How to Break a Deadly Curse // Characters: Rowan Spurius

With a soft pop, Rowan appears out of nowhere, bathed in a cloud of purple smoke. This time, the smoke smells like vanilla ice cream. “Okay, so, we’re all banned for life and the bartender is about to call the cops. Any progress on the door? We’re kind of running on borrowed time now. Just saying.”

Cassia sighs. “Really, Ro? Can’t you do anything without getting the cops called on us?”

And here’s another one. I’m on a roll. Tags are under the cut. If you’d like to be added to the tag list for HTBDC, let me know!

WIP Introduction: How to Break a Deadly Curse

In a world where humans and magic live together in faulty harmony, Katsurou Kuroda has been dealt the worst hand possible. He’s an Elemata, doomed to be devoured from the inside out by the magic he was born with. His doctor’s best estimate sees Katsurou dying by the time he’s thirty. Nihilist would be Katsurou’s middle name, if he had one--hence his extensive criminal record and the eight schools around Vancouver that have kicked him out the door.

But this time, things went a little too far. People got hurt, and Katsurou had to get out fast. Now he’s on the other side of the country, in a city he’s a stranger to--Maybridge, the walled magical metropolis on Canada’s East Coast. 

Katsurou being Katsurou, things went a little too far yet again. After trying to steal from a witch and failing miserably, Katsurou has been cursed. He now has eighty days to live instead of twelve-ish years, and it looks like those eighty days are going to be rough. However, thanks to a gang of misfits headed by a woman with a curse of her own, Katsurou has a place to stay until the end--and, perhaps, a way to break his curse. Not the one he was born with, but the one he managed to get put on himself by being an idiot.

A strange group hiding within Maybridge’s many shadows is up to something odd, but they may have the key to making Katsurou’s imminent death a little less imminent. Not that he cares, of course. He was dying anyway.

Genre: ya/na urban fantasy

Themes: found family, delinquent kids, lgbtq+ relationships, neon cyberpunk dystopias

Status: second draft in progress

Current Word Count: 18,000

Tags: #htdbc, #maybridge

The ride down to Hadesgate is a silent one. The train stops at the end of the line, at a station where the fluorescent lights flicker and the walls are covered with faded graffiti. Hadesgate is an appropriate name for this place. It’s even further down than where Katsurou entered the city. Sunlight never reaches the faces of the people who live here, and the streets are too narrow for cars. And yet, somehow, everything smells of gasoline and rust.

When Katsurou and the others get off the train, there’s no one else around. It isn’t that late, but Katsurou has the feeling that he’s out somewhere he shouldn’t be at midnight--there’s a dangerous feeling in the air, as if a bomb is about to go off at any moment. No wonder Cassia seems to hate this place so much.

“Where to next?” Cassia asks. “I’ll be very pleased if you say we’re not going any deeper than this.”

Rowan sighs. “I can’t say that for sure. I think we’re supposed to be going into the catacombs.”

“Oh, no,” Sylvie says. “I don’t like the catacombs very much. I don’t like small spaces. Neither does David. They’re too far from the sky.”

David’s eyes dart towards Sylvie when she says his name, but he says nothing. He doesn’t look like he’s about to make a point about hating small spaces. Everybody seems to be taking Sylvie’s word for it, though.

Katsurou pulls another cigarette out of his jacket pocket and lights it up. “I don’t know where we’re going, and I don’t care. I just want to get this over with.”

“That’s the spirit. I love it when people don’t care. That way they don’t notice when I don’t have a clue what I’m doing.” Rowan claps Katsurou on the back and, somehow, simultaneously reaches into his jacket pocket and takes a cigarette, softly enough that Katsurou doesn’t notice until she’s already reaching into his other pocket for his lighter.

It’s going to be a long night.

-How to Break a Deadly Curse, Chapter Seven

I was tagged by @lilquill, who’s a pretty cool cat--check them out if you don’t already follow them.

Here’s the last few lines I wrote in the second draft of How to Break a Deadly Curse. Things have been coming along really nicely, actually, so I have some very recent (circa yesterday) stuff to share for once!

“Look, there.” Rowan points to the tunnel directly across from the one she and the others entered through. “That’s where we need to go. At the end of that one is the hideout thing we’re looking for.”

She leads the way again, over the slippery stone floor. The whole room is soaked with spray, so everything is just a little bit more treacherous than normal. Cassia nearly slips a couple of times because she’s wearing heels, so Milo carries her across, leaving Katsurou to navigate on his own.

“I’m the disabled one here,” Katsurou cries. “Have you not noticed the clunky metal leg I’m packing around?”

David, however, is hanging back a bit, even though he could be across by now. The others are ahead of him, but he’s waiting--waiting for Katsurou.

Katsurou glowers up at him. “It would be nice if you gave me a hand. Not that you can understand me, right? Maybe I should learn to ask for help in Russian. Or, maybe your buddies could learn to lend a hand, too.”

Okay, maybe it was more like the last few paragraphs, but whatever. I like this scene as it is. Katsurou is being a bit of a jerk, as usual--but this time it’s a little bit warranted. Nobody tried to help him cross.

Well, David is about to. I just haven’t written that part yet.

Hey, thanks for the ask! For once I actually checked my inbox lol

I’ll be answering these for Katsurou, the main character of my current WIP and NaNoWriMo project, How to Break a Deadly Curse.

43: What is their least favourite thing about their physical appearance?

Katsurou is pretty resigned about how he looks, but he still hates the scars all over his body from his magic. He’s an Elemata, which in the world of the Maybridge trilogy is a human that somehow got the ability to produce their own magical energy. Humans really aren’t supposed to be able to do that, and it messes up their bodies a lot, eventually resulting in death. In Katsurou’s case, it’s a progressive congenital defect. He’s got scars shaped like rune circles burned into the left side of his face and neck, his left arm, most of his chest, and his right leg. He had them on his left leg, too, until it was amputated.

44: Do they have any scars? If so, what is the story behind those scars?

Well, Katsurou has the aforementioned rune scars--those have progressed and covered more of his skin as he’s gotten older. He’s also got a regular scar across his nose and another running down the right side of his jaw, both earned in a knife fight. Other than that, he has lots of small scars from careless behaviour--little burns, little cuts, stuff like that. He doesn’t remember how he got any of them.

45: How would they describe their own appearance?