Hand of the Goddess ✔️

Chapter 3: The Dark

Over the next few days, Nicole lives in the secret room behind the wall, content with her arrangements. Aside from the excessive dust in the room making her allergies act up, which was easily solved by opening the small window, the room was perfect. The bed was soft and there was a desk for her to write at. She uses the pen and papers she found there to keep track of the days she spent in the fortress.

At first, she struggled to use the nib pen. Unlike the pens she was used to, this pen was messier and had to be dipped into an inkpot to work. Countless ink stains dotted her sleeves, but after a good amount of practice in the room, she was writing smoothly. There was nothing else she could do to entertain herself anyway.

Getting food was the tricky part. Whenever she wanted to leave the room, she had to pull the lever to open the secret entrance. And she would only do so at night, as the maids woke up early to do their work. Their Lord had returned and the fortress had to be kept in good shape.

Sneaking around at night was a challenge. She had forgotten her way to the dining room and tripped over her feet several times in the dark. The cat had to lead her out of trouble several times. She was surprised that her blunders didn't wake the whole manor.

When she arrived at the dining room, she made a beeline for the kitchen. Tonight, she was stealing two loaves of bread, a hunk of cheese, and a bottle of milk. The food would be enough to last her a few days, sparing her some nights of wandering.

In the meantime, how was she going to find that demon? She twirls the blade in her hands, watching the light bounce off the metal. She had no clue what he looked like, only that she had to kill him to save her cat and return home. She missed her family. The sooner she found the devil, the sooner she could see them.

She leans against a wall, frustrated. Then, she hears two voices whispering on the other side. She can't make out anything being said, but her dagger begins to vibrate, responding to the voices. Her eyes widened. One of the speakers on the other side of this wall was the demon. The demon was living in this manor, in the room next to her no less.

She pulls away from the wall, her heart beating rapidly. A part of her wants to pull the lever and jump the demon on the other side of the wall, but her more cautious side told her to wait. What if the demon kills her first? Or worse, what if she stabs the wrong person?

She looks at the blade in her hands again. She needs to do this the right way so that the demon would never see it coming. And a dagger in hand with both edges of the blade sharp was far too obvious. She couldn't trust herself to make the kind of kill she wanted. If only there was a way to disguise the dagger, to carry it around in plain sight.

"No one would suspect a thing if you were a bracelet," she said, speaking to the dagger. Only a fool would fear death by jewelry.

The blade starts to glow in her hands, responding to her words. The metal collapses in her palms, melting into a shiny liquid. Then, it swirls in her hands, circling her wrist until it forms a simple silver bracelet.

She stares at it in wonder, unable to believe her eyes. Why didn't Lillian tell me about this before? And what else could the dagger turn into?

But by then, the voices behind the wall had faded. She had missed her chance to catch the demon.

Unable to sleep, she spends the rest of the night playing with the dagger, getting it to transform into all sorts of objects. But there were limits to its powers. She had to look at it directly for her command to go through. It couldn't turn into food or any living creature. And after three transformations, it overheated, unable to shift out of the current form it was in.