"ID, please."
"You still don't know how old I am, you old bastard?" Solomon shot the bar owner a glare and snapped his fingers at the tray holding four drinks. "If I'm not mistaken, this came from a certain not-quite-friend of a friend." Before heading back to his seat, Solomon gestured with his chin toward the shotgun mounted on the wall behind the bar. The shotgun's body was covered in twisted Gothic engravings and skull decorations, the grip wrapped in iron chains, and the whole weapon radiated a frightening heat as if it had just been pulled from a furnace. The Magus asked offhandedly, "You know him?"
"The Ghost Rider sent it over through someone," the bar owner muttered without looking up. "Word is he's doing okay now."
"I doubt that," Solomon shook his head.
As far as he knew, Johnny Blaze, the current Ghost Rider, had been taking on and losing a string of stunt motorcyclist gigs. His unstable employment had left him entirely dependent on his journalist girlfriend. Though Kamar-Taj provided him a stipend, Johnny's pride always led him to reject help from both Kamar-Taj and his partner, instead taking odd jobs in obscure places to make ends meet. Apparently, he was recently pulled over for speeding and driving without a license and had to be bailed out by a local Kamar-Taj magus. Solomon shook his head, casting aside unrelated thoughts. He turned to signal an invisible servant to carry the tray to the table, where Wanda and the Drum brothers were already waiting.
"Beer, beer, tequila, martini." Solomon sat beside Wanda, facing the Drum brothers. The reason these two had agreed to fly from South America to meet him in New York wasn't Kamar-Taj's authority, nor their distant relative Master Daniel. It was because they believed Kamar-Taj possessed something they needed. They wanted to make a trade—maybe a book, maybe an artifact. The Drum brothers had no idea what the item was, but they were convinced Kamar-Taj had it. Their conviction only deepened as they watched Solomon casually conjure etheric spirits to serve him.
"This concerns a prophecy," said the elder brother, Daniel Drum—sharing the same name as the Kamar-Taj Master. "Or rather, a curse. It's somewhat known in the magical world, though it's a bit of a cliché." He gave a dry chuckle, with only Wanda listening intently. Unfortunately, the story was short and underwhelming. "A witch who was an enemy of our family once prophesied that only one member of each Drum generation would survive. That curse has lingered in our bloodline for over two hundred years."
"You want the curse broken?" Solomon nodded. "I can try, but I won't guarantee success."
He wasn't some underdeveloped protagonist from a power-fantasy novel who barked orders at people who didn't understand them. He had no problem listening to others or accepting their conditions. Even if he refused, he could still afford to buy someone a drink. The Drum brothers clearly hadn't expected Solomon to be so reasonable—in their distant cousin's stories, he was the heir to the Sorcerer Supreme, a figure far above minor spellcasters like themselves.
In the rigid class hierarchy of the magical world, knowledge equaled power. Kamar-Taj and the Sorcerer Supreme held their unshakable dominance because they had the strongest knowledge. Old Master Daniel had joined Kamar-Taj in the first place to find a way to break the curse. But after years of fruitless searching, he began to believe Solomon might know things only a Sorcerer Supreme could access—things that could break the Drum family's centuries-old curse.
"I'll need to run some analyses," Solomon said, gesturing for the brothers to extend their arms. He took out two blood vials and needles. The Drums did so nervously. In the magical world, handing over blood, hair, or fingernails required tremendous trust. But the Drum family was desperate. If they wanted the curse lifted, they had to cooperate. Now, all they could do was pray their ancestors had not misjudged Solomon and Kamar-Taj.
After the brief meeting, Solomon booked the Drum brothers a hotel room and told them to await further notice.
"Can you really lift their curse?" Wanda Maximoff asked in a low voice. "I'm pretty sure they're not telling the whole truth. What kind of witch casts a curse just for fun? Sounds like something out of a fairy tale. Have you ever heard of the Baba Yaga stories? I don't think breaking a curse like this is going to end well."
In the legends, if a husband beat his wife without cause, Baba Yaga would curse him, and the one who undid the curse would have to sacrifice their life, with their soul becoming her slave. Curses, as told in folklore, were always a mixture of truth and fiction—but one thing was certain: any curse passed down by blood was extremely powerful, and the stronger the curse, the higher the price of lifting it.
From what Solomon understood, whenever one twin in the Drum family died unexpectedly, the soul's power would pass to the surviving twin, making them stronger. He even suspected the curse might have been cast by the family's own ancestors to help an otherwise mediocre bloodline accumulate power over generations. Such things had happened before. In many lineage-based schools of magic, familial bonds were irrelevant—pursuit of ultimate knowledge always trumped blood. Solomon could easily cite cases where elders possessed their descendants to continue pursuing the arcane. If the Drum family's forebears had planned to use their descendants as offerings, Solomon wouldn't be surprised.
"Of course I know that, Wanda. And I never promised to actually lift the curse," Solomon said as he stashed the blood samples into his belt pouch, tossed a lemon wedge and some salt into his mouth, and downed the tequila. "If the cost of solving this is greater than dealing with the Feathered Serpent, I'm not going to be generous about it. It's not like they're our only lead. I'm not stupid enough to take a bad bargain."
Upon returning to the Sanctum, the old Master Daniel hurried over, eager to ask questions. But Lady Calamity, wearing an absurdly grotesque bug-eyed mask, blocked his path. So long as she didn't touch the Sanctum's books or relics, this madwoman had a great deal of freedom—because her identity as a seer frequently brought Kamar-Taj unexpected insight.
"You won't succeed, old man. Your brother's still weeping inside you!" she suddenly spun around, startling Wanda Maximoff. Lady Calamity pointed at her crude mask, whose orange-red bulging eyes took on an eerie tone as her voice deepened. "I saw you drive a sacrificial dagger into a woman's chest and pull out her heart. That's the only way to kill the Serpent. Solomon, you must make a choice."
She reached for Solomon's forehead—and the Magus instantly saw the vision she had beheld.
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