A Curse Upon Thee 2-36

“My point is…” Emma’s sigh came loud over his shoulder as he kept working. “Even if we do get out of here…”

Finn grunted. “When…”

It was a when, not if.

The finger trick was working and had been for a few solid minutes.

That was the good news.

“Fine. When we get out of here, we don’t even know which direction to go in.” The sheriff huffed loud again. “That’s the whole point.”

“Emma…”

“Cora has the compass at least, and the ashes on top of that.” Emma didn’t even pause to let Mary Margaret speak, the woman too caught up in her own point to slow down. “We’ve got nothing. Might as well walk two days in the wrong direction.”

Emma’s mother let out a sigh of her own. “No, they’re not.”

Unfortunately, the bad news was pretty much everything else about it.

He was down at the corner of the cage, pointer finger pressed right against the black iron. Off the tip of it, his nail burned bright with a needle of red — thin, tight and hissing. Where his finger lined the metal, it began to weep.

Slow.

Very slow.

Stupid slow.

“What do you mean?”

“What I mean, Emma, is that there’s only one place in this realm with renewal magic strong enough to restore the power in that cupboard. Lake Nostos.” Snow’s feet paced across the flagstones behind him in a slow back and forth. “Cora’ll go there. It’s at most an hour away on foot.”

"Oh, so just happens to be barely an hour from the place she left us to starve in." Emma had stopped pacing a while ago, the woman leaning against the other end of the cage from where Finn knelt, one hand around the grip of the glowing sword. "Mom, hate to say this but I feel like you're guessing."

"Sweetheart, I'm remembering. There's a difference."

"There is?"

Orange dripped down in beads behind his finger, a groove maybe a nickel wide across a large chunk of the cage after ten solid minutes of this. All this time holding the red needle steady and the sick little heartbeats kept thumping agains the iron. 

His hand shook, Cursed Energy wobbling as he did its best to keep the stream no thicker than the end of a shoelace. He had no other choice, no other option than to keep it that thin, even when compressing it this tight was like trying to hold a full-pressure water hose closed with just his finger and thumb alone. Letting up for even a second meant the iron just sucked up the wider flame the same way it just drank in his punches. The pressure wanted out, juryoku almost desperate to bloom back into a normal fist of flame.

Every second he kept it narrow was another line of sweat that ran down his forehead and soaked his bandages even worse.

And if that wasn't bad enough, the argument was still going on behind him.

“Okay…” Emma breathed out. “And let’s say the lake dried up sometime in the last three or so decades? What do we do then? We walk an hour to stand in a hole?”

“Emma, the lake’s already dry.”

“...Th-then what’s even the—why?”

“Magic.”

A long low sigh trailed from the blonde bondswoman. “...goddamnit.”

He would’ve laughed if laughing didn’t cost him focus and strain his breath. Sweat had already glued a rope of hair to his cheek and he couldn’t spare a hand to remove it, not with five fingers gripping tight to another wrist to keep it as steady as possible. His hand was already approaching the other side of warm, burns itching tighter the longer he kept the flow going. 

On top of that, his reserves were draining out of him in a slow bleed, a trickle going down the constraint drain that was his finger.

So… distraction time.

Because there was at least one little thing he’d been chewing on, something else he’d bothered to give attention to over the last ten minutes as it niggled in the back of his mind like a loose tooth.

The fact that this bead on his fingertip — the cutting stream of red — was new.

Nobody else in the stone box knew that of course, because all they saw was just him flaring up another part of his body. They’d seen him light his feet and hands on fire plenty so it’s not like a finger should have been any harder, right?

Wrong.

Because Extensions didn’t work like that.

To gain anything except the Lapse of a technique, it came about two ways; either by instinct or something you created yourself.

And this little trick was definitely the second. 

Angry Ember had launched free from him in Aurora’s dream no different from how a sneeze came out when it had to. It worked, sure, but Finn couldn’t have explained how he did it any more than he could explain said sneeze in the first place.

Standing in a heart-cage with nothing but time and injuries as he punched and roared and made threats, he'd thought about how his Lapse moved through his hands, pushed his brain hard to figure out shape and compression and output just the way Kyoto High was always on his ass to think.

Making all that theory practical had been a bigger move than he’d realized. Utahime-sensei would've fallen off her shrine steps if she ever witnessed it and he honestly couldn’t blame her if she did.

Hell, he could barely believe it; a real Extension Technique on his own, drawn up in his own head first like a play on a whiteboard.

It needed a name, though.

Unfortunately, every single one he'd come up with so far had been doo-doo garbage dogwater.

Flame Finger? No. 

God, no. Absolutely not, that was something off a menu at a cheap wing spot.

Fire Cutter was… accurate. 

Boring, though, considering it sounded more like a landscaping company in California than anything else. Burn Line? Torch Point? Red Needle?

No, no, and no… 

The closest Finn figured he’d gotten to something good was Hot Knife, and he’d been muttering that one under his breath for the last thirty seconds. Probably not, though.

“An hour on foot.” Mulan stepped forward, arms crossed as she nearly — nearly — leaned back against the cage bars before holding herself straight. “For us. Cora does not simply walk, though. The witch has her smoke travel.”

“Yes, but Mal and Hook don’t.” Snow’s answer came with no hesitation, the queen’s voice still strong. “She also has to prepare the ritual and those are never quick.”

"Guys." Emma leaned her head back against the bars. "Maybe we can focus on getting out of this evil cage first before we make plans that might never go anywhere. Like us."

“I’m…” Finn grunted again. “Working on it.”

"You’ve been drawing on the bars with your finger for fifteen minutes, Finn."

"Cutting." Finn didn't look up, the groove most of the way through on several bars; line molten and red as he kept dragging the seam. "The word you want is cutting.”

"My mistake, Picasso." From the sound of her voice, he really doubted that by a lot. "... you know what, I’m just stressed. I’m sorry, Finn.”

“No problem.” The sorcerer forced the words out, eyes still aimed forward as sweat poured down his face. “We’re all… all struggling here.”

"Which is why we need to go after her." Snow’s footsteps approached the bars, stopping just behind him. "We have tracking skills. We have weapons. We have Finn."

"Touched by the confidence." Finn grunted the words out again. "Feeling all the warmth right now." And that was only half a joke, too, considering his CT literally burned him the longer he used it.

Hellfire Drill?

No, that was… that was just trying too hard.

Cinder Snap? No — Kind of a candle scent, really. Almost halfway to a cookie. Ginger snaps are cookies, right?

Ember Fang sounded… edgy as hell. Almost like some knockoff energy drink. Scorch Line sounded like what happened when you got a sunburn while wearing a zipper. Man, why’s naming things so hard? Finn clicked his tongue as he tried to deliberate on something this momentous, the only witnesses being four women arguing about a dead lake. Just keep it simple.

"Look, just saying, if we're wrong about the lake, we've burned our onl-"

"Emma, we are not wrong."

"You keep saying we."

"Because it is we. Even if you can barely accept me as your mother, I am still your m-"

"Can everyone please…" Aurora finally spoke up, the princess making herself heard with a tight strained voice. "Please. He is working."

She really is a princess. Finn nodded to himself as he went back to both jobs, cutting as important as the naming.

Cinder Blade? Keep it honest.

Cinder Line? Let the sound do half the w—

Cinder Edge.

"So, when we find her, then what? Just a hundred-percent serious now.” Emma clicked her tongue. “We caught her off-guard exactly never. She had Hook in her pocket the whole time and she had…”

“Emma…”

“No, Mary Margaret. She had that little fairy girl sleep in our camp for almost three days, and I just bought it. I bought all of it."

"Emma, we all did."

"Yeah, well, you're not the one with the lie detector that apparently doesn't work on fairies, Mary Margaret. That was my thing, the one thing I trusted."

“...you mean, you trusted yourself.” Snow’s voice softened. “And only yourself.”

“...maybe.”

"Then we trust in one another instead. Cora is a being of evil, more heartless than any of her victims.” Snow’s steps padded forward. “A witch of her caliber thrives on people standing alone and apart. It is how she has always won. We go together, we watch each other’s backs, and when the moment comes…” The queen breathed in. “We do not hesitate when she does."

“Hesitate.” He could almost hear Emma’s eyebrow touch her forehead. "Queen Kali Ma really doesn't seem like the hesitating type."

"No, Cora is just like her daughter. Both live for an audience. Her speeches will buy us bare seconds but we will make them count."

Old lady does love to monologue. Finn had to nod at that, that simple fact undeniable. Well, dearie this, foolish boy that. Snow sounded pretty on point and he was sure that if yapping was a window, they'd get a window.

The last bar came free, the twelfth cut through with a simple soft give. Finally.

Palms flat on the ground, Finn leaned back on his hands, feet raised up in front of him. With a simple kick, the whole cut section of severed iron came away in one piece. Heavy and hot at the seams, the panel tore loose from glowing hinges and fell face-first onto the stone loud and hard enough to bounce.

Four heads snapped around.

"Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to interrupt." He stood up through ast the iron echoed out through the stone hall, shaking his half-numb and smoking hand out at the wrist. With a snort, he stepped out into open air. "I was just busy getting us the fuck out."

Emma's sword was already free of the scabbard before the echo finished, white light up the blade and her feet set. Snow had her bow off her shoulder, an arrow already shimmering on the string. 

"Jesus, Finn." Emma let the sword drop back into the sheath, leather hiding the sheen. "Maybe a little more warning next time.”

"I did warn you.” He raised an eyebrow. “Fifteen minutes of warning. My finger was on fire, Emma."

"...fair.” Emma pulled in a breath, the woman stepping forward with a hand near the still glowing edges. “How’s the hand, by the way?”

"I’ll live." Pins and needles stung all the way through as he flexed it, fingertip skin gone shiny and a little waxy but his tank was decent enough. Nothing to complain about. "We hitting Lake Nachos, right? I heard maybe thirty percent of what you guys were on about."

"Nostos." Snow nodded back at him. "It’s just up north from here. If we move fast, we c—”

“Wait.”

Everyone froze all at once, four heads turning as Aurora stood up with hands folded tight together in front of her. “You must go without me. I will remain here.”

Mulan blinked at the princess. “Aurora…”

"No, I am no fighter and I have spent our travels being carried and guarded. This is no falsehood, Mulan.” Aurora wore a sad smile as she shook her head. “All I have done is slowed our travels and against Cora, you will need every hand. I would only be a h— No. I will not be the reason we fail or one of you falls.”

“Then I stay by your side.” Mulan’s boots planted themselves firmly, shoulders squared toward Aurora. “You will not remain unprotected and alone in the den of a witch.”

"Mulan, I beg of you…” That smile only got sadder, hands stilling on her silks. “Please do not have me proclaim my uselesness again. I am asking you to help them. I… please. Consider it my command, if the asking is not enough for you.”

Finn stood there quiet, no different from Emma and Snow as the warrior stared the princess in the eyes for nearly ten full seconds.

“You touch nothing of hers, you understand? If anything approaches, you hide and you keep hiding.” Mulan’s words were met with a teary nod. “I will return for you.”

“I know you will.”

“I will return, Aurora.”

“Mulan…” A pale hand met Mulan’s armored shoulder. “I heard you the first time.”

"Anything comes sniffing around, Princess, you scream for help.” Finn tapped his own ear, a smile offered to Aurora as she fought tears back. “I’ll hear it.

"From an hour away?"

"...okay, scream in like the first fifteen minutes, then."

"Ser Finn."

"Princess Rory."

“I apologize for ever doubting you. A sorcerer and a knight, you are.”

Finn tilted his head. “...not sure if number two is true, but I’ll take it.”

"And humble, too. I wish you the best of luck." Still smiling with wet eyes, Aurora looked at the four of them from the mouth of a cage that couldn't hold anyone now, back straight as she stood small against dark iron. "All of you. I know you will find your way home."

A white-toothed grin split his face. “Here’s hoping.”

– o – o – o – o – o – o – o –

Extension Course – 200 GP
Create a proper Extension Technique on your own.

Ultimate Ninja Style – 50 CP
Naruto | Illusion
No, this isn’t some overpowered fighting style. What this does is provide a boost in cosmetic flexibility to your techniques. Simply stated, your techniques are much more stylish and cooler-looking than normal, though no more or less powerful than normal. This effect can be spread to teammates, allowing team attacks to benefit from the same aesthetic boost. This can be toggled on and off freely.

Grimoire Points: 650