on inside. I’ll get some cookies. I don’t know if I can believe this, but it’s an interesting story I’d like to hear.”

  “Okay.” He trudged in and sat on the sofa, in the same spot he’d been in last time, staring at the same portrait of Sarah to his left under the giant air conditioner.

  “All right, here we are.” Mrs. Norris walked in a few minutes later, again with two glasses of milk and platter of Nilla Wafers. She set the tray down and joined him on the sofa. “Go on, Keith. I’m listening.”

  “You said the day after she disappeared, you heard someone inside the house, but didn’t see anyone… and then you heard the front door close.”

  “Right.” She nodded.