The Quiet Ever After

Fourth String - 2

During their system issues last week, Nina suspected. She eyed the computers curiously but didn't have a good moment to check if they were cursed. Too many prying eyes, too many customers.

Yet she could sense something. Earthly technology varied wildly from that which operated on the Starlit Plane. Those ran entirely on the natural energies infused into every single thing to be found in that realm. Earth technology had far more metals involved with properly conducting its power sources. Normally, thus, Nina didn't sense anything from it.

Why, then, had she been constantly bothered as if there were a tiny bug flitting about her whenever she strolled by the computers?

She promised herself that she'd inspect whatever at the first sign of suspicions. That she'd been right didn't bring any amount of joy. It brought anger and confusion.

The issue was in how one question of this mystery answered the other: Who would bother cursing the store? Someone who wanted to get to Nina.

In case whoever, or whatever, laid the curse on the store still lurked about, Nina went about the rest of the work day as if it were a normal one. She engaged customers with a smile without a care for the outside world. She did her duties diligently. She jabbed and joked with the others about the upcoming results from Monday Night Football and how that'd impact the fantasy league.

All so that, when she got home, she could focus. She brought the box of chocolate home, saying that Axel could use it in his new obsession with making croissants. In reality, it was perfect study material, evidence for a crime.

Per a typical Monday evening, Axel was out in the front tending to the lawn. This time, he had some of the tools Geoff bestowed on him. The gardens were beautiful and the new flower from Geoff bloomed well.

Nina exited the car in a hurry.

"What's in the box?" Axel asked from the other side of the lawn.

"Cursed chocolate."

"Interesting." He sat up. "Like an actual curse?"

"That's what I need to find out. If you hear an explosion from the basement, get a mop."

Axel pursed his lips and nodded. Nina hurried into the basement and flung the box to the ground. It rolled on the ground but none of the chocolate came out. From the steps, Nina muttered an incantation and raised her hands up, then shot a jet of magic at the box, holding it in place.

Twin half-spheres came up from the ground and gobbled up the box, holding it in place. Nina put her hands together, then slowly separated them, creating a thin needle of radiant golden light that would blind anyone not well-versed in magic. She landed at the base of the steps as red lightning arced out of the box against the sphere.

Most of the time, a curse could be broken by counter-spelling it, finding a way to dispel the malevolence in there with a cure of some sort. Nina, in her time on Earth, also discovered that some curses weren't alive but could be killed.

Then, there were some that were immortal. The worst kinds.

She took the needle of light and stabbed it through the spheres. Red lightning blasted out of the chocolate, arcing all about the containment sphere that held remarkably well. She injected more power into the needle until it completely left her hand and fizzled into the chocolate. A red cloud burst from the box and then settled into the spheres, her magic having absorbed the curse with ease. Nina undid the containment and held up a single ball of light over her head for inspection.

Chocolate oozed out of the box in its melted state, as it should've all along. Nina nodded, tipping the box back to its normal sitting position. She waved a hand over it. No more curses.