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“Three Chances to Banish a Shadow”
The First Attempt
Mortigogg braced himself against the altar’s shattered lip, his gnarled fingers clutching the cold obsidian casing of the Thornlight Lens. A whispering wind crept through the ruined vault, and with it came the slither of unseen things shadows that moved without bodies, curling like smoke around his boots.
“Not today,” he muttered, teeth gritted like cracked granite.
The Lens pulsed once. Faint light flared across the chamber’s broken stones. Ancient runes carved into the walls flickered, dim and suspicious, as if deciding whether to believe in him again.
He raised the Lens. “Name the curse, face the dark, burn the thread, and tear the mark,” he chanted, the incantation rasping from a throat more used to silence.
The shadows recoiled. A great pressure surged from the stone floor then…
Nothing.
The shadows slinked back into place, grinning in their voiceless way.
A crack spidered across the Lens’s core.
“One,” he said bitterly. “One chance wasted.”
His knees ached. His jaw trembled. Not from fear. From the weight of knowing: two tries left. And the thing clinging to him it wasn’t going to give up easy.
He didn’t know where the curse ended and he began, anymore.
They’d called it a lingering effect from the war, a tether from some spell long forgotten. But Mortigogg knew better. This was punishment. This was a memory made manifest. And now it was starting to talk low, guttural phrases that slid beneath his skin when he tried to sleep.
You think you earned peace?
You buried the others so you wouldn't have to look at what you did...
We are what’s left.
He needed help. Someone who still believed in him. Or at least believed in burning shadows.
Outside the vault, the twisted pines of Troaldor swayed like watchers holding their breath.
Mortigogg turned toward the moss-path, hunched but unbroken. “Time to find Fizzle,” he muttered. “That wild-haired sparkpot still owes me a favor.”
He slipped the cracked Lens back into its pouch, close to his heart.
It was still warm.
The Sparkpot Solution
Fizzle’s treehouse was already smoking by the time Mortigogg arrived.
“I swear it was the mushroom’s fault!” she shouted from a balcony tangled with ivy and tools, sparks flying from her fingertips like mischievous fireflies. “I said ‘no hissing’ in this lab!”
Mortigogg cleared his throat.
The young troll spun, saw him, and grinned wide. “Morti! You’re not dead! Yet!”
“I’ve got a curse that refuses to listen and a Lens with two chances left,” he growled. “Thought I’d come to the expert in explosive solutions.”
She was already halfway down the rope ladder, feet bare, apron singed, hair a crown of frizz. “Well now, that’s either flattering or a trap. Come inside before the tea boils angry.”
Inside was chaos distilled. Books leaned like drunks. Beakers clinked in precarious rows. A jar labeled “Dragon Burps?” rattled ominously.
Mortigogg unwrapped the Thornlight Lens and placed it gently on the table between them.
Fizzle leaned in, her expression going still for the first time. “Oof. This thing’s old. Not just ancient eldritch ancient. Where’d you dig it up? Or... who died holding it?”
“Don’t ask,” he said. “Can you amplify it?”
She nodded slowly. “Maybe. But you’ll owe me two favors and a new cauldron.”
“Done.”
The brew she concocted smelled like regret and cinnamon. As Mortigogg hovered the Lens above the steaming bowl, Fizzle laced the potion with golden threads of enchantment.
“Okay,” she said. “Say the words. Focus on the shadow you want gone.”
Mortigogg closed his eyes.
Name the curse. Face the dark. Burn the thread. Tear the mark...
The Lens pulsed. The cauldron glowed. Then…
BANG!
A geyser of violet light exploded from the table. Shelves toppled. A panicked squirrel launched itself out the window. Mortigogg staggered back, blinking hard…
He couldn’t see.
Not darkness. Something else. A swirling white haze that pulsed with voices.
She trusted you.
You told them it was safe.
They followed you into the fire...
Fizzle’s voice cut through. “Mortigogg?! Hey, HEY! Breathe! You're glowing and not in the good way!”
He dropped to one knee. The voices surged. His chest tightened.
And then, the Lens cracked again. A jagged fracture down the center.
His sight returned. Fizzle knelt beside him, panting. “Okay. Not great. But you’re not a toad. That’s progress.”
Mortigogg didn’t answer. His hands trembled. The Lens had failed again and now, the shadows weren’t just watching.
They were talking back.
“One more try,” he whispered.
And this time, it had to count.
Whisper and the Voice Beneath
They met at the edge of the Silver Echoes the stretch of forest where no one dares speak above a whisper.
“I heard you were looking for me,” Allura Moonshadow said quietly, stepping from the mist like a memory.
Mortigogg nodded. “You still hear things others don’t?”
She tilted her head. “I hear what’s not being said.”
He pulled the Lens from his satchel, hands still shaking. “It’s cursed. I thought it was mine to carry. But I was wrong.”
Her eyes flicked to the spider-crack webbing across the Lens. “It’s speaking to others now?”
“Through dreams. Through silence. Through people who come too close.” He looked away. “It tried to speak through Fizzle.”
Whisper stepped closer. “Then we don't have time to waste.”
They sat on opposite sides of a shallow pool known as the Listener’s Mirror. Whisper set two stones down beside her one humming with silence, the other echoing with her own heartbeat.
“I’ll use audial separation. I can isolate the voice of the shadow cut its tether to your mind long enough for the Lens to work.”
Mortigogg raised an eyebrow. “You can separate the voice of a curse?”
She gave a dry smile. “If it has a frequency, I can find it.”
She began to hum. Low. Resonant. The pool rippled. Mortigogg felt his limbs tingle, the Lens heating in his hands. The shadows within it curled, recoiling
Then a second hum joined hers.
Too deep.
Too cold.
Not hers.
Whisper gasped. Her hand went to her throat. The echo stone cracked.
She’s hearing us now...
The echo girl. The one who hides in silence.
Let us show her what she’s missed.
Her breath caught. “Morti... I can’t hold them…!”
The pool blackened.
Mortigogg lurched forward, slamming the Lens into the water.
Light seared through the dark, sharp, white, and burning. A shriek tore through the forest, echoing across trees that had never known such pain.
Then: silence.
Whisper collapsed.
Mortigogg pulled her from the edge, cradling her head as the water returned to silver.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I thought I could fix it before it hurt anyone else.”
She stirred, eyes fluttering open.
“They’re not done with you,” she rasped. “But now… they know who I am, too.”
He looked down at the Lens. A third crack bloomed like a thorn across its surface.
Only one try remained.
And now he wasn’t the only one at risk.
Rune and the Unasked Question
Mortigogg sat beneath the twisted birch known as the Hanging Memory Tree, staring at the Lens in his palm.
Three cracks now. It looked like it was barely holding together like he was barely holding together.
He hadn’t slept. Couldn’t. Every time he closed his eyes, the shadows sang lullabies laced with guilt and screams.
Footsteps rustled behind him.
“I brought snacks,” said a small voice.
He turned.
Rune.
The troll child looked like a half-dressed whirlwind leaves in his hair, glitter on his cheek, and a satchel far too big for his size swinging from his shoulder.
“I told you to stay in Troalstone.”
Rune shrugged and plopped down beside him. “I told you shadows were boring. Guess we’re both bad at listening.”
Mortigogg sighed. “I’ve got one use left. One. If it fails, the Lens breaks. And maybe me with it.”
Rune didn’t say anything for a moment. He just opened his satchel and pulled out a glowing mushroom, a rubber duck, and a half-eaten acorn biscuit.
Then, casually: “What if it’s not supposed to destroy the shadows?”
Mortigogg frowned. “That’s what it was made for.”
Rune tilted his head. “Are you sure? Maybe it doesn’t work because it’s not doing what it was meant to. Maybe it’s like trying to use a telescope to dig a hole. It’s still a tool, but you’re using the wrong end.”
Mortigogg stared at him. “It burned the shadows when I activated it.”
Rune took a bite of the biscuit. “Yeah, but what if that’s just... the reaction it has when you’re scared of them? What if it’s reacting to you?”
That landed like a stone in Mortigogg’s gut.
Rune leaned in. “You ever talk to the shadow instead of just yelling at it?”
Mortigogg blinked. “You don’t talk to curses.”
Rune grinned. “Then maybe that’s your problem.”
Silence. The wind shifted. The Lens hummed faintly in his hand, as if it too had something to say... if only he’d stop trying to shout it down.
Mortigogg closed his eyes.
You think we’re the rot.
But we are your roots.What you bury doesn’t vanish.
It grows.
When he opened his eyes, Rune was watching him calmly, seriously, the mischief momentarily gone.
“I think,” Mortigogg said slowly, “this time, I don’t try to banish it.”
Rune nodded. “Good. ‘Cause I’m fresh out of glitter grenades.”
Mortigogg stood, taller now. Not stronger, but... steadier.
One try left.
But maybe, just maybe, that was enough.
Does Mortigogg survive his last attempt, or become something else entirely?
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