145 Chapter One Hundred and Forty-Five – The Ritual of the Silver Queen (1/2)

Moonfire came down from the sky, quite gentle at first.

As it coursed across Verd, something responded.

It was like a shadow that was always there, but never noticed. Under the moonfire's illumination, it couldn't conceal itself any more. From inside every cell of her body, it began to bubble forth.

Verd began to scream, because she could feel it worming out of the back end of her mind, and suddenly she knew that everything Hazé had told her about the Curse and Hags was totally and utterly true.

She was a Persona built upon a Curse, with a stolen soul. If she wanted to be real, if she wanted to live, the Curse had to go, or it would swallow her everything.

Darkness rose, moonfire lashed, and the fight between a Curse that had bedeviled humanity through eternity and across multiverses, and a goddess of silver magic.

The Curse had originally been meant to punish the souls of those who sinned, perhaps woven by outraged goddesses in the past. Black Annis, made from the souls of those who raped and murdered women. Greenhags, the souls of women who abandoned and abused their children. Shellycoats, reincarnated from women who used their beauty to forge a bloody road to power. Stormcrones, from the matrons who ruled over their families and brought ruin to their own and others in cold scorn. Sea hags, those who abused magical power over others, the weakest and ugliest of the Hags...

There were others, but those were the most common Hags. And somewhere along the way, the Curse had been turned, altered, and the Hags learned how to use it to make more of their kind out of innocent souls.

Only a goddess could twist the Curse, for good or ill, and thus it fell to the Silver Queen to fight back on behalf of the innocent souls condemned to a horrible fate, and take their doom from them.

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Scut's hand was burning, both of them. He was holding onto Verd, who was now floating above his head, holding her down, feeling the Curse lashing at him, moonfire swirling with grace on his scarred hands, darkness and light spraying across his soul raw and pure, as he had never imagined.

He'd had a hard life, losing his parents young, and the orphanage he'd been staying at closed for lack of funds. Verd had been one of his few friends, looking past his desperate need for food and shelter to see what he might have been, helping where she could, talking to him when few would.

But he'd been told he had power. As much as Verd herself, and Verd was potentially a Hag, a terrible witch of nightmares! He had that kind of power!

It was a dark thing, twisting inside of him now. He could feel it inside him, responding to the intrusion of the powers here, one cursed, one divine; a power that was neither and ready to defy them both.

The Shadow is not afraid of the Dark.

”The Shadow isn't afraid of the Dark!” he snarled, refusing to let go, and he breathed. Something stirred deep in his gut, and began to build, racing through his blood. He could feel it, cool shadows in his blood... shadows like knives.

They erupted out of his hands, cutting and slashing, and the dark and the light reeled back from his hands as the shadow danced between them.

”The Shadow does not hate the Light, for without the Light, there is no Shadow, only the Dark,” came a whisper into his ear, and Scut shook.

It was true, wasn't it? A shadow was defined by being created by the light. The dark was where there was no light, and it loathed the light, was chased away by it... leaving behind only shadows.

It was in the dark that there were no shadows!

The shadows enveloped his hands, locked onto Verd's hand, he felt like he was hanging onto her with his very soul, latching onto her own with his, not letting go.

”Cut the Darkness. Be the shadow to the Light!” he swore to himself.

His power billowed in his lungs, swirled through his blood, and stopped fighting the moonfire. Swirling with it, through it, it began to follow it, dimness to the light, falling upon the darkness and chasing it from its territory.

A shadow to the light.

His power wasn't great, wasn't enough. He knew that he couldn't go much past her wrist, past the hand clutched in his grip.

But he wasn't going to let go of that hand, and where shadow and light burned together, it formed an unassailable source of strength for the light to work.

As long as he didn't let her go.

Scut bit his lip hard enough to draw blood, and held on.

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Hazé and Mother Greta had literally nothing to do. The Ritual wasn't something that required raw power. No, this was taking place at subtler levels, fundamental competition of magic, energies of Fate going against Creation, trying to establish who was more absolute, more dominant, a competition of non-finite powers drawn down to a tiny wrestling match over a soul.

Verd was still screaming, on and off, from both pain as the energies conflicted over, and from the searing visions the Curse was inflicting on her. It was showing her what it would do if she didn't submit, if she did, power, horrors, dreams fulfilled, the price she would pay if she won...

There were only words to hold onto, and moonfire burning into the visions and ending them with cool grace and reassurance.

To win, all she had to do was hold on!

A cold, deadly hand was clasped about hers, she could feel Scut's presence despite everything the Curse was doing, that one hand that it could do nothing to.

Holding her, letting her know what was absolutely real.