Work Text:
Madam Zabani had been confident in the power of her magics to keep her safe from titans. Even in the titan infested lands of Wall Maria, she had spent the last half-decade in relative comfort. She had thought nothing of leaving her home unattended, with the front door unlocked, when she had decided to spend a couple of days in the mountains picking mushrooms.
What she failed to calculate on, was the fact that while her wards did wonders to repel titans, they had absolutely no effect on humans.
So when she returned from the mountains, she was surprised to find her front door kick in and her home completely trashed. Furniture was broken, windows were smashed, there was mud and dirt tracked over the floors, rugs, and walls, trash littered the place, and it looked like someone had had a bonfire in the middle of her sitting room.
Madam Zabani reached down and picked up one of the stray bottles littering her floor. She glared down at the crossed wings emblem burned onto the bottom.
Scouting Legion.
Those assholes were going to pay for this.
---
It was the middle of the night when Eren was woken up suddenly with a distinct feeling of wrongness. Instantly he was on his feet making his way to where Arming and Mikasa were sleeping.
"Guys," he hissed, shaking them awake. "Wake up, I think we're being cursed."
"Wha...?" Arming grumbled, rubbing sleep from his eyes. Mikasa stirred casting an equally bleary glance at her friend.
"No time to explain," Eren hissed back. "Meet me west of the camp. Bring your book too. The big black one bound in human skin."
---
Erwin had not been amused when the three of them had returned to camp later that morning. They had been drenched head to foot in blood, covered in strange charcoal symbols, and wearing necklaces of animal bones and garlands made of nightshade and garlic flowers.
They had then tried to feed both him and Levi some story about a curse, and how they needed to act fast to protect themselves from it.
But, they had to be on the move before any titans got wind of their position, so there had been no time to discipline the three, or even get them to wash the blood and charcoal symbols off.
That would have to wait until they were safely back at the Walls.
There was one thing that was bothering him however.
"Why did they say they were trying to ward off a curse," Erwin mused out loud. "They surely didn't think we'd believe them."
"Hmmm..." Levi looked up. "Sorry, wasn't paying attention. There's this stain on my sleeve that won't come out."
---
By mid-day the stain had refused to so much as even fade, instead it had grown in size. In fact, every step Levi took seemed to kick up a cloud of dust. Which was strange as Erwin had first noticed it when they had been in the middle of fording a river. The man was now surrounded by a perpetual cloud of dust which seemed to hover over him.
Hanji had broken her glasses when her horses had gotten spooked by a gopher and thrown her. She had also landed right on top of all her spares as well.
To top things off, they had already had five of the horses throw a shoe. One of the errant horseshoes had been sent flying over ten meters, missing Mike by an inch.
It was then that two of the recruits rode up to him in panic. Kirstien and Springer if Erwin recalled correctly. Kirstien opened his mouth, and a loud horse-like neigh came out, followed by other sounds you would expect to hear from a panicked horse.
"For Walls sake!" Levi finally snapped. "Cut it out Kirstien and tell us what's going on!"
"He can't!" Spring finally spoke. "He's been like this all afternoon! All he can make are horse sounds, and when he tries to write all we get is some strange script that looks like horse-prints!"
Levi let out a loud groan, and muttered something about Jeager being right about the curse.
---
Things had only gotten worse by the time they had finally made it back to the walls. It now seemed that every bit of dirt that was thrown into the air would home in on Levi and add yet another stain to his formerly pristine appearance. To make matters worse, ants had gotten into their food supply and had proceeded to carry away every crumb, leaving everyone hungry.
The horses were now throwing shoes for practically every step they took, filling the air with flying metal projectiles. Reiner Braun had already taken one to the head, and was mumbling something about being an armored titan. Erwin could certainly sympathizes with that sentiment. He was certianly wishing he was an armored titan after one of the horse shoes had nailed him in chest, cracking one of his ribs in the process.
Hanji had also made the very unhelpful observation that Jeager, Ackerman, and Arlert's horses still had all their shoes, and that none of the three had even come close to being hit by the flying horseshoes.
But if there was one thing Erwin was, it was rational. There were no such thing as curses. There was bad luck certainly, but no amount of blood sacrifice and secret midnight rituals would change that.
They were just on their way though the gate, when the seals on all their remaining gas canisters spontaneously failed, sending the canisters flying through the air with all the force and destructive power of a rocket.
One missed Erwin's head by a millimeter.
---
Thing only got worse from there. Between the surprise visit from the royal auditor, and the manure pile outside of headquarters spontaneously catching on fire. It seemed like nothing could go right. Kirstien was still speaking like a horse, Braus had gotten the stomach flu and now could only keep down small amounts of broth, and Springer had suddenly hit upon a sudden growth spurt and was now approaching three meters in height. (Leading some to speculate that he was actually half-titan.)
There had even been a very strange encounter with Ymir in the middle of the night, involving the girl staring at him for a good half-hour, before blurting out "I'm finding you attractive!" and bursting into tears.
Levi was still being followed around by his perpetual dust cloud, and now seemed to have lost his ability to clean anything. His efforts instead only making things even more dirty. Mike appeared to be turning into some kind of humanoid bloodhound, and was now sporting a smooth coat of dirty blonde fur. Hanji couldn't so much as touch a pair of glasses without them breaking, and had for some reason grown a third eye.
Then there was the matter of Jeager and his friends. While nothing bad had happened to them so far, they had outright refused to take off their animal bone necklaces and flower garlands. They had also developed the habit of disappearing into the woods for hours at a time, oftentimes carrying with them bottles of strange substances, and live animals. (Both of which they would not return with.) Ominous chanting in long dead languages could frequently be heard.
It was about a week since they had returned from the expedition, when the three of them had come into his office, and pronounced that they thought they had a way to reverse the curse.
Arlert had then gone on explain an elaborate ritual which would force the curse-maker to reverse their curse, hopefully returning everything to normal. They just needed some very specific components for the ritual. Componets which happened to be very expensive and which they couldn't afford without funding from the Legion.
Erwin had leaned back in his chair. "You're still think we've been cursed?"
It was at that moment that the floor beneath his chair suddenly gave way, sending Erwin plummeting through two floors straight into a locked cell in the basement.
Needless to say, Jeager and his friends go their funding.
---
Madam Zabani slowly lowered her bloodied frying pan as the eldritch abomination finally retreated from this world and the howling portal that had opened in her sitting room closed. She glanced over to where the monstrosity had burned the words "No More Curse?" into her walls with some sort of black acid.
Damn those kids were good. It took a special kind of person to make such an unspeakable horror more afraid of them, than they were of it. You had to respect that kind of power.
She reached over to her shelf and removed her book of spells. All things considered, those assholes in the Scouting Legion had probably gotten what they deserved by now. There was no point in being too vindictive after all. She found the correct counter-curse in her book, and paused for a moment to survey that section of wall that had once housed a portal to places beyond human comprehension.
Damn those kids were good. She'd have to invite them over for tea one of these days.