The holes had come to Elach’s headspace. The first one broke through when he wasn’t there, and he came face to face with a grisly scar in reality that was ripped open through one of the little cracks that had become so numerous he couldn’t move without planning every step. They opened up a pathway for the snaps to make their way inside his headspace, thundering through his headspace to rip and tear at his memories. They couldn’t take what he’d had, but his present was slowly eroding away and his future grew dimmer and dimmer by the second. It hadn’t been safe for a while now, but with his awareness fading Elach couldn’t even begin to formulate some kind of plan to escape. And even if he did, he would just emerge into the real world’s tortures. But he couldn’t remember any of those, so maybe that was the better option.

Elach walked through a crack that slipped through his shoulder like he was made of melted butter, parting skin, muscle, and bone without resistance. But his memory was null at that exact moment, so when he came back to his senses for a short moment he felt the pain and helplessness of his now useless arm in full. He was going to absentmindedly kill himself, he realized, and the thought brought with it a twisting pain in his stomach. Ever since he met Flow, he’d started to look back at his memories with the abject horror of a judge reading out the accused’s list of crimes. Or how a judge should have acted, since the judge that was brought out to his little village had reacted just like he, and everyone else he ever knew, did; a kind of ‘this is how it is’ attitude that left everything feeling like some kind of cosmic joke. A parent reacting to the loss of their child the same way they did when his store ran out of their favorite kind of sweets; mild annoyance followed almost instantly by acceptance as their lives went on. That wasn’t how it was supposed to go. But it was how everything went.

So why had he changed? Was it Flow? Had the wisp done something to him that screwed up his morals and perception of pain, loss, and grieving? Was he now in the wrong, and everyone else was right? He didn’t even know how he’d come upon these feelings, since nobody had ever shown them around him before. Even his favorite books felt soulless and pointlessly boring now that he thought back on them, their stories of loss and immediate acceptance before moving on to the next big thing a mirror on his life before torture became his everything.

Cradling his arm as he watched the cracks in the sky grow larger and more plentiful, Elach gripped onto the few moments he could recall that weren’t instantly swallowed up by the snaps. He let out a long, shaky breath and looked down at Flow, who had stationed themselves squarely between his feet, and was barely moving as the flow of red-gold liquid amber trickled ever slower every time he found himself aware once more. He sat down with a grunt, crossing his legs and picking up flow with his usable arm and moving them into his lap. And with one last look towards the ceiling, Elach closed his eyes and felt his consciousness slip out of his headspace.

“Hey, brother, you alright?”

Elach felt the words pierce the veil that had been in place for eternals knew how long, and it was disquieting. Like an echo from an abandoned cave. But they didn’t do anything else for him, just a few stray anomalies in an empty, quiet world.

“Can you hear me? Hello, you there!” A few quiet grumblings, followed by footsteps and clinking. How was he hearing this? “Oh damn, you’re messed up. Outside and in. Your container’s held together with hopes and dreams at this point, ain’t it? Hoo boy, it is. Tyrant’s hate, how are you standin’ right now? Well, kneelin’, but that’s besides the point.”

Elach’s vision suddenly cleared as someone stared down at him with a grin splitting their face from end to end. “Welcome to my personal space, stranger. Please leave your shoes at the door. Don’t want you scuffin’ up the carpets.” The man winked at him and gestured at his own bare feet, the skin on his ankles pressed taut like there should have been a bracelet or bangle on them.

The carpet the man spoke of was an extremely extravagant rug woven with deep purple and blackened silver threads in a pattern that emulated the night sky on a cloudless night. It was also placed directly on the ground, roots and anthills showing through so perfectly that the carpet couldn’t have been more than a millimeter thick. Elach peeled his mostly ruined shoes from his feet, surprised at just how clean they were for how destroyed they were. He’d expected more filth with how long he surmised he’d been gone.

Elach laid his shoes down right in front of the carpet, and his host nodded in appreciation. “Where am I?” Elach asked, scanning the opulently decorated little forest clearing he found himself in. “And why doesn’t everything hurt anymore?”

Purple and silver tapestries draped down over the treetops, depicting scenes of armored people fighting various Issi monstrosities. The carpet extended in a perfect circle around a tree stump in the center of the clearing, with what looked like an executioner’s axe lodged inside it. Something rainbow coloured shimmered near the blade and ran down a ridge in the stump, but Elach couldn’t make it out without getting closer. A couch, two armchairs, a burning hearth, and a long table were crafted out of a dark purple metal with blackened silver wood accents, lighter purple fabric covering whatever needed it. A water wheel spun out in the corner of the clearing, hooked up to some kind of Issi generator that didn’t seem to be connected to anything else.

“Why, you’re in my cell of course.” His host smirked as Elach shot him a disbelieving look. “Not what you expect when you hear the word ‘cell’, I know, but it’s my prison all the same.” His host held up his arms, purple lines snaking from his fingertips up to the middle of his biceps where they disappeared into a plain white shirt. The sound of rattling chains came from nowhere, and Elach noted two bands of taught skin on his wrists. Just like his ankles. “See? A prisoner of this wonderful little grove. And you can call me that, too.”

“Little Grove?” Elach asked with mock innocence, and his host let out a belly laugh and smiled wide. Elach raised an eyebrow. It wasn’t that funny.

“Little Grove! Ha!” His host gasped, doubling over and gripping his gut. “Oh man, I missed people. No, no, not little grove. Hah.. mmmhm.” He cleared his throat. “Call me Prisoner.”

“Prisoner? Isn’t that a little demeaning?” Elach asked, walking over to one of the armchairs and feeling the upholstery. It was smoother than silk, almost slippery even.

“It’s what I am, so that’s what I go by.” Prisoner said, sitting in the armchair that faced the one Elach was fiddling with.

Elach took a seat and almost slipped onto the carpet. With his back halfway off the chair, he struggled into a sitting position. “For what? And by who?”

“Ain’t tellin’ you, and it don’t matter anyway.” Prisoner shrugged. “But that’s enough about me. Who are you, and how in Hoalt’s hate did you find my humble prison? Especially with your body ravaged like it is.”

Hoalt’s hate? Elach racked his brain just to be sure; he had never heard that expression before. He’d ask about that later, after he got the more important stuff out of the way. “My name’s Elach, and I don’t know.”

“Please, elaborate.” Prisoner leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees and his chin on his fists. “And before you ask, elaborate on everythin’; your missing surname, what you were doin’ before you found my cell, and how you found yourself on death’s doorstep. Don’t leave anythin’ out. Because I’ll know.”

Prisoner spoke without a hint of malice, and his words did not carry threats. They carried promises. But for some reason Elach felt comfortable sitting across from him. Maybe he was manipulating Elach with his Issi and that was why he was here thinking, not doing whatever he was before he stumbled into Prisoner’s cell.

“How far back do you want me to go?” Elach asked after a moment’s consideration. “The beginning, or when all this,” Elach motioned to his utterly ruined clothes and unkempt yet clean appearance, “started?”

“How far back is the beginnin’?” Prisoner asked.

“Six years.”

Prisoner hissed air in through his teeth, leaning back and crossing his arms. He shook his head and muttered something to himself that sounded like self-depreciation. “What do I care about how long you take? Time’s all I got. Hit me.”

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

“Alright, skip the pointless trauma and get to the meat.” Prisoner said after Elach told the story of his fifth solstice. “I get that you’re dealin’ with all these newfound regrets, and that lookin’ back on your life now is like watchin’ atrocities bein’ committed in your own skin, but that don’t get your tale told. Skip to when things change.”

Elach grabbed a piece of dried meat from the table between him and Prisoner, chewing on the heavily spiced and yet somehow overly sweet jerky as he gathered his thoughts. He skipped ahead to when he and Kayvee encountered the intruders and bonded their own wisps. Prisoner nodded along with seeming interest, stopping Elach when he got to the part with Gilt, Hollow, and Resthollow.

“You saw a wisp’s manifestation? That’s beyond rare.” Prisoner drank from a plain wooden cup with a pattern carved into it, then placed it down on the table with a thunk. “Are Hollow and Resthollow two different manifestations, or is Hollow just the nickname for the latter?”

“Two different entities. Don’t know why I never thought of the similarities before.” Elach shrugged. “And I think it was at least three true manifestations. Hollow, Gilt, and Flow.”

“Flow?” Prisoner asked, then snapped his fingers. “That little wisp you bonded that came from the big plant bird, right? How's it doing, anyways?”

Elach’s throat got thick, and he suddenly had trouble swallowing. “I need to check something.”

“Go ahead. I’ll be waiting right here.” Prisoner said. He refilled his cup and poured water into a far more ornate vessel, setting it in front of Elach. “Just scream if you need me.”

Elach closed his eyes and found himself in his headspace, and it seemed to be mostly back to normal. The cracks and holes had vanished, the level in the fountain was back to normal, and water was flowing into the void once more. And, looking upwards, Elach saw Flow in their old sleeping corner, their wounds closed and their little body slowly heaving with each and every sleeping breath.

“Flow’s fine.” Elach sighed, his relief palpable as he rolled his uninjured shoulder.

Prisoner pushed the ornate cup towards Elach, and he accepted it with gratitude. “Drink, brother. You’ve got a long while to go since the solstice.”

“You’re right.” Elach gulped down the contents of his cup, realizing too late that it wasn’t water that Prisoner had poured him. “That’s some strong stuff.” He coughed, wiping the clear liquid from his chin.

“You want more?” Prisoner sloshed a half empty jar carved out of some kind of red gemstone, and Elach set down his cup to be filled. “Take it easy on this one, won’t you? I don’t got a whole bunch of this stuff.”

“I don’t think I could do that again on purpose.” Elach coughed as the back of his mouth and throat burned. “Where exactly did I leave off again?”

“Resthollow, who you’ll have to tell me more about after this, had just told your town that the primal spring was quarantined.”

“Thanks.” Elach swished the clear liquid in his glass and shifted in his chair. “So the festival should have been cut short, but everyone still...”