When he opened his eyes, Elach found himself at the top of a giant iceberg. But it wasn’t in the water, so did that make it a glacier? Elach found himself at the top of a giant glacier. Looking down the ice was a frost coated white-blue that gave barely any insight into anything below the surface, and Elach pushed himself to his feet as he surveyed the area. There was a distinctly him-shaped hole in the snow that covered the glacier, the sky was cloudless while the sun beat down on him, and he could see nothing but glacier until it fell off a cliff. The sound of waterfalls came from all around him, and with that Elach put together where he was.

Freshetfall, the underground city that built itself into a constantly melting and reforming glacier. Which also meant that he was on top of it, and from what he remembered from geography class there was no way down from the top unless he could contact someone in the city. He would have been stranded if he didn’t have a way to safely bring himself down to the ground.

It took Elach ten minutes of trudging through knee-high snow to reach the edge of the glacier, looking down at the absurdly long drop partially obscured by the crashing of waterfalls flowing out of yawning chasms in the side of the glacier. He wasn’t sure he could even make an anchor that far down. But he needed to try anyway. Elach focused on a spot a dozen feet away from the lake around the glacier formed by the waterfalls and tried to force his Issi to materialize, and though he felt like it worked there was one major problem with this idea; he was way too far away to see if his anchor had formed.

“That’s a problem.” Elach reached out with a grasping hand to try and get a hold of the anchor, latching onto something far below. “Or not.” Elach yanked his arm back, ready for the ground to race up to him, and found himself face down in the snow. On top of the glacier.

“Alright, can’t go through solid objects.” Elach muttered as he brushed the powdery snow off of his arms. It wasn’t near as cold as he’d expected. He undid his anchor and placed a new one further away so that he wouldn’t hit the glacier on the way down, pulling himself down to the ground in one grasp.

Elach’s container strained in agony at the sheer distance he traveled, and when he looked back up at the top of the glacier he realized just how far he’d gone. The glacier must have been at least two kilometers tall, maybe three, and he’d had to alter his path to avoid falling in the lake and smashing himself on the glacier. So now he found himself with a two-thirds empty container and a completely empty stomach on the outskirts of a city he knew only from the few lessons he was taught in school. And he couldn’t really get help from anyone, since he was now dissociated from the people under the eternals’ control.

“Hands in the air. I see a spark of Issi and you’re done.” A voice said from behind Elach, cutting him off from his thoughts. Elach grimaced and did as told, his elbows at ninety degrees with his hands straight up. “Good. Turn around slowly so I can see your face.”

Elach turned around to come face to face with a person in blue and white robes, chainmail armor showing through on their legs and where their sleeves rolled up to point a spear at Elach’s neck. They wore a bandana around a head of short cropped light blue hair, snow white iris-less eyes with a single blue dot for a pupil. A Freshetfall vassal if Elach had ever seen one.

“Your Issi feels…. Strange. Whose colours do you fly?” The practitioner asked. “No explanations. Only answers.”

Sentence hadn’t told him not to use his name, but Elach Sentence didn’t sound quite right in his mind. And he was not going to use Elach Prisoner. Elach Cavress sounded better to his ears, but he didn’t want to use the name of a dead city. He wanted to avoid any and all ill omens he could. So where did that leave him? Mom took Pyreheld’s name, and dad took the name of a hammer he bonded. He didn’t want to take those either; they didn’t feel earned. By this point the practitioner was growing antsy, the spearpoint moving ever closer to Elach’s neck. So he mixed the names of the two things he felt comfortable using, even if he wasn’t bonded to one of them yet.

“Elach Follow.” He said, holding back a curse when he realized he’d chosen a plain old word that already existed. He didn’t sweat it too much, though, since he could always choose a different name later. This practitioner wouldn’t remember anyways.

“Follow, Follow…..” The practitioner said, a flurry of snowflake-like Issi flowing off of them in visible waves that surprised Elach with their clarity. It was like his parents’ demonstration, but seeing it in the real world was somehow different. “Never heard of it. Is it a place, creature, thing, lineage, or ideal?”

“Ideal?” Elach asked out of reflex, cringing as he remembered that the practitioner had instructed him to only answer. Luckily, they seem to have forgotten their own order.

“We get a few of them around this time every year. Practitioners who bonded for a reason other than power. They think their cause is so much more important than their bond, so they choose to take a name like ‘Greven Justice’ or ‘Baraveth Equality’.” The practitioner shrugged. “They claim that they take the name with permission from their bonded, but who knows if they’re making that up.”

“You could get someone with truth Issi to question them.” Elach suggested.

“Not worth our time or coin to hire them. And you still haven’t answered.”

“Right, sorry. It comes from a place.” Elach said, not divulging any more information than he needed to. Just in case this person was immune to the eternals’ control like he was.

His worries proved unfounded as the practitioner’s eyes started to glaze over, the barely audible sound of cracking and snapping echoing around them. They spoke no more, and Elach stepped to the side to see if they even recognized that he was here anymore. The second he got out of their field of view they disappeared with a loud crack, and Elach looked around in a panic to find them with their back turned to him walking towards the lake. They had completely and utterly forgotten he was ever here.

He followed them to the edge of the lake, where a sparkling ice bridge rose from the waters to let them cross over. Elach created an anchor just behind them and pulled himself to the edge of the bridge, trying to keep his footsteps as quiet as possible as he crossed ten feet behind the practitioner whose name he never learned. Halfway across the bridge someone called out in the distance and the practitioner whirled to look at Elach, spear raised and eyes wild with fear.

“Hands in the air. I see a spark…” The practitioner started, and Elach sighed. He wasn’t going to do this again. He created an anchor at the other side of the lake and pulled, the shore rushing up to meet him as he left the confrontation behind. A chorus of snapping and cracking sounded as everyone that had noticed him was corrected, and Elach strolled confidently towards a check-in station before a tunnel that led underground. He was getting used to this far too quickly.

“Name and reason for visitation?” A guard in the same colours as the practitioner from moments ago asked Elach as he got to the front of the line, his iris-less eyes underlined with dark circles.

“Elach Follow, and just visiting.” Elach answered, and a flare of Issi from the guard washed over him. No truth practitioners, Elach snipped sarcastically yet silently, and resisted the urge to roll his eyes.

“Go ahead.” The guard motioned to a platform barely a quarter filled with people, and Elach nodded thanks before stepping away.

The lift was a giant square slab of grey stone with a railing around it, hanging above a steep incline that delved downwards into a barely-lit tunnel below. Looking around him Elach could sense that each and every person around him was emitting Issi magnitudes more powerful than he expected he was, and the concerned looks they shot him confirmed his worry. The bars he’d entered through snapped shut while a bell rang, and Elach reactively grabbed onto the bars in front of him in a firm grip for dear life.

The slab fell to the ground with an ear-splitting crash, followed soon after by the frantic squeaking of wheels that hadn’t been oiled in ages. Elach screamed for dear life as the slab rocketed down the tunnel, torchlight flickering on and off as the speeding slab cruised by. Elach had to force his eyes to remain open as his knuckles whitened on the bar in front of him, light snapping and crackling sounding as the people around him were affected by his presence. At least he would be the only one that remembered that one guy who got on the wrong lift and screamed his head off for the entire trip.

And then just as soon as it had begun, the lift crashed against a stone barrier and sent Elach tumbling over the bar. He flew for a good fifteen feet before he managed to collect himself enough to create an anchor on the ground below, pulling himself to it and skidding along the ground for a few torturous seconds before coming to a stop.

“So it doesn’t take away all my momentum.” Elach groaned, pushing himself to his knees. “Good to know.”

A few good samaritans offered Elach a hand, and he graciously accepted knowing that they would forget him in moments. “Thanks. Thank you. You’re too kind.” Elach murmured as the people around him fussed over him. “I’m fine, really. Just a few scrapes. I have medical supplies with me. No, I don’t need any apples.”

Except for the man who tried to use Elach’s injury to get him to buy apples of all things, the people of this marketplace checkpoint before Freshetfall were overwhelmingly kind. Maybe out of the goodness of their own hearts, but maybe because the eternals determined that these people needed to be kind. He’d never find out, so worrying about it was a waste of brainpower. Instead Elach reached into his pocket to find his miniature first aid kit, smeared some of the healing paste on his wounds after washing them out with freshwater, and was on his way. The people had already forgotten him.

As he walked along the long tunnel with homes and businesses carved into the rock, little windows poking outwards for homes and large windows cut for businesses, Elach wondered why the heck he’d decided to come down here. What did he even want to do at this point? Get stronger so that he could kill all the eternals plaguing the world with their influence? That wasn’t a want, it was a goal so far away that he couldn’t even justify working towards it at the moment. Maybe he should just find somewhere to hole up and find out how to use Sentence’s ring, turn Prisoner’s coin into a focus, find out how to grow his Issi seed, and pick out the eternal who needed to die first. He nodded to himself. That would have to do.

And yet he couldn’t settle down in an inn; the innkeeper would forget he was there and rent out the room to someone else. And he doubted that this part of Freshetfall, if this was even considered part of the city, had anything like a park to sleep in. He needed to go forward, into the city proper, where he could hopefully find a way to settle down for a little while. Elach’s stomach chose that moment to cramp in protest, one step past growling to let him know that he was dangerously close to debilitating hunger. He added finding something to eat to that list after noticing that his pack was suspiciously absent, cursing his and Prisoner’s forgetfulness as his stomach did the same.

“Another thing to add to the list.” Elach sighed as he thought of the fountain and it’s night-sky waters. He wanted to test them right away, but he wasn’t even sure of what the existential bleed was doing for him. Best to wait a few days for any changes to surface before adding another variable into the mix.