A Centaur's Troubles Ch. 06

"Alright, wizard," Krank grumbled, leaning against a wall with her arms crossed under her bust. "Yer all outta jizz, what's the verdict?"

"Technically speaking," Richard said with a polite cough. "The spell isn't a curse, per say."

"What?" Christoph had been leaning against a wall, even his eager attentiveness to learn more about his condition having given way to boredom, and he jumped upright at the unexpected answer.

"Well, the Third Magical Convergence defined curses as non-consensual enchantment, removable only via specific conditions set by the caster."

There was a moment where the entire room just looked at the wizard.

"And!?" Christoph broke that silence with the force of a brick through a window.

"And from what I can glean, your transformation is the result of an action on your part, you did something that the spell was coded to perceive as consent which caused it to activate," Richard continued, starting to sweat. "You said you broke something, right? A small hollow statue? That was likely some kind of magical artifact, a-"

"No shit, Merlin," Krank muttered, drawing a giggle from Amanaiya.

"-a container for the spell," the wizard soldiered on, only a sudden wrinkle between his eyebrows showing he had heard her. "By breaking it, and releasing the magic therein, you technically agreed to be its subject."

"... So?" Christoph prompted.

"So there is no specific lifting mechanism for the spell."

"So I'm stuck like this?" One of his hooves stamped particularly hard on the rugs below, causing Richard to actually since.

"I never said that! Only that there isn't some random thing you need to do like lick a unicorn or father triplets on a mare or anything. All you need to do is find someone of significant power to reverse it."

"Oh well, that sounds simple enough, " Krank mused, not without a healthy dose of suspicion.

"In most circumstances it would be," Richard replied, prompting a groan from the centaur. "But in this case it's such a thorough transformation that it will take an incredible amount of power and skill. Off the top of my head, I only know of one mortal spellcaster who fits the bill. Belacose the Green."

He spoke the name with such reverence and awe that Christoph was surprised the candles around the room didn't choose that moment to gutter dramatically.

"Who?" Gortuk asked, speaking up for the first time in hours from where she lay on the floor, having just woken from a nap.

"Belacose? The Green wizard?" Richard explained, pouting a little at the complete lack of reaction. "The greatest living practitioner of the arcane arts?"

"I lived on a farm until a few weeks ago," Christoph pointed out.

"Goblins don't pay attention to human politics," Krank added.

"I've heard of him, I think," Amanaiya said, mostly to herself as she tapped her chin in thought.

"I just don't give a shit," Gortuk threw out, stretching from her spot on the floor with a groan.

"I'm surrounded by magical philistines," Richard sighed to himself. "Look, the point is, Belacose is your best bet in getting all of you turned back to normal."

"Even us?" Amanaiya asked, morning to herself and Krank.

"Yes, given that the enchantments on you are relatively simple, I'm sure he can figure something out."

"You didn't even examine us!" The goblin pointed out.

"I don't need to, your spells are hardly subtle," Richard explained with a dismissive sniff. "Anyone with any amount of training can just look at you and spot them, and anyone with the sheer magical might of Belacose could lift your curses with a snap of his fingers."

"Where can we find this Belacose guy?" Christoph interrupted before they got any further off track.

"He travels far," Richard answered. "And often. Last I heard, he was in Ahad, a city on the coast. Head west until you hit the mountains, then go south until you find the end of the range, then just loop around to the north and you'll be there. After that, you will have to figure out where to look on your own."

"Well, I guess that's where I'm going next then," Christoph said with a small shrug, which on his broad shoulders wasn't small at all.

"Where *we're* going," Krank corrected him, giving his side a light smack. "Got no reason not to come with at this point, since Purple Dick over here-"

"Richard!"

"-couldn't do anything useful."

"I'm also included in that 'we,'" Amanaiya interjected, tapping the butt of her staff on the ground to punctuate. "Vilú bade us meet, I'm sure of it, so this must be their will."

Christoph turned to look at Gortuk as she stood up, his eyebrows raised expectantly. Recent events had made certain things expected, after all.

"Yeah yeah, I'll come too," she shrugged.

"Why?" Richard asked. "I thought you loved your curse."

"I do," she explained. "But I wanna be the biggest cock-swinging mortal around, so that means I gotta make sure ponyboy over here finds the green guy."

"Your altruism is astounding," Richard grumbled. "You can all leave now, we're done here."

"Whatever you say, oh great and powerful Jizzard," the Orc laughed.

*~*~*

That night, Gortuk took them to the inn she was staying at, which happened to have a decent sized stable attached. It was there they spent most of their night, the three telling the orc their stories, brief as they were, before she shared her own.

"I was part of this travelling mercenary company, see?" she explained over a mug of ale that she had managed to bribe the innkeeper into serving them in the stable. "Small thing, five people and a wagon, rode around the land taking strange missions and mundane ones too. Anything from clearing giant rats out of the sewers under Spearpoint to escorting some princeling to Kerpar."

"Why aren't you with them now?" Christoph asked, eating his second plate of food in ten minutes.

"They ditched ya, didn't they?" Krank supplied, picking her teeth with a smirk.

"Nah, I left them. Didn't like how they kept complaining about my sex life."

"Somehow I'm not surprised," Amanaiya sighed over a steaming cup of tea.

"I mean, none of them complained during the act, but I guess it was more about how I was tanking their reputation everytime we went into a town. Too many broken marriages. Gods above, I love married folk."

"Women?" Christoph asked.

"And men," she said with a leer. "It's all fun to me. Anyway, after our most recent mission wrapped up, I felt it best we separate, then I kept myself entertained for a few weeks before Dick got paid to improve me, and here we are."

"Amazing," Christoph said, a mix of admiration and embarrassment on his face. "An adventurer, a professional one!"

"You know it, kid," Gortuk said with a laugh.

"Murder hobo," Krank muttered into her own mug, causing Amanaiya to almost spit her tea.

"If the price is right!"

"You know, we have a destination, we have a quest, and we have a party," Amanaiya said. "We're something of an adventuring troupe ourselves!"

"An elvish priestess, a goblin... Uhh..." Gortuk trailed off.

"Artificer," Krank supplied.

"Yeah that, a centaur farmboy, and an orcish warrior. I've been in worse-balanced parties."

"Do we need a name?" Christoph asked excitedly.

"Technically, no, unless you're trying to get hired or make a guild or something," Gortuk explained.

"Did you have an idea?" Amanaiya asked, giving Christoph a warm smile.

"Well..."

"Gortuk's Girls!" The orc shouted.

"No," Krank vetoed flatly.

"Lame."

"I was thinking..."

"Ooh!" Amanaiya interrupted. " Vilú 's Vagabonds!"

"Absolutely not," Krank vetoed again, not even looking at the elf as she sipped from her mug. "Don't care about Vilú and we ain't hobos."

"I was actually thinking of the Curse Club?" Christoph finally managed to get out.

"Cute, kid," Gortuk chuckled, shaking her head.

"I don't think it would stick," Krank added. "Not serious enough."

"What about the Cursed Companions?" He tried.

"Now that has potential..." Amanaiya hummed thoughtfully.