Honestly, disappearing from the entire world for several years sounds really good right now. It's been that kind of day.

The man who walks up to the wall of tangled black brambles that guards the northern edge of the city is tall and well-dressed, with a very fancy-looking sword on his back. He looks like he is probably some sort of prince, except that there is no crown to be seen, and he definitely dresses like the sort of person who would wear a crown if he had claim to one.

He glares at the wall of thorns. The part of the wall directly in front of him bursts into white-hot flame.

The part of the wall directly in front of him is obligingly incinerated.

The brambles near it stir, then begin twisting and regrowing to mend the broken hole in the thorny wall. Not fast enough to stop someone from walking through, but fast enough that the wall should be back to its properly ominous and bethorned state within a few minutes.

He spreads out the fire ten feet to either side and keeps it going for several more seconds, until he can feel the edges of the magic start to spark and fray, the first warning signs of a spell about to escape the caster's control. Then he walks through the gap, letting the fire dissipate only after he's all the way through the wall.

The smell of stray magic lingers in the air, a subtle undercurrent mostly drowned out by the much stronger smell of burning brambles. There is nothing in the world quite like the smell of magic going wild, but he's heard it described as 'honeyed thunderstorms' and that sounded almost right.

Those brambles are so on fire. That'll teach them not to exist where Siran is looking.

The ruined city awaits. Buildings have buckled and sunk into the soft ground at odd angles, the once cramped streets now strange and claustrophobic. Past the smell of wild magic and burning brambles is the faint and subtle sickly sweet smell of rot that drifts on the air, like fermented fruit. Magic that went wild long ago, and lingers long past its time. The street is more green mold than paving stones, and like the urban landscape, buckles and twists upon itself. Barbed silver thorns glint out from beneath the green-grey mold. There are probably more hidden within the mold itself. He'll have to watch his step.

Ugh. He may have fucked up pretty badly but at least he's pretty confident the entire world is not going to smell like stewed spellfray a thousand years later. Who did this, and what the hell were they playing at?

He shouldn't use fire again so soon. Something else. The street freezes over, trapping the thorns under ice for as far as he can see them in every direction.

The path is summarily frozen.

In the distance, the too-tall castle stands out against the horizon, the most obvious place for where the curse was born. But it's a long way away, through twisted and buckling streets. Maybe it would be best to leave it alone.

There's a faint hissing sound, to his right. A small muddy creature pokes its head out from under a collapsed balcony, snarling with a mouth full of spine-like teeth.

He glares at it.

It does not have a very good sense of self preservation, and leaps at him accordingly.

He draws his sword. Doesn't even bother with magic. Not that the sword is perfectly mundane; its edge seems to ripple and waver, mirage-like, in the slanting afternoon light. Faint threads of power trail from the blade like ghostly smoke.

The effect when it goes through the creature is... messy.

The nearby architecture kind of needed another coat of paint, anyway. He's just doing his civil service.

There's some more hissing from a right-wards direction, but nothing else jumps out at him. Maybe they have a better self preservation instinct, or something.

Maybe so.

He keeps walking. The sword stays out.

That turns out to be a good idea.

The small muddy creatures apparently started collaborating, because now there's a swarm of them. Ten, maybe fifteen, leaping at him with unnatural speed from all around him. All at once.

He catches about half of them with one swing of his sword, spraying several more buildings with a fine mist of ex-creature in the process; but this still leaves a half-dozen creatures unimpeded, and he does not have time for a second swing.

Somehow he's not worried.

Half a dozen of the creatures attempt to see if he's part of a balanced breakfast.

They all get at least one bite in, and some manage two, before he growls and bursts into flame. The creatures are incinerated. When the flames die down, the unsettling aura around his sword is just a tiny bit brighter.

Also he's bleeding. Kind of a lot.

He starts walking again. The bite marks heal over with visible speed. They'll probably be gone in half a minute or less.

Nothing attacks him in that half a minute. This precedent will probably not hold.

The ice is definitely helping with the ground spikes, but not quite obviating them entirely. When he steps on a particularly buckled bit of street, it crumbles under his weight, sending his foot right into one of those silver spikes.

It slices through his boot as if there were no boot present, and it burns like it's coated with acid.

He snarls.

It hurts enough that he has trouble concentrating, which makes this a spectacularly bad time to do magic; he puts his sword away and grits his teeth and carefully disentangles himself from the thorn.

How careful is he being, really? Is he very, very careful? The ground is so slippery from the ice, and some of the thorns are hidden...

He is being very fucking careful, but ice and blood aren't the best combination, and he is not at his best. He falls again, landing hard on the section of street right next to the one that got him the first time.

A thorn would like to say hello!

This one is barbed.

Yeah well Siran would like to -

No he would not like to set it on fire, this is such a bad time to start throwing fire around, so soon after the last couple times and when he let the first one start to get a little wild and when he can barely think straight with pain and frustration -

He takes a deep breath. He stares at the thorn. It's the size of a pen, slender and glittering, sticking out of the back of the hand he put out to catch his fall. Scraps of skin and flesh cling to the barbs where they tore at him on their way through. It will no doubt be worse in the other direction. But sitting here dreading it isn't going to help any.

So he just yanks his hand off the thorn.

It's definitely worse. He hears the bones in his hand snapping before he feels it, and cradles his hand against his chest with a hiss of pain as the bones unsnap and the flesh regrows and knits back together. Silent tears drip from his face to mingle with the blood on the ground.

He has a few minutes of undisturbed peace.

His hand finishes healing, and the lingering pain fades almost completely, and he wipes tears from his face and then scrubs away the resulting smear of blood with a clean bit of sleeve, and then he starts to examine his surroundings in preparation for maybe standing up.

There's a faint whizzing sound from behind him, then a soft thump.

A winged insect creature with glittering iridescent chitin peers at him with large dark eyes, chittering softly. It's about six inches long, with six curved legs and small bits of fluff poking out of its carapace where the chitin meets wing. It's - kind of cute, actually.

"Fuck off," he says, and calls a blast of wind to blow it away.