TRAGIC TIM: THE CURSE HAS FORWARDING

Rían walked out to the Hill of the Slain — a literal mountain of dead soldiers that McEvilface's orcs had piled up after the last big battle — lay down on it, and died there. That's her whole story. She had a husband named Huey Chair who never came back, and a baby named Toby Tourguide who got handed off to some Grey-elves in the north to raise, and then she was done. Remember the kid's name. He matters later, in a chapter that is not this one.

Because this chapter belongs to the other branch of the family, and the other branch got it worse.

Quick recap for anyone who skipped the war: Huey Chair had a brother, Hugh Chair, who fought at the same disaster, refused to surrender, got taken alive, and mouthed off to McEvilface personally. McEvilface's response was to curse his entire bloodline and then chain him to a chair on a mountain so he could watch it happen. Not metaphorically watch. McEvilface gave him the view.

So the curse is real, it is active, and it has a forwarding address. It goes to Sadtown, where Hugh Chair's wife Stone-Cold Morgan is now living in occupied territory, surrounded by Sellout settlers who have decided her people work for them now, with an eight-year-old son and another baby on the way.

Stone-Cold Morgan does the math. She is proud, she is broke, and she is one bad week from her son being taken as a slave or a hostage. So she makes the least sentimental decision in the book: she smuggles Tragic Tim out. Sends him south, on foot, with two old servants, to the hidden elf-kingdom of Doorlatch Forest, on the strength of a family connection — Based Ben, the guy from the Shiny Rock heist, was her father's kin, and King Theo Gatekeep owes that family a favour.

Tragic Tim is eight. He does not want to go. He goes.

Then Nina No-Memory is born, and here's the part that quietly ruins everything: Theo Gatekeep sends messengers offering Stone-Cold Morgan a spot in Doorlatch Forest too. Safe. Fed. Same roof as her son. She says no. She will not leave the house she lived in with Hugh Chair, because he might come back to it, and leaving would mean admitting he won't.

What she does send is the family heirloom: the Dragon-helm of Sadtown, a helmet so intimidating that orcs reportedly ran from the sight of it. She keeps the pride and mails the armour. Her son gets raised by an elf king who loves him, and her daughter gets raised by a woman who is waiting for a dead man, and neither kid ever meets the other.

For nine years, messengers come from Sadtown. News, letters, proof his mother exists. Then, one year, nothing. And the next year, nothing. The road north has gotten too dangerous to cross, which Tragic Tim does not know, so the only information he has is silence.

A teenager with no news and no way to get any does not sit with that feeling. He goes and finds something to hit. He joins the border patrols with Bestie Bowman, the best woodsman in Doorlatch Forest, and becomes extremely good at killing orcs and extremely bad at every other part of being a person.

So when he comes back to the royal hall after seasons in the wild — no haircut, gear held together with hope, mud to the eyebrows — he sits down at a table full of immortal elves in nice clothes. And one of them, Salty Sy, decides this is funny.

The cup hits Salty Sy in the face. Theo Gatekeep, who is a functioning adult, hears both sides the next morning and rules that Tragic Tim was provoked but should apologise. Reasonable. Case closed.

Salty Sy does not want case closed. He ambushes Tragic Tim on the road the next day, loses instantly, and Tragic Tim — still eighteen in every way that counts — decides on a punishment: he strips Salty Sy and makes him run. Just run, through the woods, with a sword behind him. A humiliation, not an execution.

Salty Sy, blind with panic, tries to jump a ravine and misses.

This is the hinge of the whole story. Tragic Tim killed him — sort of, not really, definitely not on purpose. An elf saw all of it and tells him to come back and stand trial, and the king who raised him will clear him in a heartbeat. All Tragic Tim has to do is walk through the gate and say I need help.

He can't. He decides he's already an outlaw, so he may as well go be one, and he walks off into the wilderness and joins a gang of desperate men who rob the same starving villagers McEvilface is already ruining. Theo Gatekeep pardons him about a week later. Nobody can find him to tell him.

Bestie Bowman goes looking anyway. He finds the outlaw camp the hard way — they catch him, call him a spy, and tie him to a tree for a day and a night before Tragic Tim wanders over and recognises his best friend.

Tragic Tim cuts him loose, swears off robbing the innocent forever, and then hears the good news: you're pardoned, come home. And says no. Because going back now means admitting he was wrong about all of it, and Tragic Tim would genuinely rather live in a cave.

So Bestie Bowman goes back to Doorlatch Forest alone, and Theo Gatekeep, moved, gives him a parting gift: Emo Sword, a black sword made of meteorite iron. Melanie Magic takes one look at it and says the blade is malicious and will not serve him long. She is a Support Crew kid. She is never wrong. Bestie Bowman takes it anyway.

Meanwhile Tragic Tim's band captures a Discount Dwarf named Petty Pete — one of the last of a shrunken, hunted people who once began digging the caves that became Nacho Throne — and Petty Pete buys his life by offering his home: a hidden hall inside the hill Bald Hill. They arrive to find one of his two sons dead, shot by one of Tragic Tim's men on the way in. Tragic Tim pays gold for the boy's life. Petty Pete accepts. Petty Pete does not forgive.

Bestie Bowman shows up that winter and stays, because of course he does, and for a season the two of them actually make it work — orcs die, villagers breathe, hope spreads. Which is exactly the problem, because word reaches McEvilface that the terror on Bald Hill is Hugh Chair's son.

Orcs take Petty Pete foraging. Petty Pete, who hates Bestie Bowman, and whose son is still dead, shows them the door.

The band is slaughtered. Tragic Tim is dragged north in chains, alive on purpose. Bestie Bowman is left for dead, isn't, and goes after him — picking up on the road an elf called Gwin the Ex, escaped from Hell Basement, grey and bent though elves don't age, who watched orcs kill his brother Gel the Warning to bait an army into charging.

The two of them find the orc camp, kill the sentries, and carry Tragic Tim out unconscious in a thunderstorm. Bestie Bowman lays him down and kneels over him with a drawn blade to cut the cords off his wrists. Lightning. Tragic Tim wakes up, sees a shape above him holding a sword, and fights the way you fight in Hell Basement: instantly, silently, to kill.

He takes the sword. It is Emo Sword, the blade that has hung at Bestie Bowman's side all season, and in the dark and the noise he does not know whose hands he is prising it from.