Opening the door, I take a single step inside, and looking up, I say, "It's rather dark. But if it is anything like the rest of the house, I am sure there is a switch somewhere."
I look near the door, and seeing a button, I press it, and on top of the ceiling, I see a fiendish hand that radiates light from its fingertips, and then, lowering my head, I get a good view of everything in the room.
Throughout the room are countless cursed items. "So many in here. I guess it must be his personal store for cursed items to bury during Radonitsa."
Growing happy, I say, "They all look so fresh and polished, Dragoste is such a good person."
As my mind flutters with happiness, in my peripheral vision, I see on the only desk in the room a giant decorative book, and my body moves on its own over to it.
Hovering my hand over the book, I say, "I probably shouldn't do this. But I have already come this far, what is a little more rule breaking!"
I open the first page of the book, and there I see a series of scribbles. "His little doodles are so adorable, he must have drawn them to excite his mind when he was bored."
I turn to the next page, and as I see what can only be described as a picture on how to turn a nightmare's skin into a bullet."
My hair shifts from green, to black, to silver, to yellow, and then sweat starts to fall down my face. "No way. He probably just stole this from some sicko who did this, it definitely isn't Dragoste."
I close the book, and in front, I see written clearly; Property of Dragoste Nightfall.
"No way, no way, no way, no way, no way!"
Behind me, I hear, "Did you not read the warning, Orb?"
My body tensed up, and turning slowly, I smiled and said, "Hello, Dragoste."
He glares at me and slowly walks up, saying, "Orb, did you see it?"
My hair turned lime and I say, "I absolutely didn't see it, not even one bit."
"Are you lying?"
I nod my head yes.
"ORB!"
I quickly shake my head and say, "It's not too late, Dragoste. If you turn yourself, I am sure your punishment will be lighter than if you continued to go about lying."
Dragoste quickly picks up a cursed weapon from the room and moves towards me, and I say, "PLEASE STOP!"
He moves the weapon that looks like a rotten hand gripping a fleshy eyeball to my cheek, and as it touches me, I start to laugh uncontrollably. "What, is, go, ing, on!"
"It is a cursed tool made from Fredrick Aas, it makes it so the boy starts to laugh uncontrollably like it's being tickled. It's a great way to torture someone without mutilating them."
Moving away, I say, "Dragoste, doing stuff like that isn't good. Those are people's bodies, and you are just playing with them like they are a tool."
"Orb, all the cursed tools in here were made from people who donated their bodies."
"Donated their bodies."
A big smile appears on Dragoste's face, and he picks up another one that looks like a giant branding rod but with a flat circular brand. He says, "You see this here is a cursed item that has the ability to make you're body accept a foreign object. It can be used to remove allergies from people who have one."
Picking a roll of fleshy bandages up, he says, "This is a cursed item that removes the impurities from a body just by wrapping them up in it. It can be used to disinfect wounds incredibly fast."
Grabbing an earring, Dragoste says, "This curse item reduces a person's hunger, allowing them to lose weight far quicker than would be possible if they were to do so, just by wearing it."
His joy is just like that of a child who wants to tell his parents all about his day; it's something that bears no ill will, no malice, no hate. It isn't something I thought a man like Dragoste could act like.
Stopping, he says, "Eh hem, sorry about that, I got a bit carried away. You see, everything here was done consensually. You see, our curses have immense power. Their abilities are strange, but can be used to better the lives of our citizens. So many donate their bodies to be used in biological engineering, like you see here."
"Then why is the room forbidden?"
Orb-cursed weapons are extremely useful to people in the outside world, so they can get you a fair amount of money. It isn't uncommon for nightmares themselves to be some of the biggest participants in grave robbing to make a pretty penny. This wasn't always the case, but due to the unified currency of Lupas being usable in our country, it has made it an actually profitable cause."
"Then wouldn't you guys use your own currency then? I have heard Blestemate is all but self-sufficient, except for the agricultural trade you used to receive from Varage, before Gevurah conquered it?"
"You know quite a bit. But it really isn't as simple as that. Blestemate first took on the currency of Lupas because cursed weapons were mostly being traded in it, and they would reject our national currency at the time if it were ever used in such a trade. Historically, we just exchanged our currency with Varage for the sake of buying cursed weapons, but as Varage had to take on Lupas for economic reasons, we had to follow suit. Though many citizen still want to revert to our own national currency, because they don't like the incentives it gives their neighbours to do bad things. Yet as prime minister, I can't just do that. It's a big headache."
"Is that why you look so tired?"
"I look tired? I think I look quite healthy."
"No, you're wearing make-up to cover up your eyebags, and your speech sometimes pauses, even your eyes lag at times, and you constantly try to move your eyes to make sure that you don't fall asleep."
Dragoste smiles, then says, "You pick up on subtle details, are you sure my father raised you?"
Saluting, I say, "He did his best. Though he never told me you had such interests."
"I hid them for most of my life, to my knowledge, he just thinks I am into biology. My father and I didn't share similar interests. I liked to stay inside by myself, while he loved to rush out and detail everything he could about the world he could. I am pretty sure he far preferred my sister, who was much more like him."
"Umm, actually, you are you're sister has the exact same blood flowing through you veins, so you're actually just as much like him as she is!"
Dragoste flicks me on the forehead, and I say, "What was that for?"
"Just a bit of a warning for the future. Other people won't be so kind to smart-assed attitudes."
I hold my head in shame, regretting that my joke didn't land, but Dragoste says, "Still, you are right about our blood, but still saying we are the same as my father, biologically speaking, isn't all that accurate."
"What do you mean?"
"Orb, how do nightmares function?"
"Isn't it just that your souls are cursed so much they lost their shape. So basically spirit magic?"
"While it is magical, that still doesn't explain everything. When you use your legacy to create ice, real ice is made despite its spiritual beginnings. Spiritual things can have real, tangible effects on the physical world, so if we follow the same principle, why do curses alter the body?"
"Because they change the soul."
With a large smile on his face, Dragoste says, "Yet why does that have an effect on you're body? What is happening to the body during the process of the soul being cursed that leads to these apparent physical changes that cause the creation of nightmares? During the process of being cursed, the soul must actively physically affect the body in a way that is only recognisable after a certain intensity. Or at least that was my hypothesis."
Full of excitement Dragoste moves over to a table with a series of cursed objects on it, and pushes them all off the table, and then places a microscope, and says, "This here is a microscope, though it's lense uses the eyes of a woman named Deimantė, whose curse enhance her vision multiple times over, using this we can even see the smallest insides of a cell."
My body takes control of itself and moves right over to Dragoste. With a beaming smile, I cannot control it, so I say, "Really, you can see that far into another human being! I always wanted something like this."
Dragoste nods happily and says, "You like things like this as well."
I nod uncontrollably, then say, "Of course, there is nothing my mind spends more thinking about than how all of my friends are on the inside. Like how does their skin feel to them, how are their bones shaped, what are the differences between organs, are there any secret differences between blood, are we really all the same inside, or can our differences be categorised on an even deeper lev-."
I quickly cover my mouth as I realise the depths of my thoughts that I have allowed to leak out. "I am sorry about tha-,"
Dragoste puts his hands on my head and lets out a tear before saying, "I didn't know there were such young thinkers like you out there. I thought this interest was something only I had, but it seems the next generation isn't doomed yet."
My body beams with happiness, and I say, "Whatever you need, I will help you get it done!"
"Thank you, Orb. I appreciate it, now come look at this little cell of mine."
Staring down through the microscope, I look down into it, and there I see something, and I say, "Is this a cell?"
"Yeah, it's your first time seeing one outside of a book, isn't it?"
"YEAH!"
"Just keep turning the nob on the side and you'll see something interesting."
Following his instructions, I turn the nob more and more until I start seeing a glowing crystal, and pulling my head back, I ask, "What is that!"
"It's something I have discovered in my many years of research, the magnum opus of my work. Orb that's crystallised spirit energy."
"Crystalised spirit energy? Isn't that-."
"Impossible? Well, at least that's what everyone thought by the end of the Age of the Tower. Though I assure you it's real Orb, that the spirit energy that should have existed within my body crystalised within my cells."
I freeze for a second, and then I say, "When someone becomes cursed, it's their soul crystallising within their body, permanently changing it."
"Exactly, Orb. A command is given to someone's soul, and then their spirit energy moves to the person's body and crystallises within their cells, and as the supernatural abilities of spirit energy take hold of the cells, they transfigure the body in whatever way the person putting the curse on requests. In my opinion, the difference between a hard curse like a nightmare and a soft curse like your friend Suzuka is that in our bodies, we simply have so many cells with crystallised spirit energy that they outnumber our souls. Due to all of this, my body, despite being born from my father, may no longer be related to him due to this difference."
"THAT'S SO COOL!"
Standing behind where the book is, he opens it, flips through the pages, and says, "I have a lot more like that. Would you want to hear more about it?"
"I would love that!"
"Then come over here and I will teach you whatever my mind can spew out. Oh, how exciting!"