Surprisingly enough, Maxime had actually provided Emika with a book, a flashlight, and a few batteries. Introduction to Curses, Volume I, published 1963, written by B. Venic. With that, Emika had to split her time awake between practising moving her wooden hand, reading, and lamenting her sorry state.
She didn’t get a lot of reading done, overall, considering the book was dry, and she felt way too exhausted after practice to even focus on anything.
The good news was, she had managed to move a finger. The bad news was, it only twitched about as much as you could bend a branch, and it took a lot of effort to even do that. She really hoped this wasn’t the extent of what she was able to accomplish here.
And yet, there was nothing other to do than to try.
Sitting in the middle of her cell on the next day, again, she tried to move her finger. And again, barely anything happened. Maybe she was thinking about this the wrong way. However, before she could start brooding about it, she suddenly heard a chuckle.
That selfsame chuckle belonging to a higher pitched male voice she’d heard in her sleep on her first day. She looked around, but saw nothing. “Hello?” she asked, the sound gently echoing within the basement chambers.
“Hell…O?” that voice responded, in the same cadence and tone Emika had used, as if to mock her, but sounding a little peculiar at the same time.
She rolled her eyes. Of course, it wasn’t bad enough that she was being confined, shot at regularly and dying from a curse, now she had to be mocked too. “Get lost, I’m busy,” she snapped into the room, and put her attention back to her finger.
“Yes, you’re bUsy, quite obviously, yes, yes. I was just w0ndering whatever it is that you are doing. It’s quite fumny, actually. Especially if you’re doing what I thinK you are.”
The cheeky, melodic voice came from literally nowhere. It sounded weird too. Like it was… lo-fi? And… glitching out?
With a shock, Emika suddenly saw something protrude from the ground around a meter in front of her. It was a white shimmer, somewhat distorted. As it showed more and more of itself, finally, it dawned on her what she was seeing. A transparent head. And, a neck of the same kind attached to it. And finally, shoulders connected to that.
A ghost. Slowly, a ghost was emerging before her from underneath the surface of the cell. The shape flickered, like white noise, had no colour, sometimes parts of it disappeared only to snap back immediately after.
“Who the hell are you? This is my cell. Get lost.”
“I’m alreaDy lost!” the ghost replied, again with its distinct chuckle. “Or rather, my boDy is. Lost in the void. WoE me.”
This voice was hard to focus on. And Emika was time-pressed. As much as she enjoyed the idea of living in a haunted prison, she had to prepare her escape.
“Actually,” she suddenly said, “Can you help me? Does Maxime know you are here? Can you like. Give me the headquarters’ layout or something?”
“So, eNlighten me, why would I hElp you?”
Emika stared at, not able to come up with anything at all. Instead, she just blurted, “… Because I’m nice and cute?”
The ghost started laughing out loud, voice cracking or losing connection every now and then. Meanwhile, he had appeared completely, sitting cross-legged, copying the pose of Emika. He looked only a few years older than her, 25 at best, as far as she could tell through the noise of his appearance. His skin must have been brown when he still lived, and his clothes were somewhat stylish to the extent she could judge that — he had a scarf, wore a turtleneck jersey, and what seemed like… linen pants of the same colour?
Overall, had he not started out mocking her, she would have found him sympathetic.
“Glad I’m amusing you. What do I know… What’s there to offer a ghost?”
He seemed to ponder for a bit. “I like having fUn. So, honestly, you are already d0ing qu!te well.”
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“You are getting harder to understand,” she remarked.
“There’s a liMit to how long I can manifest at a time,” he said, shrugging. “Better huRry!”
Emika was rapidly losing confidence that this ghost could help her in any way at all. “You know what, never mind. I’ll manage on my own. Can’t be that hard to find the way out once I break those bars open.”
“AnD, how are you planning on doing thaT? So far, you can barely m0ve a finger!”
Emika just stared back at him. She couldn’t really admit that she was hoping for a sudden breakthrough — literally. That she was essentially simply banking on the fact that there was a slight possibility of her maybe being able to move her hand, and that it could potentially be strong enough to get her out — or help her run away from Maxime the next time he took her outside the cell.
Yes, going through it like this, it seemed like a total flop of a plan.
“You know — I was a mage bEfore I was killed. Excuse me, left to die. Maybe I could help you.”
Another mage offering her help, huh? At least this one wasn’t human. It may be worth a shot.
“Okay, help me then, please,” she replied, still unsure what she could offer in return, though. Perhaps she could fool him.
He inspected her for a few seconds, flickering out and back into existence a few times. “I suppose there is something you can do for mE,” he mused. “I’ll help you. But you’ll owe me a favouR.”
First and foremost, Emika needed to get out of this prison. Anything else came second. In other words, no matter how sketchy this seemed, she really had no basis on which to refuse him. And if the advice was garbage, she could just screw him over…
“Okay, sure. Sounds good to me. Do we enter some pact or something?”
“What are you talking about? Your word is enougH for me. Anyway, I take it you’re trying to contRol those,” — he made a gesture towards Emika’s growths — “… Those things? Do you have any experience with maGic?”
“I do not.”
He nodded, and thought for a while. “What’s your cogniTion?”
“My what?” He sounded like he’d sneezed in the middle of the word.
“What are you thinking about when you try to moVe?”
“I think: Please move.”
“Huh…” he hummed, and went on to say, “TreEs don’t move, though. They grow. Also. Don’t think too much about the process. Magic focuSes on the result, not the wayYy to get there. You spend magical energy to make something appEar in a way that you want it. Think about it that way.”
Moving her concentration back to the finger, she tried to apply what the ghost was saying. She wasn’t supposed to think that the wood could move… In other words, if she wanted her hand to become a fist, she should imagine it as already being a fist, not as clenching it?
When she tried, initially, nothing happened. She just stared at the hand, trying to imagine it to be a fist, but… then, she closed her eyes, painting it in her mind instead.
And a few minutes later, was disrupted by an “OoOo0oo!” the ghost let out.
Opening her eyes, trying to keep her focus as much as possible, she saw something amazing. Indeed, the fingers didn’t move. Instead, new growths appeared from her hand, growing into the shape of a clenched fist, all the while the old fingers decayed rapidly, dissolving into dust. And then, finally, she was staring at what looked indeed very much like a wooden fist.
“Wait, that’s completely useless,” she blurted out, “I can’t even grab anything if it works like this!”
The ghost chuckled again, and shrugged. “YoU’ll have to find ways to make it work, I supPose.”
Emika took a deep breath. On second thought, this was pretty cool. She had something valuable to practice and improve on how, even if she couldn’t see her even holding a mug with that yet.
“Well, thank you. Let me know when you find a way in which I can repay you.”
“HahA, actually, I already have a p̶e̴r̵f̶e̵c̴t̶ ̴w̴a̵y̴ ̸f̶o̸r̶ ̴͚̆y̴̘̆õ̶ͅu̵͉͗ ̷̦́ẗ̶̡́o̶͙͋ ̶̼̋d̴̙̽Ǒ̸̳ ̸͇̓ǐ̶̯ẗ̸̨ ǎ̶̲̗̝͌ņ̴̝͐̎d̴͔͍̍͛ ̷̛̬̝͉̓̌î̴̠t̶̻͖̟̕’̸̨͇̥͐͊͗s̴͖͈̘̏͘ ̴͙͖́̈͒͆t̴̳̜̣͌̀́̉h̶͔̗͍̰̯́̾̐a̵̡̦̰̮̕ť̷͍́͆̅̾͒ ̵̗̓̍̄̃̂͌y̸̫͐̈o̸̧̤̓́̓ư̸̯̏̈ ̴̢̬̭̩̪́̐̚͜͝ş̶̛͙͉͎ͅh̵͓̝̔̑̂͝͝͝ͅo̸̜̽̀ų̷͚̻͇̳̽̀l̵̨̡͙̘͉̉ḑ̷̧̛̟̲́̀̒́—”
And with that, he disappeared in a grizzled disconnect, his body glitching and flashing up a few times before he was gone.
And immediately after, Emika heard the footsteps of Maxime approach from the stairs. She wondered if the ghost had just faked his disappearance due to the timing… or maybe he couldn’t stay manifested around Maxime? Or his time had just run out that very moment by mere coincidence. Be that as it may, now Emika had a different thing to worry about. Dealing with this Cursebreaker wasn’t something she looked forward to, right after finally finding out how to control her curse.
But the topic of Maxime was an interesting one in its own right. He had conducted fewer and fewer experiments over the last few days, and Emika could feel a certain unrest build in him.
As best as she could tell, through his guarded and expressionless demeanour, he still seemed to be unhappy with his progress. Of course, he wouldn’t tell her why, although Emika had a somewhat decent guess. For one, he had run out of space in the hall. Apparently, her radius was very large. And it seemed like he disliked the speed of her recovery. He’d often return to the cell after an experiment, only to find her awake, and then immediately turned around and leaving.
“Another experiment?” Emika asked, slightly annoyed because the last one had just been the day before.
“No,” he began, “Done with those. This is about something else. You’re going to be transferred.”