Sylas didn't take the wight's final words to heart. Empty threats were easy to make, any bitter spirit could manage that much.
Still, he had a hunch. The voice behind that last curse wasn't truly the prince's. It was likely the influence, or even possession of the Witch-king of Angmar, the chief of Sauron's nine Nazgûl.
Being marked by the Witch-king should have been terrifying, but Sylas felt surprisingly calm. It wasn't as though the Ringwraith could appear before him right this instant.
With the battle over, it was time to claim his spoils.
Sylas showed no hesitation as he began collecting the prince's ornate jewelry, crown, and accessories.
Then, near the foot of the coffin, he noticed four daggers.
Each was forged from an unknown silver metal, utterly unblemished despite centuries underground. They gleamed cold and sharp, exuding a strange magical chill.
Curious, Sylas levitated one with his wand and brought it down on the corner of the stone coffin.
Chhk.
The blade sliced through the solid stone like it was butter.
His eyes lit up with joy. 'Perfect. Just what I needed to carve into tree hearts.'
But as he turned the dagger over in midair, examining it with a grin, something tugged at his memory.
"Wait a minute..."
He recalled that in the distant future, the four Hobbits of the Fellowship, Frodo and his friends, had once fallen into a barrow and were nearly killed by wrights. Tom Bombadil had rescued them... and gifted them four enchanted blades found in that same tomb.
Sylas blinked. 'So... did I just rob them of their moment?'
He paused, then shrugged.
"Well, tough luck. I got here first."
With his prize in hand, he didn't linger. He made his way back through the winding tunnels and toward the surface.
But the moment he stepped outside, Sylas froze, and sucked in a sharp breath.
The entire hilltop was swarming with wights.
Hundreds of them.
They stood shoulder to shoulder in the heavy mist, gaunt and rotting, eyes glowing like embers in the gloom. And the moment they caught the scent of the living, they surged toward him like a rising tide.
There was no doubt. This was the Witch-king's doing. He had roused the entire burial field in retaliation.
Sylas didn't hesitate.
He had no desire to get caught in a brawl with an undead army.
"Lumos Maxima!"
A brilliant orb of white light burst from the tip of his wand and soared high above the tombs.
The entire Barrow-downs lit up in a dazzling flash. The wights hissed and recoiled. While not as harmful as sunlight, the intense magical radiance still stung their senses and slowed their advance.
Sylas, protected by a powerful Shield Charm and flanked by several levitating forged swords clearing a path ahead, did not slow his pace as he strode down the northern slopes of the Barrow-downs.
The wights were relentless. They trailed after him like shadows, their hollow moans echoing through the mist. But it was still daylight, and with every step Sylas took away from the cursed barrows, the Witch-king's influence waned. The dark magic that bound the wights to unlife weakened under the sun's gaze. Eventually, they could do little more than howl in frustration, watching helplessly as their quarry slipped beyond their reach.
After hours of walking through wild country, Sylas finally emerged onto the East-West Road, the great thoroughfare that cut across Eriador. From his position just north of the Barrow-downs, the road stretched eastward toward Bree, the nearest human town. Westward, the path curved past the Old Forest and Buckland, crossed the Brandywine Bridge, and led into the gentle green hills of the Shire.
Sylas paused and glanced toward Bree, but then turned west.
He wasn't ready to visit Bree just yet.
First, he needed to purify the spoils he had taken from the tombs.
Finding a sunlit clearing near the roadside, he opened his cloth satchel and began laying out the artifacts: five cursed greatswords, four silver daggers, and a small bundle of jewelry and ornaments taken from the tomb of the Cardolan prince.
One by one, the relics were arranged on the grass.
Sunlight poured over them.
The swords hissed softly as curls of black mist rose from their surfaces, residual curses and malice evaporating in the purifying light of day. One by one, the enchantments woven by dark hands burned away into nothingness.
The daggers, however, remained pristine. Their silver blades gleamed even brighter under the sun, and the faint magical aura clinging to them felt stable, untouched by decay.
The jewelry, too, shed its gloom and shimmered anew, gems catching the light, polished metal glinting with renewed brilliance.
Only the five greatswords bore the cost of purification. Once fearsome weapons capable of cleaving through magical defenses, they were now dulled, cracked, and fragile—reduced to ancient relics devoid of power.
Sylas let out a small sigh, but he didn't dwell on it. The daggers alone were worth the journey, and he had no shortage of enchanted treasure to study.
Once everything had aired out and the last tendrils of darkness were gone, he carefully repacked the items and slung his satchel over one shoulder.
It had been over half a year since he'd arrived in Middle-earth.
Perhaps it was time to return to Hobbiton for a visit.
Having been away for so long, Sylas felt the pull of home, or at least the place where he first arrived in Middle-earth. He wanted to rest for a while, enjoy the calm before the next storm. Besides, the large bundle of pipe-weed he had bought for Bilbo was still sitting in his bag. He hadn't had the chance to deliver it yet, and it would be a shame to let such fine Longbottom Leaf go to waste.
But more importantly, the time of the Dwarves' expedition to the Lonely Mountain was drawing near.
It was now January of the year 2941 of the Third Age. If memory served him right, this was the very year Bilbo Baggins would be swept into that grand tale, the quest to reclaim Erebor. Sylas had no intention of missing it. If he wanted to be part of that story, he would need to reconnect with Bilbo before the unexpected party arrived at Bag End.
As he continued westward, Sylas summoned the Dark Arts book he had received from the Barrow-downs sign-in reward.
Its cover was grotesque, a carved human face twisted in agony, frozen in eternal pain. Sylas arched an eyebrow. So this was Curses and Counter-Curses, a book that reeked of forbidden knowledge. Even the cover alone could make one's skin crawl. But his curiosity outweighed any sense of dread.
He opened it and began reading as he walked. The deeper he read into its crimson-stained pages, the more disturbed he became.
Curses, it turned out, were not merely a subset of the Dark Arts. They were its most insidious branch, slow, irreversible, and terrifyingly creative.
Take, for example, the infamous curse Voldemort had cast upon the position of Defense Against the Dark Arts professor. Every teacher who took the post was doomed, plagued by misfortune, injuries, or even death within a year. Not even Dumbledore, the greatest wizard of his age, had been able to lift it.
Then there were the Maledictuses, those tragic witches afflicted by hereditary curses. Over time, they lost their humanity, transforming slowly into beasts of instinct and silence. The process was agonizing. And, worst of all, permanent.
The book documented dozens of methods for cursecasting: binding a person's essence to a voodoo doll using their hair or personal possessions; inscribing their name or face with dark symbols to bring nightmares, weakness, or wasting sickness; embedding a death curse into an object so that anyone who touched it would suffer a horrible fate.
Worse still, the potency of a curse was not determined by incantation alone, it fed off the caster's malice and magical power. The more hatred behind the spell, the more unstoppable it became.
And once cast, a curse was nearly impossible to undo.
In the wizarding world, these arts were outlawed without exception. Those caught practicing them were sentenced to life in Azkaban, the wizard prison guarded by soul-draining Dementors.
Sylas finally closed the book and exhaled slowly.
It lived up to its reputation. Even he felt slightly nauseous from the gruesome illustrations and the sinister auras embedded in the parchment. Some spells demanded blood sacrifices, sometimes even human lives, to take effect.
But that didn't stop him.
No, Sylas didn't plan to use curses. But he had to understand them.
In his mind, ignorance was never an excuse. He might never cast a death hex or blood-bind, but one day, he might have to recognize such a curse… or break it.
Should he ever face a life-or-death crisis, this would be his final trump card, his last resort.
Of all the dark techniques he had just read about, it was the voodoo doll that fascinated Sylas the most. It was disturbingly effective for remote harm. With just a strand of hair, a fingernail, a scrap of clothing, a photograph, or even just the victim's name, he could cast a curse that would cause the target pain, illness, madness, or worse.
Some variants even allowed one to redirect harm onto another, or manipulate their will, making someone fall helplessly in love, or spiral into despair.
Sylas couldn't help imagining: if he had owned such a doll earlier, when the Witch-king of Angmar had threatened him in the tomb, he could've just performed a curse on the spot, no matter how far away the Nazgûl was, he could have struck him down.
Then again... was the Witch-king even alive in the usual sense? Given his spectral Nazgûl form, Sylas had serious doubts whether such curses would affect him at all.
Unfortunately, there was another problem: materials.
According to Curses and Counter-Curses, crafting a proper voodoo doll required the magical plant Mandrake.
But where would he find Mandrake in Middle-earth?
...
Read advance chapters ahead @ p/treon.c-om/Keepsmiling818