And so the creature, still disguised as an alluring mortal woman, spoke her words and spat her ire at me — her forked tongue flitted and stabbed the air between us. As you well know, friend, I started this journey as a scholar and knew to some degree a great many of those dead languages of Magic. One such she spoke to me now: Jasbari. Known to some as the Sinister Sound or the Dark Hand at the Clay, a language used to tamp and twist and knot the world into painful clumps...

The language of Curses.

The beast revealed herself as she recited her hatred into my bodily form. Thrice a man’s height her head neared the lowest of the silver-grey branches — for the woods too revealed themselves to be the fog-filled and otherworldly Whisper Woods, with it’s silver trees that extended upwards forever into the low dark clouds and whose roots sought to drag any and all into the damp depths of the black soil.

But my focus was on the beast: a Chasati. Her lower half was that of a giant armoured millipede, dark brown chitin and orange legs that writhed and gesticulated; her top half was that of a woman, though made of damp leafmould; her head was wreathed in a main of insectoid braids, a mess of many long bodies and countless legs, all of which slid and scuttled and scattered about.

The Chasati’s faux face rested atop this dark and crawling mass. A mask made of smooth pale-grey wood. A glorious, perfect, bewitching face that could only have been made more beautiful if it had held a living breath or a modicum of the divine gift of life.

From behind the wooded-veil her words fell as whispers but hit as fists, the forked tongue still stabbed at me, escaping and retreating from a small slit betwixt those perfect and forever still lips.

It is that image that has stayed with me. Beauty and fear. Lust and damnation.

I apologise. Back to my tale. I had avoided the Chasati’s initial enchantments and had thus earned her ire and through will and waning warding words once more managed to slip from the spell that had stilled me.

Jasbari — her language — was, at that time, not my strongest of learn-ed words. I had gathered enough, though, that I knew to tear a strip from my tunic and bind my vision — at this she grew louder but did not cease her unfinished curse. I felt the beast move, and then! One human hand was at my throat, a million little arms grabbed and tapped and pinched and stabbed and wrapped about my body — her other hand was at my blindfold scratching and tearing...or trying to. It, being part of my tunic, was made of enchanted fawnish wool and could only tear by my will or at the hands of beings far more powerful than a mere beast in the woods.

And this property, as you know, had kept me anchored in mortal form by staying many a blade and pike.

Knowing that I must act I forced my hands among the gripping pins of the insect legs and found, first, the Orb of Antarus on the left of my rope belt and, second, the hilt of Fjorn my blade that was at rest on my right. Fjorn lit and the flame sword tore through insect legs, thick chitin, warm innards, up and out of her belly and took one of her human hands off at the wrist — the grip held tight to my throat despite the severance and I heard the devil scream in agony and anger...this worried me as it suggested that the spell had finished.

I crushed the orb in my left hand and was gone from that realm and dropped into a plane of mortal beings - which I knew by all senses save that of sight. The blindfold held. In darkness I found the smell and sound and sway of the Sea. Felt wooded planks at my bank.

The familiar creak of wood and flap of sail. I was on my boat and far from the Island of Wonders, the Whisper Woods, and the accursed Chasati.

Her severed hand lay limp on my chest. That would serve as proof of my work and earn me my bounty.

And the curse woven into the fabric of my being would be the cost.

I remember I touched my eyes and found my face scratched and clawed, but not badly. Her words echoed in my ears, whispers on the cusp of hearing.

I hear them now and think I always shall.

* * *

Thankfully my crew found me shortly thereafter and I explained that my blindness must needs remain until such time that I could break the curse or, at the very least, until I could study and be assured of the spells effects. I knew only that if my eyes were to fall upon a person...I would love them.

Wholly.

She had wanted me for herself — such is the Chasati way. They live to lure and entrap mortal men that wander into the forest such that they may play. Once bored the Chasati lay their eggs within the sorry fellow and he is eaten by her children when they hatch. To make me fall for her, that was her goal...

Surely.

I could not risk taking off my blindfold until I was certain, and as the lone scholar among my crew, I was forced by necessity to wait until we made the many week journey out of the Wild Seas and back to civilisation. My adventure had taken its toll and I welcomed the rest.

At first. I grew listless and took to learning any and all songs and instruments that we had aboard.

Another story for another time.

Lutes and near mutiny.

* * *

Celebrations and libation filled our arrival! So furious was the fervour and riotous the reverence of that gathered crowd, that they nearly lifted the boat wholly from the dock to take us up the steps and through the streets, atop a sea of shoulders. King Havar, here are your heroes!

I convinced them to take the men, save those that wanted to stay aboard and guard our bounties.

AUTHOR NOTE: I have to run! More later if I remember.