After leaving the corridor, another two followed that were just like the first; same setup, same type of rooms, same white furniture. Then, they got to an elevator, and judging from the buttons Dr. Haur pressed, they were pretty deep underground. The machine carried them up for quite a while, until it stopped, and they left into a large reception hall of a building. Being on ground-level, Emika could see out through the windows; it was a bright day, the sun shone sharply from above. There was a garden and park area outside the building, neat little shrubs and bushes and the occasional tree. She could vaguely make out what probably were some other complexes on the island.

But they weren’t leaving the building; instead, Dr. Haur gestured Emika towards the left, where they entered a roundway lined with more windows showing the outside on the right, and nondescript metal doors on the left. Emika tried to keep all of this in mind to build a mental map of the place, but she got fairly distracted when suddenly, there was no park outside the windows anymore but deep nothingness filled with clouds in the distance reaching up to the horizon, and the occasional glimpse at a ground kilometres beneath them. They were likely well within the stratosphere.

Okay, yes. This was Heaven, sure enough.

Eventually, they moved into one of the doors on the left, and entered another corridor hidden behind it. It was very wide, filled with an expensive looking carpet. A multitude of large meeting rooms stretched themselves to the sides, shut off by large glass doors.

It was at around that time that Emika realised how this was all off.

Apart from her three roommates and Dr. Haur, Emika hadn’t seen a single person on her entire way so far. All the rooms in the corridors that probably were supposed to contain research subjects had been empty. Not a single soul had been inside the meeting rooms, or crossed their path on the way here. She hadn’t even seen anyone outside.

Something similar to this had happened once before, when Emika had left the Magical Fund Research Branch after almost killing Victor Felton due to his ill-advised decision to poison and gaslight her.

In other words, apparently Heaven had chosen to evacuate the entirety of this wing in order to receive Emika.

At the end of the corridor was a spiral staircase leading up, and then finally, at the end of the next floor, they arrived at an office with another glass door that had the words Dr. Eris Haur, Magical Affairs written on it.

She opened the door and waved Emika through. Then, she gently closed it behind them, took place at her desk right in front of a wide glass wall overseeing the deep cloud sea and gestured Emika to sit on one of the chairs opposite her.

Emika eyed the chair, but it didn’t seem strong enough to hold her. At least, she was not going to try. Instead, she summoned a few strong branches and roots from her back that spiralled down into a stout structure she eventually sat down on, leaving her legs dangling a few fingerbreadths above the ground. Like she was sitting in a moon sickle made of wood, held up by simplistic meandering footing.

When Emika was done, the woman cleared her throat and smiled. “Welcome to Heaven.” She waited for her guest to answer, but Emika had no clue how to react, so she said nothing. Instead, she just looked at Dr. Haur, waiting for her to continue, which she eventually did. “First of all, I want to ask you a question. Prior to your arrival, we have been ensured that you willingly accepted our offer to join us as a guest. Is that characterisation of events correct?”

Emika was here willingly? That was news to her. Or… was it? She vaguely remembered perhaps softly agreeing to the transfer in front of Maxime, even though that had only been part of the ruse to get to use the shower. In any case, he hadn’t made it sound like it was her choice at all, so it didn’t matter. Technically, she’d come here willingly, though, because after all, she could have spent her last few hours on earth desperately scratching her entire back off instead of cuddling Melisande. Though it was still very questionable whether that would have worked.

“Sure, I want to be here,” she eventually settled on saying, because it was true enough. Right now, she wanted to be here, so she could bring the whole thing to the ground.

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Dr. Haur nodded in relief. “That’s good. Sometimes, people arranging transfers aren’t too straightforward with us. It is very important to our establishment that everyone here actually wants to be here, since treatments are generally much more effective if guests are put through them voluntarily. Can’t help anyone who doesn’t want to help themselves.” At that last sentence, she gave a knowing and soft chuckle.

Well, Emika did actually want to receive treatment for her curse, if that was what that woman was talking about. So, again, good enough for now, even though it still didn’t motivate her to speak.

Dr. Haur bore through the silence by sorting through some documents on her desk, and then she said, “Okay, very well. Then, let’s start with laying some groundwork. Miss Hasegawa, what brings you here and how can we help you?”

Oh, god. Didn’t they already know full well what brought her here? Hadn’t Maxime provided them with information? Emika couldn’t imagine that they would have just accepted her blindly. So what was the point of her having to repeat it all? Sure, Emika wasn’t very squeamish, but she did go through a certain amount of trauma, and a reasonable person in her place probably wouldn’t be too happy with repeating it all the time. Well, on the other hand, it made sense that these people wanted to cross-reference their data with her actual personal account, but damn, Emika had no clue what data they already had! How much had Maxime supplied? Did they know she had killed all of her friends? Probably. But if they didn’t, Emika didn’t want to be the one to reveal it.

This sucked tremendously.

“I’m cursed to turn everything I touch into plants,” she eventually decided to say. “I’d like for you to remove that curse.”

There, good enough.

Dr. Haur went on to ask some follow-up questions; mainly about how the curse functioned, when the symptoms had started showing, if Emika had any prior knowledge of magic, and so on. Eventually, she was satisfied, and although the process had been slightly annoying, Dr. Haur had obviously tried very hard to be considerate and accepting of boundaries. For example, a question like ‘Has the curse ever killed anyone?’ had not been asked.

“Okay, please excuse me. Those are the motions we need to go through with every new patient, can’t be helped, even when it’s someone like you.”

What was that supposed to mean? It didn’t sound deprecating at all. If anything, Emika got the impression from the tone that she was supposed to feel good about it.

“I’m going to be very honest with you,” the woman went on to say, “While we are going to give our best efforts, I am not sure if we will be able to cure you. There is a limited number of tests we can run — non-invasive tests like ECG, MRI, CT — and those still have good chances to give us decent data on your condition. But beyond that, we are constrained, as you should well be aware.”

“I am probably aware,” Emika lied, “but please explain it to me anyway.”

“Well.” Dr. Haur hesitated, gesturing at Emika. “It is our understanding that your affliction repairs damage you receive by taking magical energy from your surroundings. There is a reason I am the one assigned to your case — I am a trained medical professional, but also an experienced witch. While I feel reasonably safe in your surroundings due to the immense amount of magical energy my body has saved up, there are still risks involved with anything that would damage your body in any way. And of course, I will continue to monitor my personal levels of magic and how much it saps due to being in your vicinity, and recuse myself if I end up believing to find myself in danger.”

She cleared her throat again before continuing. “We do not want to take any risks, because we value the life of our guests as well as everyone involved in this project as a worker. As such, non-invasive tests are the primary recourse we are recommending in this situation. I sincerely hope that you have understanding for this situation.”

It made sense. Emika wouldn’t have felt comfortable with invasive tests anyway.

Dr. Haur eyed Emika for a little longer; as if appraising her. Then, she wet her lips, and continued, with a bit of tension in her expression, even though she tried to cover it up very well with a decent amount of professionalism. “Again, I absolutely want to reassure you that we will do our best to help you. That much is true in any case. However, it is not the only reason why you are here. There is a secondary aspect to it, one that I hope you will appreciate as well.”

Emika raised her eyebrows. Dr. Haur swallowed. “You are a being of exceptional magical abilities,” she said. “We are experienced in establishing relations with several individuals of immeasurable strength, one of which is also currently inhabiting this island.” She gestured to a place behind Emika, in a way that made it seem like she was pointing to the other side of Heaven.

Emika shook her head gently and gave the Doctor a confused look. “I am sorry. Please be clear with me. What exactly is the second reason I’m here?”

“Of course,” Dr. Haur replied, some of her tension leaving her body as she shifted her arms around the table. She took a noticeable breath.

“Emika, we would like to negotiate peace.”