Luci shuffled towards the thug hiding behind the open lobby door, grunting from the effort. With her hands bound behind her back, she had to wiggle her whole body just to move a few millimetres. It was a perilous effort. One wrong move and she could pull a muscle or maybe even break something. Every muscle below her stomach ached from fatigue, from the heat, from dehydration.

Wip was pinned to the wall by a shield made of rose-pink light. He tried to pry himself off but the light shield didn’t budge. He spiked his enma into it, but the electricity he arced out of his body kept reflecting back into him.

Two other thugs were flanking his sides where the shield left him exposed. Wip only had his fists, but one had a spear whose tip dripped with venom while the other had five assorted charms dangling from his shirt that reflected light in such a way that it seemed to amplify it. Those weapons had range. Wip only had his fists. Luci had to hurry.

Gritting her teeth, she wormed her way to Lunacogita. Everyone was too focused on Wip to realise that she was slowly moving across the floor.

Fifty centimetres to go.

The thug with the spear and the one with the reflecting charms got into position.

Thirty centimetres.

The thug with the spear stabbed. Wip spiked his enma and lightning arced out from his side, knocking the spear away.

Twenty centimetres.

The second thug’s reflecting charms twinkled brightly. Then, beams of light shot out from them and sizzled Wip’s skin. Wip grunted and spiked enma to the five points of his skin that were being burned.

Ten centimetres.

Every breath Luci took, every movement she made, was agony. The thug by the door was dripping sweat. With her concentration so focused on maintaining her shield and her breastplate boiling her, she didn’t even notice when Luci wormed right in front of her. Luci prayed to Starfonyne that she remained unnoticed.

Five centimetres.

Luci put everything she had into a desperate lunge. Her mouth landed right on top of Lunacogita’s head and she bit down.

The cuffs, Luci had realised, didn’t strangle her enma completely. If that were the case, she would have taken on a curse immediately from her bind with Lunacogita. Rather, they prevented her enma from escaping her soul, meaning she could only use her passive enma. In other words, she was practically useless.

However, when she connected with Lunacogita, she had two souls: one in her, and one in Lunacogita. And she could use both as though they were her true soul. Because when she was connected with the staff, she was both the world and the moon. It still felt so weird to her, but right now she wasn’t questioning it.

Luci didn’t bother with a complex meld. This idiot thug stood no chance against her, and Luci had an idea that was way more fun than a bazelbind net! She lashed out with torrents of conform.

The thug, finally noticing Luci’s presence, was too late to react. Luci wrapped the threads around the thug and tossed her skyward. Having been weakened by smoke and flame, the ceiling cracked and she shot through, up into the next floor.

Luci snickered as the thug came tumbling back down. Her side clipped the hole in the ceiling and she spun a full circle before crashing in heap on the floor. She was out cold, possibly dead.

Luci’s laughter was muffled by the staff. What an idiot! That Cartel wannabe was just beaten by a girl wearing enma blockers. Luci was so strong. She felt so alive!

Another thug flew past Luci and crashed into the wall in front of her. Luci stared at the man for a moment, confused. Then a spear stabbed into the wall beside his head. She found it somewhat comical that someone was almost killed by their own weapon.

Luci didn’t concern herself with it, though. She was aware that the commotion behind her had died out; all she could hear was the crackling of flames, the desperate shouts in the distant street, and a pair of footsteps drawing closer.

She was ready for the challenge, ready to send the next thug flying out a window, but the man stopped in front of her. His shoes had been burnt so that his big toe poked through. He kneeled down and flashed his half-missing teeth.

“Wow, that was really good, Luci!” Wip said.

Memories flashed through her mind. Of a man she’d tried to tear to pieces. Of a girl lying in a hospital bed, comatose, with bandages wrapped around her eye. Of a doctor seen through the gap of a door telling her parents that Vesina Animana may never wake up.

Luci spat out the staff. Her head collapsed to the floor under its own weight. She was panting heavily. Her heart was racing. Her head was spinning. Her eyes stung, and that had nothing to do with the heat.

“I’m sorry,” Luci whimpered. “I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry.”

Wip cocked his head sideways. “Who are you apologising too?”

That gave Luci pause. “You. My sister. My family. Ms. Stella. Everyone I let down.”

“You have a sister?”

Tears ran down Luci’s cheeks and evaporated before they reached the floor. The ceiling in the lobby entrance had caught fire and an oxon pipe came crashing to the floor, spraying abyss-dark oxon that dissipated once it was too far from its casing.

“I don’t think she wants me to be her sister anymore,” Luci said.

“Did she say that?”

Luci sniffled. “No.”

Wip hummed for a moment. “Then, I think that, until she says otherwise, she’s still your sister.”

Luci glanced up at Wip and caught him scratching at his collar. The scarred dungeoneer looked even more beaten than usual. He was covered in fresh cuts and burns. Blood was pooling on his knuckles. Luci couldn’t tell if it belonged to him or the people he struck, but she was guessing the latter. His clothes were in tatters. None of that seemed to bother him.

Wip chuckled and poked Luci in the temple. “You know, you’re really lucky. You’ve got lots of people who care about you. Your sister, Stella, me.”

Luci jolted as Wip sent his enma into her temple. The cuffs on her wrists snapped open. Luci felt free, like she could finally stretch her arms and not brush against a wall. Of course, she couldn’t actually do that because her arms were too heavy to lift. Rather, it was the ability to meld enma again that gave her that sense of relief.

“But that’s the problem,” Luci cried. Her voice was hoarse. Every part of her ached. “I always try to hurt the people that care about me.”

Wip’s lightning coursed along her body. It prickled her but only so much that she winced a few times. Miraculously, her body started to lighten up. She was beginning to understand why Wip was so nonchalant all the time: his enma’s deviation granted it some recovery properties. If Luci’s enma had deviated the same way, she’d probably be just as carefree!

“You mean in the dungeon today?” Wip asked. “Nah, you didn’t look like you were trying to hurt me. You looked like you were just having fun.”

“I nearly killed you!”

Wip started laughing. Luci couldn’t believe what she was hearing. How could someone laugh at that? It wasn’t a joke!

Wip  grabbed her from the armpits and pulled her into a seated position. Luci’s body was still heavy but she could manage at this weight. Now that she was able to look around, she saw that Wip had managed to deal with the few remaining thugs in an instant once the shield was gone, and the smarter ones all seemed to have fled.

“No—ha ha! You tried to,” Wip said between his laughing fits. Luci didn’t know whether to feel embarrassed or indignant. Wip’s laughter died down and he spoke more seriously. “Okay, I know I said you’re strong, but you’re still a long way off from killing me. Don’t worry. Much stronger people have tried and, um…”

Wip peeked over his shoulder at the man he’d just flung against the wall, whose spear was poking out beside his head. Shrugging, Wip picked up Luci’s staff and placed it in her lap. Luci didn’t take it.

“Why don’t you have some fun?” Wip said. “All the people you care about are either far away or are way stronger than you. If you go crazy, you won’t hurt them.”

“But the people living in the nearby buildings—”

“Don’t worry about them.” Wip glanced up and stared at a wall. Luci got the impression that he was looking straight through it at something beyond. “I’ll make sure nothing bad happens to them.” He stared into Luci’s eyes. The lights on his collar flickered brightly and his eyes began to spark crimson. “But all the people out there tried to hurt you. Whatever happens next, they deserve it. So it’s okay. Lose control.”

Luci’s hands gripped around her staff. Her chest felt tight. Her throat burned. “I—I can’t.”

“They’re going to hurt you if you don’t.”

“I said I can’t!” Luci screamed.

Smoke caught in the back of her throat and she doubled over into a coughing fit. After a few painful moments, she managed to collect herself enough to explain.

“You don’t understand, Mr. Wip. I’m always falling. Every day feels like I’m trying to climb out of a well. I climb and I climb but I always slip and fall. It hurts. It always hurts.” She sniffed and wiped at her eyes with her sleeve. “So I’ll just stay down the bottom where it doesn’t hurt, and you can forget all about me.”

Wip pressed his head closer to Luci’s. She looked up and met his eyes again, saw fierce determination. “No. I’ll help you get out.”

“Liar! You said you didn’t want to help me. You said I was strong enough to help myself.”

“You are! That’s why I’m going to stand at the bottom of the well and catch you every time you fall. That way, you can climb as many times as you need to. And when you do get out, we’ll both laugh about it over a beer.”

Luci tried to protest out of instinct but no words came out. The tears staining her cheeks had dried up. She was in shock, disbelief. Her whole life, she’d been expected to fight, to be better, to live up to higher expectations. Everyone in her life had stood above her and dangled their strength over her, sneering at her while she struggled to reach them. Nobody had ever offered to help her before. Nobody.

She never realised how much she needed to hear those words until she finally heard them.

Wip stood and grinned. His enma was sparking all around him, shooing off the smoke so that he had enough space to breathe in the smoke-ridden room, adjacent to the lobby.

“Let’s have some fun,” he said. “You try to fight all those bad guys out there, and I’ll support you so that you don’t kill them. Okay?” He held out a hand for her to take. “Come on. I need a good lambaster.”

Lambaster. The word echoed through her mind. It drowned out the searing heat, the pain clamping down her body, the burning in her throat. This was it. She could actually be lambaster, the powerhouse of the party, for whose job it was to wield their power to the fullest. If she did so, she’d no longer have to follow a path ordained for her, where she wielded enma precisely yet forcefully like her mother did.

Rather, she’d tread her own path, one where she could smash everything, turn the world about her like the moon turned the tides, and never fear who got swept up in the chaos. A path that felt natural to her. It was too surreal to believe.

Luci sniffed to hold back her tears, gripped her staff, then slowly reached out for his hand.

But just as their hands were about to touch, the wall burst open. A yellow beam as wide as a Luci was tall struck Wip’s side. Carried by the beam, Wip was sent flying through the wall. He vanished in a bloom of concrete, smoke, and flame.