The shower, well, the shower attached to the room I’ll be sleeping in specifically as opposed to the other four showers, turns out to be amazing. I’m fairly confident the other four showers are much the same, save for the color scheme and decoration; mine is in greens and blacks, a mix of some sort of smooth, fired ceramics and gleaming metals. It’s all strikingly beautiful, and the shower is a couple of square meters on a side with four nozzles whose power levels go from mediocre to overwhelming.

I am, I was, notorious in a really petty way about showers. I’d been something of a running joke for devoting most of the auxiliary space of my blister to water recycling specifically so that I and my partner could have a real, proper shower when I was doing a jump; a very narrow running joke in a very small community, galactically speaking, but a running joke nonetheless. The grounders mostly understood just fine, but they were tourists; no grounder born had ever seen the patterns in the Void. Statics, on the other hand, tended to be too small to have the water capacity and reclamation systems that let you take a nice shower, so it was just the Worldships whose residents knew both what it took and how much of a pleasure it was. You needed either planetary-scale systems or Worldship levels of intentional design for that kind of casual water usage.

Medium story short, I know my way around a decent shower, and this one is great. Steamy without being cloying, high pressure without it being painful, hot without being scalding, a floor that’s somehow grippy without being gritty or unpleasantly textured; it’s only because we’ve got something of a time limit that Amber and I somehow manage not to dawdle too much, by which I mean we do spend some time commenting on soap scents and we vigorously scrub each other’s backs, but not much more than that.

I’m a little startled when I see my clothes. It’s the same stuff I was wearing, but it’s clean, clean like it’s never seen a speck of dirt and crisp like it’s never seen a day of wear or tear, from the jacket on down to the socks and underwear.

“Was this…” I wave vaguely at the clothes.

“Sara, I should think.”

“Then I’ll have to remember to thank her.” I’m frowning as the obvious thought occurs to me. “I hope she doesn’t think she’s expected to clean, any more than she’s expected to cook.”

“Then may we both of us thank her, and find tasks within our capacity to take.”

“Yeah. Especially since this isn’t Keyhome, and we’ll actually have to do dishes, unless we want to bring someone we don’t trust into our space. Which, to be clear, I’m not suggesting, because I’m not that much of an idiot.”

That gets me a kiss, a short but fierce one that has my toes tingling as Amber turns to get dressed, being unsubtle about stealing glances back at me as I juggle the onerous mental overhead of putting on my clothes while ogling her. Amber’s extremely distracting hips aside, I’m ready before she is due to having much less in the way of a need for structural support in the chest region, and we meander back into the common area.

Well, meander might not be the right word. Amber swaggers; I practically float.

That could be literal, if I went the right - or the wrong - route to power. I could definitely see some sort of passive emanation or instantiation of my mental state into the world, and that sets me off giggling as though it’s deeply hilarious. I wave Amber off when she quirks an eyebrow at me and she wraps an arm around my shoulder for a moment, pressing a kiss to the side of my jaw right under the earlobe; I suspect a certain amount of smugness, and a comforting degree of comprehension as to the reason for my distractibility.

It’s nice. It being nice doesn’t mean I’ve forgotten just why we fit together so well, so easily, but those things don’t make it any less nice.

Sara’s there, arguing heatedly with Zidanya about something runes-related that goes totally above my head. It has something to do with whether the mid-elemental glyphs possess gender, or are associated with gender in some sort of useful way, or can be modified by associating them with gender concepts along the vast spectrum of identity and performance, and I give them some time to notice that I exist. I’ve had bonding exercises very much like what they’re going through, and I don’t want to rush it; them being friends isn’t strictly necessary if we’re going to part ways after we hit the surface, but…

… well, I don’t want us to part ways, that’s what.

I shake my head as I sit down, and the creaking of the chair or the soft sound it makes as it slides across the floor catches their attention. Sara cuts off in the middle of a sentence, and cuts me off in mid-greeting.

“I have a method to ameliorate your curse. It will require trusting me, which you have no reason to. It will not be possible for anyone to rule out that I have compromised you, including yourself. You should not accept this offer.”

The words pour out of her like an upended bowl, and end abruptly. “Can you give me any context? On what you’ll be doing, and why you - is this soul magic?” I blink a couple of times. “It’s soul magic. Of course. You mentioned that Rei had a school of magic he wouldn’t let you learn, you’ve mentioned that the curse is soul magic.”

Sara stares at me, unblinking, for a solid five seconds. There’s no expression on her face, not one that I can tell, but there’s a ripping sound as she tears a napkin lengthwise, bundles the pieces up, and rips them again. They aren’t thin napkins, and she’s not the bulkiest of people; I’m impressed, but I know well enough not to call attention to the single sign of her anxiety or worry.

Instead, I wait, back straight and palms down on the table.

“I would be rerouting connections from the Worldspirit which currently run to you and are intercepted by your haunt. I do not know how successful it will be.”

“Worldspirit.” I frown. “That’s a funny word.”

“Also called the All, Magelord; that which has domain over all that is not the Void.”

“Huh.” I digest that for a moment. “So it’s the systemic layer that grants structure to Skills and lets us have our Status and whatnot? Interesting.” I look away from Zidanya back to Sara. “Where would you reroute them to?”

“Your artifact. It interfaces with Conjure Visor. There is a high chance that it will allow you to access the Worldspirit through your use of it.” She pauses, one of those pauses of hers that betokens needing to gather her words. “I will leave now. You will discuss this matter with Dame Ashborn and Taveda Medah.”

“Is that really necessary?”

Sara stops, two strides towards the door. She stares at me like I’ve said something blindingly stupid, and then keeps walking. It’s not till the door clicks shut behind her that Amber sits down next to me and Zidanya relaxes. She shakes her head slowly, and her voice has complexity when she speaks, complexity I can’t really decipher.

“Magelord, you do her a disservice to treat with her so lightly. That which she proposes to do is in many ways madness to consider.”

“I hear you.” I try to relax my shoulders, shaking my head at Amber when she snakes a hand over to offer me a backrub. I need my brain working, not in a puddle. “I’ll hear you both out. We have time.”

Amber and Zidanya sort of have a weird faceoff staredown thing. I cough after a few beats and both of them jolt, looking kind of embarrassed or sheepish. I look at Amber and nod, and she nods back. “You should take her offer,” she says simply, understanding that I was asking her to go first. “For both of your sakes. She, because she requires a feat of Soul Magic in order to tier up to her preferred Class; you, because you must stay the person who trusts unreasonably or lose the essence of who you are.”

There’s a solid silence after that. I have no idea what I could possibly say, so I don’t say anything; eventually, Zidanya sighs, breaking the moment. “She is neither viper nor scorpion, but she is wounded, broken. It brings me no joy to say that you should decline her, but it is a mad thing to entrust to her all that you are, when she might do what she wills and not a soul will have the knowing of it. More, she is one who needs structure, some set of boundaries she can find and be told not to trespass upon. Let this be that boundary; let this be your first time telling her no, and let her know where she stands, with you and in your service.”

“If she is neither viper nor scorpion, why is that madness? It will take soul magic to fix the curse regardless; why should my lord trust a new companion above this one?”

“The Magelord should trust a Reca, one who has the skills to solve the matter; or, as he will not do so, take treatment from one bound and then free her.”

“And will he?”

“An the Temple falls to dust, an the stars gutter and die, not even then; were I to hear elsewise, I’d hie to his side to kill they who have stolen his voice.”

They both swing their gazes around to me, Zidanya glaring and Amber fond. I laugh, hands in front of me defensively, but it’s an awkward laugh; something about Zidanya’s gaze is making me profoundly uncomfortable.

“Am I to learn, then? Are you?” Amber’s eyes swing back to Zidanya, suddenly serious. “I might in two tiers be able to see, in three to touch, but your path… four tiers, for perception? Sixth tier before you could cure him? If it’s to be one of us, it must be me, and to do so will require Adam to break the world yet again, so that his Reca might progress in tiers beyond him.”

“And so leave you me as the full strength of arm, in my furs and claws?”

“We are yet four.”

“Madness nonetheless. What crosses your lips is a blasphemy to your God; he would turn his eyes from you. Are we to find a new Paladin to take your shield?”

“And yet.”

Amber’s eyes track over towards me, and Zidanya’s follow. “And yet,” the latter says softly.

I nod slowly. “Okay,” I say quietly. “I get that it’s my call. I… you know, I’d say give me a minute, but I already know what my answer is going to be, and thinking about it isn’t going to change it.”

“Then I will call her in,” Amber says softly. “And you will tell us all, my lord, that answer.”