Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

By the time the IPC’s guard forgot who he was chasing, Aventurine was already halfway across the city. Being cursed didn’t come with many perks, but being stubborn did, and if he wanted it badly enough, Aventurine could order the curse around for a few minutes for his own gain. The guard would remember who he was in a few minutes, or at the very least Madam Jade would order someone to come looking for him, and then they would be on his tail again. His curse made him invisible, in a way- nearly as soon as he was out of sight, people would forget he had ever been there, as if he were nothing more than a mere breeze. It made him exceptionally hard to track, precisely the reason Jade had taken him under her wing. Now, though, the very quality she sought in him was the one that would help him escape.

Jade would remember, of course. She was one of the few people who could slip in between the cracks of his curse, as someone who had, herself, been cursed. People with dark magic stuck in their blood could sniff each other out, like tracking dogs, and that fact seemed to cancel out his functional invisibility. She and the other Stonehearts would come looking for him once they realized something was afoot. However, Aventurine would be well into the wastes by then- either on his way to a cure, or being picked apart by scavengers, depending on how gracious lady luck was feeling today.

The storefront windows he passes don’t manage to hold his reflection, showing instead the people behind him, in front of him, like a painting where one subject had smudged out one of the subjects in dissatisfaction. He should be used to it by now, being a whisper. When people approach him they see only his surroundings, themselves, or figments of their imagination, everything and anything except for him. They saw him when they needed him- when he is useful by someone’s definition. When he’s the man with the contract, with the pouch of money, with the rifle, he’s like anyone else. But when the hourglass runs empty, as they always do, he turns into nothing once again.

Things are better now than they were when he first escaped his old master, and he thought that would be enough to make life a bit more bearable. He had hoped he could learn to stretch out the feeling, make each bit of okay-ness count like a starving man savors each bite. But he was tired. He was tired of being invisible, of being the ace up someone else’s sleeve. So he ran. He left the only place he had known for the last few years, left every person who had ever been able to see him, to set off for the wastes. 

There was a sorcerer who lived in the wastes, in a wandering castle powered by dark magic. He had been expelled, so they say, from the royal magic academy, and had gone half-mad as a result. The rumors varied greatly: some said he communed with demons, other said he ate the hearts of people who wandered too close to his abode. When the fortress wandered too close to town, visible in a lumbering heap on the horizon, mothers told their children that the witch would come get them if they stayed out after dark. That being said, sightings of the witch himself were rare, and the rumors were more akin to ghost stories than fact. The way Aventurine saw it, why should he care if the man is doing black magic out in the middle of the wastes? He could at the very least his own business, which was more than Aventurine could say of half of the enchanters he had met.

And so, Aventurine makes his wager, and slips past the city borders out into the wastes. Either he would walk away with some more knowledge of his curse, or he would get his heart torn out of his chest. Perhaps he would be more use as a disembodied heart, anyway. (He supposed that at some point, the scales of risk and reward got hard to read. Perhaps they weren’t so much scales as they were a compass, spinning wildly in confusion.)

The wastes don’t welcome him, though they don’t seem to scorn him, either, the way they were known to do to some unfortunate travellers. Perhaps his curse of invisibility also works on jackals, or vultures, or whatever sort of creatures managed to live in a place like this. The land is still, fast asleep under the hot glare of the sun like a housecat in a sunbeam. Jagged cliffs lie on the horizon, while insignificant clouds watch from overhead. The ground is thick with clay, in which only the most obstinate plants attempt to grow. In that way, it feels a bit like home. This was dirt, rather than sand, but it had the same dry heat that laid heavy on his skin like a blanket.

He isn’t sure how long he walks for. The sun hasn’t set, though it’s managed to swag across the sky, behind his back, coaxing his shadow in front of himself. And then, the fortress finally lumbered out from behind a great hill. The great thing shambled to and fro across the wastes, chimneys, towers, and thatches scattered across the thing in places they surely didn’t belong. It was a bit silly looking, in all honesty, though still imposing in its own right. The thing itself breathed like a great beast, The wood groaning with each step. The front gate seemed to smile mockingly down at him, as if the castle itself could see him, and it too thought this entire ordeal was somewhat ridiculous. (Though perhaps he was only imagining the mockery, due to heat exhaustion, or perhaps a lingering hex for those who wandered too close.)

Hanging steps come down from the door, a little less than a knee’s length above the dirt. Aventurine hesitates for just a moment before he steps on. Would this really be worth it? If the rumors were true, the witch very well may kill him. Was being invisible really worse than being dead?

The house lurched forward, and he followed it. The castle wouldn’t grant him time for consideration. He stepped up onto the small staircase.

“Hello?” He called unproductively, to the castle which payed him no heed. “Mr Witch, are you home? I could really use a hand, you see.” The castle, predictably, did not reply to his greeting. He sighed, trudging after the fortress that fortunately, was not capable of moving very quickly. “Don’t worry, don’t worry. I’m willing to sweeten the deal, alright? I could get you gold, or jewels… or do you want… blood, or something? Witches like blood, right? Well, I’ve got plenty.” The castle creaks as it patters along the dirt, continuing to give him the silent treatment. He realizes that the witch might not be able to see him, but perhaps if he could offer something the witch wanted, the curse would deem him useful enough to be perceived. He begins to formulate another desperate, half-baked offer, when in the blink of an eye the ground dropped from below him, and he’s falling. He barely has the time to wonder what in the world just happened to him before he blacks out. 

“Oho, this one’s going to be trouble,” Seraphine cackled. The fire spirit hovered around him as Veritas looked into the scrying mirror at his uninvited guest. She wasn’t usually quite this excitable, though it had been some time since they had a guest. He batted the flame away halfheartedly with the back of his hand, trying to analyze the curse inscribed onto the man’s neck. It was hard to read from here- clearly rather intricate, perhaps encrypted, even. It looked burnt on, which was strange, considering that curses engraved onto the skin were most commonly done with a needle or a blade. “You’re going to let him in, aren’t you?” She asked.

“Quiet,” Veritas snapped. “You’re being especially obnoxious today.” Seraphine kept to herself for the most part, piloting the castle, or sleeping, or doing whatever it was that fire spirits did for their own amusement. But now, of course, she had to hover right over his shoulder, like a particularly hyper-focused insect. She’s lucky Veritas is too preoccupied to get out the spray bottle and mist her like a misbehaving cat. “And if you set anything on fire, you’re fixing it.” She had a habit of flaring when she was excited, and had once set his curtains aflame because of it.

“Is that a yes? Oh, thank the gods. It’s been getting terribly boring around here,” she lamented.

“And by boring, you mean peaceful,” Veritas retorted, though she was, indeed, correct about the assumption that he would let the stranger in this time. The few people desperate enough to seek his help were turned away, for the most part. He gave them a small pointer in the right direction, if he thought they could use it, and then he shut the door in their face. If you solved a person’s problems for them, they would never learn. He was doing them a favor, in the long run. This man in particular did have a rather nasty curse, though, and there were likely few people who could help other than Veritas himself. Not to mention, he was a bit too curious to leave the man be. A curse signature that complex was rare, and the unfortunate stranger had brought it straight to him. If nothing else, it was likely to aid his research. He sighed. “Knock him out,” he told her.

“Rather crass methodology,” Seraphine replied, though she cackled in amusement regardless, and darted outside though the window. Binding a spirit to oneself was dangerous- they could quite easily drain the mana from your body and take your physical form. However, the two of them had an agreement, and she was free to use his mana as needed. It came in handy in cases like this, where he would rather not walk to the front door.

Aventurine woke up on a floor, disoriented and dizzy. He was now inside of a house- the castle, presumably. The house was cluttered, with books shoved everywhere they could be fit, tables scuffed and dotted with chalk marks. Despite this, it was much more sensible than the outside, at least- it could almost be mistaken for a normal house. It made him think of his mother’s house when he was a child, the same controlled chaos, the same warm glow of candles on tabletops.

A man was standing over him, a disapproving glare on his face as if Aventurine’s sudden departure from consciousness was an issue of his own fortitude. Aventurine had imagined, when he envisioned this moment, a wizened, bearded old man, perhaps in a cloak and a pointy hat. Though he had also expected to be let in through the front door, rather than being knocked unconscious and then inexplicably waking up inside. It seemed that today would be full of surprises.

Instead, he seemed only a bit older than Aventurine himself- and rather ordinary compared to Aventurine’s rumor-fueled imagination. Though to say he was ordinary looking was admittedly rather misleading- he was honestly rather gorgeous- dark hair and eyelids lined with red. Aventurine wondered if he had some kind of magical skincare, but now was not the time to ask. “You. Who are you?” The witch asked.

“Just a humble passerby, good witch,” Aventurine replied, getting to his feet with as much dignity as he can manage from his current position, supine on the stranger’s floor. “I could use a helping hand, you see, and I’m willing to compensate you handsomely for your magical prowess.”

“I heard,” he replied, flatly.  “And no, I have no interest in your blood,” he scoffed, as if it were an utterly ridiculous notion. Maybe it was, but magic was far from Aventurine’s strong suit, alright? “ Payment will be discussed once I know more about what, exactly, must be done. Let me see your curse,” he ordered.

“Usually, a guy buys me dinner, first,” he quipped, dusting the dirt off of his clothes pants.

“This one’s cute!” A blue wisp of flame, no larger than a dinner plate darts out from behind him, hovering in front of Aventurine’s face. “Can we keep him?” It asked the witch, grinning. Aventurine had never witnessed a fire smile before, but this one was certainly managing it. 

“As flattering as that is,” Aventurine replied, “I wouldn’t like to be kept as a pet by a sentient… fiery… thing.” He wasn’t sure exactly what it was, honestly. He had visited a fair amount of witches before this one, and as far as he was aware, none of them had magic talking fires.

“... Excuse me?” The witch narrowed his eyes at him.

“No offense to your floaty friend here, of course,” He backtracked, laughing a little, trying not to sound overly nervous. “I’d rather not be kept as a pet by anything, that was my point.”

“Cease your yammering,” he scoffed, holding up a hand. Yammering? Really? The dark witch just used the word yammering? “Can you see the spirit?” He asked. Aventurine wondered if this was some sort of trick-question, or if perhaps he had cast an invisibility spell, and it hadn’t worked.

“Am I not supposed to be able to?” Aventurine asked. Maybe it was some strange side effect of his curse- whenever something strange happened, he normally wrote it off as curse-related, and it almost always ended up being true. 

“No,” the witch crossed his arms. “Only I can see her,” he said, as if Aventurine were supposed to somehow already know that. 

“Not anymooore!” The spirit cackled, jovially bouncing around in between the two of them. The witch stepped closer and grabbed his face, lifting it to peer at the mark inscribed on his neck. Aventurine normally kept it covered, though he figured there was no point in trying to hide it in a place like this. He tried not to flinch, not to startle away from the one lead he might have on figuring out his curse. He snapped, and a book came to float beside him, which Aventurine honestly thought it was rather showy. The witch stared at it for a long time, occasionally cross-referencing with the book as if it were some sort of arithmetic he were trying to solve. 

“Interesting,” The witch said, finally letting go of his chin with a decisive nod. Aventurine let out the breath he had held for the duration of the exchange. He turned to walk down the hall, long black cloak swishing behind him. “Come on, then,” he said, looking over his shoulder with exasperation that Aventurine hadn’t yet begun to follow him. “We have work to do.”

Chapter Text

The witch walked up to a table covered in books, papers, and other baubles and trinkets placed about with little to no order in their organization. He swept them carelessly off of the table with one robed arm. From beneath the table, a wicker basket tottered out of its own accord, catching the falling items before settling back beneath the table, like a well-trained dog playing fetch. Despite the irregularity of each thing he did, his gestures were graceful and precise, his gaze set. Perhaps it was a sureness that came with the profession- being able to put faith in one’s own abilities.

“Sit,” The witch ordered flatly, gesturing to the now vacant wooden table. Aventurine shrugged and complied, sitting on its edge, feet dangling slightly over the side. He felt rather like a patient undergoing examination at the physician’s, though he supposed this was a close equivalent. The room smelled of Jasmine, and some smoky, rich incense that Aventurine couldn’t parse. “First things first,” he asked, pacing restlessly in front of the table. “Do you know who cursed you?”

“Straight to business, huh?” Aventurine quipped. “No what’s your name, how are you?” Provoking the dark magic witch who had so graciously agreed not to kill him (yet) was not his best idea, admittedly. In all honesty, he was rather unused to the things he said to people having much consequence at all in the long run. Like lines drawn in the sand, soon to be washed away. It had been years since something he said had really mattered to anyone , save for Jade, and on occasion, the other cursed individuals under her employ.

“Ah, yes. I forget how you people cling to your formalities,” he sighed, as if he were somehow above names as a concept. “What is your name.” It was a begrudging demand rather than an actual question, but it was better than nothing. Aventurine supposed that when you were on your own in the middle of the wastes for long enough, they might not seem as important. But then again, he supposed that his own name barely mattered anymore, either. He was like a ghost in that way, floating among the land of the living, yet never quite being able to touch. Still, a name was better than mentally referring to the other as the witch like some sort of fairy tale villain.

“Why, thank you for asking,” He said, placing a hand over his heart in a gesture of mock-appreciation. “My name is Aventurine. What’s yours?” He had heard the witch called Ratio once or twice, though his name was rarely spoken aloud. If it was, it was in hushed tones, as if he might overhear. Perhaps the passerby were afraid the witch would turn them into toads, or something.

“Veritas,” he replied flatly. A pretty name, really. Not one that seemed to strike fear into the hearts of strangers, but Aventurine supposed that names were often misleading. “Now if that will be all, let us move onto something of substance. Allow me to ask once again- who cursed you?”

“My old… captor, you could call him.” Aventurine had been permitted only to call him master, and it left a vile taste in his mouth each time he spoke the word. He had never been permitted to know the man’s name, and he didn’t mourn that fact. It wouldn’t do him any good to know. He wished he could forget his face just as easily. “He wasn’t a magic user, as far as I know. I didn’t even realize it was a curse until a while after it was placed, it didn’t do anything at first. It… activated, somehow. I’m not sure.” 

He could still pinpoint the moment, a snag in the thread of his fate. He was running from his captor, running through the sand as fast as his bare feet could carry him, when the brand began to burn, as hot as it had the moment it had been pressed into his flesh. It was so sudden, so fierce that it was all that Aventurine could do not to fall to his knees. Since that moment, he had been invisible. When he had run into town, sobbing help me, someone help me, the villagers walked past him as if he wasn’t there- even children playing in the street didn’t spare him a confused glance. For a while, he thought he may really be dead. Madam Jade was the first to tell him otherwise.

“Then it was most likely the weapon itself that held the curse, rather than the man who wielded it.” It made sense, in retrospect- the brand had been uniform across all of the people he kept, already fashioned into it’s strange, twisting shape. At the time, Aventurine had thought it was merely a mark of ownership, as one might give to cattle. Of course, it was nothing so simple. “Weapon-bound curses are tricky,” Veritas said. “The magic is harder to control, if it’s done secondhand. It will take time to analyze, both the external and the internal signatures,” he noted. “I’ve already taken notation of the external markings, but I’ll need to take a sample of your mana.” 

“So you are going to take my blood.”

“If I were a lesser witch, perhaps,” He said haughtily. “But my methods are not nearly so crude.” He stepped forward, reaching his hand out to touch Aventurine, to place a palm over his heart. His curse flared up at the proximity- perhaps in reaction to the magic, or perhaps just because the sudden touch had startled him. The body remembered things that the mind strove to forget- remembered the pain, the crawling discomfort. The curse was like cold water rushing over and through him, making his hair stand on end. His form flickers, becoming indistinguishable, opaque, before fading  gradually back into solidity. He ripples like a lake disturbed by a tossed stone. No matter how many times this happens, how many thousands upon thousands of times he’s felt himself disappear, Aventurine always wonders- will this be it? Will this time be the time he doesn’t come back? 

Veritas hesitates for a moment, before silently continuing, palm placed flat over his chest. Aventurine hopes that Veritas is too preoccupied with the magic to take note of his frantic heartbeat. Aventurine feels a tingling sort of pressure, travelling from his fingertips, centralizing and crawling towards his heart. Veritas draws a faint, white glow from his body, slowly and carefully, like unspooling a thread. The glow wriggles like a captured garden snake, trying to climb back into Aventurine’s body. Veritas frowned at it for a moment, before pulling a small jar from his pocket and coaxing Aventurine’s mana inside. It was strange, seeing your own body excrete mysterious glowing energy, but there were too many sensations at once for that to be the focus of his worries. Aventurine’s head was still spinning from the feeling of having energy physically removed from his body, but he made an effort not to look as dizzy as he felt.

Aventurine half-expected him to make some passive comment. About his curse, or his mana, or some kind of insult that he wouldn’t have any frame of reference for in the frist place. But the silence that followed was... clinical. Detached. Somehow, that was worse.

“That will be all.” Veritas pressed the jar shut with a pop, a gentle glow emanating from the inside like a candle . He placed it carefully into the pocket of his cloak, removing it from view, which suited Aventurine just fine. His skin crawled a bit at the sight of it- his own mana, something he knew he had, but had never seen. “I need time. I will be in my chambers, and I expect absolutely no disturbances. Should you make a racket, or touch any of my tools, I will toss you back out into the wastes. Am I understood?”  Aventurine nods.

What a ray of sunshine this guy is. Aventurine supposes that you can only expect so much hospitality from a witch, especially one as illusive and supposedly dangerous as this. He was lucky to have gotten this far. Still, Aventurine was unused to the feeling of being an annoyance . If he was not wanted, he was not there. Before the IPC, he stayed in vacant hotel rooms, picking the locks and using the space that no one would notice if he occupied for a while. But the witch could see him all the time, and remembered him when he was out of sight. Perhaps it was the result of some spell, or perhaps merely the fact that once this was over, he would be able to extract some method of payment from him. Somehow, some way, he would be useful. This is all the curse can tell him.

He climbed off of the table. On its edge were more sigils, not unlike the one burnt into Aventurine’s own neck. They were carved onto the tabletop, the sides, the legs, each serving some distinct, unknown purpose. The more he looked, the more symbols he saw, infesting everything like spiders. There were carvings on the floor, on the shelves, on each candle, chiseled into the trim of the mirror. 

The sight of magic like this never failed to make Aventurine uneasy, to stir a nervous sort of nausea deep inside of his being. He was no different from these objects, these places, with magic carved into him against his will. If he wanted to, Veritas could easily curse him all over again. He could do it while Aventurine slept, while he was distracted, while his back was turned. Or perhaps, like his old master, Veritas would simply hold him down while he writhed in agony, and press anew a cursed iron into his flesh. No one would be able to hear him scream, all the way out here in the wastes. 

But Aventurine had weighed that risk when he came, and he had already made his wager. He didn’t really have a choice, when his options were so slim. He could die, or he could fade away, and all he could do was walk on the narrow tightrope of chance, and pray to the mother goddess something waited for him on the other side. Did he even know what he was hoping for? Freedom? Normalcy? Did he really even know what normal was supposed to entail?

Magic and money, they sang a duet. If you had one, you had power, If you had both, even better. People like Aventurine- people stuck with neither were at their beck and call. It was all he could do to slip between the cracks, to try and fine some life for himself that he could dictate. He could figure out the rest when he got there.

All there was to do now was to lie on the witch’s couch, and try not to look at the magic that surrounded him. Try, in vain, to let exhaustion carry him to sleep.

There sat a long, silver mirror at the end of the room where Aventurine slept, and through it, Veritas quietly observed. All of the mirrors in his home were connected through a spell, allowing him to see through the like windows. It was a simple security measure, to allow him to monitor any intruders (or more often, to be alerted of any unlucky birds which occasionally flew through his windows). His strange new guest had drifted off to sleep at last, lying on the sofa. He was curled up on himself, as if he were staving off some unseen cold. Every now and then, his form flickered, like a candle in a drafty room.

Veritas hadn’t yet been able to untangle what secrets lied dormant in Aventurine’s curse. Being hasty with magic never yielded proper results, no matter how much curiosity may spur one on. Even still, he had felt the strength of that magic when he grew close- it made his head swim. A curse like this wasn’t meant to be survived, that much would be clear to even an apprentice witch. And yet, here Aventurine was. Battered, flitting in and out of the light, yet his chest rose and fell with breath.

“You’re doing it again,” Seraphine remarked, from behind him. She was sticking closer to him today, likely not wanting to be left alone with the stranger. She was more outgoing than he was, but not by too wide of a margin. This proximity suited him just fine. He never had to worry about the things she might say to anyone aside from himself, before.  “The whole creepy staring thing. Most people don’t like it when you watch them sleep, if you haven’t heard.” He frowned a little, realizing that this did indeed come across as rather voyeuristic. But comfort could be sacrificed for knowledge.

“He can see you,” Veritas replied, not turning to look back at her. Seraphine was a spirit tied to his very being, given form by their pact. Her existence was tied to his soul, and his, to some extent, was tied to her in turn. This stranger wasn’t a spirit, wasn’t a witch, wasn’t even a magic user in the slightest. So why ? Why could he see her when no one else had? He had come across many a cursed individual in his day, and never, not once in the 15 years that Seraphine had been bound to him, had one of them seen her. “Why? Why him?” 

Morning crept in, the sunlight peeking through the windows and nudging Aventurine awake. He was still curled up on the stranger’s couch, confirming to the doubtful voice in the back of his mind that his journey to the wastes hadn’t been a dream, after all. The IPC was well and truly behind him now, for better or for worse. The witch, unsurprisingly, was nowhere to be found, nor was his companion spirit. At first glance, Aventurine assumed that no one had so much as entered the room since they had left him here. That is, until he noticed that the table was no longer bare, instead bearing… breakfast. Eggs, toast, and fresh fruits, with a cup of tea to the side. He cocked his head in curiosity. Had Veritas done this? It didn’t seem like the type of thing he would do, and yet Aventurine wasn’t sure if the spirit could even make food without hands.

Making him breakfast and then fleeing the scene of the crime before he so much as opened his eyes, was… not expected, but not particularly unwelcome, either. (Unless it was poisoned, but one can only hope not.)  It was more baffling than anything else. The witch hadn’t been cruel to him by any measure, but he had been… detached. He clearly hadn’t cared for Aventurine’s comfort, especially not enough to make him food. But he supposed that if he died of malnutrition, he wouldn’t be of much value. 

When he reached for the tea, the cup was still warm to the touch.