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.
------
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.
----------
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.
She was a shadow upon the Curse, and it wanted to take her into the Dark.
He was a shadow, too. Of course he could hold onto her...
To defeat the Curse, she had to embrace the Light, and leave behind only shadows...
----------
"She understands," Mama Greta said, her dark glasses watching the swirl of magic change suddenly.
"Yes," Hazé agreed, as the moonfire began to shimmer and gather, and what was a wild conflict now became some different.
It became a hunt.
From the fortress of her right hand and the shadow chi there, the moonfire began to move, ripping, tearing, domineering, dominating. It began to separate Curse from Persona, let the latter fall back to the soul, leaving the former with nothing anchoring it.
And it drew the shadow chi behind it, dim tendrils of grey that sealed away any attempt by the dark to reclaim what it had lost.
Up that arm, down the side of her chest, dripping darkness. Down her right leg, forcing umbral worms out her soles and feet; shitting and pissing out vile remnants as it crossed over her guts to her left leg and chased the darkness out of that leg.
Up to her left arm, nails discoloring there, until she half-flipped over, her hand slapping into Scut's as he released his and they came together like magnets, the air rippling with spiritual howls as the Curse was pushed from two fronts.
The moonfire spun up her left arm, and drove up her neck and throat. Foul gasses and black slime spewed out her mouth, eyes, ears, and nose, and she gagged and choked in horror and pain. Her whole body spasmed as her brain was cleansed, the visions raging through her and promising her godhood and damnation, that it was over and she'd won and would have her power and be the greatest of Sylune's servants...
Shadows on her hands told her of the lie, and she screamed as the moonfire closed in from all directions on her heart.
More vile stuff, vomit and bile from her stomach, choking fumes from her mouth, umbilical fluids from her navel, waste from her guts and kidneys, all forced out of her as she convulsed, heart stopping, the Curse closing in a fist around that organ as veins popped out all over her body, burning white, and suddenly surged forwards, pushing, pushing against throbbing darkness trying to stream out of her heart, locking her down...
Her chest split open, clean as a surgeon's cut, her ribs cracked and opened more cleanly than a bonesaw. With an eerie, wailing howl, the Curse was forced out with the spray of blood, a red deeper then blackness spewing into the air.
The moonfire and shadows came together, severed that last invisible tendril. The Curse floated free.
Hazé and Mama turned around, and as Aru tipped the horizon, twilight turned, and the King of Suns rose as the Silver Queen descended into someone else's starry sky.
The Curse had no anchor, no shelter.
The light of the King of Suns burned through the dawn, the Great Renewal of a new day. Shadows flew between the trees, wind danced, and like a hurricane, the dawn swept past them all, burning that unanchored Curse away to nothing before The Light.
-----
Scut caught her as she fell, bloody and stinking of foul things, and at least ten pounds lighter then she had been. Bones were showing through her skin, her robes torn, ripped, burned, soiled.
Oh, and her brown hair was rapidly changing to deep green locks.
Shadows rose where he clasped her skin. He turned desperately, just as Hazé's hand came down, flaring with gentle magic that rolled across Verd like waves of clouds.
The gaping cut in her chest sealed up smoothly, filth wiped away instantly, and her robe began to repair itself... partially, as some of the stains and the burns didn't go away, frayed and discolored in a way magic couldn't fix.
Just like her.
Verd's eyes opened, and her hands crossed to hold those of Scut, kneeling and still holding onto her.
"It's gone," she said, her voice hoarse and strained, and holding a great sadness under the firm strength. Her eyes found Hazé's.
"Yes," Hazé said sadly. The Curse was the source of the magic of the Hags. To lose the Curse meant to turn away that power.
Verd was now Forsaken. For a hagchild to embrace magic meant becoming a Hag. To deny that doom was to deny and let go of the power, of the magic, of the visions the Curse had told her she could accomplish with her power.
She would never be a Witch of Sylune now.
"Are there... are there others like me?" Verd asked, and everyone looked at Hazé inquiringly.
Hazé nodded shortly. "The Void Brother told me of two others he knows of."
"Will Scut be able to help them?" she asked, and Hazé sighed.
"No. The child of a shellycoat needs fire, and a stormcrone, wind or lightning." Her eyes turned to the lightening horizon where Sylune had disappeared. "But the touch of a sister can help."
Verd's green eyes burned, and she clutched Scut's hands tighter. "I won't let them go, either!" she promised.