Curse & Affect: A LitRPG / GameLit Adventure (Steve the Paladin Book 3), page 1
ALSO IN SERIES
Pity the Ghoul
Aberzombie & Lich
Curse & Effect
CURSE & EFFECT
©2022 A.C. HADFIELD
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Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Thank you for reading Curse & Effect
Groups
LitRPG
Chapter
One
The female goblin looked at me as though I were something she’d stepped in.
She knew I could see her watching me from her poorly hidden position behind a thick oak tree. She’d been tracking me ever since I entered this particular part of Blackbirch Wood earlier in the night when I started my patrol duties.
The aforementioned wood is a foreboding, ancient woodland that covers most of the northern and eastern sections of Hallow’s Bridge, my current hometown. This deep in, the moonlight barely broke through the dense canopy, and despite the weather breaking for the better as we approached the middle of spring, here in the UK I couldn’t stop shivering.
It wasn’t solely from the low temperatures. Blackbirch had a thing about it that set me on edge: the fact that the veil between our world and the Other Side here stretched perilously thin at certain points. This necessitated the likes of me and my fellow Arkane Academy people to patrol the area to ensure no supernatural gribblies got through and munched on the unsuspecting citizenry. We were mostly successful.
This was the case all over the world, with sites of power drawing in the nasties. However, goblins pretty much kept to themselves, regarding the general human population more of a threat to them than the reverse. They knew the danger of exposing their existence to the public and therefore kept within the dark folds of Blackbirch and other such gloomy places.
Despite the goblin’s self-seclusion, we still had to keep their numbers down so they didn’t get too organized and cause any trouble.
“Alaach gahk foegetche. I see you watching,” I said, putting into practice my goblinese. I’d been studying it as part of my extracurricular studies for the last few months. The academy has a kind of DuoLingo for various supernatural races. I knew my pronunciation was rough, but goblin speech wasn’t designed for human mouths.
Despite my lack of finesse, it got this particular creature’s attention.
Her long ears twitched. She froze, confusion written across her ugly mug.
I’m not being unkind here; goblins are disgusting, evil creatures. And by that, I mean their favorite BBQ recipes include baby humans dipped in their secret sauce.
I would advise against asking what’s in their sauce. I am told it’s quite tasty, however.
This particular specimen stood about three feet tall and wore an outfit of roughly tailored animal skins and furs. I saw some badger and squirrel parts in there and furs of things that didn’t look native to our realm. Her face was colored with a reddish hue, and her skin was pockmarked and boil-covered, giving her a permanently diseased look. Bulbous, green eyes with a narrow, vertical slit for a pupil widened as she continued to observe me.
“Gahk schen bulbar. You stink, human,” she replied before darting behind a tree.
I sighed and trudged on, continuing to follow my prescribed patrol route, all the while keeping an eye on my follower. She was probably just a local wilderness goblin, the kind that subsists on woodland fare, but it wasn’t wise to keep them at your back unattended for too long lest they got any ideas. I was, after all, a potentially large meal.
In my right hand, I wielded what regular people would assume to be nothing more than a comb. With one magical word and a concentrated visual, it would change into virtually any melee weapon I could imagine. This magic was required so I could remain armed at all times and not scare old Doris in the high street with my massive weapon. Likewise, the leather jacket was a “glamoured” breastplate.
One couldn’t be too armored these days.
Wondering what the rest of my unit was up to, I continued on, sweeping the woodland around me for anything unusual. The previous night’s patrol member had told me to look out for any peculiar carvings on tree trunks. Someone had detected unusual activity near an old stone structure that was once a standing stone. The fear was that another hag—a kind of witch—had made her way through from the Other Side.
If that were the case, she’d likely mark her territory and set her boundaries with runes and other magical symbols. Having faced a hag before, I was in no hurry to discover another.
An hour went by. Apart from the occasional owl and a frightened hedgehog, I hadn’t seen anything else of note. The goblin was still following. At some point, she passed me and was now twenty meters ahead.
She picked at her blackened teeth with the tip of her rusty dagger. It seemed dental care wasn’t high on her kind’s list of priorities. I willed my pocketknife into a short sword and glared at her. “Hashug ujhg gahk foegging ik, uskeh? What are you looking at, ugly?” I said, moving directly toward her, losing patience with her lurking presence.
She turned and swished aside her furs, exposing a rotten arse covered in disgusting clinkers. She slapped one cheek before giving me the goblin-equivalent of the “wanker” sign. “Gash ket lok igah!”
I didn’t understand the remark, though a betting man wouldn’t bet against it being a foul insult.
She giggled in that tortured, scratching way of her kind, farted so loud an owl hooted in response, then ran off into the woods, yelling, “Oomjar oig beik-moiker!”
As best as I could translate, it sounded like she was calling my mother a whore-pig.
Such high culture.
I wasn’t going to stand by and let one of these foul creatures insult me, so I chased after her. She was crashing through the woods clumsily, making little effort to disguise her escape.
Branches slapped me in the face, and I nearly fell arse-over-tit from a fallen log hidden in the gloom, camouflaged by years of moss and other vegetation. Regaining my balance, I pushed on, determined to catch up with the beast and give her a piece of mind—and sword. I had tolerated her presence long enough.
Now it was time to do my duty.
She leaped over a narrow brook, displaying considerable agility. Once on the other side, she turned to face me and spat something yellow on the ground before calling me a son of a cursed slime.
I narrowed the gap, jumped over the brook, and chased her down, infuriated by her and generally pissed off with the whole situation. I didn’t want to be here. I was missing my fellow Night Riders and my dog, Whiskers, who was back at the apartment with my roommate, Silvia.
My situation was ultimately a punishment for my academy code breaches, and I had agreed to take it without complaint. Well, perhaps a little complaint, but mostly I kept that to myself. No point digging oneself a deeper hole than necessary.
When I got within a few meters of my quarry, she suddenly dashed to her l
She had timed it just right.
As soon as my foot hit the loose leaf litter, I knew I had screwed up.
The loamy surface gave way. I fell into a hole—I’d laugh, given my recent comment about digging holes, if I wasn’t so shocked. Exposed roots scratched at my hands and face as I collapsed awkwardly into the base of the trap. My sword dug into the dirt. My ankle turned, and I fell backward, hitting the back of my skull against the wall of soil and stone. I let out a yell of pain and frustration.
For a few moments, I remained in a squatted position, assessing the damage.
The trap itself was only about four meters deep, but the sides were sheer and free from any apparent footholds. I could eventually make some with my weapon, but it would be a long and laborious task.
My ankle throbbed and began to swell. I may have sprained it, or worse.
Not wanting to wait it out, I removed my Converse shoe, rolled down my sock, and wrapped my hand around the already-bruising ankle. I closed my eyes and concentrated, sensing the undercurrent of power that ran through me. I channeled it down my arm and into my hand. A warming sensation flooded the injured area. A white light glowed from my hand as I continued to channel the healing energy. My heart rate kicked up a notch and sweat dripped from my forehead—all part of the process.
I stayed that way until my head buzzed with a lightness not too dissimilar to smashing some Jägerbombs. The pain in my ankle eased. I sat back and waited for my breathing to slow. And to recover from both the exertion of the chase and the healing.
The goblin’s head appeared at the top of the trap. She looked down at me and laughed. “Gahk uigh gast! You are dung!”
What a great way to start my patrol duties—being outwitted and mocked by a goblin. I looked up at her, shrugged my shoulders, and requested she help me out. In response, she spat at me. The viscous yellow substance splashed inches to the side of me. It stunk of sulfur and something that Whiskers might have coughed up.
“Gahk uigh nlekh! Now you are food.”
Logic wasn’t their strong suit either. I replied as best I could that she was saying that by eating me she was essentially, by her own words, going to be eating dung.
Her brow creased and her eyes narrowed as she thought about it. Then her red skin glowed ever more crimson, the realization of her stupidity dawning on her.
It often took them a while.
She pulled a dagger from her furs and reached her arm back, ready to throw it down at me. I scrambled to my feet, preparing to dodge as well as I could, given I was the figurative fish in a barrel.
Before her arm could thrust forward, a shadow loomed over her.
She spun around, dropped the dagger, and screamed.
Her bleat lasted all of a quarter of a second.
A reptilian beast, the size of a bus, chomped down. The massive creature raised its scaly neck into the air and swallowed the goblin whole in much the same way a snake devours a mouse.
Its scales gleamed a bright white even in the low ambiance of the moonlight. The exposed underside of its belly was the color of ham. The outline of the goblin made its way down a neck as long as any tree trunk.
Once the bulge in its great neck disappeared, its ancient-looking horned snout let out a belch of magical flame that lit up the surrounding woods. Then it turned its face to me, its great head filling the top of the trap. Its horns and large crocodile-like teeth scraped at the edge.
I pushed myself as far back as the narrow space would allow.
Its huge nostrils flared with each voluminous inhale. Gigantic yellow eyes swiveled to fix me in its gaze. If my description hadn’t made it clear by now, I was staring into the eyes of a gigantic white dragon.
Its mouth opened, displaying a horror-film scene of razor-sharp teeth and a forked tongue. “You must be Steve,” the creature said with a lilting Welsh accent that reminded me of Tom Jones.
I blinked, surprised at the odd, human-sounding voice coming from this nightmare vision. “Um, yes,” I said. “Please tell me you’re Jerezriel, the dragon Zan and the academy said would be helping me with my patron problem?”
“Of course. How many dragons do you know?”
“If my ex-mother-in-law counts, then at least two.”
“Don’t besmirch me by association, Steve Firestone.” Its eyes flashed. A fiery glow appeared at the back of its throat.
“I’m sorry!” I exclaimed. “I make jokes when I’m nervous.”
It let out a belly laugh that rumbled through the woods like thunder. “I’m playing with you, puny human. Now, let’s lift you out of that goblin hole, shall we, and get acquainted before I fracture your pathetic mind into a million pieces—I mean, solve your curse issue.”
In a blink of an eye, the great white dragon turned into a kind-looking older man wearing a tweed suit. His hair was white and hung gracefully against his shoulders in long curls. A leather patch covered his left eye.
He knelt by the side of the trap and offered his hand.
I had to jump to reach, but as soon as we clasped hands, he lifted me out of the trap with a strength that belied his appearance, though not that shocking, given he was a massive bloody dragon beyond the magical illusion of his current form. Where the extra mass goes, I can’t tell you. I once asked one of the wizards at the academy, and they talked for fifteen minutes on trans-dimensional and interstitial spaces, barely uttering more than a handful of words I understood.
When I stood and cleaned the dirt from my clothes, I thanked him and offered him my hand, fearing he would crush the bones to dust.
His touch, however, was gentle, if not a little limp. I guess such a powerful entity didn’t need a firm handshake to show their dominance.
“Nice to meet you, Steve,” he said. “I am indeed the great and powerful Jerezriel, Seventh Lord of the Dragon Realms, Conqueror of the Ruby Dreamscape, Plunderer of Hell’s secrets, Gatherer of the Nine Arcane Laws, Severer of the Eldritch Bonds, First of his Name, Last of his Clan, Wanderer of the Twelve Deserts, The Grand Magus of the Nine Apostles, Sole Survivor of The Great Schism, The One True Crystal Champion, High Archduke of Eldus, The Great Collector of Astariad, Smiter of Throm, Heir to the Throne of Lasnagar, Bearer of Bad News, and Tottenham Hotspur season ticket holder. But you can call my Jerry.”
Chapter
Two
We chit-chatted for about an hour while Jerry accompanied me on my patrol.
It was getting close to midnight, but I still had four more hours left of my shift. Despite my concern regarding Jerry, he came across as quite a decent chap. He had a good sense of humor and indulged my many questions, some even on dragon anatomy which would make your gran blush.
Considering the many days left of my patrol duty, I was thankful for his company.
During our light-hearted conversation, the real reason for Jerry’s companionship almost slipped my mind. As though already inside my head, the old dragon casually brought it up while we continued to hike through the woods.
“Zan brought me up to speed on the curse. It’s a terrible business,” Jerry said.
“You could say that. Level with me, Jerry. What are the odds you can get rid of this curse and leave me my mind intact?”
He stopped, leaned against his walking cane. It had a sphere of amber the size of an apple on the top. His hands surrounded it. He looked directly at me with his one good eye. “I can’t give you a definitive answer until I get to know you better and start poking around in that mind of yours, but considering the entity to which you are bound and cursed, in my professional opinion, I’d say about five percent.”
