Luckily, nobody with the barest modicum of good sense is around.

Siran has been having a sufficiently shit day that he actually can't think of anything he wants to do more than find the nearest cursed city and fight it. This is obviously a stupid idea, but at least it's the kind of stupid idea where the only things likely to suffer damage are Siran and a cursed city, as opposed to the other stupid idea that he has had today, which was rather wider in scope. So. Here he is, armed with a bad mood and a magic sword.

The outer edge of the city still has some remnants of exterior defensive walls, however crumbled. Where the stone has fallen away, thick black hedges crowd into its place, bristling with thorns. The city doesn't seem to appreciate visitors.

He sets the hedges on fire.

They burn like ordinary hedges, though they give off thick clouds of oily-sweet black smoke.

Ordinary hedges don't burn fast enough. Luckily, Siran can fix that.

When there is nothing but ash left in this gap in the stone, he steps through it.

Fresh ashes kick up around his feet as he steps into the city proper.

Or at least an alleyway inside the city proper. The narrow pathway between the outer wall and the inner wall of the building is filled with more of the black, spiky plants, clinging in clumps to the ground, climbing the walls as vines, and twisting into the brickwork. Good thing he brought a sword. 

A flower opens on one of the nearby vines, its deep red petals almost as black as the stem it sits on.

...the flower's kind of pretty. He is not quite in too bad a mood to notice.

The flower has broad petals, and now that it's fully bloomed it's about a palm-width across. The stem it grows on has the same wicked thorns as all the other plants he's seen so far, and it has a faint note of the same oily-sweet smell that came off the burning hedge.

Cursed cities being cursed cities, it's probably horrible in some way, but it's still pretty.

He considers whether he would like to knock down a wall, and then decides to start walking instead.

There's quite a bit of alleyway, still filled with occasional hedges. A few turns onward, the alleyway is completely blocked by another dense hedge. 

More flowers open on the bushes and vines whenever he passes, all the same deep red color. 

He didn't let it get out of hand the last time; it's safe to use fire again. Hedges in his way can be summarily removed.

Then the hedges will not impede him! 

The alleys are rather twisty and similar, though at least the bloomed flowers let him see where he's already been. Where is there to go in cursed cities, anyway? 

This is less stress-relieving than he might have hoped.

After enough turns that he's thoroughly lost count, he draws his sword. The blade gleams with an unsettling shimmer and trails threads of power through the air. He starts hacking at the nearest wall. His sword is best at living things, but it can do stone and brick too if he puts some strength into it.

The wall gives way easily, already degraded by centuries of weathering. 

All the hedges around him burst into bloom, dozens of flowers suddenly standing out. Some of the blossoms are much more red than black. 

Huh. Interesting.

What's on the other side of the wall?

The inside of a rotted-out building, noticeably lacking a floor - though some of the opposite wall has fallen in, making the fall into the basement slightly less nasty so long as one doesn't land badly. 

... odd that he hasn't seen any doors in any of the other walls so far. You would expect more than blind alleyways.

It's a cursed city. A giant maze of blind alleys is not that remarkable.

...he builds an ice bridge to the other side of the building, and crosses it.

He emerges into a courtyard filled with flowering bushes. A broad avenue extends to his left and right: rightwards, he can see what must be the outer wall of the city. 

The other direction has a lot of stairs, but a white-walled palace stands at the top of the flower-lined ascent. None of it seems to have fallen over yet.

This city really has not been as hostile as advertised.

He starts up the stairs.

The hedges quietly close in across the base of the stairs once he reaches the first dais. 

'Kay.

The top of the next flight of stairs is also blocked by a thick hedge. 

What about after he sets the hedge on fire, what then?

The hedge refuses to burn, though it creaks faintly in the heat. The thorns gleam slightly: they look like black glass, each about two inches long, straight and sharp and buried in his throat and his eyes and his wrists and his ankles and his spine and a thousand other places as well.

The concussive crack of the plunging thorns only registers after his body is completely riddled with them, every joint punctured and locked stiff by the glass in his flesh.

—he doesn't hear it. He is kind of busy.

(The fire falters and fails without him.)