She wasn't looking at Drusilla's ugly, heavy gold necklace.
She wasn't looking at the girl's angry, flushed face.
She was looking at Drusilla's shoulders.
Clinging to the heavy, crimson brocade fabric of Drusilla's dress, invisible to the naked eye, were three small, fuzzy, pitch-black clusters of dark aura.
They were roughly the size of softballs.
They didn't have distinct faces, but they possessed tiny, grasping, shadowy claws that dug deeply into Drusilla's spiritual aura.
They looked like little, pulsating soot-gremlins.
They weren't weeping ghosts of the dead, nor were they the terrifying, ancient void of the red-eyed monster.
They were curses.
Low-level, parasitic curses born of pure, negative emotion.
In a city built on the suffering and exploitation of thousands of starving miners, ambient resentment was as common as the smog.
