"I give you this truth: I know of the cancer that afflicts your party, and I am both able and willing to assist in its removal." Zhytln paused a beat, perhaps to gage our reactions, perhaps to let us interrupt if we wished. Honestly, her claim wasn't much of a surprise. She'd clearly had some way of listening in on our meet-and-greet with the children of Knwharfhelm, and she had every incentive to claim that she could cure us. "This I ask of you: how long do you plan to stay in Knwharfhelm for?"

"Ha. When's the last time that's happened?" Sansen muttered to himself, chuckling. His left eye was glowing with futuresight once more; whatever he was seeing, it wasn't the same as everyone else in the room.

The remaining four of us glanced at each other uneasily, wondering who would speak first, before I said, "At the very least, until there's nothing trying to kill or mutilate us."

"I offer you this truth," Lucet suddenly spoke up. "We come as refugees from the Silent Peaks, where kidnapped soldiers are mind-wiped back into their childhood and our emotions were fuel cells for weapons of war. Given our past experiences, you can understand why we'd be a tad tetchy about some uppity witch throwing mind magic around."

Zhytln's lips pressed together, but she said nothing. Meloai asked our question—perhaps not the question I would have asked, but an important one nonetheless if there was to be any possibility of peace with Zhytln.

"This I ask of you: why are you spreading living memories across Knwharfhelm?"

"Great amounts of human intelligence go untapped every night, when the citizens of Knwharfhelm sleep and waste their computing power on creating dreams that they will neither remember nor use. In order to solve several complex problems in the physical sciences, I have divided up the workload among every citizen in Knwharfhelm and set their subconscious minds to finding solutions while they sleep."

Even Sansen was staring at her in bafflement by the time she was done. Whether through soulsight or plain old common sense, she seemed to tell we were baffled, because she added, "I offer you this truth: if you wish to verify this fact, you may ask any citizen of Knwharfhelm what they dream of, or monitor their soulspaces while they sleep. Unless they are one of the few that sheer chance has not allowed me to modify, your findings will corroborate my story."

Well, fuck. I wasn't sure if that was better or worse or just plain fundamentally different from the abominations that the Silent Peaks had been institutionalizing as a part of their war machine.

"This I ask of you," Zhytln continued. "What can I do to prove to you that I am unlike the witches in the Silent Peaks who you have encountered in the past?"

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Before I could formulate a response, Lucet said, "Nothing. Your 'modifications' to people's minds were rewriting our memories to make us think we were happy when we really, really weren't. I don't care what 'complex problems' you're solving. You can't justify that."

"I offer you this truth," Jiaola suddenly added. "I remember Knwharfhelm before you arrived. And I talked to the latest generation of Knwharfhelm's children who are hated and feared for being who they are. Nothing has changed. Attempting to trick people into joy when they could get disowned or killed or worse at any moment is cruel at best and sadistic at worst."

Neither her expression nor her inscrutable, screaming soul gave any indication that Zhytln was anything but perfectly calm in the face of Lucet and Jiaola's accusations.

"This I ask of you," Meloai said. "Why do your living memories induce happiness in their hosts? What relation does that have to your stated goal of... computing?"

Her answer was swift—perhaps she'd been expecting that question. "My actions are not common knowledge, but are not kept secret either. People are less likely to attempt to destroy or alter the network of living memories if doing so would remove a source of happiness for them."

I could see where she was coming from, but unfortunately she'd happened to run into the five worst people in the world for that to work on. Perhaps she caught on to how Lucet scowled and I flinched, because she changed tactics.

"I offer you this truth," Zhytln said. "I know your memories of your time at the Silent Peaks weigh on you. There is nobody in this city who is more well-equipped to handle such traumas than me. This I ask of you: do you have any memories you would rather forget?"

And oh, there were so many. Shrinking into the corner while a witch of frost shattered our front door like cheap glass. The corpse of one of the goblins who'd taken me in when I was lost, thrown on a dissection table by Aimes as an educational prop. The blind bloodlust of my classmates as they cheered on our battlechoirs as they massacred hundreds.

"Never," Lucet snapped.

The insane, dripping grin of the eldritch thing my clasmate had become. The last moments of uncountable soldiers in a frozen hellscape battleground, clinging to my soul like so many barnacles. The squelch and splash of it when I crushed Iola's flesh beneath my boot.

"I offer you this truth: none of us are willing to feed you our memories for whatever ultimate goal you have planned," Meloai said.

The sickly wash of alien magics as Iola's death curse doomed us all. The hopeless, bleak smile of Sansen as he beheld a future in which his body failed organ by organ, time and time again. The looming blade of the knowledge that there was every chance I would meet the same fate.

My head snapped up, and I met Zhytln's eyes. Sansen's lips quirked in a bittersweet smile.

"This I ask of you," I said. "Your claim to be able to remove memories. What is the cost?"

Lucet whirled and Meloai stiffened, and I couldn't meet their gaze without the glass in my soul shattering.

"I charge nothing more than the memories themselves," Zhytln informed me.

It wouldn't be the first devil's deal I'd taken. It wouldn't even be the worst.

"That's enough," Lucet snarled. "Get out of here, Zhytln."

The woman nodded in acknowledgement, turning her back on us and leaving without a fight.

Why would she?

She already had what she needed.