“Now, let’s get that nasty curse under control!” Maven said with a determined clench of her fist.

Confident that she had a hope of separating Ela from the curse, at least temporarily, Maven decided that this was the time to go all out. Abandoning her use of tiny threads to restrain the occasional writhing tentacle or two (hundred), Maven just poured an endless flood of divine power onto it and brute forced a solution. Rather than rely on some complicated trick, Maven just wrapped up the pesky curse like a Christmas ham and bound it into utter helplessness.

“Hehehe, when in doubt, don’t overthink it! Simple is always best.” Maven said with an impertinent grin.

“Good job!” Kannon cheered as she flitted around happily, enjoying the show with the pure heart of a child.

“Now that you have the curse locked down, just drag that puppy out of there!” Henna advised, pumping her fist in a subdued manner at Maven’s success so as not to distract her.

Acting on Henna’s words, Maven attached a thick rope to her trapped prey and yanked on it with all her strength as she attempted to drag it out of Ela.

“Urgggg… it’s stuck!” Maven said with a grunt, somehow sweating in exertion despite not having moved her body. “The dang thing won’t budge, not unless I’m willing to pull out pieces of Ela’s soul along with it. How should I get this thing out of here? I don’t want to risk any damage, not here in the core of Ela’s soul.”

“Hmmmmm,” Henna said as she thoughtfully tapped her chin. “You really can’t just pop it out even after wrapping it up so tightly? It must have dug its hooks in quite deeply…”

“My Lady…… If you can’t take the whole thing out at once, why not try removing it one piece at a time? You’ve already proven that the curse can be cut, after all.” Shayna said, doing her best to be helpful to her lady.

“Not a bad idea,” Maven said with a soft smile, grateful towards her companions for their calming presence and helpful advice. If they weren’t there to keep her grounded and focused, Maven was sure she’d be frantic and useless, if she could even survive her first battle. “Now let’s try it out!”

Using an ultra-thin thread of divine power, Maven tried to cut through the main body of the curse with the same clean swipe that worked for the tendrils. Unfortunately, nothing was ever quite worked out the way things Maven expected. When her thread made contact with the enormous curse, it felt like she was attempting to slice through an endless collection of springy, self-repairing silk fibers that fought her every step of the way. The clean feeling of smoothly slicing through was nowhere to be found.

After attempting a few powerful swipes, Maven turned to her companions and said, “There’s no way I’ll be able to reduce the curse by any significant amount any time soon. It’s quite resilient… possibly due to the sheer concentration of divine power combining itself with a piece of a god’s soul.”

“So it would be difficult to easily cut the whole thing to ribbons, huh… but can you try to cut off at least a small piece of the curse? Doesn’t matter how small, as long as you can get a piece off. After all, even if it’s just a drop at a time, you’ll eventually you’ll eventually drain the ocean given enough time.”

Fae encouraged Maven with her ever-gentle voice. No matter the obstacle, the mature priestess was sure that her little goddess would be able to overcome it.

Per her companions advice, Maven began experimenting on the curse. Using a few dozen threads, she tried cutting out sections of various sizes - ranging from the size of a baseball all the way to the size of a football field.

It was slow, backbreaking work, requiring endless sawing and infinitely more power than a simple slice, but Maven did eventually succeed at breaking off a few small chunks.

Compared the planetary scale at play, it really was just a drop in the bucket. Even so, Maven was heartened by her success at chipping away at Kurga’s power

“Yes! I did it! Looks like I can only take the curse down one boulder-sized chunk per thread, with a limit of about a dozen threads at a time, but at least we know my current limit. I can control more, but I’ve gotta limit it to twelve to make sure they all succeed.”

After the curse fragments were removed from the whole, they underwent a wondrous change. Losing the guidance of Kurga’s soul fragment, they were just bundles of ownerless curse energy. And when those divinity fragments made contact with Maven’s unique divine power, it merged with the threads that held them.

“Huh?” Maven said, dumbfounded at the sensation she just experienced.

“What’s wrong?”

“Well… I have to be mistaken here, but it feels almost like I just received a slice of Kurga’s divine power and authority. Feels just like the time you guys granted me your power… Just much smaller in scale. Not enough give me actual power over curses or anything, but who knows what’ll happen when Ela’s curse is completely taken care of. Maybe I’ll get authority over curses?” Maven continued, her head titling cutely to the side as she pondered this curious turn of events.

“Wow! So you’re telling me you’ll end up stealing Kurga’s divine blessing? That’s awesome!” Kannon said, doing a little jig in her excitement.

“What about Ela? If you can seal off the curse, she should be waking up soon… but if you need to absorb the curse one piece at a time, we’ll probably have to keep her around for awhile.” Henna added, warning Maven that if the curse couldn’t be resolved quickly, Ela would be forced to accompany them. She doubted Maven would really mind, judging by the furtive glances and blushes the two sent each other, but it was better to be upfront about these things.

“It would be difficult to do anything with my current level of power and technique…” Maven said with regretful shake of her head. “I think we’ll have to take her with us and just settle for keeping the curse under lock and key while I steadily nibble away at it.”

Maven felt bad for making decisions for Ela while she was unconscious, but it was the only option. You needed divinity to deal with the curse and the only three people in all of Avalon who had it and were actually willing to help were all in Maven’s party.

“Uggh… wh-what happened? Maven?” A hoarse voice drifted through the air, interrupting the four’s discussion.

As if sensing the major life decisions that had just been made for her, Ela finally woke from her slumber.