image [https://i.imgur.com/y1XUYA7.png]

23.05.2024 – 12:00 UTC +01.00

“So much for this part of Niger being the safe one,” I exclaimed. I recalled how we made a point of going through Bilma to avoid the surrounding Maydan of Cursed more powerful than us; yet somehow here I was, tangled into a confusing Cursed mess.

The wide circular windows of Yahaya’s inner sanctuary were shifting and turning. As light refracted through them from the outside, you could spot all the colors of the rainbow. Her disciple, Tiwalade, was rhythmically moving her hands in an elaborate dance.

“I guess we step in now,” I suggested, but I knew this was merely another command for the young girl. She walked towards the shifting glass and passed through it.

Before I followed her, I looked around. I knew my Calling would lead me back here. There was something important in this hideout. But first I had to piece together the mystery of how Aisa, Yahaya, and my stay in Bilma were connected.

I followed through the shifting glass. I did not feel hurt by it, but the feeling was certainly one of uneasiness. I shifted and turned as well, spiraling in and out of its rhythmic movement and out of Tiwalade’s manifold ward.

“Where are we?” Tiwalade asked. My control over her was now gone – whether my Calling meant for that or simply my curses had reached their limit was unclear. But her question was a bit futile, as the answer was quite obvious.

“We are in a mosque,” I responded, “An abandoned one at least.”

I examined our surroundings. Windows were broken or shut, the prayer hall was dusty and unruly. I was not religious in the traditional sense, but jumping into the middle of a prayer hall by using a girl’s curse felt like sacrilege.

“I can see that.” She appeared more confused than I was. Whatever I had done with her free will before, it must have also influenced her memories.

“You were supposed to bring us to your Mistress. I am trying to understand what is happening myself,” I scolded her.

“Faith is not about understanding,” a woman’s voice echoed in the temple.

“Reveal yourself, witch!” I yelled. I had enough. “Were you the one to hurt my brother?”

“Why would I do such a thing? I am only here to pray.”

I turned towards the women’s praying plateau. A tall woman, previously out of sight, was looking right down at us, standing at the edge of the balcony on top of the praying hall. The fence that usually stood there was partly undone. She stood there ominously, right in between the broken fence, stretching her hands to hold onto the rail. Her long vestment was decorated with a handwritten Arabic script.

I immediately focused inwards, trying to sense her Nabd. All I had to do was grab her heart, the same way I had previously done with Tiwalade. Then she would tell me all that I needed to know.

She swiftly moved her hand, grabbing something from inside her robe. It was a small circular white sphere, but before I managed to understand more, the sphere landed and exploded into a thick white cloud.

I covered my mouth and nose, as a chalk-like substance expanded around me. My vision was limited, and I immediately lost my sense of orientation. I felt my Calling grabbing me like a puppet and flinging me around inside the cloud. I trusted it and followed it, allowing my intuition to be enhanced. I saw a blade passing by where I was, aiming to kill, a dark arm holding it.

Yahaya was inside the cloud, but her position was unclear, as the arm vanished inside the cloud. The Calling pulled me aside again before another knife-wielding arm spawned from inside the hovering dust, aiming where I was standing.

The arm disappeared and then appeared again behind me, as I dodged it at the last moment. She was everywhere in whatever this hex was, or at least her murderous arms were. My mind raced through the available options. My Curses were inconveniently not useful at knifepoint. Even if I could dodge her forever, I risked my Calling surrendering to my fate and leading me onto her blade. A Calling was fickle and untrustworthy if left without options.

I flailed around the cloud, pushing away one arm after the other as they hunted me faster and aimed deadlier. One after the other, their blades managed to find better aim. Nick after nick, cut after cut, I was bleeding out of tens of small cuts throughout my body. None of them were more than a nuisance, but their persistence revealed this witch’s plan: death by thousand cuts.

I could hardly breathe through this dust cloud, and I could not sense her Nabd. It was only mine and Tiwalade’s, that had gone eerily calm the whole time. But I could use what I had.

I grabbed onto Tiwalade’s Nabd, trying to imitate what I had previously done under my Calling’s guidance.

Sharara, I whispered. I tapped into her heart’s pulse and commanded it to reverse. Her pulse increased erratically.

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“Break your Mistress!” I yelled desperately. The arms stopped attacking, and the cloud started dissipating, the chalk settling down around the floor.

Yahaya was in the middle of the prayer hall, frozen in what her eyes betrayed as terror. Seven hands, dark and covered in chalk, each holding a knife, were twitching unnaturally, each one spawning through her robe. I could only assume they were a part of her. A Curse or a hex gone wrong maybe.

She sat still, eyes held open by whatever vision was haunting her. Tiwalade was standing next to her, visibly hurt by the knives as well, as the chalk mixed with red blood was contrasting on her dark skin. Her eyes were rolled backward, leaving only their white with pulsating blood vessels.

I breathed in and out rhythmically as I walked near the deadlocked duo: Tiwalade’s heart under my grasp, Yahaya’s mind under Tiwalade’s terror-inducing visions.

I could sense Tiwalade straining to keep Yahaya under control.

“Break her,” I repeated and lifted my arm and put it on Tiwalade’s shoulder.

Each of Yahaya’s arms twitched one after the other, and the witch started cackling in a madness-infused frenzy. She was helpless in whatever she was experiencing in her mind. What Tiwalade was doing was frying the woman’s brain.

Tiwalade’s eyes bore tears of blood. Suddenly Yahaya opened her eyes. Unable to move her head, she turned her pupils towards me. I funneled my will through Tiwalade’s Curse, hoping to incapacitate her; perhaps this witch had more cards in her sleeve.

“T’es pas…”

She struggled to say something, finding difficulty in pronouncing her message through her agony.

“La seule…”

I got tense.

“Nida.” Her Arabic had a peculiar accent, but the choice of words was purposeful.

“Stop,” I said calmly to Tiwalade.

You are not the only Calling.

“I said stop,” I repeated as dread crept up on me: what if this woman had the answers to my Calling? What if killing her now would leave me out of my trail? She openly implied she knew about my Curse, something no one besides me and my family should know.

But Tiwalade did not obey. I saw Yahaya’s arms twisting as she closed her eyes in surrender. I took my hand off Tiwalade’s shoulder, trying to understand what was happening.

“Tiwalade, I said stop!”

I tried to sense her Nabd, her heart, as I did before; I breathed in and out, but now I was hitting a wall. She was now actively resisting me. Tiwalade smirked. I was not controlling her anymore, perhaps I never fully did. I only enhanced her Curses.

I looked at Yahaya first, and then what I thought was her student. The two of them were still in a deadlock in the middle of the prayer hall, but now my intentions were not the same. I needed Yahaya tamed, but alive, something I could not say about this unpredictable girl. No matter what the story of these two women was, it was clearly not one of trust and loyalty, and I did not need to be involved to understand more.

Tiwalade slowly turned her face towards me, sensing my hesitation.

“You set me free from this swine’s cage,” she said, with hatred I had not previously sensed. “With your Curse making me stronger, I can finish her. The two of us!”

I took a step back, breathed in, and then lifted my two hands, forming a cusp with the palms of my hand. I breathed out facing Yahaya and tried to grab her heart’s Nabd.

I heard it as clearly as one hears their heart's first beats of waking up in the morning. Yahaya was giving me control of her heart. I grabbed it, and it was mine now.

“Yahaya, kill!” I commanded.

Yahaya’s eyes opened, and her hands almost doubled in length. Tiwalade screamed at me:

“You stupid…” Blades started ripping through her body, as Yahaya’s enhanced wrath was unleashed on her. She never managed to finish her sentence, as Yahaya maniacally slashed through her in what seemed like a second. The young girl’s body lay butchered as Yahaya turned towards me and all her arms stretched their knives at me, but all stopped an inch away from my skin. I could see she was exhausted, panting even.

“Ah, ah, ah!” I said, scolding her as if she was a little child. I did not need to explain. I could see in Yahaya’s angry expression that she knew she had lost to me. Her heart was mine. I took a step closer to her, and she moved her mutated hands one step further as well.

For a long minute, we both recomposed ourselves and caught our breath, both of us standing ready to jump into action if needed.

Eventually, she retracted her hands back into her robe, where she mysteriously hid her curse. Without the hands revealed, she did not seem as villainous.

“I guess I am sad that it had to come to that, Tiwa. But I am at least thankful to you woman,” she said. I did not care.

“You tried to kill me,” I said.

“Are you that naïve? That was her, messing with your mind. Instilling terror. I never hurt you.”

I tried to say something, but I stuttered. I looked at the butchered girl. Then on me. There were no cuts, no signs of wounds. Could it be that what I had experienced in that white cloud was all misdirection? I remembered the fear of being chased by Yahaya, and the pain of the cuts, but I had no wound to show for that.

“Am I supposed to trust you on that?” I asked Yahaya.

“No. But regardless, my heart is yours now. So, it matters not,” she said as she looked around. “I owe it to my faith that I fix what was broken and tainted here. If you intend to stop my heart, I will only ask that you do so after I tend to it.”

Her piousness disarmed me. I was previously enraged at her, but as the fight’s dust was settling, I decided that I could no longer trust what my past self was thinking. I could only trust myself now, and I felt that she was no danger.

“What do you know about my Calling?” I asked her. That was the first question I needed an answer to.

“I have it too. The Calling. But I can feel more and all of us. Gathering. You are but the first I meet, but, you are like a magnet,” she said stepping closer. Her dark eyes were already big, but as she was looking at me, I could see them dilating, “an irresistible magnet of conundrum, pulling Curses across the continent.”