Vale wakes up with a jolt, her phone's upbeat ringtone catching her in a stolen nap. She fumblingly takes her phone from the iron desk it rattles against, and holds it up to her ear. "You've called Vale, but to what avail?" she says, trying to remember if she decided to use that line or not. It's been a while since she talked to someone.

  "What?" a gruff voice shouts in her ear.

  "Don't yell at me, I'm- wait, sorry." Vale lowers her phone's volume with a few clicks of the side button. "It's Vale. What's up?"

  "Is this the occultist?"

  "No- Wait, yes, I am. That's me." It's a hard habit for her to break, having gone a decade lying about it. Not needing to is a relatively recent thing.

  "Good. I'll be there in twenty minutes. Think I got some weird shit."

  "Understood! May I ask-"

  The dial tone answers the question for her. It's only slightly past noon... She flips the phone closed and tosses it aside. What was she doing again? Oh, right... Vale looks over the ancient text again, the corner of the mummified paper once again introduced to liquid courtesy of her drooling. Oh well. Hardly worth her interest anyway.

  She carefully slides it back into its plastic cover, and takes out a series of alphabetical stamps from the box of documents. A shame they won't let her use a pen or pencil... She painstaking stamps each individual letter down, spelling out, 'MUNDANE - NON-LITERAL CURSE' on a yellow sticky note she affixes to the cover. With a little pride, she drops the text into a cardboard box with three other similarly marked and labelled pages. With that done, the satisfaction fades as Vale looks forlornly at her desk. That's all she had for the day.

  With a sigh, she hefts the cardboard box to the metal door next to her, and knocks a few times. It opens, revealing a pair of armed Counter-Magic soldiers keeping guard over her. One of them attentively trains a rifle at her, while the other extends his hands. It's impossible to make out any details of their faces behind the helmets. All she can see is her own distorted reflection in the mirror of their visors.

  "All set," Vale says, offering the box to the soldier nearest to her.

  The soldier quietly sends a message via his radio, and takes the box from her.

  "Hey, did the warden-"

  Again, she's cut off, this time by the grinding hinges of the iron door closing shut in front of her.

  She's a criminal, but that doesn't warrant being so rude. She turns back around, so tired of seeing the same gray metal desk, the gray metal bed frame with a gray foam mattress, the gray metal toilet...

  She's sick to death of looking at iron. Maybe literally.

  "Face the back wall," a chipper computer-generated voice says through the boxy speaker attached to the ceiling.

  Vale does as requested, reaching up and pressing on the cool iron as the voice requests, "Place your hands on the wall, reaching as high as you can."

  "Hah, beat you-"

  A shrill ringing cuts her off. Right, she's not supposed to talk during this part. She hears the door behind her open, followed by the sound of heavy footsteps entering her cell. Once the door slams closed behind her, a clear and happy chime comes over the speaker, and she relaxes. With a light stretch of her back, she sits down on the table across from the new person standing in front of her. He's burly, easily six feet, and looming down at her with disgusted bright green eyes. Vale's gaze drifts over his left hand, diligently holding the silvery panic button that all her visitors are given.

  Still, she forces a smile. "Good afternoon, how may I help?"

  He wordlessly holds out a tempered steel stake, which Vale takes. Anything to pass the time. She's not even allowed to have books in here.

  There's a strange symbol carved on the head of the weathered stake, a series of crossed line and acute angles. Funny how this isn't common knowledge. Hunters should really have a handbook or something for things like this...

  "It's magic, yeah. It's a stake with a formalized sigil on top, made so anyone can activate it. I'd demonstrate, but you know, I'd be killed on the spot. The sigil means 'hold', or more specifically, 'static'. It's a hunting tool, you know, not anything illegal. Just obscure. Where'd you find it, anyway?"

  "Great Salt Lake. Buried in the mud," the burly man says, poorly hiding his distaste by speaking more quietly than he needs to.

  "Yeah, just hand this over to MBR. They'll give it back to whoever left it there... these things can run like fifty or sixty bucks, you know. Not a lot of people know how to make them." She drops the stake into her guest's hand.

  "Mhmm... You know anyone who can? Sounds useful."

  "Funny you say that. I made this one, actually. Don't worry, it's not -"

  She watches as the stake loudly clatters to ground, the burly man's thick thumb depressing the panic button. Before she can react, an intense migraine drills into her brain, accompanied by that shrill ringing from before.

  She collapses into a ball, covering her ears, trying to shut out as much of the noise as she can. The pain is intense, blinding, leaving her completely at the mercy of her jailers.

  Soon, but not soon enough, the sound fades. Her migraine does too, at least mostly, but still hurts just enough to make it impossible to ignore. Vale wipes a few tears away, looking around her once again vacant cell. That asshole. All she did was do as requested.

  Vale was imprisoned two years ago, having been accused of a half dozen charges that all centered around a central theme: the occult. Curses, bewitching, hexing, summoning, necromancy, and whatever else society has declared as forbidden is called the occult, even if it's harmless or beneficial.

  It was all true, and she wasn't ashamed of it. She studied magic, learning all she could from as many sources as she could. Not just the forbidden ones, but legal magic as well: spells, sigils, alchemy, the old magic, item enchantment, ritual casting, magi-tech, everything. All in service of her one ultimate goal: finding soul of the world, the source of all magic, the thing that brought life to Earth all those millennia ago. The anima mundi.

  For researching the occult, she was sentenced for six months in jail. Some time later, her lawyer advised her to plead guilty on a few of the other charges as well in a plea bargain, since the judge hinted that the death penalty wasn't out of the question.

  Vale confessed to necromancy, creating cursed rituals, and hexing; all of which she did, of course. For those crimes, she was sentenced to fifty years in Magimax, the supermax prison that holds the most dangerous magical threats to the USA.

  Of course, both the Counter-Magic branch of the military and its autonomous subdivision of Magical Beast Research weren't wasting that much knowledge. They love visiting her and getting her help, followed by continuing to treat her as if she were a leper carrying a loaded gun.

  And Vale keeps helping, even though she knows there's no reward in it for her. She's been cooperative for two years, and to mark the first day of her third year, she has been forcibly given a migraine after identifying an object for someone, not to mention her daily translating, deciphering, and summarizing of ancient documents and other assorted readings that Counter-Magic has trouble managing themselves. The implant at the base of her skull was a brilliant touch to make sure she was never out of reach of their control, and if they felt like it, torture.

  In a way, she gets it. She's dangerous, and they don't understand half of what she's capable of. If only they let her have some kind of migraine medication for the hours after they shut off the implant, though.

  The computer voice tells her to face the wall again, and she does so, listening as food and water are dropped through a small mail slot that's usually kept locked.

  Once the chime sounds, she meanders over to the thin iron tray holding a large, wheat-colored, and tasteless brick that features a perfectly balanced daily diet, alongside two bottles of water with the labels torn off. They're certainly thorough about letting her see any writing besides the manuscripts she deciphers.

  She brings the tray to her desk, munching patiently on the brick. It doesn't taste like anything, but it has a pleasant texture. Small miracles.

  Before she's halfway through her meal, though, the voice cheerily demands she once again put her hands to the far wall. As always, she does, hoping this isn't one of the days where they collect her tray early just to screw with her sense of routine in an attempt to prevent her from making her single meal a day into a ritual.

  The door opens, the door closes, and the chime sounds. She turns around to see a rather familiar face, and weakly smiles. "Hello, Warden Stolatz, what-"

  "Don't speak unless spoken to, reanimator. What does this mean?" the pale-skinned warden demands, as he displays one of the documents she deciphered today. Vale misses the last warden. At least that one never talked to her.

  "Mundane, non-literal curse. It's written like a curse, but it's not meant to actually channel magic. It was a common way of insulting people in-"

  "I get it."

  "Yes, sir." She looks longingly at the remains of her lunch, waiting for Stolatz to continue.

  "Look at me, reanimator."

  Vale does so. She's long since given up trying to explain that she's never reanimated anything besides a mouse before, and only as proof that an occult grimoire she acquired was legitimate. "Yes, sir?"

  "One of our agents... She made an error. Listen closely to what I'm going to say."

  The communique is addressed to 'Counter-Magic Sergeant Willow Valley'. It sounds terrible, Willow thinks, as she reads her mission briefing. Willow Valley is already a confusing enough name, but it sounds even more bizarre next to a rank.

  The mission involves occultists, unfortunately. She hates dealing with the occult, but time and again she's proven herself very capable of handling obscure and unknown magic, despite her own lack of spellcasting. She considers herself a victim of her own success. Willow tightens her mouth as she continues to read: someone created an unknown ritual for an unknown purpose. Great, almost nothing to go off of.

  As always.

  Willow packed her bags, took a flight out to the middle of Nebraska, and drove to the recently discovered ritual site: a small copse of trees with a large, flat stone in the center. Some kind of magic symbol is drawn on the rock, but it doesn't look like either a sigil or a magic circle. Whatever it is, she has no idea what it's supposed to do with it. She scans the surrounding trees, finding similar symbols carved into the wood all around, all facing the central stone. She approaches one of the trees, and looks more closely at the stone. It's certainly not high magic, nor is it some kind of druidic ritual or folk spell. It's laid out in a circle with strange script ringing the interior, along with yet more writing in three triangles that frame the circle. She steps away, scratching her head.

  She steps away, and returns to the trees. A similar type of design, though seemingly less complex, was hand-carved by a rough tool into the sapwood, the bark having been peeled away. Still a mystery.

  With still more questions, she tries to examine the other side of the bark, but finds herself unable to. Whenever she tries to cross that threshold, some kind of mental force makes her backpedal away. She's trapped here.

  She takes out a knife, and approaches the center stone with the intent to break open the barrier by force. Target the central symbol, and the rest will fall away with it, like most ritual magic. It seems to be fairly intricate and complex, but by identifying the weakest point she should be able to disrupt it without consequence. It's how all magic she knows of works, anyway, and she doubts that this obscure variety will be functionally different.

  With a single strike of her knife, she splits a chunk of the weak rock away. Immediately after, Willow feels an intense pulling and warping sensation, every muscle and bone in her body painlessly distending and twisting, until they settle on a new shape. Willow drops to the ground, sweating fiercely, and holds out her hand. Her large, rough hand. In horror, she scrambles to take out her phone, using the camera as a mirror.

  The sweaty man staring back at her makes her scream.

  Vale nods along at Stolatz's explanation until he finishes. "Warden, there are spell purging professionals. Why are you coming to me with this? I'm happy to help, but-"

  "They couldn't do it."

  She feigns surprise. Obviously, they couldn't undo a curse like that, if they even recognized it as a curse. Anything outside of Western European style magic is foreign to nearly all academics in the US. "Oh. Okay then, I'll do what I can. When is she coming by? Wait, are you the-"

  A migraine hits Vale as soon as she asks that question, accompanied by the squealing alarm. By the time she's able to open her eyes without vomiting, she's alone once again.

  Even worse, her tray is gone.

  Vale's next visitor comes a few days later, long after she's forgotten the conversation. Just like last time, her meal is interrupted. With no small amount of worry, she presses her hands on the wall. She'd only gotten three bites in this time. She's going to have hunger pains if she doesn't get more of that brick to eat.

  After the bell dings, she immediately looks for her food. It's there, fortunately. With a relieved sigh, she lets her focus shift to the man in front of her. He's... standing weird. Like he's physically unused to his own body.

  "Hello, sir. I'm Vale," she says, hoping against hope that he doesn't take the tray when he leaves.

  "...I'm, uhh... the one Stolatz talked about." His voice is small and uneven in pitch, adjusting itself with every word.

  Right, that. She'd almost forgotten her meeting with the warden. Hopefully she gets out of this without being punished with yet another excruciating migraine. She spent an hour leaned over the toilet last time they gave her one, and puked up her only food for the day.

  A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

  "Sorry, ma'am. Let's see... can you tell me the location of the ritual site?"

  "It was in a small patch of trees a mile off the highway in Nebraska."

  Vale figured as much. She knows what what happened the last time she admitted to making something, though: the man hit the panic button. Maybe she doesn't have to include that part... "I'm familiar with the ritual. It's old Scythian magic. Did you damage the circle, or is it still intact?"

  "I broke it, and it did this," she says, whispering to hide how her voice sounds.

  "...shhhhhit. Okay. I know what to do, but I need you to promise that you won't hit the panic button. It's... startling."

  Willow goes to place the button on Vale's small desk, but Vale immediately leaps towards her, reaching out but stopping her hand a few feet from the other person. "Sorry. If you let go, it'll activate anyway. Just hold it. Promise?"

  "I was told not to say yes or no to anything you ask... you're my last hope here."

  "Okay. It's technically a curse... one that I set up a few years ago."

  Willow goes completely silent, even her breathing stops as her world comes down around her. "Why would-"

  "Because people wanted to use it," Vale interrupts. "I hid it away so no one accidentally became cursed... My intentions were good, just walking into a circle and touching the rock is a lot easier than doing it the hard way, right?"

  Vale grimaces, realizing she's trying to justify the highly illegal magic that cursed the woman in front of her. That's not a great look. She better redirect the conversation to the solution.

  "Okay, there are two ways to undo this. First, you have to go back to the stone, and say a short incantation. That option won't work now that you destroyed it, though. The other option is, well... I make another one. I gave the curse a thirty day grace period where it could be reversed, so-"

  Willow shushes Vale and checks the date on her phone. "I looked everywhere else before coming here. It's been twenty-eight days."

  "Oh. I'd need a day to find a suitable location, but the seals themselves aren't too hard to make. We could do it in time." Admittedly, as much as she wants to help, she's also thrilled by the idea of seeing the sun again. She's dreamt so much about its soft warmth...

  "Wait. Why the fuck would the ritual place trap me once I walked inside?"

  Vale bites her lip. It was her first attempt at making that specific ritual. "That was a mistake. It was supposed to keep people inside after activation, so they wouldn't run off in a panic. Even when you go in knowing what to expect, it's still an uncomfortable process and a dramatic physical change. Evidently, though, my spell kept people inside until activation... I'm sorry."

  She nods, her voice trying to sound assertive, but it cracks at the edges. "I need to find Stolatz, and call my commanding officer... take your spot against the wall, prisoner."

  Vale does as ordered, hiding how giddy she is about the information Counter-Magic unintentionally leaked just now. If they didn't know what the ritual site in Nebraska was, then it stands to reason that the other ones she's set up around the country haven't been discovered yet, otherwise they'd recognize her work.

  It's been a few long hours. Vale supposes that Willow gave up, or more likely, was forbidden. After all, Vale's been kept in maximum security since she arrived, and forbidden from leaving her cell a single time since beyond a rare infirmary visit. She lays down on the simple cot in her cell, and gazes into the security camera's wrathful eye. It's always pointed at her, and security is ready to disable her with the push of a button, if required.

  The speaker once again surprises Vale. She waits for the chime in her usual stance, but it never comes. Vale is instead roughly grabbed, has her hands put into steel anti-magic restraints, and is held at gunpoint by two of the guards. Maybe they're going to execute her... she's conflicted on the idea.

  She's led into the hall, as she hungrily takes in her surroundings. Any novelty in her environment is welcome, even if it's still just iron and concrete.

  She sees Stolatz as she's directed to turn the corner, along with Willow. That's unexpected, but very welcome.

  "If you're lying," Stolatz says, "I'll kill you."

  "I'm not, sir. Okay, I'll need a patch of trees-"

  "You can't do it here?" He interrupts, his voice both flippant and hard.

  Vale thinks her answer over. Did Willow lie about what Vale needed for some reason, or is this just a misunderstanding? "I can't. I need a few components, and to be near trees."

  Stolatz shrugs, and pats Willow on the shoulder. "I tried."

  "What?!" Willow yells, not expecting how loud she is now. "You were ordered to do this! I have Major Krastev's-"

  "It says I have to comply within forty-eight hours. I'll just wait, and say we couldn't due to the timing. Sorry, but I'm not risking that occultist getting free so you can have an easy fix to the situation you got yourself into. Besides, this is an upgrade, right?"

  "You can't do this..." Willow squeaks out.

  He doesn't break his stare. "It's my prison. I can do whatever I want."

  Willow slumps to the floor, covering her eyes but failing to mask the tears.

  Vale watches Willow collapse, followed by Stolatz barking something at the girl on the floor...

  Vale accepted that she will never find the anima mundi, and that all her research was more or less moot in the end. She helped people, though, as scattershot as the approach was. And right now, right in front of her, she can help one last person. She has one last card to play, for whatever it's worth... She never really liked the sound of her own voice, anyway.

  She bites her cheek hard enough to cut through the flesh, ignoring the pain, and rapidly speaks an incantation with flowing blood on her tongue. "I bequeath the curse I wrought upon a different head, that of the man before me, Stolatz."

  "...what?" Stolatz asks, his voice cracking.

  Both he and Willow start changing, as Vale is immediately gagged and thrown to the ground. She was hiding the fact that she could curse people with words and blood alone, an ancient art that's largely lost to the modern day. She kept it secret out of a likely justified fear they'd cut out her tongue, or worse. Vale smiles to herself as she watches Willow's tears turn into relieved sobs. It was worth her tongue, she figures.

  Stolatz now has the curse, though, which is deeply upsetting to everyone involved.

  Stolatz did not want to be a woman, as expected. This was the only way Vale could think of to actually purge the curse: move it from Willow to Stolatz, since in her experience, he would be willing to facilitate and expedite everything needed if it was for his own self interest.

  He even borrowed a Counter-Magic helicopter to look for a site. It's louder than she expected, and the view is giving her serious vertigo... two years in a small room also made it hard for her eyes to focus on anything more than ten feet away or so. She'll have to relearn that... well, she guesses she won't. Not like she's out here for any longer than she has to be.

  Once they land, Vale takes a few seconds to pause and feel the sun on her face. It's everything she remembered it being, and more. A warm caress that leaves her feeling whole. It's enough to make tears start to fall down her cheeks, until Stolatz demands she get to work.

  As she starts to peel away a section of tree bark and carve into the wood beneath with a sharp stone, one of the prison guards stops her. He yanks the gag from her mouth, and points at the tree. "Tell me exactly what you're doing. That's not a magic circle."

  "It's a seal."

  "A what?"

  "A seal. You're not familiar, I take it." Vale run her hand along the half-finished symbol. "A seal is a really ornate diagram with a very specific ritual purpose, not a spell circle that's all math and angles. These are based a lot more on intent and building off of previous understanding, plus the collective unconscious and such. They're not always used for curses, but... it's usually curses. Or some forms of object enchantment. This seal, for example, is used to change the sex of anyone who does the ritual... by the way, I'm gonna need a bottle of pregnant mare urine."

  Vale is gagged again after the explanation, and gets to work, doing nearly ten hours straight of painstakingly etching the required seals with the sharpened stone, and her right hand is a mess of blisters after she finally finishes the carving on both the central stone and trees.

  As soon as she's done, Stolatz shoves the requested bottle of horse pee into Vale's hands. She points to her gag as she holds up the bottle, and Stolatz begrudgingly unties it.

  He says, "If she tries anything she's not authorized to do, kill her. No exceptions."

  The six prison guards watching her all respond with 'Affirmative' in unison. It sends a slight shiver down Vale's spine, but she collects herself and starts the ritual as floodlights pour in to keep everything well-lit even as the sun sets.

  At nearly midnight, the site is fully ready. Stolatz hesitantly walks toward the stone, and gently lays a hand on it, speaking the incantation Vale told him to. After a minute or so, he's back to being his usual male self, and immediately sprints away from the rock.

  "Disarm it, Vale," he orders.

  She nods, and disables it in the proper way: gently touching every seal on the trees. They react lightly to her touch, their faint glow falling away, until there's nothing left but the strange carvings and a vandalized stone.

  Stolatz's relief doesn't quite outweigh his anger at Vale, though.

  Vale absently prods at the swollen wound in her mouth with her tongue, given there's not much else to do. After she got to feel the sun again last week, the room was rigged to cause one of the awful migraines if it detected her voice. Better than cutting out her tongue, at least. She looks down at her hands, the right one wrapped in a white bandage to cover the blisters beneath.

  The feeling of the sun was intoxicating. After being outside again, even for so brief a time, she's thrust right back to where she was when she first descended that elevator... It took her a year and a half to accept her situation the first time. She hopes it'll be shorter now. All she can do now is picture it, and escape into a fantasy. Maybe it'll rain, or maybe she'll find a nice girl who-

  "Face the back wall," the familiar voice line plays, cutting through her idle dreams. As always, Vale obeys.

  When the chime sounds, she's face to face with two people. One of them deeply unsettles her, though she doesn't quite know why.

  The first person doesn't unsettle her at all, though, quite the opposite. He's a stern looking white man, like most people she sees, around Stolatz's age. Curiously, he's in a military uniform with a pair of shimmering bifocals that catch her interest. She's certain that's a magic detection enchantment, and a very high grade one at that. Impressively rare... but why is Counter-Magic brass here?

  The second one, in stark contrast to the first, makes her skin crawl just from looking at him. He's dark skinned, wearing a nice business suit, but what unsettles her are the man's tattoos. The seem to adorn much more of his body that he's showing, judging by them peeking out from the neckline. The tattoos are alchemical symbols, which alone wouldn't pique Vale's interest, as it's pretty common theme for tattoos. The ones that cover the man's skin seem a little too intentional, though. Vale sees the symbols for sulphur and mercury mark his left, while the symbol for salt is on his right. A strangely functional choice, given how boring the symbol for salt is. Not to mention, they're so heavily stylized that they almost resemble sigils...

  Alchemy is largely forgotten in the modern era, since turning lead into gold is simply not worth the effort and risk for most people, if it even works. All the healing effects are outmatched by modern medicine, too. Now, it's an expensive hobby for someone with a lot of free time, or a starting point for people like Vale who seek out fundamental rules or facets of nature. Or, Vale supposes, someone more than a hundred years old.

  There's also something in his eyes that she can't place. Whatever it is, though, she's uncomfortable with it.

  The military man smiles, and offers a handshake. "Good morning, Ch-"

  She rapidly shakes it with her bandaged hand, so as to cut him off. "Vale. Just Vale."

  She braces for the migraine, since it would hurt less than what she interrupted, but it doesn't arrive.

  The tattooed man must have noticed Vale's concern, and raises an amused eyebrow at her. "You're allowed to speak, for now. This is Major Krastev of Counter-Magic. I am the MBR Director of California. I've come a long way to see you, Vale."

  She nods, leaning back on the far wall. Of course the creepy guy needs help with the occult.

  The major takes over for the Director. "The Director has been looking at the charges that landed you in here, and I must say, I was also concerned when he showed me. Necromancy, making cursed ritual sites, and hexing. That's quite a broad scope."

  "Yes, sir."

  "I'd like to go over all three with you, to satisfy my curiosity. What kind of necromancy were you up to?"

  "Divination through channeling spirits, casting bones, that kind of thing. The only thing I ever reanimated was a mouse, which I promptly re-killed once I was convinced the grimoire held actual knowledge."

  "Hexing?"

  "Yes... that one I don't have an excuse for. I used it in self-defense, but I could have theoretically used a sigil or spell of some kind."

  "How about these 'cursed ritual sites'?" the major asks, clearly skeptical of the wording used.

  "I know a lot of rituals and curses, and used some to help people. I'm not ashamed of it."

  "I don't see how cursing someone could help them."

  "One man's curse is another man's blessing... Take the one that was just destroyed in Nebraska. A lot of people made a pilgrimage there to have their sex inverted. For them, it-"

  "I get it. You know, you don't show a lot of remorse."

  Vale nods again, her head turning to the side. She fully expects these two to string her along with false promises of potential leniency, have her work for them, and then maybe shave off two weeks of her sentence. No reason to hide the truth. "I don't regret helping people, but I'd definitely have done things differently if I could go back and try again... I wish I didn't hex that guy. I wish I put better safeguards on the ritual sites. I regret using necromancy altogether, since it's not right to bind a spirit. Left a bad taste in my mouth. I regret a lot, but I don't regret changing people's lives for the better."

  "Mhmm. Good meeting you, but I have to get going. All yours, Director." The major taps the tattooed man twice on the shoulder before exiting the room, in clear view of Vale. She's never actually seen the door open or close from this far away before... that just adds to the uncanny tension in the room.

  The director takes the one chair in the room, and sits on it. "I've taken an interest in you, Vale. You've touched on nearly every branch of magic there is. Why?"

  "In search of the world's soul."

  "That's an objective, not a reason. Why do you want to find it?"

  She hesitates, and answers with, "My reasons are my own."

  "I see. I've heard you can hex people with just your voice."

  "And my blood... but yes, I know some blood incantations."

  "Fascinating. That's something I haven't seen in a very long time."

  "Sir..." Vale wishes she had more space to back up into, instead of being only five feet away from the Director. This guy looks like he's thirty or forty, and he's saying he's seen verbal blood hexes before? That art was largely lost decades upon decades ago... Something's very wrong here.

  His eyes narrow. "Well, if you have an affinity for the occult, I'd like to ask you something. Are you familiar with a geas?"

  "Cursed contract that binds two willing parties, with a repercussion if they break it. I... I know how to make them."

  He nods in thought, but not in acknowledgement. "I'd like to enter into a geas with you."

  Probably to stop her from saying any more fully verbal hexes. She figured it was coming sooner or later... but a geas? "That's not the kind of thing an MBR Director should be asking for. They're illegal."

  He smirks slightly, and checks his watch. "Just hear my offer, alright? I won't bury the lede: do you want out?"

  Vale really wishes she could take another step back now. "No, sir, I like being alive. If I wanted to kill myself, I-"

  "Not what I meant. I mean out of Magimax."

  "...oh." He's joking, right? But what's the angle here? All this talk of geas and the occult, all for what? Maybe this is a test of some kind, and if she answers incorrectly, she could be thrust into even worse conditions.

  "I know what you're thinking. Yes, I do have the authority. That's what Krastev just okayed. You're a largely non-violent offender, Magimax is at Counter-Magic's discretion, and I think two years down here is plenty enough punishment. Don't you?"

  Vale's brain goes numb. She can't think. All she can do is picture the sky. She could have that again. She could have it every day, even. She could have the smell of grass, and not just what faint traces cling to sweaty soldiers who demand she decrypt something. She could have rain falling down on her, not just pretending in her biweekly cold shower... "Yeah... Yes. Yes sir."

  "Good, good. Here's the deal. I'm sure you've noticed an uptick in the number of people coming to you for help recently, correct?"

  "Yes. Sir. Yes sir."

  "Lot of occult out there recently, no one's really sure why. And wouldn't you know it, there's a dangerous lack of people who know enough about the occult to, for example, not touch the rock that turns you into a man. It seems that making research illegal leaves people unable to counter the subject of that research. I won't hide the fact I'm familiar with some curses, but you... you're a treasure trove of knowledge. MBR and Counter-Magic are setting up joint ops to deal with the occult threat, and I'd like you there. You'd be reporting to Krastev. I simply have an eye for talent. Are you still interested?"

  Vale's neck starts to hurt from the speed at which she's nodding. "Yes. I'm incredibly interested. Whatever you need. I'll work eighteen hour days if I have to."

  "I like the attitude. Alright, let me lay out the terms. On your end, I promise you... let's call it parole. You work for us, you don't stay in prison. You're free to walk anywhere as you see fit, so long as you don't miss work. And this isn't a temporary measure. Even after the uptick is dealt with, you can stay with Counter-Magic, assuming you don't fuck it up. How's that sound?"

  She takes a while to answer, her mind now obsessed with the idea of sleeping under a blanket again. "It sounds really, really good."

  "Great. In return, you won't try and expose me for my occult knowledge, you won't try to escape, you won't intentionally sabotage any of our operations, and you'll work with your supervisor."

  The Director holds out his left hand, a previously invisible symbol now alight in his palm. It's a form of geas, definitely, but it looks like it was made by someone unfamiliar with human spellcasting. It's too angular, interlaced with alchemical symbols that seemingly serve no real function, and was clearly made with ill intentions.

  Vale firmly shakes his hand, regardless. She'd die for just one more look at a sunrise... "Wait," she says, "did you say supervisor earlier?"

  "Mhmm. Need to have someone watching you. She'll have the little migraine button too, just in case."

  "That's fine, that's more than fine."

  "Even if it wasn't, you already agreed. Krastev will be back in a few days. We have to iron out some paperwork to keep your parole above board, okay?"

  "Perfectly okay. I've been waiting this long, right?"

  Krastev hesitantly descends the elevator, standing next to a soldier who's fairly average in all respects. It's the same one that occultist removed the curse from... He wonders what the Director is scheming. Krastev's not naive; he's fully aware there's more going on than the old scratch is putting out there.

  Still, this occult issue has to be resolved, and he does have a point about Counter-Magic being unable to adequately defend against most occult magic. Having someone like Ch- no, having someone like Vale is a godsend.

  She's a schemer too, though. She has those same eyes that the Director has.

  Eyes that've seen too much to ever stop looking.