6°34'37.1"N 6°05'36.9"W

  Sassandra-Marahoué, Ivory Coast

  18.05.2024 - 16.50 UTC +00.00

  Kouadio’s body sprang up headfirst, activated by an invisible puppet master, a thin web holding and moving his legs.

  Rox said something in her own dialect, Maninka, if I was not mistaken. Something about gods, Curses, and death.

  I did not have her for a God-fearing mercenary.

  “Move,” was my last command. And so did Kouadio.

  His body, hanging by strands of a new will, started walking. He walked first to me, and then turned around, testing the limits of his bounds. His eyes were doors to a soulless cave, save for the hundreds of spiders infesting his brain.

  “As long as he tests the front, we follow in his steps,” I said.

  “Qu'il repose en paix. May he rest in peace,” Guarin said.

  There was peace for Kouadio; but not the one Guarin expected. The After would cater for him, as long as I so willed.

  Kouadio’s lifeless body walked clumsily for the first few steps, and then gradually found its footing, the ant spiders learning how to coordinate his movement every passing second. And also, I was there. Part of me was with him now, with the ant spider.

  Akissi’s eyes shone wet as he passed by her. I had seen that look before: a hopeless disgust seeing her compatriot turned into mechanized flesh. She could not take her eyes off him and said something I did not understand.

  Rox did not translate, but, like Guarin, turned to me, and looked at me, tight-lipped and eyes frowned. It was not shock or disgust exactly in their eyes – I knew this look all too well. It was pure fear.

  They finally understood why I had not revealed my Curse so far: it was not something they could rely on to survive, only something they could fear once they died. They all wondered who would be the next one to be Sparked by spiders.

  “Let’s go,” I said, wondering myself the very same thing.

  ? ? ?

  The wilderness became the natural choice of path.

  “No road seems safe anyway,” Rox had said when I steered Kouadio’s Sparked body out of the road. Akissi did not complain, which amounted to agreement. Guarin remained silent for the majority of the trip.

  Rox was right; there was no safe road. But after Kouadio had been raised from the dead, sprang to life by spiders, it would be difficult to explain his state to even a simple civilian crossing our path.

  After a few hours of walking, however, I even had to admit that the path through the wilderness, led by a Sparked body, was not only slow but also quite exhausting.

  Once the sun set, our progress was so tiring that when Guarin suggested we rest, no one really voiced their opinion for or against that, and simply obeyed. We all knew the risks of delaying. We all had memorized the coordinates by that point, and we all knew we were about to miss the deadline:

  6°37'08"N 6°02'52"W

  18 MAY 2024, MIDNIGHT

  “We rest for two hours. And then, we head again. We might make it a few minutes past midnight, but if they want the damn pouches, they should wait,” Guarin suggested. Akissi only nodded. She was only nodding for the past hours, one way or another.

  Akissi knew Kouadio personally; that much I had figured out. Perhaps more than that, and I could understand her. Kouadio was to her what Marin was to me. Perhaps, she also thought that would have been one last mission for them. The only difference was that Kouadio was a lifeless walking piece of flesh now.

  I could see in her expression that she despised me even more for not letting him find whatever peace he should. Really, what other choice did we have? If indeed these lands were part of a domain designed to kill us and get the pouches we carried, someone had to volunteer to carry his pouches. Risk the same fate. It seemed like a pointless argument given how Kouadio was dead already, and no one would want to be my next Sparked. Akissi knew all that. So she stayed silent and made fire.

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  I simply sat next to its warmth, Kouadio standing still by my side, and I drank some water from my waterskin. My eyes trailed Guarin, who sat on a large rock, mumbling to himself. His eyes revealed another type of concern. It didn’t look like a moral concern like Akissi’s – no, it was something more practical.

  Rox approached him, and I decided to do so too. Akissi could be left alone to search for anything edible in the surrounding area.

  “We can’t be far from Kouétinfla,” Guarin said. His short beard was getting greasier as he stroked it, like a tick. He was looking at the fire. “And the fire should alert our allies at the very least. Our enemies, too, but that should not matter at this point.”

  “And why do you say this, like this is something bad?” Rox asked. She was leaning forward, her dark skin still dripping sweat. She was not facing me or Kouadio’s Sparked body next to the fire. I took note of her stance and stood back.

  “Well, for one thing,” Guarin pointed to Kouadio.

  “Do not worry. He belongs to me; he poses no danger,” I said.

  Guarin stared right at me. Rox inhaled sharply, still declining to turn to my way.

  I did not care. Whether she was afraid of what I could do to her or simply hated me for my Curse, it did not matter. Fulfilling my mission and getting paid were all that mattered at this point. Getting to the coordinates in a couple of hours – that was what mattered.

  “That’s not it,” Guarin insisted, “the first problem is he is a temporary solution. I mean, eventually, when we reach the town, we will have to leave him behind. We can’t just walk around with a zombie. One of us will have to carry his things. And we saw how instantly whatever this hex was worked on Kouadio. What if it happens again?”

  We all stood in silence. Rox leaned left and right uneasily, still sweating.

  “Not a fan of the z-word,” Rox said, “but I get your worry.”

  “I doubt the entire area is under this scream-hex domain. This would take a very powerful Curse,” I said.

  “That’s the second issue. We were supposed to meet more support soon. I called in for reinforcements, in Sa?oua, remember?”

  I remembered. I had disposed of an assassin on that day, and I had decided to keep it to myself.

  “They said they would replace Marin, right?” Rox asked, looking more worried than relieved. She meant Curse-wise: the reinforcements would probably have at least one more Cursed. I hated that phrasing, but I did not mind the meaning. I would no longer carry the weight of this entire team. Not that Akissi was not a capable threat in a fight, but even she could not do much against such powerful hexes.

  “Well, yeah. I was hoping that when we got near, they would reach out. Instead, nothing. And someone Cursed is controlling the area so…” Guarin said.

  “…so, either your friends from the Kanem betrayed us, or our enemies found them first,” I finished his sentence.

  “So, in any case…” he paused, “we are completely alone.”

  Akissi dropped a basket with roots and vegetables next to us. She said something in Baoulé.

  “We were always alone,” Rox translated.

  “Well. Good news is, someone must be waiting for us,” he concluded.

  Whether they were friend or foe, we would learn soon.

  The attitude of our small company only got worse while Rox prepared the sad, tasteless stew of whatever those roots were. No one had anything smart to say, and our position seemed as desperate as it could be. Even Guarin did not dare discuss what we would do in a few hours: charge into Kouétinfla victorious, or sneak in? We had no time for reconnaissance. We only had a time and a place, and who knows what waited for us there.

  “You know, I just need to ask. It has been eating me apart, this question,” Rox said, breaking her silence, her voice audibly trembling. “Why didn’t you do your… spider thing with Marin as well? Why didn’t you have him carry all our pouches from the moment he died?”

  “Kouadio might have been alive now. Is that why you ask?” I asked. Akissi remained still.

  She stopped stirring the pot on the fire. Her eyes, as well as Akissi’s, demanded an answer. Guarin feigned that he did not feel the tension, but I could see his eyes glued to Akissi’s machete.

  “It is very simple. I cannot Spark the Cursed,” I said, and picked up a tiny spider crawling nearby. I held it in my hand, and I kept twisting my hand, making it walk in circles. “I think the Curses some bear destroy what you people have. You can call it a soul if you want. That’s what my spiders aim. Consume what’s left of it. Give it a final Spark.”

  I tossed the tiny spider in the fire. I knew it was thankful, for some reason.

  Akissi cursed in her unique way.

  “So, one of you lot had to die first,” I said, trying to sound as neutral and calm as I could. I had gone over this conversation with so many different groups of mercenaries like this before. Some went well, some went badly. But I had learned that if I showed emotion, that was when people got angry. As if I got to decide.

  No one said anything. Rox just looked right at the pot half-full of soup, clearly trying to hold back whatever she was going to say.

  “Marin knew this,” I said, “and still went into the action for your sake, Rox, not because of the mission. But because he was a genuinely, stupidly, good person.”

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