Elach returned to the clearing with a puzzle box, a tattered arrowhead, a candy heart, and a whole slew of basic wisps that he and Kayvee hadn’t bothered coming up with names for. They just looked like leaves, rocks, flowers, raindrops, and so on, so he called them that. There were only four people in the clearing, not counting himself, and all of them had brought at least one wisp to bond. One boy in a black shirt and red pants had found seven, all of which looked dark and brooding. Elach checked his timepiece and saw that there was still three minutes until he’d said they could start bonding, but the process was simple enough that he didn’t mind explaining it multiple times. It was the experience that some of the kids would find difficult.

When he’d asked his mom what it was like to bond a wisp, she’d brought him up onto her lap and ruffled his hair while she tried to find the right words to say. She’d eventually settled on ‘It’s like trying to put together a puzzle, but the pieces don’t stay the same shape and there’s no picture on the box to recreate’. She’d eventually told him that the puzzle she was putting together was her container, the immaterial space a wisp created inside of her to live in and the only way anyone could hold and manipulate Issi. She couldn’t explain why she’d needed to try so many times to succeed, but Elach had formed his own theories over his years watching kids try for themselves.

“Thanks for holding onto this.” Elach said as Grej handed him the lodestone, returning it to a side pocket on his bag before getting into his explanation. “Since all of you have one or more wisps with you, you can start trying to bond with them. Find somewhere comfortable to sit or lie down, because you’re going to have to hold that position for as long as it takes to bond with your wisp.” Elach waited for the four kids to get comfortable, nodding when the last one settled in against a mossy tree with his legs outstretched.

“Bonding is not something that can be triggered one-sidedly. That would be slavery, and the pollution that flowed through that bond would stifle any chance you had at growing stronger. To avoid pollution, don’t force the wisp to stay inside you if it tries to leave. Even if you really want to bond with that wisp, it’s not worth it to destroy your future for something you won’t even see after today. Now that I’ve warned you, take the wisp you most want to bond with and hold it up to your forehead.” Elach instructed, and all the kids obeyed. “Now you need to make an offering. Think, whisper, or just feel what you need from it and what you’re going to give; space in your body for Issi to manifest. And that’s it. You’ll instinctively know what you have to do to cement your bond once the wisp drags you into your headspace, so get at it.”

Before Elach had even finished, all the kids had regressed into their minds as they attempted to bond their wisps. He sat down leaning against a tree and set his pack down next to him, removing a leaf-wrapped breakfast he hadn’t had a chance to eat yet. It was almost six in the morning at this point, and he had a long road ahead of zero rest and shoving enough Issi to kill ten tyrants in his gut to stay hale and hearty for the festival.

As he’d expected, Grej was the first to bond his wisp, taking only ten minutes to do so. The other two that had brought back one and three wisps respectively failed on their first attempt, but both weren’t discouraged when Elach spoke to them since they’d tried to bond their least desired wisps before the ones they really wanted to. And then the boy who’d brought back seven wisps bonded his on the first attempt, taking close to forty minutes to do so. He’d taken so long that some other kids had returned with their own wisps at that point, and Elach gave the same explanation he’d given to the first group to them. Everything was going smoothly until the girl he’d pegged as difficult returned with two armloads of wisps, and five minutes after that the Freshetfall initiate trudged into the clearing with five water or ice-like wisps, slumping up against a rock and starting his own bonding without needing Elach to explain anything.

After handing off another wisp to the girl who was growing more and more concerned with each and every failure, Elach tried to offer a wisp that looked like a sunflower with daggers for petals to the Freshetfall boy. He turned it down after a long inner feud, pulled his hand away from the wisp, and trudged away to find yet more pointless wisps he would fail to bond. When he eventually came back Elach would force the bladeflower on him, but at that moment two bigger problems came marching into the clearing empty handed.

“I saw a huge pyramid made of gold. Go get it for me.” The one on the right side said, and Elach cursed under his breath. He’d hoped they wouldn’t lock onto one of the Old Ones, but of course they did. “Well? What are you waiting for?” The girl clapped twice as if to call him to action. “Get on with it, servant.”

“See, the problem here is that I’m not your servant. And you’re asking me to go fetch you a wisp you can’t get on your own. Maybe that flies while you’ve got mommy and daddies’ influence to push your maids and butlers around, but that doesn’t fly here.” Elach said, pushing himself out of the dirt next to the girl who kept failing to bond. “If you can’t get it yourself, and you won’t settle for anything else, well you just won’t bond with anything today. It’s that simple. I have two examples of high level wisps right there,” Elach lied as he pointed to the cube and arrow, “and I’m willing to tell you where to go if you decide you want to bond something today.”

The one who spoke looked at him like he had two heads, a snarl forming on her lips as she prepared what Elach assumed would be a seething tirade that insulted everything from his ancestors to his distant descendants. Her sister didn’t look much happier, but she kept sneaking glances at the wisps Elach had pointed out to her. Before her sister could blow up in Elach’s face she tugged gently on her arm, whispering something in her ear that took the edge off of her sister’s indignation.

“Fine, we accept your proposal. Lead the way, servant.”

“It’s just up that hill, along the old cobblestone path to the ruins.” Elach said, pointing to his right and tossing his gloves at the sisters. “The arrow’s quite sharp, so wear these to protect yourselves. Good luck.”

The twins walked off with a huff, and Elach would be lying if he said he didn’t take some small amount of joy from their annoyance. But then the girl who didn’t have any preferences stirred once more from her bonding trance, and Elach smiled encouragingly and offered her another choice of wisps.

Almost two hours later, just a few minutes short of his time limit, the final hopeful managed to bond with their wisp. Kayvee had brought new people in just under an hour ago, and had watched over his two difficult cases while he went to gather yet more wisps for the Freshetfall boy and the preferenceless girl. As he’d expected, the boy had quickly bonded to the bladed sunflower once Elach told him time was running out, and the girl had finally bonded with a wisp that looked exactly like luminescent moss that Elach had scraped from a rock in a cave much further than he usually ventured in these outings. But the closer he got to the primal spring, things got weird. Weirder than he’d seen in his six years of guiding.

A flock of black spots shifted chaotically in the sky, moving to surround isolated wisps and closing in on them like flies on a corpse. Elach didn’t see the other wisp again, but the flock seemed to grow as it devoured more and more wisps. The Issi beasts he usually saw, heard, or smelled this close to the spring were utterly absent, the unnatural chimes and chitters of the wisps the only sounds emanating through the woods as Elach stepped over a patch of wisps that looked like steel spikes, complete with bloodied tips to sell the illusion. Water wisps overflowed the rivers, pulling in other nearby wisps to drown. Vine-like wisps dangled down from branches and snapped up any wisps that came nearby, sometimes crushing them to death and sometimes getting destroyed themselves while the other wisp carried on like nothing happened. He even saw a wisp that looked like a rope tied into a noose, hanging a corpse that looked more like an Issi beast than any wisp Elach had ever seen. By the time he emerged from the cave with the moss wisp, the noose and corpse were gone without a trace. But the gilded pyramid was in their place, standing thirty feet tall and gleaming like molten gold in the sun. Words written in white shifted across its surface, words that Elach should have been able to read, but his mind just wouldn’t process them no matter how hard he tried. So he turned away from the pyramid and went back to the clearing.

“I’m heading back. Need me to bring you anything from the town?” Elach asked as he shouldered his pack, watching his small crowd of newly minted Issi practitioners out of the corner of his eye.

“Just the usual.” Kayvee responded, tossing Elach two empty canteens that he clipped to his belt.

“Alright. See you in an hour.”

The first week continued without a hitch. Bring a group to the innermost part of the gardens, hand off water and sometimes food to Kayvee, help the kids get their bonds, and find increasingly disturbing displays of violence Elach didn’t know the wisps were capable of. He even thought he’d caught sight of a pair of robed figures slinking through the underbrush once or twice, but he chalked that up to the mounting exhaustion he felt as the days went on without pause. What he couldn’t put to exhaustion, however, was the fact that he started seeing creatures unlike anything he’d ever witnessed before. Sometimes running across his path, or flitting through the sky above, or once or twice brushing up on his legs with what Elach hoped was affection. And then the pairs of people became trios, then quartets, and the last he saw of them on his last run was when he barely stopped himself from running into the group of them as they descended into the cave where he’d found the moss wisp. They were getting closer and closer to the primal spring itself, but Elach couldn’t do anything about it. They had to be powerless, like him, or else they would scare all the wisps away for a good mile or so. He guessed that they were just trying to get wisps to bond for themselves, not wishing to take part in the festival his village was putting on. And they were allowed to do that. It was just easier to use the patsies his village put forth than trying to hire an independent guide who also happened to be powerless.

And then the solstice came.

Elach was in the village getting his forty-third group of the festival ready to make their trek when the midnight sun sparked to life in the sky, a black and orange fireball that would bathe the entire day in light more intense and powerful than any other time of the year. The Issi in the air would be far more concentrated than usual, and the primal spring would greedily devour that Issi and turn it into something the wisps couldn’t ignore. They’d flock to the spring in numbers that put the previous week to shame; it would be difficult to find a place to sit in the clearing without crushing an untold number of dirt, rock, or plant wisps. And that was why people paid the village ridiculous sums of coin to get their hopefuls into one of the nine and a half expeditions that would be going out today. All of his hopefuls wore colors related to some sort of power, and all of them would have received training and schooling for this day alone. The village and the powers had tried to get Elach and Kayvee to take more trips on the solstice, but the four hour outings were already pushing some of the kids to bond faster than they should be. And no matter what the powers thought, their kids weren’t immune to stage fright, anxiety, misinformation, or just flat out being terrible at this new experience. So the four hour blocks stayed.

The first sign that something was horribly wrong was the almost complete lack of wisps in the outer ring. And when Elach did see a wisp, it was always accompanied by the corpse of an Issi beast. Two sparkwillow wisps were each curled up around half of the corpse of a feline beast that looked like it had been pulled apart, intestines still connecting the two halves as blood dripped into a small puddle under the beast. The group balked at the sight, showing far less experience with this kind of thing than Elach would have expected from disciples of the powers. And when the second corpse, an iridescent snake with a ridge of spines on its back bisected and thrown haphazardly over a rock like two discarded fleshy socks brought with it retching and exclamations of disgust, he knew he was in for a long day.

There were only two other corpses on the way to the spring, both of which were in the outer ring, and both of which used to belong to hopefuls. The airlock seemed to be as vacant as ever, even with all the weirdness going on, until one of the kids let out a blood curdling scream that was all the warning Elach got before some sort of Issi bird swooped down and dug it’s talons into the shoulders of a boy in dark blue and green robes. Luckily the bird seemed to have eyes bigger than its carrying limit and bones made of tissue paper, letting Elach grab onto its legs and force it to the ground as it struggled to lift off with its prey. Bones snapped under his weight as he tried to force the giant bird to unlatch from the boy, but it died before relenting and he had to dig the talons out himself before he could use the medical supplies he kept in his bag for situations like this. Normally there would have been more Issi beast attacks by this point, so Elach counted himself lucky this was the first one this year. But when the boy was stabilized enough to keep walking, albeit with a terrified look in his eyes and jumpiness rivaled only by the most skittish of prey animals, did Elach finally get a good look at the bird.

It was like nothing he’d ever seen before. The bird’s wings looked to be made completely out of lotus petals, a mixture of pink and white that felt like silk against his fingers that were barely attached to its wings. He could pluck them with the barest amount of effort, the motion accompanied by a gush of sweet smelling liquid from a stem-like structure where a normal bird’s feathers would’ve attached to their wings. The thing’s body and head were a non-uniform green like the underside of a flower bud with two little black dots for eyes and a beak of some kind of razor-sharp resin. It’s talons were huge thorns on the end of more stems, wicked dark green things that were stained with the poor boy’s blood and would probably sell for a good amount to the right buyer, along with the beak and some of the larger petals. But Elach didn’t have time for that right now. If this was happening in the airlock, then he could only imagine how bad it was at the primal spring.

“Everyone stay here.” Elach instructed as they got to the edge of the airlock. “If it’s safe in there I’ll come back for you. If everything goes sideways, run back to the village. Don’t try to bond, don’t be a hero, just go get help. Am I understood?” Elach saw a few nods and decided that was good enough, taking a deep breath and walking through the invisible barrier between the airlock and the primal spring.

The first thing that hit him was just how loud it was. Sounds of combat were near constant, detonations of power going off every fifteen or so seconds followed by the screams of people or the wails of animals in their wake. Elach was about to run into the thick of it when he came across a corpse that he hadn’t seen moments ago, even though it should have been visible from the airlock. It was lying on its side and split from neck to gut, and as Elach got closer he could see the corpse’s heart still beating. A few steps turned interest to disgust as he saw that the corpse’s heart was not in fact beating, it was lying on the ground a few feet away from it. What he thought was the animal’s heart was in fact a candy heart, beating away joyfully as it sucked the corpse’s veins dry and grew darker red by the second.

He knelt down to get a closer look and immediately regretted it. The candy heart sprayed a jet of blood at his face that stung his eyes, and Elach cried out in agony as he clamped his hands over his eyes and stumbled back. Something sliced through the skin on the back of his hands as he fell, his blood hot and sticky as it dripped down his arms, a mass of tiny tendrils inserting themselves into his wound and ripping at it like he was an old shirt being made into washcloths. It was a contender for the worst pain Elach had ever felt, intensified by the fact that he couldn’t see, and then his blood got sharp.

As he screamed his throat raw at the sheer pain of having his blood rip at his veins as his heart struggled to beat, the wisp took initiative and started sucking. It was like nothing Elach had ever felt, a pain so all encompassing that everything else ceased to be. He wasn’t Elach in this moment. He was a nameless and thoughtless sack of meat writhing on the ground waiting for the blissful embrace of nothing. And then came a loud screech, like someone being murdered dragging their fingerbones down a chalkboard, and his blood became blissfully smooth as the tendrils retreated from the wounds on his hands. Elach forced his eyes open to see what had happened and bore witness to the most bizarre fight he’d ever seen. He might have laughed if everything didn’t hurt so much.

The candy heart was cracked along its side, tendrils of blood waving about like a nest of snakes as it lunged at Elach’s savior. The hollow one seemed unperturbed, floating gracefully to avoid the candy heart’s whiplike attacks and then striking back with a geiser of grey from its core. Another chunk of the heart was chipped off with a keening screech, and the hollow one shot out thick tentacles of grey to pull the piece into its core where it quickly broke down into smaller pieces and disappeared into the roiling grey that was the hollow one. Elach wiped the burning blood from his eyes as the rest of the heart was chipped away and dragged into the hollow one, feeling lightheaded and lacerated from the candy heart’s intrusions. Through the brain fog he remembered he needed to fix himself up before he bled out internally, so he limply flopped out of his bag’s shoulder straps and shoved around the contents until he managed to push out the metal box that had his medical supplies.

He’d used two recovery pills, some of the anti-bacterial salve, and half a roll of bandages to fix up the bird attack, but that had barely put a dent in his supplies. He still had eighteen pills, ninety percent of the tin of salve, five and a half rolls of bandages, and a vial of universal anti venom. He dropped one of the pills in the dirt multiple times before he managed to get it down, feeling the capsule burst with regenerative bliss as the Issi rampaged through his system to try and bring it back to normal. The sensation died down as quickly as it had come, and Elach had to take four more pills and slather the back of his hands in salve before he could manage sitting up without feeling like he was going to vomit. He took a big mouthful from one of the canteens and shook in a liberal amount of a nutrient powder that would speed up his recovery, finally taking in the absolute carnage that was all around him.

The wisps were attacking anything and everything that moved, from Issi beasts to people to other wisps. A cloud of black wisps descended on a rock formation and were pulled onto the sharp edges by some unseen force, Issi leaking out of the decimated flock that was quickly lapped up by the sharp rocks. A robed figure like Elach had seen earlier in the week was fighting for their life, an endeavor that was cut short when one of the tattered arrowheads punched clean through their skull and exited with a burst of grey matter and cloth that stained the ground below. Elach had seen kids killed by Issi beasts before, but that was due to their own awful choices. Seeing a wisp take the life of the unknown person seemingly out of malice alone was a nauseating sight, but Elach shook his head and powered through the disgust. If it was this bad this far from the spring, Kayvee and his kids must be in far worse shape farther in. The hollow one floated up to his shoulder as Elach slowly got to his feet, the shifting sea of grey in it’s center dripping out and disappearing before it even touched the ground. Elach brushed the wisp gently with one finger and the hollow one pressed back, a pressure and numbness that Elach had never felt before shooting up his arm accompanying the gesture. A distinctly young scream pierced the veil of the underbrush, snapping Elach back to reality. He gave one last look at the corpse the candy heart had drained dry and shuddered, forcing himself to walk forward. Kayvee and the kids needed him. Another static pressure pulsed out from the hollow one, and Elach took that as agreement as he pushed aside the low-hanging branches and navigated the underbrush towards the clearing.

The hollow one killed four wisps before Elach made it to the clearing, all blending in with the thick foliage and going for a swift and merciless kill like ambush predators. Each time they struck out at his neck, and each time they were met with a deluge of grey that shattered, melted, or pierced the wisps that the hollow one proceeded to drag into it’s core and somberly devour. Elach couldn’t quite place why he associated the hollow one’s feast with a somber tone, but it felt like the wisp was reluctant in killing it’s kin and would not waste their deaths by letting something else get to the Issi manifestations first. It was a state of being that an organism such as a wisp should never be able to achieve, but Elach didn’t dwell on the thought for long as he pushed aside one last branch and stepped into the clearing.

The first thing he noticed was the blood. Dark red slashes on the ground, splashed against trees, and pooling underneath bodies, dead or soon to be. Luckily most of the corpses bore the same robes as the person who’d just fallen victim to the arrowhead, but there were a few distinctly teenage victims splayed out on the ground and left to rot. The first was unfortunately beyond saving, a gaping wound torn into their gut and hollowed out from there, but Elach had hopes for the second one. They were lying face down in a pool of blood and had no wounds Elach could see from his angle, but before he could even step out to check a trio of robed figures burst into the clearing fighting with another Issi beast that was completely foreign to Elach.

Floating white text wrapped in golden ribbons lunged across the clearing with a front half filled with teeth and claws, it’s back half spiraling ribbons and text as it shifted to match the front. Elach moved to help the robed strangers and another numbing shock ran through his shoulder, this time much stronger than before as if to stop him from interfering. It worked, and Elach clapped a hand to his shoulder in surprise. The hollow one darted away from his blow, repositioning itself closer to his face as Elach turned back towards a newly minted grisly scene.

The ribbon beast was in the process of eviscerating the last of the trio, tearing into their neck in a spurt of blood that slid right off the ribbons without leaving a trace of a stain. Their struggling ceased immediately and the beast raised a perfectly clean maw full of sharp words from the corpse, turning an eyeless stare towards Elach and the hollow one. He raised his arms to try and make himself larger, backing away slowly for a few steps until he tripped over a raised root and fell flat on his backside. In that short moment the creature had planted it’s front limbs to either side of his torso, effectively pinning him to the ground as it stared at him with an ever-shifting glare.

“The other one requires aid.” White symbols shifted through the air accompanied by ringing and chiming noises that coalesced into a coherent sentence. Elach had never heard an Issi beast speak before, and he had heard that it was possible with a powerful enough creature, but that didn’t stop him from gawking at the bundle of ribbons and words hovering over him. “Did you not understand me, keeper of the spring? Your partner is in grave danger, along with the remaining empty vessels they brought to be filled.”

“How are you talking to me?” Elach asked, but shook his head and started pushing himself up before the creature could answer. “Never mind, Kayvee comes first. Answers later.”

The creature flowed back to let Elach stand up. “The intruders are attempting to take advantage of the maelstrom to gain powers far beyond their stature. Your partner is caught in the middle of everything, and is attempting to keep the wisps and intruders at bay while protecting his empty vessels. I understand that you yourself are an empty vessel, so it is with a heavy conscience that I call upon you and your partner to aid us. I am truly sorry that we could not prevent this.”

“Just show me the way.” Elach said, noting that the creature had referred to an us and a we that time.

“Follow me.” The creature turned and sauntered towards the way it had come, constantly upping its speed as it gauged how fast Elach could follow. “I had to leave your partner to ensure your safe passage. They are currently holding a ruined building where the empty vessels tend to their wounded, but the wisps are relentless and the invaders ruthless. It is only a matter of time until they fall.”

“What do I need to do when we get there?” Elach asked as he ran, feeling the hollow one pulse on his shoulder in time with his heartbeat. “Are we going to run?”

“You cannot run.” The creature rumbled, it’s form shifting to the mass of teeth and claws Elach had caught a glimpse of in the clearing. “They are attempting to force the primal spring back into dormancy, draining its life giving gifts to sate their tyrant’s endless appetite for bloodshed and conflict. They are destroying wisps to power their channeling, feeding our own Issi to the ritual that would have us wandering the world piece unknowing and directionless for yet another eternity until a new primal source was created.”

“So none of them can use Issi right now. That evens the playing field a little bit.” Elach said, and the creature sent out a message of confirmation. And then what the creature was saying finally clicked. “You’re a wisp, aren’t you.”

“I was.” The creature said in low reverberations that felt melancholy. “I was what you had classified as an Old One; I was the gilded pyramid. I did so enjoy being named, but I fear that it no longer accurately portrays what I am. Once this is over, I do hope you and your partner will bestow upon me a name befitting my newfound stature.”

“You won’t name yourself?”

“No.” Was all the creature said, the single word carrying the finality of a dying star. Elach then understood that there was significance there, but he could not fathom what it was. Silence reigned for a dozen minutes as they ran, until the creature perked up and words slid into Elach’s eyes and ears. “We approach. Be prepared.”

Elach didn’t even register the absence of wisps bothering him on their short journey, but he suddenly realized why that was when the forest cleared and he laid eyes on a building no larger than a storage shed overrun with hundreds of the little Issi manifestations. A bird like the one that had attacked one of his kids earlier was in the process of being swarmed by the wisps, and the creature that used to be the gilded pyramid roared in anger and sadness as it surged ahead at a speed far out of Elach’s ability and slammed into the horde of wisps.

By the time Elach caught up, the wisps had scattered in fear as the gilded pyramid struck out in all directions with snapping jaws and scythe-like claws from a hydra’s worth of heads and an octopus's worth of limbs. Elach knelt down to get a good look at the bird, noticing a few key differences from the earlier one. It’s petal-feathers that hadn’t been devoured were a deep iridescent purple that seemed almost black from most angles, and it’s face looked more like a lotus seed pod filled with black diamonds than anything. And it didn’t so much as move when Elach took its head in his hands, feeling a sadness that he couldn’t explain for a creature so closely related to the attacker from before.

“Thank you for your sacrifice.” The gilded pyramid said as they moved over the bird’s body, cradling it in it’s ribbons as Issi swirled off of the bird. There was no blood, no viscera, no nothing as the bird dissolved completely and utterly into Issi before reforming into a tiny black wisp that looked like a flower bud. “The flowing lotus gave themself to save your partner. It will take centuries for them to gather enough Issi to attain the level of sentience they need to reclaim their glory. And they will die today if we cannot protect them.”

The gilded pyramid gently cupped the little wisp between it’s now very person-like hands, gently prodding it to go towards Elach. “Bond with them. I will not allow their memory to be tainted by death or an inferior vessel.”

“I can’t right now.” Elach said, but the gilded pyramid pressed an immovable hand to Elach’s chest and pushed him into the shed. The scent of iron perverted the air in the small space, and Elach suddenly became very aware of Kayvee’s absence. “I can’t let these kids bleed out. At least let me fix them up first.”

“Very well. But I cannot wait. The manifestations and intruders managed to steal away your partner and a handful of empty vessels. I must find them.” The pyramid said, dissolving into ribbons and symbols as it flowed out the door and slammed it shut behind them.

Elach dug out his medical supplies and set to work on the most injured girl, working down from mutilations to scrapes until he was as satisfied as he could get that all the kids had a good chance of surviving this. The hollow one was still glued to his shoulder, but the lotus bud was gliding around the room like a leaf on the wind. Elach tapped the wisp on his shoulder once and got a small shock in return before the hollow one drifted off his shoulder, herding the lotus bud along until Elach could cup his hands and catch it.

“I always thought I’d be bonding you.” Elach said to the hollow one. “But if the other two Old Ones transformed like that, I don’t think it’d be fair to try and keep you to myself. I guess this is the last time I’ll ever get to see you.”

The hollow one drifted towards the door and stopped, as if it would protect Elach from anything that tried to come through. And if it turned into anything like the gilded pyramid had, he had one hundred percent faith in the wisp. So Elach turned all the advice he’d given the kids over the years back on himself, placing the tiny bud against his forehead and whispering the words he’d been keeping in for six years.

“What you need for what I want.” Elach whispered, and the scent of sweet nectar and freshwater replaced the bloody musk of the shed.

Elach expected to open his eyes to a blooming field under a spring shower, but when he pried his eyes open he had no idea what he was looking at. An outline of what the lotus bud had looked like before it regressed to its current state was slowly spinning in front of him, tiny streams of water spilling off of each of its petals and dropping off into an empty void below. He was standing on nothing. The room was absurdly small. There was no puzzle to solve.

He stretched his arms out and managed to touch a wall on both sides of him at once, his hands slowly forced downwards by an invisible current running through the walls. No matter how much effort he put into keeping his hand on the wall it was always pushed down at a steady but inexorable pace. Elach turned his attention away from the walls and focused on the outline of the lotus bloom, now noticing a small speck floating in the middle of the outline. It was the little bud the lotus bloom had devolved into, locked in place by some unseen force to be the centerpiece of this bizarre existence.

There were no hints as to what he was supposed to do. No pieces to put together to create a grand picture, no trial to overcome to gain the trust of this little wisp. Just this tiny room that was always moving. With a sigh Elach stepped forward, putting a hand under one of the streams of water and letting the warm liquid pool in his palm for a few moments before it overflowed into the void below. Was this the container the lotus bud would grant him? Not a glorious field of ashen plants like his mother, or a bastion of stone and gold like his father? They’d both started smaller in scale, a garden for his mother and a cabin for his father, but their starting points were ten times larger than Elach’s. This was a glorified closet. A closet without a floor.

“What the heck am I supposed to do with this?” Elach muttered, wiping his hand off and circling the lotus outline. “Mom said that Issi’s supposed to change these places into something special. But there’s nothing to change. There’s not even a floor to keep the Issi in!”

Grumbling to himself made elach forget about the properties of the walls, and his attempt to rest left him sprawled on the floor with warm water soaking him. “Flowing lotus bud. We didn’t know how right we were.”

Elach pushed himself to his feet and shook as much water as he could off, wringing his shirt out as he stepped into the lotus outline between two streams to get closer to the lotus bud. He reached out to try and move the black-purple bud, but it held fast. No matter how he pushed or pulled it wouldn’t move, and just like that Elach was out of options. Not that he’d had many to begin with.

“What do you need?” Elach said to the air, not expecting a response and not receiving one. “Am I even supposed to do anything here?”

Nothing.

“Can you even bond with me?”

Nothing.

“I can’t waste time with this. Kayvee needs me.” Elach muttered, closing his eyes to try and cancel the bonding process somehow. He could puzzle this out later when Kayvee and the spring were safe.

Nothing.

Elach opened his eyes, and the shed around him came back into focus. But the little lotus bud was missing. And there was a feeling of fullness in a place he didn’t know was empty before, a tiny swirl of warmth and power at the base of his skull and behind his belly button that tried to control something he didn’t have. That must be his container, and that meant that the little closet was his headspace.

“Wonderful. A quick and faultless join on both sides.” A new voice came from over Elach’s shoulder, a tone that shot through his being and threatened to both numb and jolt his nerves to action.

“You’re the hollow one?” Elach said without looking over his shoulder.

“That I am.” The voice chuckled, and a collection of black bones joined by thick flowing columns that looked exactly like the hollow one’s core settled on Elach’s shoulder. “How are you feeling?”

Elach inspected his arms to see if bonding with the lotus bud had done anything to him. Seeing nothing, Elach reached into his pack and pushed his finger to one of the Issi cards he had left. A faint, small diamond confirmed that he had, in fact, bonded with the flowing lotus’ bud. “I feel exactly the same. I thought this would be the best moment of my life, at least until I got an Issi seed, but it seems like nothing changed. It’s a little disappointing.”

The hollow one stepped around into Elach’s cone of vision, a visage of existential dread looking down at him with a triangular mask of bone obscuring the upper half of a smiling, skeletal face. From the waist up they looked relatively like a person’s skeleton crafted out of matte obsidian filled with a slowly shifting liquid grey light, with some of the bones removed and replaced with more tendrils of liquid. But from the waist down the hollow had long tendrils of bone reaching downwards, connected by a thick curtain of grey to give the illusion of a flowing dress sprawling out behind them as they moved.

“A proper bonding can take infinite different forms. When the wants of both parties align so perfectly that there are no compromises to be had, it can feel like nothing of note has happened.” The hollow one bent over one of the kids Elach had fixed up, pressing sharp fingertips into their shoulder that elicited a weak moan of pain from the sleeping teenager.

“How do you know that? Weren’t you a wisp until a few minutes ago?” Elach asked, and the hollow one nodded.

“Wisps are akin to the larval states of an Issi beast. A first generation Issi beast, to be clear, as once we have gained a form like this,” The hollow one motioned at themselves, “we can reproduce as any regular Issi beast might. Though it has become exceedingly rare for a wisp to survive long enough to reach this state; as far as I am aware, it has not happened for decades.”

“So are some wisps sentient?”

“Partially. When I took this form it felt like awakening from an eternally long sleep, feeling my thoughts crystallize into real memories and interpretations of what I merely experienced while I was a wisp. I was aware, but not in the same way as you are.” The hollow one stepped over one of the kids, coming face to faceplate with Elach. “It is thanks to you and Kayvee that I lived long enough to become this. The gilded pyramid would tell you the same thing, but they are too proud and equally as shy to open up about something this important. So I will say it for the two of us who managed to survive; thank you for everything you have done for us. Your insistence on an equal bond stopped the empty vessels from reaping rewards they had no right claiming.”

The hollow one’s words dug up a memory Elach had mostly forgotten; a person claiming a wisp they deemed the only one worthy of their greatness, the piercing shrieks of the wisp being torn down and consumed to make that person’s container, and the elation of a success from slaughter that fell off them in waves. There had been no pollution, no tainted bond, because there was not a bond. The wisp had been completely consumed, harvested for its resources instead of being allowed to grow with the person. Greater power had been granted in the moment, the person gaining many offers from prestigious institutions and powers, nobody but Elach having witnessed what happened. And then that person left, siphoning an absurd amount of coin from Elach and his parents for their personal gain. And Elach never squawked at the cost, because it kept them out of the village.

“Forsaking the future for a prosperous present.” Elach muttered the same words his mother had told him in secret while his brother was out celebrating his unparalleled success.

“Exactly. The other primal springs are anathema to us; far more powerful, but they also attract at least fifteen times the empty vessels as this one. And they do not have guides as future-minded as you and Kayvee; domination is standard practice if a bond is not instantly given.” The hollow one shivered, their grey making waves along their entire body. “They are the sweet nectar residing inside a carnivorous flower that wishes to devour everything we were, are, and could ever be.”

“Then we need to defend this one.” Elach said, pushing himself to his feet. “I’m not sure if it’s safe, but do you have a trial of worth for me to take? If I have a bond that actually gives me Issi I’ll be way more useful in this fight.”

“I’m sorry. I am far too weak right now to even think of bonding.” The hollow one said sadly. “If I tried to give you any of my Issi right now, I would simply melt away; my form has not yet stabilized so I would leave nothing behind, not even a juvenile wisp like the flowing lotus had.”

“But know that the moment I am powerful enough to bond with you I will.” The hollow one quickly added. “It is not that I don’t want to right now, eternals know that I do, but I physically cannot. I don’t even know if I’m powerful enough to make a difference in the fight to come.”

“You’ll do way more than I can.” Elach said, the feeling of reassuring a being like the hollow one a new one for him. “Should I stay here and keep watch over the kids? I doubt I’ll be anything but a hindrance when the fighting starts.”

“You’ve trained your body far more than most of the other empty vessels could claim. And the intruders are either empty vessels themselves, or they are masking their Issi so completely to keep the primal spring untainted.” The hollow one said, walking towards the door. “Come with me. Everything awaits.”