Wen stumbled forward, still unsure of what she was seeing. Was it really Dale? Was she back in England, back in Oxford? She could barely focus on the world around her. It all seemed to blur together as she approached the man.

"Dale, is that you?"

"Hey, Ice Queen." Dale looked up from his bench where he had been feeding bread to the nearby ducks and waved at her.

The name hurt, just like it always did, but it was a familiar pain. Wen clutched at her heart as she stumbled forward again. She didn't want to believe it. The pain came back, but at the same time, she threw herself forward to grab hold of him.

"I can't—I don't understand," Wen whispered. "I thought I could never return, but here I am."

"That's because you aren't back, Wen." Dale's strong hand caught hold of her wrist, helping support her. "Surely you know just by looking. None of this is real."

Wen looked around then, really paying attention to the details of the world around her. It was like Oxford, but it wasn't an exact recreation. The few people in the park that were out of her immediate area had blurry faces. The ducks themselves were wrong. Their eyes were closer to a human's eye than what they should be for a duck.

"What?" Wen shook her head as she saw the discrepancies. "If this isn't--where is it?"

"Well, that's where things get complicated." Dale sighed, releasing her hand and stepping away. "We're inside you, Wen."

Wen's eyes widened, and a sharp pain tried to rip her head in half. She put her hands on the sides of her skull as she forced her eyes closed. None of it was making sense. Nothing about this world around her could be real.

"I have to be dead," Wen said. "I'm dead, and this is my personal hell."

When she opened her eyes, the grass below her exploded in detail. In comparison to the blurry faces of the people around her, she could see the edges of each individual blade of grass. She could see a ladybug crawl up the stem of a flower near her feet. Even her own body was a blur in comparison.

"Hey, none of that, Ice Queen." Dale's words were like a punch to the heart, and it knocked her out of focusing on the grass.

"Why do you have to say that?" Wen whispered. "You know I hate it."

"Wen, I'm not Dale," the man said. "I'm what you remember about him."

"Just tell me what the hell is going on!"

Wen screamed, forcing out all of her anger and all of her frustration. Nothing about this was making sense. It didn't feel like a dream. Everything around her felt far too real. No, it was like she was in a very real place, just not Earth or Erth.

"You're here too early," Dale said. "You weren't ready, but you pushed yourself so far anyway."

Two strong hands gripped her shoulders, and Wen looked up at Dale, tears streaming down her eyes as she tried to blink them away. Wen blanched away from his face as it practically shined like the sun. Everything was moving too fast. She just needed space.

"You need to listen, Wen," Dale said. "You're close, so very close to growing in your curse. You pushed yourself so close to the barrier that you can reach out and grab hold of new power. You just need a little more."

"What--"

Wen didn't understand what he was saying. Was this place a manifestation of her curse? What barrier was he talking about? What was happening? All those questions wrapped around her mind. However, she couldn't seem to voice them.

A cold hand touched her cheek, and her thoughts froze in place. Like encroaching frost leeching away the heat of a dying man, her thoughts were put to sleep, pushed away until her mind was blank. When she blinked, Oxford was gone. The gardens and the tower were gone. She stood in the middle of an empty void, and a dark hand filled with stars pulled away from her. Wen didn't know what it was, and her mind was too cold to be able to focus.

"Rest for now," the voice echoed through her. "You'll reach the next level soon."

Her world snapped like an old television shutting off, and when she opened her eyes again, she lay on the jungle floor. She lay where she had fallen at the end of the fight, looking up at the stars above as the warmth of the jungle caused steam to arise around her.

Her cold wounds were starting to melt. Each heartbeat pushed more blood out of her wounds as ice turned into sludge. Wen recognized the problem but could do nothing. Her body was too tired to move. Her limbs were like heavy weights. All she could do was stare at the sky above as she lay in the forming mud around her.

Find this and other great novels on the author's preferred platform. Support original creators!

Crack.

"Well, you did it, didn't you?" Wen whispered, blinking away wet tears as the ice around her melted. "You pushed yourself beyond your tools and ended up broken in a mud puddle. Was it worth it?"

"That's a question you can only answer for yourself." A man's deep voice echoed through the trees around her, and Wen tilted her head to the side to see who it was.

A skeleton with a man's head stepped out of the darkness, his body draped in a tight black uniform. Wen smiled and tried to move her hand, but she couldn't. Even the attempt drew too much from her body and caused her vision to waver.

"Tsk, tsk." Jean approached her, towering over her before he knelt beside her face. "You look horrible, Wen. Are you alright?"

"I think so," Wen said, her eyes catching the seeping wounds in her shoulders. "Maybe."

"We'll get you to Erin," Jean said, his bony arms scooping her from the ground. "Just rest."

***

Jean sprinted through the forest, only glancing down at Wen occasionally as he searched the area for Erin. In his eyes, he could recognize Erin's spirit and had an idea of where she was due to faint glimmers on the horizon. However, his main concern was what he saw when he looked down at Wen.

At first, he thought she was changing, that her curse was growing. The cold blue light that normally wrapped around her form shimmered on occasion. However, there was a problem. When a person's curse grew, they would be put into a deep sleep, and the new light would overcome the old. However, when Jean looked down at Wen, it was like she flickered back and forth between the lights.

"Your fate rests on a knife's edge," Jean whispered, though he had never seen anything like it before. "I may just be guessing, but you are in between states. I wish I knew how that might affect you, but in truth, I am as knowledgeable about curses as the most studied scholar."

He chuckled but quickly pushed the laugh away because even thought of laughter was too morbid.

"Which means I know almost nothing at all."

Curses were a mystery, both in terms of origin and growth. While Jean had some firsthand experience in both acquisition and growth, he was still woefully ignorant of every mechanism of the power. He had his own theories based on his observations, but those were untested. They were guesses based on what he knew.

He had three core ideas to his theories—three things that were always true about every cursed individual he met in his travels.

Curses followed suffering. The more suffering inflicted, the more likely a curse would develop in a person. Jean did not know if it was the suffering that called a curse to a person or if it was a way for the Real, Surreal, or Outside to make up for the suffering inflicted on a person in life, but suffering was key.

The second was a key traumatic event. There must be a singular event that pulled all the suffering a person experienced to the forefront—something that would break the person's mind at that moment. For Jean, it was the betrayal of his friend. The knife that slid into his back that fateful night so many years before.

Lastly, for a curse to grow, the cursed person needed to push their body and mind past all possible limits. They needed to use their curse until they broke over and over again. The stress of pushing harder would allow them to ascend to higher levels of power. All of that would be guided by a manifestation of their psyche within their mind, a world made up of memories of the past.

Beyond those three things and the aetheric nature of a curse's power, Jean knew very little. Even those three facts were not widely known. He could imagine the old men at the Academy on April arguing between themselves while never going out and experiencing the suffering necessary to understand the truth.

"The old fools." Jean brushed aside the thought of his homeland.

He burst into the ruins on the far side, jumping up the side of the temple in one leap so that he could run along its wide base and away from the jungle itself. He followed along the base of the temple as he ran, his eyes picking out two familiar auras on the far side of the temple, along with one colored a dark black.

"Erin!" Jean yelled out as he crossed over the side of the temple and jumped to land on the ground beside Erin and Artur. "Hurry, I have an emergency!"

He looked over Erin and Artur as they watched him with wide eyes. They hadn't expected to see him jumping around the temple with Wen in his arms. Both of them had fresh pink skin that shone in the moonlight. As Jean surveyed the scene, he saw that much of the plants around them had been reduced to ash in the blackened circle where he stood.

"What twists of fate must have happened here," Jean whispered as he looked over the destruction.

"Is that Wen?" Erin had recovered from her silence as she pointed to Jean's arms. "Set her down. I'll get to work."

Jean did as he was asked and lay Wen down on the blackened grass. He stepped away as Erin bent over Wen, her glowing green hands working their way over Wen's entire body quickly. To his surprise, Jean saw green energy extend out from Erin's hands, wrapping over Wen like a thick blanket of grass.

"Ah, your second level," Jean whispered as she worked before turning to Artur. "Tell me, what happened to you both back here?"

"That ruffian we did face." Artur gestured to the man on the ground nearby. "But victory we had, thanks to your ace."

Jean nodded, approaching the downed combatant. At first, he thought the man was dead due to the lack of aetheric energy flowing in his body, but on closer inspection, Jean saw that he was breathing. Around his wrists were wrapped a pair of manacles that were far too familiar to Jean.

"I see you kept the cuffs," Jean said as he knelt beside the man and tipped him over with one bony finger.

It was the knife-wielding man from earlier in the night. His glasses had melted into the skin over his eyes, and his hair was burned away. Jean frowned. It was a horrible way to go, and the man didn't seem like he had much life left in him.

However, Jean was under no illusion. The man would see no pity from him.

"I did," Erin said as she stretched her hands and held them in place over Wen. "What about everyone else? Are they still fighting?"

"I left Alex and Sayed fighting a strange plant monster," Jean said. "Alex sent me to retrieve Wen and get her to you."

"A what?" Erin asked, her eyes wide as she looked up from where she was working over Wen.

"It was another Finger." Alex's voice rang out from the temple above as he and Sayed jumped down from the second level. "We'll work it out in a minute."

Jean couldn't help but smile. While they were all far from whole, everyone survived the fight. The enemies were defeated, and they just had to return to the village to see everything done. They had won the day for the second time without needing to run away immediately.

It was an excellent turn of fate.