Solo Hey Heartbreaker

[Madeira Dusk]

50th of Spring, 518

The day wove on slowly, with a sleepy kind of appetite. A late noon sun was slanting off the sea and into High Spirit's dusty bay window, highlighting Nessela's scaled cheeks. The Konti was in the sitting room, an abacus clicking away on the table and a book of ledgers open across her lap. At her feet the ghostly form of Emma had her scabbed
lips pursed together making sputtering noises as she prodded her rolling duck toy around the floor. Madeira observed all of this from her spot across the room, hip propped against a cluttered desk of drawers, drawing in the red notebook in her hand.

After a season of being an employee, Madeira found herself warming to the experience. The shop was an interesting place, full of strange items and the passing dead. And there was a lot to learn from Nessela, who's long life took a path to their shared profession so different from Madeira's. But mostly she was coming to appreciate how appealing separate it was. As soon as Emma led Madeira to her big apartment, once she had divested herself of beads and crossbow and iron nails, her work was over.

Madeira was still a Spiritist, still identified herself as such, but it was no longer her only identity. The Craven name meant nothing outside Alvadas, nobody would glance twice at its mention. She was not at the beck and call of the family who had raised her as a medium from birth, and who had built their massive power on the back
of magic. Here she was just Madeira. No expectations followed her home, or kept her up at night.

She hummed with quiet appreciation as she sketched, that sounded much to loud in the sudden quiet.

Madeira glanced up as she realized the clacking of the abacus and the playful noises of the ghost had stopped. It seemed Emma had expended too much of her soulmist playing, and had wandered away as a tired, barely-there flicker. Nessela, meanwhile, was watching Madeira with interest in her tired eyes, her chin in her hands and her elbow on her book.

"What have you got there, Madeira?" the older woman hummed distractedly, obviously looking to distract herself from her endless numbers.

Madeira tucked a charcoal stick into the book's binding and approached the reclining Konti, turning it around to show the mess of strange circles that filled the page. The circles weren't strange to Nessela, though. She raised a pale brow as her eyes skimmed knowingly over the incomprehensible mess.

"I did not know you practiced Malediction."

"I don't. I mean, I've only tried once."

Nessela gently took the book from Madeira and flipped through the pages, her expression unreadable.

x

[Madeira Dusk]

"Here, explain this one to me", she handed the book back, open to one of Madeira's more complete drafts. It was a circle made of a snake latched to it's own tail. Inside a design of a scythe was made of a dense, interlocking word of loyalty. She remembered this one, she had made it last season at the bedside of an irritable dying man.

"I made it for my Malediction teacher, actually." Madeira began, pulling a chair to the corner of the table, so the two women could sit elbow-to-elbow as they talked. "For her corpse, I mean. I would tattoo this on her preserved tongue. She is a Dhani, hence the snake. Ssanya is a follower of Dira, and a loyal a woman as you've ever met. So I've
made a scythe of words to represent it."

Nessela nodded along to her reasoning for the separate elements, only to hit her with a question that scattered it: "what was your intention?"

Madeira blinked, looked down at the drawing, and shot the Konti a quizzical look.

"To inspire the affected to loyalty?" the statement came out with the curling tail of a question.

"The elements are well thought out", Nessela explained patiently, “but the separate elements do not make a cohesive whole. The snake, for instance... being Dhani has no baring on loyalty. Not only that, you had to connect the head and the tail to make a complete circle. That imagery can be confused, and any loyalty this fetish inspires might
come back to bite you." A long pale finger circled the inky snake in an endless loop to demonstrate the inevitability of it.

Madeira frowned down at the paper, embarrassed she had not caught this fatal flaw herself.

"Accuracy is very important to Malediction. You must consider your circle from all angles, consider all the different meanings in it. Magic is a fickle beast and can easily turn on you if you don't give it proper instruction."

As Madeira considered her words, a spark of excitement lifted from her chest. They had just opened a dialogue about a magic many peopled dared not speak aloud, and the ambitious Spiritist had a lot she needed to ask of the Konti. But just as she was about to open her mouth to inquire further, the hitherto silent bell above the door gave a cheery jangle.

A human man with nervous eyes and a hard brow slid sideways into the room. When the first thing his blue eyes saw was the ghost flickering ominously in the middle of the room, she saw his determination visibly waver. But he steeled himself, and cast about until he found the shops living occupants.

x

[Madeira Dusk]

Madeira was on her feet at once, hiding her disappointment behind a polite smile as she welcomed the customer with a practiced: “welcome to High Spirits. How can we help you?"

He was tall and broad, she noticed. But not in the way the Akalak were. His dense, heavy body and the long scar she could see on the back of his hand spoke more of combat experience than combat practice. The man was blonde, blue eyed, and peeling from a recent sunburn. She guessed him to be just shy of middle age. The way he seemed to be actively avoiding looking at the many knives, bones and mysterious beads on display she knew he was not looking to purchase anything. That only meant one thing.

"I have a... a problem." he stated, in lieu of greeting.

"No need to worry, I'm sure we can help", Madeira soothed, pulling out the chair she had vacated and motioning him to sit. Nessela pushed her books and things aside, giving the man her complete attention. “I'm Madeira, and this is Nessela, the proprietor."

"Michel. Pleasure." he said automatically.

"What can we do for you, Michel?" Nessela prompted him to speak.

But now, sitting at the table with two pairs of eyes trained on him, he didn't seem able to continue. He opened his mouth with two false starts, cleared his throat uncomfortably, ran his hands over his thighs, and finally surfaced with a little purple velvet bag.

Neither Nessela or Madeira let their irritation show, knowing these things came in their own time, but both their focuses were caught by the innocuous little parcel. But while Madeira's brows were quirked with interest at the sight, Nessela's were pulled into a frown. Wordlessly Michel upended the bag and a little ivory ring bounced on the table.

Unthinkingly, Madeira reached for the jewelry as it looked like it would roll over the edge of the table. Only for the Konti to jump out of her seat and slap Madeira's hands away with a stinging blow that she felt all the way up her arm.

"Ow!", she complained, snatching her hand back as the thing toppled to the floor. Nessela's eyes held no apology.

"You're smarter than that, Madeira. Grab the gloves from behind the counter."

Oh.

The ring was a fetish.

x

[Madeira Dusk]

Properly cowed by the Konti's disapproving glare and her own thoughtlessness, Madeira nodded and meekly went to fetch the pair of snug black leather gloves she mentioned. If someone came to this specific shop with anything organic, it was a given to treat it with extreme suspicion.

When she returned, pulling the soft leather taunt over her wrist as bending to scoop up the ring, Nessela had already opened the man into speaking.

"--been a Kight for nearly fifteen years. I requested the transition to the Riverfall outpost after I got married..."

Madeira stood, turning the ring in her hand. Up close she realized the polished ring was not ivory, but more common bone. Though it would be hard to tell if someone wasn't familiar to the subtle yellow cast. The ring was thin on the underside, but a wide surface on top gave plenty of room for a gardens worth of tiny carved flowers. It was beautiful,
truly. But she turned it over, and saw on the underside of the widest part of the band, were it would be snug against the finger, was a malediction circle.

"...Did you give this to your wife?" Madeira couldn't stop herself from asking.

Michel looked up, caught her incredulous eye, and immediately looked at the table, shamefaced.

"It was just... I love her so much. But everyone else does too... I had to get her out of Syliras before she could caused more trouble. All those angry wives..."

"So..." Madeira ventured delicately "your wife is unfaithful, and your solution is to, um, move to Riverfall?"

Michel's blank, uncomprehending stare was all it took to convince Madeira the man was a few fish short of a school. Nessela cleared her throat pointedly. "Never mind, where did you get the ring?"

"Ah, a Drykas man. When the camp was last close. Disgusting man. Covered in weird talismans and... things", his lips twisted in distaste at the memory. "He said he had magic that could... help. I was desperate!" he defended weakly. "He made it out of the rib of a dog, for loyalty."

So he took his unfaithful wife to the most sex-starved city in Miza, then paid a wandering Maledictor to curse her with loyalty?

x

[Madeira Dusk]

With a delicate hand, Nessela beckoned Madeira and the ring closer. Madeira crossed around the table and stood at her teacher's side, holding the ring face-down so she could see the carved circle on the bottom. The Konti studied it minutely and looked up at Michel under her lashes.

"But since you are here with the ring, I imagine you are not happy with the product?"

"No I'm not happy with it!" the man raised his hands, exasperated under his embarrassed flush. "The damn thing made it worse!"

Now it was Madeira's turn to raise a brow, eyes sliding from the ring to the distraught man. "How so?"

"It's- I mean..." He waved his hand around them like he was hoping to scoop the words from the air. "It's made her a sl-slut!"

"I beg your pardon?"

"Men, women, those big blue bastards, I've been catching her at it nearly every night this week. It doesn't matter where or when, she’s been drooling after anything she can get her hands on! She’s insatiable and it's only getting worse! I had to wrestle this thing
off her and lock her in our apartment so she won't cause any more trouble!"

Stunned silence met his words. The big knight fidgeted uncomfortably in his seat, his ears an alarming shade of red and scowling at the table between them. Nessela turned to Madeira, and her eyes were alight with that mischievous spark she got when she was about to bestow her strange brand of teaching.

"I think I know what the problem is. Do you see it, Madeira?"

Unwilling to disappoint her, Madeira brought the cursed fetish to her eye and studied the circle. The lines were clean and neat, the circle perfect. Intersected lines inside the circle flowed outward from a pair of plump, womanly lips and wrapped around a simple design of a human heart. The design was sensual, sure. But that interpretation seemed second to the idea of faithfulness that came from the connected mages. The body and heart are bound together, which all reason seemed to point to the woman's husband, who obviously loved her. How could the circle have perverted the idea that was carved into it so completely? That was the exact opposite of its intended purpose!

Madeira glanced at the Konti from the corner of her eye, and saw the woman looking at her expectantly. Her face gave nothing away, and Madeira knew better than to ask the notoriously tough teacher for a hint. She bit her lip and spoke her thought process in a slow, measured way.

x

[Madeira Dusk]

"I can't see any fault in the circle... Though I suppose there could be meaning that I'm missing. And if the outcome was loyalty, it makes sense to use a dog..." Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the Konti's lip twist in a subtle frown. Madeira paused at that
uncharacteristic slip of composure, and reconsidered. "Or... maybe the Dykas never knew the dog. Maybe it was a loner, or sick. Or wild? Or..." her brow creased as she dug deep for some reasoning behind the very simple logic. What was wrong with the dog? Was it that it was an animal? Some primal throwback? Some... "It wasn't just a dog", she realized, her eyes going wide with epiphany. "It was a bitch!"

"Very good, Madeira", the Konti smiled proudly. "And?"

"And if the bitch was in heat when it died, it would completely rewrite the meaning of the circle! The circle isn't the problem, it was the materials. The Maledictor didn't consider the history of the dog and the state in which it died."

"Exactly", the Konti smiled. "You must consider the big picture and every angle in Malediction. A fetish is more than the sum of it’s parts."

"So, that's it then?" the man looked between the two magic users and sighed in relief. "Can you fix it?"

"You're mistake was using magic to play with your wife's affections,” Nessela turned the power of her cold blue eyes on Michel. "and by removing the cause that will be fixed."

"But the reason I sought the magic in the first place..."

"I understand your distress, but I cannot 'fix' this fetish nor am I willing to make you a new one. If word were to get out that I am willing to do such a thing I will attract some very unwanted attention. I'm sorry, you will have to find another way."

Michel looked crestfallen, but didn't argue. As his head fell into his hands Nessela spoke quietly to Madeira. "Destroy it, please."

Madeira nodded and strode purposefully to the storage area in the back of the shop, where the carving tools were kept. Behind her Nessela had moved her chair in order to rest a comforting hand on Michel shoulder.

But once Madeira was through the doorway and out of view, she paused. She palmed the ring, turning it this way and that, studying the circle hidden under the bone garden. An idea was bubbling up in her mind, something slow-moving and wary. The fetish was cursed, absolutely useless and somewhat dangerous, yet...

She ran her thumb over the perfect circle, her hungry eyes devouring their shape and seeking new meaning from the delicate picture within. She wanted it. She wanted to study it, lay it out before her and figure out what went wrong, and how she could avoid such mistakes herself.

Nessela would not approve though. Keeping something cursed was the height of folly, she would say. And she would be right. But Madeira knew she would be careful with it. She would hide it away, and nobody would need to know she even had it.

The decision was made before she was even fully aware of it. She slipped the cursed ring into her pocket and picked the small chiseling hammer of a low shelf. She picked a thick human knuckle bone from a jar of similar grotesqueries and smashed it into unrecognizable shards. She scooped the powdered dust into her hand and headed back to the front of the store, were a wastebin sat in an unobtrusive corner. She made a show of beating the bone dust from her gloves as she listened to the knight lament his sordid love life, all the while feeling the stolen ring, heavy with guilt, bump gently against her thigh.

x

[Madeira Dusk]

Grades Awarded!

Don't forget to edit/delete your grade request!

Madeira Craven

Skills

• Drawing: 1xp
  Malediction: 3xp
  Rhetoric: 1xp
  Logic: 2xp
  Investigation: 1xp
  Subterfuge: 1xp

Lores

• Malediction: considering the intention
  Malediction: how to construct a malediction circle
  Lore of the difference between ivory and bone
  Malediction: the importance of the raw material
  Investigation: the use of deduction and reasoning
  Malediction: how the source material can change the meaning of a circle

Awards & Retribution
Cursed Ring: A bone ring carved with flowers, the fetish is a severely flawed attempt at Malediction. Made of the rib of a bitch in heat, what was meant to inspire loyalty instead curses the wearer with insatiable lust.

Notes
Notes here.