???

  ***

  “No! Leave her alone! Don’t you dare!”

  The sounds of the struggling man sounded through the meadow sprinkled with crimson lilies, which were white just a moment ago.

  Pained wheezing could be heard as he tried to free himself from the thorned vines that restrained him – but it was of no use. All he achieved was that the sharp spikes drove themselves deeper into his flesh, piercing muscles, arteries and, where he thrashed especially violently, bone.

  Lethe stood a few meters away in front of him, watching his struggle with the usual sadism in her expression as she devoured the golden fruit that sprung from a pregnant woman’s chest right next to her.

  The woman passed out a while ago, and the struggling man got weaker every second as his very lifeblood soaked into his clothes and onto the field of lilies below. As she almost finished, she placed the last piece in the woman’s mouth and stepped closer to the dying man, clapping her hands.

  “A wonderful struggle, Jin. Wonderful spirit! Instead of hoping to maybe win your amnesiac wife’s heart back you decide to kill yourself! Masterful!”

  She stepped next to him as the last light of his life faded from his eyes.

  “Now your dear Nami will never know who the father of her child is. You have no one to blame but yourself.”

  There was no response. He already passed on.

  “Stupid. Stupid, stupid! All of you are so terribly stupid and predictable. That’s what makes it so fun to torment you!”

  Lethe kept rambling on, with only a corpse and an unconscious woman for company – though it wasn’t just the three in here at this moment.

  Nicola kneeled in the grass, observing Lethe with quiet apprehension. She pitied the couple that had just been torn apart, but there was nothing she could do. She was a specter, sneaking through Lethe’s Garden to return some flowers before the owner of this place noticed that they went missing.

  Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

  “Tch. I’m bored now…” Lethe mumbled, then she moved her hand like she was plucking a hair off the suspended woman’s scalp – surely enough she was erasing the memory of this place from her victim.

  A lily sprouted in her hand and she immediately went to plant it while the dead body and the woman faded from her domain – returned to Earth’s dimension.

  Nicola snuck back to the spot where the seven flowers she had picked used to bloom. They used to be placed in a special location, in a circle of lilies, as if Lethe gave them special meaning. To her dismay, this also meant that their absence was now noticed immediately.

  “Where are they…?”

  A loud shriek rang through the meadow, with enough force that every blade of grass and every flower swayed in a wind originating from Lethe.

  “WHERE ARE THEY? WHERE ARE MY FAVORITES?! WHO TOOK MY FAVORITE FLOWERS?!”

  I messed up.

  All Nicola could do was put the seven flowers down and bury them in place, in hopes that Lethe would later find them and assume that she simply misplaced them after a lengthy session of admiration.

  She dug into the ground, periodically looking up at the cursed woman who shouldn’t be able to see her.

  “Where are they…? Where? Where?!”

  The green creature ripped out flowers and tossed them aside in a frenzy if they weren’t her favorites. Every memory here was disposable to her – every flower second-rate to the memories of fated lovers who never got to embrace.

  Nicola quickly finished her hasty job burying the lilies and turned around, starting to sneak away – as the invocator she should still be invisible to the curse and be able to make a hasty retreat.

  ***

  Or so she thought. She found screaming red nails at her throat as the creature that was once her beloved Romy leaned over her shoulder, regarding her with its black and crimson eyes.

  “What were you doing with my flowers, grave keeper?”

  Nicola looked over to the gravestone at the edge of the field of lilies, with Romy’s name on it, the depiction of the sword that killed her and the fresh bouquet of flowers in front of it, which she delivered every single day.

  In this moment she realized that she had operated on completely false assumptions regarding her passage through Lethe’s Garden.

  Moon of the Forgotten King, 1067 AR

  ***

  Chrk. Chrk. Chrk.

  Nicola sat in her workshop. She carved. And carved. And carved some more.

  The blocks of rowan she purchased with magic artifacts slowly took the form of marionettes, with limbs and heads and joints and everything.

  Each one was animated by her corrupted strings created from Light Elf hair, growing to the size of a man and coming to life to serve her.

  She had been at this for at least a few days by now. She couldn’t shake the feeling that she was forgetting something. Something important.

  Something that would put people she knew in danger.

  If only she could remember…

  (Volume 2 End)

  Spielmannsfluch’ by In Extremo and ‘’ by Equilibrium. Apologies, things are about to get very German for a moment.

  https://dvpp.uvic.ca/poems/onceaweek/1860/pom_292_the_minstrels_curse.html

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