60 Witch Doctors Curse (1/2)
The excited bustle of the street entered the room through the paper window, yet infected no one inside. From inside the strange apparatus under the opening, unknown vapors escaped and filled the air with sharp smells which tickled Primus' nose. Strange flasks and tubes bubbled and burned. Though Primus knew about the concoction brewing under the mysterious machinery, his view on the apparatus was blocked by the masked figure of the witch doctor.
With a strange magic seal made from paper and an unknown blood red root, he probed at his concoction. His shoulders tensed, Primus watched with trepidation. The brew had already failed too many times and like before, both he and his fellow assistant anticipated another explosion of curses in the laboratory.
”Eureka!” With the witch doctor's bizarre chant, his gloved hand shot up in delight, satisfied with what he had seen in the magic seal. His brown, insectoid eyes brushed past the helpless assistants and onto his next target. Slow and deliberate hands took up his brew, before he moved past a table filled with loose stacks of paper. With tiny steps, he arrived at a bed of glimmering coals and settled the bottle atop a lattice, above the heat.
His work now prepared, the witch doctor revealed his most horrific of ingredients. From a glass he procured what could only be a human finger. A shiver ran down the assistant's spine as he understood that the missing bits of skin and flesh indicated the finger's heavy use in all manner of magic. Primus watched the witch doctor take great care as he cut off part of the finger, shredded it into small pieces and dropped them inside the concoction before he began to stir with a translucent wand. Once the spell was cast, he turned and moved towards his assistants.
Already used to his role, Primus handed the witch doctor a cloth. After he had taken on the tissue and taken off the amber glasses, the witch doctor returned to his human form; he once again turned into Prince Corco. With a sigh, the prince wiped the sweat off his brow and cheeks while he summarized the results of his magic.
”Goddamn, if only Ronnie could be here. Turns out, making hydrochloric acid is a lot harder than you'd think, especially if you're an amateur. Now it's done though. We just need to wait for the tissue to dissolve and we might get some answers.”
”What answers might those be, Prince Corco?” Primus asked.
”Well, the one about my father's cause of death, for one.”
”But what about the treasury's sendings? Would those not be useful? Were they not meant for just this purpose?”
Primus looked over to the pile of documents the prince had ignored up until now. They constituted the empire's financial reports for the past year, or at least excerpts from them. Two days ago, they had been sent mountains' worth of these things. As he looked at the young heir, Prince Corco raised a brow. As before, he voiced his dismissal towards the efforts of the royal bookkeepers.
”That stuff? Worthless. I expected it to be bad, but not to this extent. Someone clearly jumbled these up and made sure no one would be able to find anything. It'd be tough enough if we had more hands, but by myself this is impossible. Take all our Fastgrade accountants and we could work through this mess in a month or two, but for now there's no point. That's why we'll have to get creative,” he concluded as he bent down to his glass of magic brew, were the finger had begun to dissolve.
”But I have read stories like this about the ancient witch doctors.” Although he was sure the prince would never try anything sinister, Primus was still worried to be part of some black magic ritual.
”Don't sweat it, kid,” said the strange pale man with the golden hair to his side.
Dedrick, he remembered.
Though after the banquet's slaughter, everyone had just called him 'golden devil'. ”If you stick around for a bit, you'll see strange feats from the boss and his people all the time. Back in Borna he bought some old mine full of bitter salt. Had his alchemist buddy do some of his weird magic and out came the highest quality salt you'll ever see. Sold it for a pretty penny too. After a while, you'll just learn to ignore this stuff.”
Brought back into the talks, the crown prince looked up from his work. ”That's why I hired Dedrick's wolves, actually. Everyone thought there was some hidden salt deposits in the mine, so I had to make sure none of the good knights around would get together a couple of their peasants and storm the hill. Of course, there never were any deposits.” Corco gave a mischievous smile.
”Back when we left, it didn't stop you from selling the thing like there were, did it?” the devil showed a toothy grin. With a frown, the prince looked away to the side, focusing on his concoction once more.
”Well, there is always more important things than integrity,” Corco said. ”We needed enough capital to kick start not only an economy, but a revolution. When I got that letter six months ago, we sold all our assets overseas to buy ships and materials, but it's still not gonna be anywhere near enough. We'll have to start somewhere local, make one place all nice and tidy and then go from there.” As he talked, the prince continued in his work and dropped a coiled strip of copper into the glass beaker.
”First you'll have to get that crown of yours, boss.”
”Yeah. That too.” Corco took a careful look at the copper before he turned around with a flippant answer. Meanwhile, Primus decided to find a distraction, before the two would start another fight. They had been doing that a lot.
”Still, to me this seems an awful lot like the rituals in those old stories. It truly is too fantastical.” Primus wasn't very good at distractions.
”Talking about stories. The Raven and the Snake, was it?” However, to the good fortune of the other two, Dedrick was a lot better at it. Eyes enlarged in surprise, Primus looked over to the mercenary. How could a foreign devil know the stories of the Yaku?
”I heard what the boss said to the dumb one after the battle,” the devil explained with a shrug. ”Just wondering what that was. So what's the story?”
When Primus looked over to the prince, he seemed immersed in his brew once again. For now, the young master thought it prudent to give the answer himself, lest anything went awry in the final steps of the ritual.
”It is an old tale, about the past of our people. Back in the days of yore, our ancestors lived across the Weltalic Sea-”
”Well, a few of them did,” Corco interjected, his back still turned.
”...but the people of the lands envied the ancestors for their strength and courage and pursued them. Overwhelmed by the enemy numbers, the ancestors were forced to leave their homely shores and find their luck across the uncrossable, unknowable waters.”
”Because they were Arcavus fanatics by the way. Our dudes didn't want to play along with the Arcavus bullshit and so they were squashed,” Corco buzzed in again. This time, Dedrick took the bait.
”Just cause you got locked out of their fancy school doesn't make Arcavism a cult, you know? Getting kinda annoyed here.”
”I can't see anything positive in a religion which lets you become a god. It's presumptuous. That's a good word. 'Presumptuous'.” In disbelief, Primus stared at the Prince who kept mumbling the same word to himself over and over, immersed in another strange thought.
”Well, how about 'man's potential knows no bounds'? Doesn't that sound like the stuff you spout all the time? You keep degrading Arcavism like some warmongering cult, but at the foundation, it's a religion of peace. It's not my fault you don't get it.”