“Hey, Wolf?” I turned around after I heard Dusk calling my name. There were three days left - and counting - to break Chaiyn’s curse. I was heading down alone today, hoping that less people could help Chaiyn focus a little more. “Hi, Dusk,” I said, smiling at them. They smiled in return. “I saw you got rid of the shadows.” I nodded. “Yeah. We did that last week, I think.” They tilted their head. “How?” I shrugged. The process was pretty complicated to explain. “We used a combination of Shades and myself to kind of draw the monster/shadow things together, then we banished them like we did the regular monster.” They nodded. “That’s cool. How many Shades?” “Three,” I replied, thinking back to that day. Elena, Harlow, and Chaiyn. They nodded again. “Where are you going now?” “Going to go help a friend. What are you up to?” They shrugged. “Just wandering. I ran into Ren a few days ago. He’s pretty nice. And, like, really mysterious.” I laughed. “Very true.” They smiled. “You go help your friend. See you.” I waved, and Dusk ran off back to their treehouse. I turned down the path and headed towards the Seer’s lair, or the Cursed Clearing, as Chaiyn had called it. I pulled aside the curtain of vines and entered the clearing. Chaiyn and Elena were inside, the Seer muttering something - a spell, by the look of things - and the little Shade looking at a book. Chaiyn looked up at my entrance. “Just you today, Acwulf?” I nodded. “Yep. The others are busy.” “With what?” “Schoolwork and stuff. Looks like you’ve made some progress on the ring.” He nodded. “Yeah. We found out what spells are on the old one and put counter spells on this one. But it’s not completely fixed yet.” “What spells does it have? The old ring, I mean.” “Okay, um, it’s got a Banishment spell, a Communication Block spell, a Teleportation Block spell, a Trapping spell, and some sort of Mental spell,” Elena listed off from the book she was looking at. “Mental spell?” I echoed, confused. “Yeah. Most likely something negative, like altering thoughts and/or memories, lowering self-confidence, or something,” Elena answered, glaring pointedly at her brother. He paid her no visible attention, adding a few more spells calmly to the ring. I realized he must have scraped the precious metal version a while ago, because now the counter-ring was a brown cloth band embroidered with turquoise and black thread. “I thought tinkering was with metal and that sort of stuff,” I said. “It can be. But really anything intricate counts,” Chaiyn explained. I nodded, wondering how long it had taken for him to make this new ring. “When was the last time you slept?” He paused, thinking. “Uh, either early last week or late the week before that.” I stared at him in shock. “Are you crazy?” The Seer laughed without humor. “I have three days left, Wolf. I don’t intend to spend a third of them sleeping.” He’d called me Wolf. I don’t know why that jarred me so much - I mean, all of my friends called me that - but hearing it come out of Chaiyn’s mouth was just… odd. “No. You have /more/ than three days left. You’re not going to fade on the twenty-first, Chaiyn,” Elena protested. Her brother didn’t reply, and in that moment, I knew that the mental spell on the ring was the problem. “Chaiyn, your parents wrote you a letter. Did they send you anything else?” Chaiyn thought for a moment, then shook his head. “No. Just the letter.” “Can I see it?” He hesitated, then shrugged. “Sure.” He reached up by his hourglass - which was dangerously close to empty on the top - and pulled out a weathered sheet of folded paper. He tossed it to me and I caught it. I skimmed through it. Chaiyn’s father was not a very good author, having literally repeated the same thing over and over and over again. The overall gist of this letter was “the accident was all your fault; you’re a curse and shouldn’t exist; and we all hate you.” I looked up and forced Chaiyn to meet my eyes. “Okay, how much of this do you think is true?” “None of it,” he said, and if he’d been facing away from me, I would have believed him. In fact, I almost did. Almost. His eyes gave him away. “Chaiyn, be honest. How much of this do you think is true?” The slightly younger boy looked down. “Most of it,” he whispered, barely audible.
Notes/Credits: If you're reading this, you probably know I wrote The Wolf Boy. Well, here's the sequel: The Monster's Curse. This is Chapter 26 Pt 1. Previous Chapter(s): Chapter 1: https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/652476202/ Chapter 2: https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/652950608/ Chapter 3: https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/655177024/ Chapter 4: https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/655177565/ Chapter 5: https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/655621072/ Chapter 6: https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/656955201/ Chapter 7: https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/657580423/ Chapter 8: https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/657583863/ Chapter 9: https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/657586191/ Chapter 10: https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/657668860/ Chapter 11: https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/658404211/ Chapter 12: https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/659115920/ Chapter 13: https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/659116659/ Chapter 14: https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/659117186/ Chapter 15: https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/659420154/ Chapter 16: https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/661425573/ Chapter 17: https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/661428771/ Chapter 18: https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/661974554/ Chapter 19: https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/662108449/ Chpt 20 Pt 1: https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/663144219/ Chpt 20 Pt 2: https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/663156194/ Chapter 21: https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/663760516/ Chpt 22 Pt 1: https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/674644356/ Chpt 22 Pt 2: https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/674648505/ Chpt 22 Pt 3: https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/674658226/ Chpt 23 Pt 1: https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/683757147/ Chpt 23 Pt 2: https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/683765009/ Chpt 24 Pt 1: https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/685766546/ Chpt 24 Pt 2: https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/686198230/ Chapter 25: https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/700792854/ Credits: Me, for being the author Shannon Messenger, JK Rowling, Eoin Colfer, and many other authors for inspo @aqua_di_angelo, @AL600AWESOME, @Lanze_cupcake_face11, and @Yayabinks for inspo and supporting the story! QOTC: What is your favorite ship?
