A flurry of knocks on his door roused Elach from his slumber, and he did his best to ignore them. This was effectively his vacation, and he was going to get as much sleep as he pleased as often as he pleased. But whoever was at the door didn’t relent, so Elach pulled a pillow over his head and ignored them some more. Eventually they relented, muttering curses spilled through the door that Elach couldn’t really make out, but by then he was awake enough that going back to sleep would do more harm than good. So he threw the covers off himself and started getting ready for the day.

The first thing he noticed was that he’d slept under a single set of covers; there was more than one layer of pure white bedding over the mattress. There were three in total, getting thinner as they got closer to the mattress, and from the chill he felt Elach wondered if the rooms were cooled so he’d use all of them. His room was fairly sparse; a bed, a table with two chairs, an armoire, and two doors that he assumed led to a closet and a bathroom. He could use a shower after his time on the road, so Elach stripped off the last of his clothes as he grabbed clean ones and his toothbrush from his pack and opened the first door.

Which was the closet. And so he opened the other door, venturing into the bathroom to get ready for the day.

Locking the door behind him and pocketing the steel key, Elach ran a hand through his damp hair as he walked down the metal stairs without holding onto the handrail that stuck out of the wall like a root of bone. The quiet of night had given way to the din of daytime, and people of all shapes, sizes, and progress milled about the lounge area sharing tales of wherever and stories of whatever. The clock on the wall read nine-thirty, so Elach made his way to the grand hall for some breakfast, finding out that the name was slightly misleading. The hall looked more like a repurposed tavern area with the chairs pushed against the wall so the tables could be combined into one large rectangle with fruits, muffins, pastries, meats, eggs, and more. He took a plate from a lone table near the entrance and made himself a modest breakfast, focusing on the things he couldn’t normally get at home like the exoticly coloured fruits and juices. He left the hall, like everyone else had, and found himself an open chair to sink into.

A few minutes passed in as close to comfortable silence as a busy inn could get as Elach savoured the bizarre flavours that he wasn’t sure he enjoyed. Mint and citrus just didn’t seem to mix, and a bright purple fruit tasted like both at the same time.

“What are you doing here, scum?” An unknown voice accosted Elach's right ear, and he turned to see what was going on. Only to come face to face with the source of the voice; a teenager the likes he would have guided through the gardens just a week ago. “I said, what is an unknown bondless like you doing here? This is a place for those with potential, not country hicks like you.”

Elach held out a finger as he finished chewing. He was a little too used to dealing with teenagers like this one. “I’m sorry, who are you? And, follow up question; why should I care?”

A pompous snort alerted Elach that his new friend was about to launch into an elitist tirade, so he tuned him out and instead got a good look at this spoiled brat. His best features were an upturned nose and strong jaw, perfectly sculpted and angular to give his pale face a nice start. His cheekbones weren’t anything to write home about, and neither were any of the other parts of his face. His eyes were green and glinting with pompous grandeur, his hair black and shining with grease that could have been the result of a week without washing or hours of styling. He wore a robe of chartreuse and black cherry, an awful colour combination that had to belong to someone powerful and that Elach thought he recognized from somewhere. If those colours weren’t those of someone powerful, then the brat had an awful fashion sense for someone holding themselves to such high standards. Or maybe he just held Elach to low standards. The brat said something with an air of finality, looking down at Elach with the satisfied and expectant eyes of someone waiting for a servant to prostrate themselves in fear.

“Are you done? Can I get back to eating my breakfast?” Elach asked in a flat tone, and the boy narrowed his eyes at him. An involuntary glance to the side let Elach in on the fact that this brat was used to rolling with a posse. If he cared at all he might have found a way to abuse that.

“Screw you. You won’t get past the first stage of the trials anyways.” The brat huffed, walking all of ten paces away and sitting down in his own chair where he shot Elach nasty glances every so often.

Elach took the opportunity presented to him to get a good look at his competition while he polished off his breakfast. Though he didn’t know if there were a set number of vassals Resthollow would bond with in a given year, if someone outshone him by a huge margin they could still prevent him from getting a bond. Most of the people were like the boy who’d just accosted him; people from prodigious families or lineages who wanted the prestige of bonding with Resthollow more than the bond itself. But there were a few people who reminded Elach of himself, albeit far younger; people in well-made but inexpensive clothes, eyes bright with wonder and expectation without a single marking to define their loyalties. If he was Resthollow he would go for these people first, since there wouldn’t be any split loyalties or teachings to unlearn. But that might have just been his own prejudices talking.

And in the absolute minority were the people who already had bonds, though they too wore no fancy colours to denote their allegiances. Most likely due to their respect for Resthollow, though he doubted Resthollow would allow someone already bonded to another power to partake in their trials. A woman with frizzy yellow hair and her back turned to Elach chatted with a man with electric blue eyes and eyebrows to match, their conversation punctuated by the occasional snap of static electricity or miniature pop of thunder when it hit a high. A man with tar-black tattoos covering a hairless head wore a cream coloured suit with black gloves to leave no other skin exposed. When he opened his eyes to glance nervously around the room they were tar black as well, dripping black liquid down his cheeks that he quickly wiped up with his gloves. And the final person who fit the ‘practitioner’ category, who also looked to be about his age, was a woman with a tarnished gold ring around her neck that constantly crumbled and reformed to show an inner circle of gleaming gold. The whites of her eyes were the same colour as the inner circle, and her hair was blonde with a pearlescent gilded sheen in the lamplight. She was currently talking to a very tired looking Kayvee, who kept shooting pleading glances over to Elach. He placed a hand over his stomach and made a pained face when Elach met his gaze, a slight glassiness to his eyes that hadn’t been there moments before.

Chuckling as he stood up, Elach took his plate with him to rescue Kayvee from his conversation. “Breakfast’s almost finished, so you should go get some. You can take my plate, too. Don’t worry, I didn’t lick it clean.”

“Thanks.” Kayvee said with a relieved smile. “Sorry to cut our chat short, but I really need to get something to eat. Haven’t had anything since dinner last night.”

“No problem. Just try and remember my offer, alright?” The woman said, a sadness in her voice that didn’t seem to be from the conversation being cut short. And then she turned to Elach. “So how do you two know each other?”

“We don’t. He just looked like he needed an out.” Elach said, smirking as the woman’s face flattened in annoyance. He hadn’t noticed how gaunt she was before, as if her skin was wrapped around bone with nothing but the smallest amount of muscle in between. She’d be dead without her Issi.

“There’s no way the only two twenty plus year olds who don’t have bonds don’t know each other.” She said, crossing her arms and leaning back against the wall. “Did your village have a custom of not letting people get their wisps until they’re in their early twenties or something?”

“Not quite. It’s a short story, but one that I’m not going to share with a stranger I just met.” Elach said, an uncomfortable feeling welling up in his gut as he talked. It was like the start of food poisoning combined with a stomach cramp. Maybe this was why Kayvee’s eyes were going glassy; this woman was doing something to him. “What did you want with my friend, anyways?”

“Just seeing if maybe there was a chance.” She sighed. “Unfortunately, I was right. Resthollow doesn’t have a presence outside what you see here. But who knows? Maybe they’ll prove me wrong and their bonding trial won’t be a huge waste of my time.”

“What are you talking about?” Elach asked.

“Eh, you won’t remember any of this anyways. And maybe explaining this out loud will help me figure out what in the hells is going on in Revel’s head.” The woman shrugged her shoulders, and her gaze settled on Elach’s eyes with unblinking focus. “Wait. Why do I feel something off inside of you? Are you like me? Like us?” The woman raised her hand to the ring around her neck, leaning in closer to Elach with a renewed vigor. “Well, if you’re looking here for a new bond, then I might know someone who’s pretty desperate for new blood. I can introduce you to Revel, er, Revelation next week, if Resthollow doesn’t work out for you. Which they won’t. She’s got light, annihilation, and symbolic Issi for you to choose from. We can’t give you the same perks a more powerful patron would, but something’s better than nothing, right?”

Elach tried to take in everything the woman had excitedly spoken at him, but it was like his brain was full of holes. He just couldn’t focus on what she’d just told him. In fact, he felt like if he looked away he would forget her completely.

“Oh. Um, nevermind, I guess.” The woman’s shoulders sank in disappointment. “Something in you just screamed different, but I guess I heard wrong. Yeesh, you’re taking this pretty hard, even for someone with a new wisp bond.” The woman took a step back, and Elach felt a haze roll in from the dark corners of his mind. “You have the Issi saturation of a practitioner twice as old as you are, but the resilience of a bondless. Well, good luck with Resthollow’s bonding trial. Who knows, maybe I’ll see you in the winner’s circle. If you manage to remember me, don’t be a stranger.”

The woman turned away, walking over to the two electric figures and trying to butt in on their conversation. Elach tried without success to hold onto the last few drops of recognition as they fell through his fingers, and the next time he blinked everything relating to that woman was gone. A loud snap made him flinch, and then Kayvee was standing in front of him with a plate full of meat and fruit.

“So where do you want to go first? The park seemed nice, or we could go to a games parlor and try that out? Maybe go see a play or something?” Kayvee suggested, and Elach stared blankly at him. It felt like he was forgetting something. Wasn’t Kayvee just getting his breakfast a second ago?

“Hey, how long have we been talking?” Elach asked, and Kayvee raised an eyebrow as he looked around for a clock.

“Maybe five minutes? I haven’t been downstairs for that long.” Kayvee answered. “You alright, man? You look a little pale.”

That was about the length of time Elach’s memories were blank. What was going on? Was someone here messing with his mind? Control Issi could do that to a person, but he figured that the walls of the Inn had to be riddled with wards against that kind of thing. Resthollow wouldn’t allow a building with their symbol to be anything but perfectly safe, right?

“Let’s go to the park.” Elach decided. “I think I need some fresh air.”

As they left the lounge, Elach noted that the electric couple were talking to a woman he’d never seen before with a tarnished gold ring around her neck. They looked uncomfortable for some reason, and Elach winced in sympathy for a pain he somehow knew all too well.

---------------------------------------------

“Are you here to register for the bondless or the bonded trials?” The woman sitting at a desk made out of black slate asked, scratching down Elach’s name into the slate with a steel stylus.

“Bondless.” Elach replied, and the woman nodded and wrote that under his name.

“Fill out this form and hand it to the person at door 101. There are pens at that table over there if you don’t have one on you.” The woman said, pointing at the table Kayvee was already filling out his form at. “Eternals guide your path, bondless.”

“Thank you.” Elach said with a nod that the woman returned, and as he walked away the clerk beckoned for the person behind him to come up for their registration.

Their vacation had been a welcome break from their regular lives, but Elach was more than ready to start doing something again. He could only take so much nothing, apparently. And from the way Kayvee was almost shaking with excitement, the sentiment was shared.

“Did you know Resthollow has three different types of Issi they can give us when we bond?” Kayvee said as Elach grabbed a pen on a metal chain next to him. “Mortal, earthen, and martial supertypes, which boils down to bone, steel and fortification for the stuff we’d actually be getting our hands on. What one are you going to go for?”

“Probably steel.” Elach said, remembering the suits of armor Resthollow and her vassals wore. “The other two seem like they’re complements to steel, so why not go with the major one?”

“Yeah, that makes sense, but I’m still going for fortification Issi.” Kayvee said, finishing off his form and stepping to the side to make room for the others while still waiting for Elach. “Your parents said that we have our own way of seeing Issi, so how do you think all the guards have the same Issi armor as Resthollow did? Did they do something to make sure their vassal’s Issi would manifest the same way as theirs?”

“Maybe it’s just armor forged to look like Resthollow’s.” Elach said, writing down what kind of wisp he had and the relative size of his headspace and container. “It’s not like Issi-forged armor or weapons are rare.”

“I hadn’t even thought of that.” Kayvee admitted. “And now that you say it, I feel stupid for not having thought of it.”

“We’re still completely new to this. It could be that all of Resthollow’s vassals develop abilities like theirs, regardless of their wisps or personal Issi manifestations.” Elach said, finishing up the relatively short sign-up form. “Guess we’ll find out soon enough, huh?”

The first floor of tower one was all business. The walls were void of any kind of decorations, including the filigree that seemed to be ubiquitous throughout the rest of the city, and the furniture were a utilitarian black mixture of chairs, desks, and tables. The only part of the room that was of interest were a series of closed white doors lining the far wall, a stark comparison to the steel and black of the rest of the room. This being only the first day of the trials, there were a scant few people lining up to be the first to test this year’s contest out. It was Elach, Kayvee, around two dozen other Issi-less people, and the two electric practitioners that were staying in their inn. Those numbers were locked in when the clock struck eleven and the doors clicked shut behind them, the row of doors before them opening to reveal knights standing in closet-sized rooms each holding differently numbered cards.

“See you when we’re done.” Elach said, offering a fist bump that Kayvee returned.

“When we’ve both gotten our bonds.” Kayvee replied, turning the fist bump into a hug with one arm clasped between them. “Hope the eternals bless us with luck.”

As Kayvee left for room 105, Elach made his way to room 101. The kid who’d been bothering him every day at breakfast unfortunately joined him, letting out a dramatic sigh as he handed his form to the guard. Elach rolled his eyes and put his form in the guard’s outstretched hand, who read the forms over before nodding to himself and pressing a button on the wall.

“Welcome to Resthollow’s trial.” The guard said as the floor lurched under them, giving Elach a bizarre sensation like he was falling upwards. “When these doors open the trial will have begun. You will then have five minutes to ask me as many questions as you can, though I won’t be able to answer all of them, before I kick you out.”

“Can we start asking questions now?” Elach asked, and the guard didn’t answer.

“That’s a resounding no.” The kid chuckled, then spoke to Elach without turning to face him. “If you slow me down I won’t hesitate to remove you from the trials myself. So for your own sake, could you try your hardest not to be a burden?”

“For you? Of course.” Elach crooned, dripping with sarcasm. “If we don’t need to work together for this I think we should stay the hell away from each other. For both of our sakes.”

The room suddenly stopped, and Elach stumbled a little to the great joy of the annoying prick next to him. Twin doors hissed open to show a chamber of stone unlike anything he’d seen in the city; a steel lectern stood atop a large scorched stone dais, a narrow stone walkway crossing an inky black void that spread out from the bottom of the dais to the walls of the chamber. There was a single pipe coming out of each of the walls, inert for now, but Elach suspected that something would start to spill from them once he set foot in the room. And that that was tied to whatever the failure condition of this room was. He hoped it wasn’t death, but he had to steel himself for the worst.

“How long are the trials supposed to be?” The kid asked.

The guard shrugged. “A half dozen hours at most. If you do not finish by six p.m. you will be disqualified.”

The kid nodded thoughtfully, and Elach took his turn to ask a question. “Does everyone who passes the trial get bonded to Resthollow?”

“No.” The guard said, and Elach waited for him to elaborate. He didn’t.

“Do the trials require us to work together?” The kid asked, glaring at Elach like he’d just wasted a question.

“Once this first portion is completed, the path will split in two. You may then choose to stay together or go your separate ways.” The guard said, miming the breaking of a stick with his hands.

Elach thought back to Resthollow saving him and Kayvee from the swarm of intruders and Issi beasts. What would that person, or personification, be looking for in potential vessels? He didn’t know enough about Resthollow, the person or the city, to even begin to delve into that.

The kid took Elach’s momentary hesitation as him forfeiting his question, and asked another of his own. “If we find something in one room, are we allowed to take it into the next room?”

Elach looked at the single book resting on the lectern and hoped that the guard would say no or wouldn’t answer. But of course that didn’t happen.

“You can bring anything from one room to another unless specifically told otherwise.”

“Is there enough for both of us?” Elach asked, and the guard remained silent. This was turning out worse than he could have imagined. “Is attacking other participants allowed?” He asked in a voice as sharp and cold as steel, and he didn’t have to turn to see the kid bubbling with giddy anticipation.

“Yes.” The guard said, a single word that would change the course of these trials for the worse. “Though killing is frowned upon.”

Frowned upon. Not forbidden, not disqualification worthy, but frowned upon. So if someone killed their partner, but was a prodigy in all other aspects, Resthollow would overlook that little tidbit. Wonderful. Elach didn’t look forward to trying to balance completing these trials with protecting himself from his ‘partner’. Maybe it would just be easier to kill the kid before it got too intense.

Elach sized up the kid once more, and saw the kid doing the same. If he were being honest, Elach wasn’t sure if he could win a fight against the kid. Under the flowing robes he’d worn for the past week or so was a body toned by what Elach expected was his family’s training regimen, all lithe muscle on a skinny frame that could easily beat Elach’s untrained ass. So Elach needed to put on the air of someone who wasn’t even concerned about this kid trying to attack him. He snorted in dismissal of what he saw, turning back to the guard while holding a closed posture that gave nothing away. And he didn’t give a sideways look to gauge the kid’s reaction, since that little gesture might tip the scales. He just had to hope he’d put a little fear of the eternals into the kid.

“How do we clear the first room?” Elach asked, silencing the question the kid had begun to ask.

Much to his surprise, the guard answered. “Find the proper incantation from the book to stop the ink from rising. There are hints scattered here and there, and delving into the ink does not disqualify you. The lectern itself will provide the Issi for the incantation so your lack of Issi will not stop you from completing this test.”

Not a full answer, but far more than Elach had been expecting. Maybe he should try asking about the rooms after this.

“Can you give us a short version of how to clear the other parts of the trial?” The kid asked, and Elach begrudgingly gave him props for coming up with the same idea he had.

“No.”

Sailing blind for the rest of the test it is, Elach thought. There had to be more questions to ask, but he’d been put on the spot and his own mind was working against him. And then a soft chime sounded, signalling an end to the question time. As the guard grabbed Elach and the kid by their shoulders and shoved them out of the small moving room, Elach sputtered out one last question.

“What is Resthollow looking for?”

As the doors closed, Elach could have sworn he saw the guard smirk.

“Vassals.”

The doors slammed shut, and Elach rubbed his shoulder where the guard had manhandled him as he looked around the room for anything that might give them a hint as to what they were supposed to do. The pipes weren’t spitting out any ink, and the pool underneath them didn’t seem to be rising, so either they were in a grace period or there was some kind of trigger that would make the ink start rising. Like reading out the wrong incantation from the book.

“So do you want to do this now or later?” The kid asked from behind Elach, hopping on his toes and shaking out his arms. He was getting ready for a fight. “Because I’m good for now.”

“Seems like now’s as good a time as any.” Elach sighed. Maybe Resthollow would let him take the trial with a less bloodthirsty partner after this kid beat the tar out of him. He settled into a stance that made him look bigger that he’d used to bring down far too many Issi beasts.

The kid lunged at him without warning, and Elach barely had time to step back and shift his torso to avoid the punch that had been aimed directly at his ribcage. Elach carried the momentum into a right hook, but the kid ducked under it and danced away out of Elach’s range. If he somehow managed to win this fight, he was going to come out of it battered and bruised.

From the way the kid took a stance and watched Elach’s movements like a hawk, it was obvious that he’d either been trained in a proper fighting style or he’d spied on enough lessons to trick someone who knew nothing about them. His feet were shoulder width apart and he constantly shifted his weight from the ball of one foot to the other, his elbows touching the bottom of his ribcage as he held his hands just a few inches from his face. It was like his top half was trying to be as small as possible, but his bottom half didn’t get the message.

Elach stepped forward and threw a simple straight just to see how the kid would react. The kid jumped to the side and lashed out with a quick jab at Elach’s shoulder, his face contorting in unexpected pain as his knuckles collided with Elach’s shoulder. Elach watched as the kid’s eyes darted out and over him, then to the kid’s own hand, then back to him for just a moment. If he wasn’t used to watching Issi beasts eye up his jugular for a split second before they attacked, he would have missed it. And even now, he wasn’t one hundred percent certain of what he saw. But the look on the kid’s face cemented it. He’d learned how to fight, but he’d never bloodied his knuckles. After realizing that hitting something hard freaking hurts, a lesson Elach had been taught constantly, the kid decided to change his strategy and aim a punch right at Elach’s stomach. Where he wasn’t going to hit something hard.

Grunting as the kid twisted the fist that was buried in his gut, Elach cursed his inability to ignore the sweets in his family’s shop. Washboard abs would have stopped the kid in his tracks, but his gut gave the kid enough padding that he felt confident going in for another shot. The right came weaker than the left, though if that was thanks to the kid’s dominant arm or hurt hand Elach couldn’t be sure. As the kid tried to dance back after his attack, Elach stepped forward with a strike aimed at the kid’s left shoulder.

The kid didn’t so much as try to dodge, just as Elach had hoped. The kid had hurt himself on Elach’s shoulder, and now wanted to return the favor. The problem with that was that the kid couldn’t have weighed more than a hundred fifty pounds soaking wet, even with all his lean muscle, so he didn’t have the weight to throw around behind his techniques. Whereas Elach was a solid two-fifty of muscle and sugar-based weight. More sugar than muscle, unfortunately.

Elach’s fist smashed against the kid’s shoulder, wincing as his knuckles scraped bone, but pushing through to do as much damage as he could. The kid yelped in pain, a sound Elach would soon grow tired of, and stumbled backwards in surprise. Elach rubbed his right knuckles with his left hand, clicking his tongue at the weak ache that was starting to spread. That seemed to re-energize the kid, who went from almost stunned to ready to pounce in the time it had taken Elach to shake off his hand and check for cuts. He beckoned Elach forward with a ‘come hither’ gesture of his fingers, and Elach rolled his eyes but did not move. The kid was faster than him, so rushing in would just get him hurt or worse. He didn’t like it, but he was going to have to play this on the kid’s terms.

------------------------

A handful of minutes later Elach finally landed a good kick to the kid’s shin that swept his feet out from under him, the kid’s face splashing into an ankle-high lake of ink. Elach ignored the ever-rising failure condition to focus on the immediate danger, shoving one knee into the small of his back while he wrestled to get the kid’s hands tied with a scrap of cloth he’d torn out of the kid’s robe a few minutes back. The kid never stopped struggling even when Elach had his arms bound behind his back, his face shoved off the dais into the inexorable tide of ink, and a broken ankle that would have prevented him from finishing the trial even if he’d managed to win. That wasn’t to say Elach was in perfect shape himself, but he’d managed to somehow come out of the fight with nothing more than a black eye and some major bruising on his shins, stomach, and kidneys. Peeing was going to suck for a while.

Elach hissed as he tried to clean his ripped and bloody knuckles, but that just seemed to make them worse. He dragged the kid over to the entrance to the room, and much to his surprise the doors swung open to reveal the guard that had answered their earlier questions.

“You’ve made this much harder on yourself.” He said with a smile that betrayed his words, and Elach threw the kid’s bound form into the room with the guard.

Elach shot the guard a painful smile. “I completely disagree. I think I just raised my chances from zero to something.”

The doors slammed shut, and Elach grimaced in pain while pivoting to the trial. Now that his first real challenge was done, he could finally start what he came here for. The ink was already up to his heels thanks to the kid wasting his time, so Elach jogged on the slippery floor to finally get a look at the book on the lectern. He dried his hands off on a dry-ish part of his shirt the best he could before he even dared to touch the thing, flipping to the table of contents to get an idea of what was in the book.

The table of contents was smudged to the point of illegibility with black ink, sticky to the touch and spreading onto the back of the other page. And judging by the size of the book, it would take an obscene amount of luck or extremely advanced speed reading skills to find the incantation without any hints. Still, Elach fanned through the pages just in case there was a hidden compartment or another ink blot that would point him in the right direction. All that served was to see that the contents of the book weren’t in alphabetical, Issi type, or any other discernible order.

“This’ll be way too easy for anyone who goes next if Resthollow doesn’t plug any leaks.” Elach muttered, reaching the glossary at the end of the book and taking a moment to read over the terms. “Hells, maybe I can put together my own incantation from this.”

But again, that would take too long, especially if it failed. So Elach walked to the edge of the dais, now up to his ankles in ink, and tried to look for clues. The pipes were slowly trickling ink into the room at a pace that didn’t match the steady rise of ink, which meant there had to be some other way the ink was getting in. Maybe he could swim up one of the pipes as a last ditch effort if failing the room didn’t mean he was let out, but aside from the pipes the walls were completely bare. The light came from the ceiling itself, casting shadows perfectly downwards, so there weren’t any torches to pull or suspicious bricks sticking out he could press on to reveal any hidden compartments. And the parts of the dais that weren’t covered by ink were polished stone, no markings whatsoever to draw any kind of conclusions from.

“Did the guard just lie to me?” Elach muttered, then shook his head. “Even if he did, there’s nothing but the book here anyways. As long as they didn’t expect me to go ink-diving.”

Elach stared down into the inky abyss, which could have been anywhere from a foot deep to a mile deep. And he’d never tried to swim in ink before, so he didn’t know if he’d sink like a stone the moment he stepped in. He marked that idea down as a last resort, since he would have to float up to one of the pipes anyways to survive high tide. The lectern itself was equally nondescript, and with that Elach was out of places to look.

With nothing else to go on, Elach returned to the book and started skimming the titles of each page. And though the tiles themselves were legible, things like ‘drifter’s dream’ or ‘scavenging iron’, the rest of the text on the pages was illegible. Not in the same way the index was, but rather that he could not focus on any of the letters. They were all there, forming what should have been words, but he just could not focus on them to read them. That ruled out luck and speed reading, so Elach had to figure out this puzzle to move on. A bout of nervous energy caused him to remove the book from the lectern and pace around the top level of the dais, muttering to himself as he came up with and crossed off theories one by one.

By the time the ink had risen to completely cover the bottom step of the dais, Elach was utterly disheartened. He’d tried everything, from dipping one of the book’s pages in ink to attempting to rip one of them out, and he had less than nothing to show for it, since the book was now missing a page and had two smeared with ink. Elach’s last hope was that the book, and by extension everything the guard had told him, was a lie. That the solution was staring him in the face all this time, and he was just too focused on the book to see it. The guard had told him that he’d made things much harder for himself, so that meant that this test was probably designed for two people to complete. So what in this room could be done with one person, but would be much easier with two?

Elach put his hand on the lectern with the hope that he could access the Issi inside it that would supposedly power the book, but he couldn’t feel anything from it. Which either meant that the guard was lying, or that the lectern and the book were linked and wouldn’t work for anything but each other. He steadied himself with a few long breaths to push the frustration and panic down for the umpteenth time, but this time they just wouldn’t stay down. He had to be missing something. He had to. He just had to.

The guard’s words had to hold a nugget of truth in them. He’d said that this could be done alone, so that meant he had to be able to do all of the steps by himself. Two hands would be enough. Elach stared down at his own reflection in the ink, a perfect mirror of him except his face was a black blur. That was new. And it gave him an idea. Elach opened the book to the table of contents and held it up to the ink, sighing in relief as the words came through in an almost blindingly white font that was impossible to miss. And then the words burned far too bright for Elach to even glance at, and he had to turn away and shield his eyes until the glow dimmed.

As he prepared to go back for a second shot at reading the index, Elach realized that a portion of the ink had now turned bone white. It was a small puddle in the lake of ink, but it held its shape as the rest of the ink slowly meandered around it like a beacon from below was shining up to the surface. Elach leaned over and tentatively dipped a fingertip into the white ink, and a warm tingling sensation shot up his arm as the ink stuck to him. But when he pulled his fingertip out, there was no white ink staining it. And the black ink that had previously stained his finger was also gone, revealing a fingertip and nail that looked like they’d been freshly washed. Elach gently placed the book on the ground and sank his arms into the puddle of ink up to his elbows, the burning sensation now almost too much to handle, and when he pulled them out all the ink had been washed off. With a relieved sigh Elach took the next few minutes to carefully cup out handfuls of the white ink, ignoring the burning sensation that came along with it, and spread it onto every entry in the glossary until he found what he expected he was looking for. And then he did the rest of them, just in case the first incantation was there to make him think he’d found the right one and ignore the rest. Or maybe the ones after the first were there to make him think the first one was the trap, and those ones were the false choices.

“Don’t get into your own eternals damned head.” Elach chided himself. “You should have enough time to try all of them out before the room gets too full.”

Elach narrowed his choices down to four incantations; storm drain, desert’s claim, flash frost, and empty reign. That last one scared him, so he resolved to use it only if all the other three failed, which was unlikely. He hoped that all of them would work since this was only the first test, and that the failsafe would only trigger if someone managed to see through the blurs and started reading out incantations at random. He flipped the book to page 42, the start of the three page long description of storm drain, and cursed. He'd made a terrible assumption.