Emika’s heart pounded in her chest. Melisande had left her home? Why? What could have possibly motivated her to do that?

Before she could think about it any further, Maxime started talking again. “I see. I understand. Let me know if anything comes to your mind. I regret that you likely won’t be able to talk to her again. Is there a message you would like me to express to her? Some final words?”

A brief silence. Then, he said, “There is no need to be rude. I will take her out gently. Please remember — she agreed to the conditions of her situation. She voluntarily decided to break them. The consequences are clear. It was her own choice.”

The conversation ended. Between his words, Emika heard what sounded like a blazing fire inside the room. Was there a hearth?

After just a moment, he spoke again. “Hello. Are the results of the divinations in?”

Divinations… That meant he was trying to find her.

“I see,” he continued. “Huh… So the location is scrambled? Someone must be helping her. Did one of the non-location-specific questions yield a result?”

Emika could hear him fetch a sheet of paper and noting down something, barely audible above the flames. “She’s not trying to escape? You are sure that answer was ‘no’? Could this have been tampered with too?”

A short pause, then he added, “I don’t know who might be helping her, but scrambling not only her location but other facts too sounds very resource-intensive. So, I’m inclined to agree. If she’s not escaping… what else could she be trying to do? Maybe she was kidnapped?”

The conversation ended soon after, and he phoned someone else. “Hello, it’s me. I have a follow-up question on Melisande’s disappearance. You said you had given her a mobile phone a few years ago. Could you give me the number?”

As he was making these quick calls, Emika’s mind raced, trying its best to keep up with what he was saying. She needed to find Melisande before him, but she had no clue where she could be.

Finally, he had a last conversation.

“Hello. This is Maxime Durand. I want to request some information based on the Cursebreaker Overreach Protocol. I’m invoking it due to a missing magical creature. Yes. I have a phone number. I need the metadata of this phone. Who called, all correspondents. I also have a static IP-address. I would like you to cross-reference the pages it accessed with other users that might have visited them. How long will that take?”

He listened to an answer, and then dictated the numbers, and then silence fell as he waited.

Her head spun, barely recognizing what he was doing anymore. Where was Melisande? Emika couldn’t help but have a distant hope. Something that Melisande had once told her. That she would come save her. Emika tried as hard as she could to ignore it. It had been a joke. There was absolutely no way she had meant it. It was an irrational thought. Nothing like this would ever happen. And even if it was true, then how would Melisande even know where Emika was? A total pipe dream, and Emika felt bold and self-servant for even entertaining it.

But none of this changed the facts.

It really hadn’t been Emika’s plan to kill him. Trying to was risky, and might lead nowhere. Murdering a Cursebreaker could, in fact, make even stronger fish in the sea aware of her existence, and cause her a range of problems. Additionally, there was no reason to believe that she’d actually outmatch him, even with her newfound powers.

But she needed to save Melisande.

After a few minutes, Maxime chuckled. “Yes. I’m glad they finally powered up those channels. Dealing with magical creatures is time-sensitive. It’s best not having to wait for days for such data to come in.”

Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

Another few minutes went by, and there was mostly silence. Except in Emika’s brain, as she started to make sense of what Maxime was doing right now. There was no way. No way, right? There was no way he’d find the connection this easily.

After having felt so elated for days, now, for the first time, she felt her exhaustion seeping back in.

But she couldn’t leave before knowing how this conversation would end. The fire inside kept blazing, to the point it made her nervous. Did hearths as strong as this even exist?

And, finally, she heard some more scratches of a pen move over paper. “I see…” Maxime mumbled. “You are sure? Hasegawa Emika? And Amagdala, Witch of the Eternal Sunset? I must say, this is surprising. And yet, it makes clear why she left. And why she is able to hide her location. Maybe that witch divined this location. Thank you. Yes. I will go dispatch her right now.”

A small pause lingered, and then he said, “No, she’s just an S-tier. Well, technically, in her current state, not even B-tier. I won’t need any back-up. I’m with my family’s familiar right now, anyway. Yeah. Yes, I know. I summoned it because I am keeping a cursed one on my premises. Things should work out well enough. Thank you.”

He was not alone in there? That fire. His familiar?

Emika couldn’t go rush off to see Melisande first, because this information was way too vague. She needed to either follow him there, or… kill him right now?

Sweat broke out from her as she made the split-second decision to rush down the corridor. This was his home turf. He’d just kill her. She left the building, and immediately took in the fresh evening air, for the first time in days. This had supposed to be her big victory, after which she would to go fetch Melisande and live a life in happiness, but now…

It wasn’t dark yet, but the sun closed in on the horizon. The surroundings of the building were pure spruce forest, in which she wouldn’t be able to hide. Instead, she found a small gap in the walls of the building, and sat down, as quietly as possible. She would need to wait for him to leave. It would be much easier for her to fight outside, where her growths could weep out from her unrestrained. Especially because she had no idea what his fighting style actually was.

While waiting, she decided to try her idea from earlier. She imagined roots growing out from her, and bore them into the earth.

It actually felt amazing. The deeper she went, the thicker the main root and the more dispersed its endings, the more she felt like she was actually drinking black tea, the caffeine seeping into her, making her sharper, more awake. She absorbed the ground’s nutrition for quite a while, wondering what it was that held Maxime off for so long.

Until, finally, she heard an engine rumbling, and saw a motorcycle rush across the clearing.

Within those few seconds, she noticed three things, as she jumped up and ran after.

The first was that Maxime was accompanied by what she could only describe as a giant burning weasel — tall as a wolf, long as an anaconda. It ran around his vehicle with agile hops, until Maxime sped up enough for it to struggle to keep up.

The second was that Maxime was now armed — he had what appeared to be a curved, thin sword sheathed on his back, as well as countless scrolls of different sizes draped on his coat, easy to reach.

And the third was that she had deeply messed up. She could feel it in her wooden bones — this wasn’t like her. The disaster with the Well of Abstraction had made her hesitant to act. That’s why she had agreed to go with Maxime in the first place, and that’s why she hadn’t confronted him inside just now. She really needed her recklessness back.

And yet, in a fight against a flame creature, she had no chance of winning. She would have fought and lost, at any stage of the way, regardless of what she’d done. Especially indoors. She’d be nothing but charcoal by now. Despite that, all she could feel was regret.

Because Melisande couldn’t win against a creature made of fire, either.

She rushed after as fast as she could, but they’d already disappeared into the forest. Desperately trying to find any way at all to move faster, she closed her eyes. She imagined a thin but strong root lunging out from her, digging into the ground a few meters ahead, and using it as a lever to launch herself as far and as violently as possible.

And then, it happened. The root deeply pierced the earth, hurling her forward, then withering. After soaring through the air in almost three metres height, she realised that she hadn’t planned ahead, and crashed into the ground. Sliding dozens of metres across, her enormous mass sent earth and weeds and rocks into all directions.

That said, she was fast. She ploughed through the mossy rubble, vegetation, plantwork and stones, all of it barely affecting her inertia, she simply slid far along on the ground unimpeded. Luckily enough, she managed to bloat out a protective layer of deadwood to keep her skin from peeling off to the bone on the gravel as she reached the street. She felt a few bruises and splinters had edged themselves into her, but overall, she was okay.

Which meant this was the only way for her to keep up.

And thus, she snapped out another root from her back, and launched herself again. This time, surely, she’d grow a branch to catch her before crashing into the ground.

All she needed to do was catch up.