"...Yeah, okay, we might as well." Lucet exhaled, fists clenching and unclenching. "What's first? You getting mindfucked by Zhytln? Sansen limping off into the pier to die alone? The sinking feeling that nothing we've done has actually helped—"

"I want to get cured by Zhytln," I interrupted, soft and firm and deceptively quick like an avalanche down the Silent Peaks. "And I want you to get cured too."

Lucet stiffened. The room dimmed three shades as blood spurted out of her soul.

"I can't let you do that."

"Sansen warned us—" warned us for the last time— "that we'd fight. That it had to happen. I don't—I don't want to hurt you."

"So you're going to press me into getting operated on by some shady witch we met two days ago?"

"If that stops you from going the same way Sansen just did? Yeah."

Lucet shook her head. "I don't want to hurt you either, Cienne. You can't make me let Zhytln into my soul."

And maybe if it wasn't for Sansen's warning, I would've pressed harder. But the barely-capped well of oil in her soul would geyser if I struck one wrong stone, and so I stepped down.

"Okay." I held up my hands, pouring misty calm around me, dissolving the fear that was gushing out of her. "I'll... agree to disagree. I'll tell Zhytln you're not interested."

I turned my back on Lucet and jiggled the door.

The handle was frosted over, stuck solidly in place.

"Where are you going?" Lucet asked, her voice strained and resigned under the weight of a question she knew the answer to.

I closed my eyes.

"You can't stop me from getting cured, Lucet," I whispered. "Please. Just let me go."

The crystals of sorrow spearing cold through the door handle were the only answer I got in return.

And some part of me understood that Sansen didn't even have to be an oracle to see that this was inevitable. Lucet and I had tried talking out our positions time and time again. We understood each other—how could we not, after everything we'd been through? We just disagreed on where to proceed from here.

I just hoped she forgave me.

I grabbed the slick, transparent insecurity from my soul and hurled it into the doorframe, sprinting through a gateway into a hall of stained brick and gears. I heard Lucet curse and scramble to her feet as I left afterimages in calm behind me, collapsing the gate—

The gate's decay froze, quartz forming in the memory of a doorway, determination slowing down time around its edges. Lucet held out a hand, and multicolored paint streaked from her soul towards my feet. I had no idea what that spell was supposed to do, but I wasn't letting it touch me. I stacked coal-bricks of exhaustion into the memory of a moonlit, frosted tower; the paint-spell splashed off the memory in soulspace, while in realspace, the ceiling collapsed inwards as exhaustion magnified its weight.

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"That's enough," Lucet snapped, and a flurry of feathers blew the debris of the ceiling out of her way. Unfortunately, that meant it was barreling straight towards me—hurriedly, I repurposed my half-formed portal into the Plane of Elemental Void, stacking petrified wood above me and forming a vacuum that tugged me up and out of the way.

"You're right," I found myself saying. The Silent Academy had warned us that in a battle between witches, our words could be just as potent as our spells—draining your enemy of their most potent emotions could be the difference between life and death.

But more than that, Lucet was my best friend. Even if we'd taken the opposite conclusions from everything we'd been through, we were still bonded by it.

"This is enough," I continued. "I've had enough fighting. Enough violence. Enough death." I dropped into the Plane of Elemental Void, weaving spells of freedom around me to provide me with air. For some reason, a faint stench of rot permeated this plane, and I tried not to gag.

"I get that you're scared!" Lucet leapt through the ceiling portal after me, and though she'd expended all the freedom in her soul while blowing debris apart, she dragged atmosphere from outside with her, distorting space with arrogance wrought into armor. Our atmospheres mingled, carrying her voice. "I understand that you don't want to die. But you're making a worse mistake by trusting your fate to Zhytln."

"I know she won't kill me, and I know I'll live in a city away from that fucking war." I twisted mid-air, shaping hope into the flame beneath a bubbling soup cauldron, sending feathers dancing on the soulspace updraft towards Lucet. She swore as airbursts threatened to knock her away from her pursuit course, then made a slashing motion with one hand.

Blood fountained outwards from her soul, given no shape or memory to hold it, and utterly smothered the light from my portal. Her soul was difficult to target through the mist of fear, so I cut off my attack, dismissing my memories of freedom and hope.

"What about everyone left behind?" Lucet thundered, and her passion formed rivulets of heat like demon's eyes, superheated air sending her rocketing towards me. "What about when war reaches Knwharfhelm? Someone has to keep people safe!"

I tried to track her, tried to throw up walls between us, but when I sifted through my soul I found no arrogance to deflect her path, no joy to cut through her darkness, no fear to hide myself with.

I couldn't even cast my oldest spell.

And with that final realization, Lucet crashed into me, ripping open a portal with the oppression in her soul and sending us flying over the port outside Knwharfhelm.

We smashed into the harbor like a meteor come to earth, and I saw the darkness and flame wrapped around Lucet fade as the shock of the cold water hit her.

It felt like aeons, but both of us broke the surface.

"Someone has to keep people safe," I repeated. "And someone has to be kept safe."

Lucet stared at me. "What are you—"

"I can't keep doing this." I gestured at the slowly mending rift in the sky. "I just... can't keep being the fighter that you want to be. But... I can be someone who you're fighting for."

Hesitantly, Lucet swam closer to me. Placed one hand on my shoulder.

"You... you really would be happier here. Trusting someone else to heal and protect you. Trying your hardest to forget what you've seen."

"Not everything. Not you." I put my hand over hers. "But... I do think that whoever Zhytln really is, she truly wants to help us. Even if it's out of purely rational self-interest." I chuckled. "And if you don't trust her, well... having a friendly soulmage keeping an eye on her to make sure she doesn't step out of line can't hurt."

The corner of Lucet's lips quirked up. "I... I still can't make myself let her operate on my soul. Not when she's enspelling an entire city for her own calculations."

"I can't force you to trust her. I just... want you to trust me. And watch over me. To make sure I'll be okay."

Lucet took in a deep, ragged breath. "I thought that's what I was already doing."

"You were. In your own way. Now I'm asking you to do it my way."

She exhaled.

"Then take me to Zhytln. And if she changes a single second of your life more than necessary, I'll redesign her interiors."

I smiled and squeezed Lucet's hand, and she squeezed mine back. And together, we began the long swim back to shore.