Calamity the Cursed

"Gods-forsaken seagulls, they're a real menace around here," the burly minotaur guard muttered as he rinsed the bird crap off Nameless's head with a hose attached to a pipe trailing all the way up the cliffside to the city above.

"Yeah! Really awful things," Nameless agreed cheerfully, in too good a mood at getting out of the labyrinth to put any real bite into her words.

He peeked at her head, then shut off the valve feeding the water to the hose. "Alright, think that's the last of it. Would advise you to take a bath, not just for the bird excrement. No offense, but you smell like you need it. Anyways, we'll need to get you two registered. Thank the gods you're the civilized sort of monsters. We had to put down fourteen hostile ones todays, that's more than usual. Something's got the labyrinth all astir."

"Baths! Lovely, wonderful things!" Nameless agreed again.

"Registered?" Mirn asked.

"That'd be me. Law in most cities requires registration, so they know who you are. I'll get you all registered up, no worries," said the smallest guard, who stepped up holding a crystalline rod-shaped device. She was a brown spotted canine kobold (as opposed to draconic kobolds, who mutated from the canine kobolds due to an odd sequence of events). And she stood only a little taller than Mirn.

"Go ahead and let her," Nameless said, "It's pretty harmless and they won't let you in the city without registration."

"Okay," Mirn said as they watched the rod glow slightly as the kobold guard tapped them with it.

"Ah, a mimic," the kobold said in a slightly surprised tone.

"Is that a problem?" Mirn asked worriedly.

The small guard shook her head. "Only if you cause one. I'm obliged to inform you that impersonating other civilized persons for criminal reasons is illegal in this nation and really it's illegal pretty much everywhere. There're ways to detect impersonation by the way, so I wouldn't recommend that. Impersonating non-civilized folks like aggressive monsters or pestilence creatures is fine, or impersonating a civilized person if everyone involved knows you are doing it. I know there're a few mimics who put on performances. In addition, all crimes you perform in an alternative form are still crimes. Don't turn into a mouse to stalk people or something. Okay, I'm done with the standard warning."

Mirn nodded. "Okay, I won't break those laws."

The kobold smiled. "Then we're good. It's your turn, missy."

Nameless held still as the guard tapped her with the rod. Then a confused frown came onto the guard's face, her brows furrowed. "It says you're already registered, but it can't sync up with your existing registration. Also there appears to be a couple of errors, it refuses to list a name for you and do you really have fourteen curses?"

"One of those curses prevents me from having a name," Nameless explained, "And, yes, I do really have that many curses. It's pretty terrible."

"Ah, that's rough," the minotaur said as he rubbed his head.

"I can bet so," the kobold said sympathetically then added, "I know a pretty good curse remover who can prolly fix that."

"Can they remove transcendental curses?" Nameless asked.

"Transcendental curses? Just who did you offend to become that unlucky?" the kobold said with her brows raised in astonishment.

Nameless shrugged. "No idea. One of the curses took away my memories."

The kobold said concernedly, "You poor thing. I'll, uh, I'll try to get you all synced up and if that doesn't work, I'll have to talk to the captain."

"Alright," Nameless said, and waited patiently as the guard tapped her with the rod a few times, both her and the guard's frowns growing deeper every time.

With a sigh, the kobold said, "I'll call the captain," and took out her phone.

One explanation later, the kobold looked at Nameless. "The captain says to give you a new registration but flag it for possible merger into your existing registration if you ever get those issues cleared up."

"I don't even get to find out who I was?" Nameless growled unhappily.

The kobold shook her head. "Sorry, with all those issues, we were unable to find the original profile."

"You tried. I'll still give you a five star rating." Nameless nodded.

"Five star rating?" Mirn asked.

"It helps ensure we and our mercenary association can keep working for the city," the minotaur noted.

"It's an evaluation of how good a job they're doing, though it's the polite thing to leave a five-star unless they did a terrible job. Anything less can impact their job," Nameless explained.

Mirn looked at the guards. "You seem nice so I'll, um, five star you."

"Thanks, just will it into the rod," the kobold said.

After registering and rating the mercenary association, Nameless and Mirn began the arduous trek up the stone stairs to the city. There was an elevator, but that was reserved for emergency response deployment and any disabled persons bold enough to brave the labyrinth. Fortunately the stairs were wide enough to give plenty of room for two labyrinth runner teams to pass each other, so the two monsters weren't particularly cramped. The stair landings were cut directly into the cliff to give the stairs room to turn around and ascend the other way on the cliff face. It was at one of those landings that the horror struck.

As Nameless pulled her claws out of the formerly squirming mass of eyes and teeth and wiped off its iridescent blood on her ever-clean jeans, she muttered, "I need to get rid of this shitting horror magnet curse before a major one comes. Eh, I'll take care of it after I knock off that Damnation curse."

Mirn stared curiously at the horror's corpse. "It was weak. Are major horrors that much more dangerous?"

Nameless nodded. "Extremely. One ate a whole nation. That's at the extreme upper end of power, mind, most are just 'kill us as we are now instantly' levels of strength."

Mirn said, "I think you need to get rid of the horror curse fast."

Nameless grinned sheepishly. "I'm nearly done with the Curse of Damnation anyways--ah! There, got it."

Mirn perked their eyestalks in surprise. "That was quick."

"Stuff that go against Voice's will for everyone to grow in their power of Words tend to not have strong sticking power," Nameless explained.

"Voice is nice," Mirn said.

Nameless nodded. "Yes. But keep in mind Voice is nice to everyone, including any of our enemies who use Words. It doesn't really care what you're doing with your Words, it just wants to help you get better with them."

Mirn tilted their head. "Like Evolver, then."

"Exactly," Nameless replied, "Anyways, now I'm cursed to... not be able to swear? Ugh. It's even called the Curse of Forbidden... ah, I can't even say that word."

"Forbidden Damnation?" Mirn supplied.

"Yeah, that," Nameless said.

[Done evaluating your Word and Sigil gain based on delayed gains.

You have gained the Affliction Word due to your heavy usage of various afflictions and your suffering from many afflictions such as being on fire, chronic pain, curses, and getting poisoned by various monsters.

The Curse Word has become the Curse Sigil, attached to Affliction. All of its Sigils have been moved to Affliction. This includes earned Sigils under Curse.

The following have been added to the Affliction Word:

You have gained the Poison Sigil due to poisoning many enemies.

You have gained the Illness Sigil due to sickening many enemies.

I will note that you will likely gain the Burning Sigil once you develop banefire and use it enough times.

You have gained the Bestow Sigil due to inflicting afflictions many times.

You have earned one choice of Sigil.

The following has been added to the Relentless Word:

You have regained the Endure Sigil due to enduring .

You have gained the Guard Sigil due to relentlessly putting yourself at risk to protect Mirn from harm.

You have earned one choice of Sigil.]

Nameless grinned. "Good to hear back from you, Voice. I'd like to take the box with the Remove Sigil for Affliction. Even if it won't be strong enough to remove my current curses, I can work on getting it strong enough. Plus it'll be handy if Mirn gets sick or poisoned or something."

[I did not like that Damnation curse. Regardless, you have gained the Remove Sigil for Affliction. Due to your history of repeated heavy exposure to the Remove Word, your new Sigil has been strengthened, though not enough to remove your curses yet.]

Nameless blinked. "Wait, did I hear that right? Heavy exposure to the Remove Word?"

[You heard that correctly.]

Nameless pondered that. "Hmm, maybe I worked closely with someone who uses that Word or... hmm, the alternative isn't good. Right, about the Sigil for Relentless, what're some of my options?"

[Erosion, Energy, Invincible, Pursuit.]

Hm. Erosion would help her wear down opponents faster, Energy would resolve the stamina issues that she was currently having on prolonged battles, Invincible burned through energy fast but was ideal for quick brief nullification of particularly devastating attacks, and Pursuit would help her hunt someone down. As tempting as Pursuit was, however, she was pretty sure it required more than she had on her mysterious curse user and there was always a chance she could just earn it by working work on tracking them down.

In the end, Energy it was. She needed the energy for longer battles and while some of her energy woes would be resolved by her removing the Curse of Weakness, she wanted Invincible in the long run, she got the sense from Evolver that banefire was pretty energy intensive, and just having Energy would let her go more full throttle in general or drag things out longer for Erosion.

"Energy it is!" she said cheerily.

[Granted.]

Turning to Mirn, Nameless flashed an affirmative gesture with her two first fingers pointing up. "I'm done talking to Voice."

Mirn nodded. "I took the chance to sort out a few things with Voice, too. Got Learn, Strike, and Survive as Sigils."

Adaptable strikes, huh. Nameless pondered once again that Mirn would grow up to be very dangerous. Ahh, so cute and deadly! A perfect child for her! Wait...

Nameless paused at that thought then shrugged and decided to go with it. Sure, she could be a mom! It wouldn't be that hard, right?

~~~

"No, the implied threat by the way those cops are looking at us doesn't mean you can just kill them." Nameless groaned quietly as she rubbed her head.

"I'm too weak to anyways. But why? Weren't you talking about how bad they are? And didn't you say it was okay to kill bad enough people?" Mirn whispered.

"Their power is all in how they always band together for each other, how well armed they are, the fact that they have Words dedicated to suppressing others, how the law is always on their side, and I could go on." Nameless just shook her head.

"That doesn't sound fair," Mirn complained in a low voice.

Nameless sighed. "Yeah, some thing are like that. Luckily, some of the kinder Adepts keep them in line somewhat. Anyways let's forget about this until we get through the police cordon."

The police cordon in question was blocking off the closest entrance to the city, and from what Nameless could see, the other entrances were also clogged by similar cordons. And the obsidian city wall was too high to see anything but the highest buildings, but there were a lot of those high buildings. Regardless, there was no option to get in but to go through the cordon.

One mildly tedious wait later, the two of them were being questioned by the police. "You wouldn't happen to know anything about a ruckus at the Labyrinth's Maw Gazebo, would you?" asked the blue-furred badgerkin cop in a crimson uniform.

"Absolutely no idea," Nameless said perfectly honestly, as much as the name sounded vaguely familiar. But after all, she had amnesia.

"I dunno," Mirn said, also with perfect honesty. After all, they had only become a full-fledged person very recently.

The cop raised an brow. "Hm. And that blood on the child's tunic?"

"It was there when we found it on a dead goblin. Which we also had nothing to do with. You know how labyrinths are, always full of corpses," Nameless explained with complete honesty.

"You sure you don't know anything?" the badgerkin pressed.

"Yes," both Nameless and Mirn said.

The cop made a 'hm' sound. "Can't detect any lies from either of you. Very well, do you have any contraband to declare? Estimated value of any loot you might have brought from the labyrinth? Do I have to give either of you a pamphlet on the city's most relevant laws?"

"No contraband," Nameless lied as she quietly slipped the cop a sample of the decidedly illegal cheese she and Mirn had found in the labyrinth. "A few hundred thousand, mostly in assorted jewelry." This one was perfectly honest. A few choice bits of jewelry changed hands. "And yes, Mirn here could particularly use that pamphlet. They're new to personhood let alone laws and such."

"I'll be sure to follow the law," Mirn said, oozing what in Nameless's eyes was an enormous amount of cuteness.

"Yeah, go on in," the cop said dismissively, showing no visible sign of being affected by Mirn's cuteness. But then she handed Mirn a candy star from under the pop-up table.

~~~

"This is big," Mirn said as they stared at the array of numerous buildings, many of them reaching far into the sky. Some were made from ruby, others sapphire, and so on through a colorful assortment of gems.

Nameless grinned. "Welcome to your first city! It's called Jewel City. If I recall rightly, a builder made a building out of a gem, forgot which one, and then someone else wanted one and someone else wanted one too and before you know it all the builders were picking up Gem as a Sigil. There're a few buildings that aren't made out of gem, like that nice marble bathhouse there. Speaking of, we need a bath."

"Okay," Mirn said, "I don't really need it as much as you because of my mucus but I wouldn't mind a bath."

And so the two of them ended up relaxing in the large communal deep cleansing bath, having cleaned themselves with soap that the bath attendant reassured them was imbued with Safety to make it safe for everyone to use no matter the species, allergy, or other factor. A few others were in the bath with them, such as the massive bearkin, the trio of gossiping forest humans, and the tusk-toothed green-skinned desert human. The bearkin had a lot of scars across his body, and so did the desert human who was running a brush through her spiky hair.

There was a television set into the wall of the bath, its screen protected by thick clearsteel with a flowwoven empowerment protecting against humidity. A news channel was currently on, with the scrolling subtitle ATTACK AT LABYRINTH'S MAW GAZEBO. A gray-skinned desert human talking head in a rather nice suit said with accompanying subtitles for the deaf, "The unknown assailant still is yet to be found and police are still seeking them. So far there are three confirmed wounded, two dead, and one missing. We'll now have an interview with a brave survivor who helped drive off the assailant."

"Why thank you," said a flashy looking gnoll with shiny sunglasses and piercings who immediately set Nameless on edge due to an odd feeling of discomfort.

"Adept Noim, can you tell us about the attack?" the reporter said.

The gnoll nodded. "It happened out of the blue. Someone using some kind of appearance obscuring Word appeared out of nowhere, started attacking with a conjured blade of pitch blackness, and struck two down before any of us could react. They were clearly a deep master of the blade and quite skilled at assassination. In the fray that came after, we had great trouble fending off their attacks and I think that's when I and two others got hurt. Someone got knocked down the shaft into the labyrinth below. Then I managed to hit the attacker with my most potent multi-cursing effect, and they jumped down the shaft to escape. Given the sheer persistence they showed even through multiple wounds, I'm pretty sure they would have survived that fall."

Nameless just stared at the screen. Just what had she done before she lost her memories, and why? She must've had a good reason... right?