Elach meandered around the streets surrounding the field to pass the time, and nothing of note happened while he waited. He saw people, ate lunch at a cafe with tables outside on the pedestrian path, and took a short nap in the shade of one of the trees that separated the field from the city around it. The sounds of boots beating the grass roused him from his slumber as the fortification practitioners made their way into the field, passing by and exchanging pleasantries with the steel practitioners before laying their equipment down on the grass and starting their warmup.

A quick scan of the group showed an absence of Kayvee, and Elach stretched his legs and arms with a grunt as he sat up. The fortification group also didn’t have anything marking them as practitioners, and their instructor wore a white and black jumpsuit instead of the armor he’d come to associate with Resthollow. When they turned, Elach got a good look at the black hexagonal plates that ran down from the base of their skull and down into their jumpsuit, but most of it was obscured by the high-necked attire and white gloves that they wore. They exuded an intense no-nonsense aura, so much that Elach almost felt sorry for the vassals until he got a little bit closer and could actually hear what they were talking about.

“Do you still need help with manifestation, Asad?” The instructor asked in a gruff voice that was full of caring and love for their students. The kid who must have been Asad nodded sheepishly, and the instructor offered them a smile that extended to their eyes. “Don’t worry, everyone learns at different paces. We’ll get you up and running before you know it. Everyone starts with the usual warm-up, then meet me back here for today’s lesson!”

As the vassals scattered the large man noticed Elach approaching, walking to meet him halfway and stop him from getting any closer to the vassals.

“I’m sorry, but I can’t let you bother the kids while they’re workin’. We don’t get enough time for this as is, so I can’t afford them any interruptions.”

“Well that’s fine, because I’m here to see you.” Elach said, handing the man the slate the other instructor had given him. “I’m looking for my friend, and I’m pretty sure he’s in your class.”

The man nodded as he read, looking up to study Elach’s face and then down at the slate again. “Kayvee. Yes, he is… he was in my class. But I’m afraid you can’t see him.” The man handed Elach back the slate, gripping him by the wrist before he could ask him to elaborate. “And it’s not because he did anything wrong, before you start getting ideas. Kayvee and a few of the other vassals are getting powerful far faster than the others, so they’ve been sent away to train with someone that’s classified even to me. I’m sorry. Truly.”

“Oh.” Elach said, his heart sinking. Why hadn’t Kayvee said goodbye? Why hadn’t he said hello? Had he even tried to look for Elach? His mind cleared with a snap, and Elach sighed. “Do you have any idea when they’ll be back?”

“Not until the next solstice at the earliest.” The man replied, finally letting go of Elach’s wrist. He rubbed it absentmindedly as the man continued. “But I can pass along a message, or a little gift that I can ensure will find their way to him.”

“Do you need it in writing?” Elach asked, and the man nodded.

“I have a slate right here. Do you have anything else you want to send?” He asked, handing Elach a black slate and a steel stylus. Elach ran the stylus along the slate, and the metal flowed like ink along the rock.

“I do have something. Two somethings, actually.” Elach reached into his bag and pulled out the two most valuable things Resthollow had given him; the seed, now void of Issi, and a chunk of something they’d called ‘bonesteel’. It was apparently very rare and valuable, since the mines below the city ran dry of the stuff a decade or two ago. But they would be useless to Elach, aside from pulling in a hefty sum at some auction house. Kayvee would make much better use of them. He scribbled a quick letter to Kayvee on the slate and handed all three things back to the man.

“Don’t bother asking him to write back.” Elach said, and the man raised his jet black eyebrows in surprise. “I won’t be here to get the letter.” he clarified.

“Ah, leaving now that you know he’s unavailable.” The man said. It was half true, so Elach didn’t correct him. “I’ll make sure this gets into the right hands so that they can find their way to your friend. Good luck on whatever path you take, and for what little it matters, I’m sorry.”

Elach thanked the man and began the long walk back to what he’d called home for the last two months. No matter what he did to it, he just couldn’t get comfortable in the place. It took him all of ten minutes to gather his things, since he hadn’t bothered to fully unpack from when he moved in, and he was standing outside Resthollow’s gates before he even realized it. And now he began the 500 mile walk home, a journey he imposed on himself to give him time to think and unwind. It would take the greater part of two weeks to get home, or maybe even longer, but he didn’t care. He needed this for some reason.

The first time he was attacked by a random Issi beast was an annoyance. The long-legged flightless bird with grey and black scales instead of feathers had gone down easy once he got a hold on it’s neck, but not until it had gotten a few good kicks in on him that should have shattered bone, or at least left him with fractures that were debilitating at best. But all they left were nasty bruises, green and purple splotches on his legs and chest that were sensitive to the touch but nothing more. Elach had taken the rest of the day off, soaking himself in a nearby stream and eating a meal of bird meat and foraged berries. It wasn’t luxurious by any means of the imagination, but it felt far better than anything he’d eaten in the last few months. It proved he wasn’t completely worthless, even if he never got any Issi of his own.

Then there were a few days of boredom. Stopping at whatever Inn or town he passed by on the road to sleep or re-up his constantly dwindling food supplies, trying whatever he could to fix his container every night before he slept. For the longest time he had less than no success, but the further he got from Resthollow the more the bizarre feeling he’d started to see as normal went away. It was like his existence was sighing in relief that he was leaving the living city.

Elach stretched his arms above his head and yawned as he opened his eyes to begin his nightly check of his headspace. He grazed his hand along the side of the fountain, the stone-looking material feeling more like the waxy petals of the flower it was shaped like, and Elach lowered his hand to drag through the water that he couldn’t figure out how to make sticky like Resthollow had once done. He cupped the water in his hands and brought it to his mouth, drinking deep of it’s ever so slightly sweet flavor that coated his tongue in a waxy resin that would last for a few minutes at most, coughing and sputtering as a little slid down the wrong pipe.

As his coughing fit slowly subsided, Elach wiped his hands on his shirt, knowing that they would be dry no matter what when he left his headspace but not wanting to deal with wet hands for however long he decided to stay here. His little room had grown at least fifty percent larger while he’d been on the road, large enough now that he could efficiently pace around the fountain and not worry at all about getting wet. But the walls, ceiling, and floor still had nothing to show, and they never would until Elach managed to get a bond of his own. Maybe his wisp was holding him to his promise of a bond with Hollow? The flowing lotus had been rather close to Hollow when they were both wisps. Well, as close as two mindless constructs of pure Issi could be.

Elach placed his fingers on the wall, their utterly indistinct texture reminding him of his failures. He shuddered as the intrusive thoughts started rearing their ugly heads, things that had never bothered him or so much as entered his mind over the years. But that same soft snapping he heard ever more by the day in his headspace cleared his thoughts, leaving a gaping hole where they used to be that left Elach feeling empty and aimless. Like a piece of him he didn’t know existed was ripped from his very being, and now he felt a pain that he couldn’t direct anywhere and couldn’t explain. And so it festered.

His fingers came away from the wall caked in stone dust and blood, long ridges filled with bits of fingernail, skin, and blood scratched into the wall culminating around a single point. The symbol etched into the wall filled him with a sense of dread that he couldn’t quite place. Maybe it’s meaning was lost to the same nothing that seemed to be most of what he remembered of his headspace at this point. He walked over to the fountain and ran his mutilated fingertips under one of the falling streams, wincing as the body-temperature water got into the wounds and washed away the stone dust and ruined skin. As the tainted water fell down into the abyss, a soft splashing noise registered in Elach’s mind but couldn’t overpower the immense pain of washing out his wounds.

Something made waves in the fountain’s waters in Elach’s peripheral vision, splashing towards him like a creature that wasn’t meant to swim trying to cross a stream they had misinterpreted as shallow. His hand burst free of the runoff, splashing water all around the small room as Elach readied himself for whatever had managed to invade his inner sanctuary. But his newfound adrenaline went to waste as a small bird swam unburdened towards him, splashing the water with its wings as if to make sure Elach knew it was coming. It didn’t look like any kind of water bird that he’d ever seen, with two long flowing tail feathers trailing behind a relatively small body with a long, needle-like beak. Like a hummingbird the size of a crow, with feathers that seemed a little off. And eyes that shone like twin beads of vibrant golden nectar. Flower petals. That was what the feathers reminded him of. And the beak was like a particularly violent thorn. It hopped up onto the edge of the fountain and shook itself off, it’s legs like flower stems tipped with yet more thorns. It’s feathers were mostly a purple so dark they seemed to be black, but with a throat, crown, and some wing feathers of the same red-gold amber of its eyes. It tilted its head at Elach as if it was showing concern, flapping over to and perching on his raised forearm. It let out a series of long, somber notes that stitched together in Elach’s mind to form a song of sadness and loss, of old lives lost and of new lives cut short thanks to the cruel inscrutable world they lived in.

“I’m alright, bud. But thanks for looking out for me.” Elach gently traced a finger over the bird’s head, and it chirped happily. “Did you hatch from the little bud that used to be the flowing lotus? How did you hide from me for so long?”

What used to be the flowing lotus hopped up Elach’s arm and rubbed its head against his cheek, letting out a long series of chirps that must have been an explanation. Elach smiled and let out a short, delighted laugh as the bird continued its tirade, flapping its wings and sticking out a long tongue every now and then for emphasis. It was like a toddler telling a babbling tale, so even though Elach couldn’t understand anything the bird was trying to get through he stood and listened, nodding at random and making token comments when the bird paused for a moment before twittering happily and continuing.

About halfway through the story, the bird’s song switched to a minor key and the sadness it had portrayed earlier combined with a primal fear and terror. Elach didn’t have to understand the bird’s chirps to understand what it was trying to get through, and he probably knew what had brought on the dirge.

“Why didn’t you want me to bond with Resthollow?” Elach asked in a lighthearted tone, trying not to show the underlying frustration that bubbled up as he remembered his trial.

The bird went quiet, it’s tail feathers falling to rest against Elach’s back and it shuffled from side to side on his arm. It let out a few low notes before hopping back onto the fountain’s edge, locking eyes with Elach and waiting.

He took that as his que to start asking questions. Which meant the bird knew he couldn’t understand it. “Chirp once for yes, twice for no. Do you understand?”

The bird chirped exactly once.

“Alright.” Elach took a deep breath, a multitude of questions bouncing around in his head. But most of them needed explanations, not just a yes or no answer. The bird would have to grow far more powerful before it could actually speak to him, if it even could anymore. “Are you the reason why my bond with Resthollow failed?”

The bird chirped once then paused, chirping twice in quick succession afterwards. Yes and no. That didn’t help.

“So it was partly you, and partly something else?”

One chirp.

“Do you know what else it was?”

Two chirps and a tail ruffle.

Elach sighed and leaned against the wall, stumbling a few inches before he struck it. “Guess that would make it too easy. Can I even bond with anything?”

The bird stayed silent, tucking its head under its wing for a moment before returning its attention to Elach.

“Three chirps for I don’t know, ok?”

The bird chirped once, and Elach asked it the bonding question again. It responded with three chirps.

“Great.” Elach studied the back of his right hand, grimacing at his chipped and bloodied fingernails. He balled it up into a fist and shoved it down to his side. “Did you hatch before I tried to bond with Resthollow?”

Three chirps. That was bizarre.

“Can you give me any of your Issi? Like another bond, or something?” Elach asked, but he felt like he already knew the answer.

Two chirps, confirming his suspicions. If the bird could have helped him out, it would already have. Elach wasn’t running short on questions by any stretch of his imagination, but he was having trouble finding ones that could be answered by a simple yes, no, or I’m not sure. He ran through a few questions that got an I’m not sure, like how did the bird hatch, and why didn’t it look like a smaller version of what the flowing lotus before it died, and a few other Issi related questions that he didn’t expect an answer to. And then he came down to his last two questions; one that he’d been putting off for no real reason, and another because it could end his path before he truly had begun to walk it.

“Do you remember anything from what you used to be? Not the little egg-bud, but the wisp and then short lived Issi bird before that?”

One chirp. Elach felt a mixture of relief and regret, since from what Hollow had told him confirmed that he’d stolen this bird’s future. And it wasn’t just ‘this bird’, it was the flowing lotus. A wisp he’d known for as long as he’d known the garden, and that had given it’s newfound life to protect Kayvee and the kids he’d been escorting.

“How much do you remember? Everything?”

The bird thought for a moment then peeped once. A far quieter response than any of their previous answers, and they seemed to try to make themselves smaller as they remembered. They truly did remember everything.

“I’m so sorry.” Elach whispered, and the bird that used to be the flowing lotus stared at him in silence for a few long moments. “Alright. One last question.” Elach let out a deep sigh, holding his thumbs in clenched fists to stop his hands from shaking. “Will you let me be a practitioner?”