Disclaimer: Princess Tutu and its characters do not belong to me; they are the creations of Ito Ikuko and I am just a fan who likes to write. All rights go to their proper owners.

(A/N: And after a very long wait, this story is back on track! For those of you who are still reading, thank you for your patience. Only one more chapter to go after this!)

Chapter Four: Curse

The road to bookstore felt longer than usual. Autor retraced his steps mentally, wondering if he had accidentally taken a wrong turn. He squinted at the shop signs in the fading twilight. No, he was going the right way. It was probably just the anticipation that was making it seem so long. He had headed straight for the stronghold of the Book Men right after his confrontation with Fakir. Autor had to act now, while his threat was still fresh and the story-spinner's guard was down. He rubbed his throat grudgingly. He'd show him not to take his words lightly…

Autor turned another corner and walked a short distance down the road until he was finally facing the familiar shop front. The building itself seemed to be shrinking back into the shadows, as if it were trying to draw as little attention to itself as possible. He stepped to the door and was reaching for the handle when he noticed the sign. "Closed?"

He peered through the window around the sign. This was definitely unusual. Autor couldn't recall if the shop had always had an open/closed sign, and that frightened him a little, what with all the other changes that the town was going through. Unsurprisingly, he couldn't see anything—the shop had always been dark—but the fact that he couldn't even see the dull glow of the lamp that seemed to be perpetually burning in the back of the store deepened his concern. Where were they? They couldn't seriously be turning a blind eye to all of this!

Autor stepped back a few paces, his body tensing. If those old fools were hiding somewhere in there… Well, he'd just have to get them out, wouldn't he? With that thought, Autor ran at the door, attempting to break it open.

It gave way far too easily and he tumbled forward onto the dusty floor, his glasses skidding away from him. Grumbling, Autor realized that the door had been unlocked the whole time. He thought highly of himself, but even he admitted that he couldn't break a lock that easily. The sign had been a clever trick to keep out the passerby, but why leave the shop unlocked when no one was here? This was the stronghold of the Bookmen, wasn't it? They should know better than to keep a place like this unguarded.

Still kneeling on the floor, Autor reached out, feeling around for his glasses, half expecting his hand to hit a bookcase. It didn't, though, and his hand only closed around the smooth lens of his glasses. Slightly surprised—the place was always so densely packed with books, it was a miracle that he hadn't run into anything by this point—Autor stood up and shut the door, allowing his eyes to adjust to the darkness.

His heart stopped beating for a full second, and then continued with a heavy thump.

Everything was gone.

The bookcases, tables, chairs, and what had seemed like an inexhaustible wealth of knowledge—vanished. The store suddenly didn't feel small and cramped anymore; now it more closely resembled an empty cavern. Autor noted for the first time that the walls on the first floor were painted gray. Rectangular spots of dark wood shone on the floor where the bookcases used to stand, surrounded by a thick layer of dust. The stairway up towards the skylight was still there, but now it seemed like nothing but a whimsical addition without the desks and the smaller bookcases adorning it.

"Why?" Autor whispered. It wasn't as though the shop had been moved; the storefront looked the same as ever, and the layer of dust made it look like no one had been there in months, but Autor knew better. The patches where the bookcases once stood, with no evidence of anything dragging them out, almost made it seem as though it had all disappeared on the spot. He walked further inside, leaving light footprints behind him in the dust and stopped as his eyes adjusted further. There was something here.

It was the desk where that old man had always sat; it was still there, like it was keeping vigil. For the longest time, Autor had been nearly convinced that staying at that desk was all that the man was good for, despite knowing his true identity. It had been a good enough disguise to even fool him for a while. Autor thought that the axes had been a little excessive, though.

The lamp still sat there as well, dark for the first time that he'd seen it. A strange feeling surged through Autor. Those… those idiots! he thought. What is this? I thought that they didn't trust Fakir! Isn't this their job? Why are they just letting him change the town?

Autor glanced back at the lamp. Part of him wanted to light it, at least for the memory, even though he'd never had an excellent relationship with the Bookmen. It had always been burning, at least to him. Sighing slightly, he turned the switch, letting a tiny flame come to life inside the lamp. Autor stared at it, even though he knew that it wouldn't (couldn't, really) give him an answer to the new question that he had to face.

"What do I do now?"

Just inside the small sphere of light, something on the wall behind the desk glittered and caught his eye. Glancing up, Autor turned the switch again, giving the flame more brilliance. It looked almost as if there was a key jammed into the wall, but that couldn't be right. Walking around the desk, Autor looked closer. It did look an awful lot like a key, or at least the handle of one, since the rest of it was jammed into the wall. It was a dull gold, the carvings on it made to look like what Autor assumed to be vines interlocking, or something similar. As his eyes studied the pattern, he noticed that it wasn't exclusive to the key handle; it spread out to the wall itself, even though it was carved so lightly that it was nearly unnoticeable unless one was already looking at the key. The "vines" continued wrapping around and branching out from one another, making a diamond shape on the wall around the key handle about an inch wide and long from point to point.

Autor blinked, puzzling over this curiosity. The key was about as high as a doorknob would be on a normal door. Maybe this was…

He stood up and turned the key.

The pattern suddenly came alive, extending out from the diamond and the key and ran along the wall, twisting and making what seemed to be muted hissing sounds. Autor tried to jump backwards, but his hand had suddenly become fused to the wall; he glanced down and saw that the dark vines were gripping his fingers, holding them in place.

Magic?

Looking back up, Autor saw that the pattern was tracing what looked like the outline of a door along the wall, melting into themselves to give it color. He realized that the pattern wasn't that of vines at all, but strands of ink flecked with gold. They continued moving along the wall, melding into each other, until, in about the space of a minute, Autor was looking at a ebony-colored doorway, outlined in the same dull gold color as the key. The pressure on his fingers let go and the hissing stopped.

Autor pulled back from the door, staring at it as if it were some kind of monster. Out of all the things that he'd seen in the town when it was under the control of the story, this one beat them all. His mind spun with questions. Did the Bookmen have additional powers besides being able to "stop" stories? Was it Fakir's doing? Or was this something else entirely?

The door swung open of its own accord, tempting him inside.

Autor glanced through it warily. If this was some kind of rogue magic, then he wasn't going to play the fool and get himself killed or some other nonsense that always seemed to happen to people in the books that he read.

The only magic in this world is story-spinning, he told himself.

"What about you? Are you going to continue to stand in the darkness of shattered dreams?"

Those words came echoing back to him out of nowhere, sounding loud in the empty space despite being only in his head. Autor continued to stare at the door, hesitating for a moment longer, but eventually he worked up his resolve and pulled it open.

A dark stone staircase yawned back at him, an echoing sound coming up from the depths that only air trapped in an underground room could make. It wafted up towards Autor in a cold chill, making his legs shiver. He'd almost decided to turn back around and forget all of this when a torch hanging on the side of the nearby stone wall flared to life. The one hanging next to it lit as well, and the next, and the next, all in sequence until the staircase was completely lit. With the darkness banished, Autor had no choice but to go forward.

The stairway spiraled downwards in a gentle curve, the sound of Autor's footsteps bouncing off the walls and going ahead of him. He followed the stairs down for what seemed like a long time. Once he had started wondering if maybe he was going too deep underground and should be turning back after all, a wooden door appeared in front of him. He tentatively reached out his hand for the door handle, wondering if the same thing that had happened upstairs would happen again, but the door was just a door, and it swung forward on rusty hinges.

Stepping forward into the new dark space, Autor squinted and looked around. He seemed to be in a circular area the size of a small room. A few candles placed on small tables scattered across the room were burning low, only giving off a minimum amount of light, but it was enough to see by once his eyes adjusted. Looking up to see how high the ceiling rose, he was surprised to see that the walls trailed upward into darkness, and he couldn't see the ceiling at all. It must be as high as the staircase I came through, he thought. Leaning against the walls were bookshelves. Autor first thought that the ones that used to be upstairs had been moved down here, but as he continued to look at them, he realized that they weren't the ones that he was used to seeing in the store. They seemed to be as tall as the walls, since they reached off into darkness as well. The books that sat on the worn wooden shelves were dusty and covered with cobwebs… Except for one.

It caught Autor's eye immediately, since it was a different color—a white spine amongst black volumes—and also because it had been pulled out from between the rest of the books but still sat on the shelf, as if it were waiting for someone to pick it up. Autor stared at it for a moment, considering. Had the Bookmen thought that someone would come in here eventually and left the book like that deliberately? Was it some kind of trap? Despite that, his curiosity was getting to him. Autor needed to know why the Bookmen had left and where they had gone. He purposefully walked across the room and picked up the book from the shelf.

Nothing happened; no triggers were pulled and no secret passages were opened. Sighing, Autor turned to the book itself, examining it's blank white cover. No… it wasn't completely white. Something was covering the bottom corners, a dark splotch of some kind. Autor looked closer. Was it… blood?

After staring at the cover for a moment longer and deciding that he was over-thinking things, Autor slowly opened the cover, being careful not to crack the spine. Instead of text, a page of nearly illegible handwritten script stared back at him from the lined pages. Autor looked closer, skimming over the clearer words; the pencil marks had faded over time. Town… Story… Ravens… Death… Autor's pulse quickened as he turned a few more pages. This couldn't be… but why had they kept it all this time, then? Was it some kind of lucky talisman for them? Had they claimed it after his death?

Autor stopped on the next page. Here, instead of written on the clearly marked lines in pencil was a single word, dark and stained as the same strange blotch on the cover. Betrayed. There was a prickling feeling on the back of his neck. There was no doubt now; it was definitely blood.

He turned another page.

Even more bloody letters stared up at him, smaller and more carefully written than the single, scrawled word that had covered the previous page, but still carrying a foreboding weight. The blocky letters were clearer that the previous handwriting, and Autor sank to the floor, feeling the slight tug of the spell of words that Drosselmeyer had written.

Once upon a time, there was an apprentice that betrayed their master. Despite the fact that the master had taught the apprentice to control and use the skills that came from their shared blood, the apprentice helped the master's enemies find him and kill him. But as the enemies rejoiced and the apprentice was praised, the master still had the spark of life left within him. Unable to finish his current masterpiece, the master set about on making one last crude piece—a curse, written in blood and bound by shared blood.

And so, the apprentice and his descendants were forever fated to be unable to master the skill that the master had worked so tirelessly to perfect, that is, the art of storyspinning, of bending reality to one's will. But that was not all. The apprentice and his descendants would be bound to help the others with the storyspinning skill, whether it is what they truly desire to do or not. They would be bound—forever an apprentice, never close to becoming a master.

Autor stared at the page disbelievingly. It couldn't be true, could it? It was only two paragraphs. Surely such a small amount of words could not hold so much sway, even if they were written by a man who used to control this town? But despite what he told himself, while reading the words again, he could feel the pull of power, faintly resonating in his blood. It was true.

This was why he couldn't write. The thing that he had been obsessed with for years, becoming the next Drosselmeyer, was impossible. He was cursed by a story that had been written in a dying man's blood. He would never, ever beat Fakir. He could not get Rue back. He had nothing except what he felt and what he knew to be the truth about this town.

Autor slammed his fist on the bookshelf, making the volumes shake but not fall. The Book Men knew this all along, that's why they wouldn't accept me. They knew that I'd never be a threat. I was just a way for them to learn about Fakir.

It wasn't fair…

He slumped to the floor, Drosselmeyer's bloodied notes falling out of his hand next to him. The candle closest to him flickered, almost going out. He needed a moment to process this. The man that he had admired and idolized most was responsible for denying him the one thing that he wanted. And now he was trapped in his descendant's world, and there was nothing he could do to change it.

Autor began to laugh. It started as a short giggle, which slowly grew in volume as it became more of a choking cackle.

"S-So… This is how it is?" He was useless. Maybe he should have realized that earlier in the day when he'd confronted Fakir. If he didn't have powers on par with the storyspinner's, how was he supposed to stand up to him?

Autor pushed himself back up onto his feet, his shocked laughter slowly dying down. He didn't know what steps he was going to take from here, but one thing was for sure; he'd deny Drosselmeyer's curse with everything that he had. Long before coming here, Autor had sworn that he'd never help Fakir again. Finding out about the curse only strengthened his decision.

I won't give up. I'll find a way to make him change this world back to the way it was. It's obvious that the duck-girl is a soft spot for him… It's not much to go on, but it's a start.

Without a backward glance, Autor walked out of the room, slamming the door behind him. Unknown to him, all the candles went out.